A Dying Saviour

“I am He that liveth, and was dead; and, behold, I am alive for evermore” (Revelation 1:18a).

The events of salvation we commemorate on Good Friday and Easter are that the Saviour entered death but also rose again the third day. God’s Church has a living Saviour. However, to be Saviour, He had to die. After all, He had placed Himself as a Surety in the place of a people who had subjected themselves to death. Their punishment became His punishment, their suffering His suffering, and their death His death. The Lord Jesus entered death as a Surety and a substitute. Through His death He paid the price that was demanded by God’s justice. That justice demanded no less than payment to the last penny. Jesus paid in full. He testified this Himself when He cried with a loud voice, “It is finished.”

The Father accepted Jesus’ sacrifice as being perfectly sufficient also. God the Father declared this by raising His Son from the dead. In Jesus’ resurrection, God’s people have the receipt that all their guilt has been blotted out of God’s book and that God will never again be wroth with them or rebuke them. Atonement has been found in the sacrifice of the Lamb. The debt has been paid. What a desirable matter that is for one who is buried under debt. Yes, it becomes an indispensable matter for a sinner to whom God uncovered his debt. By nature, we all have an outstanding debt and we do not have a penny to pay, but does that bother us? With all our religion, we calmly live on as people who always make debts. We live as if there will never come a time when God will settle accounts with us. Remember that there will come a time when there will be no more escape or delay. Then it will sound, “Pay Me that thou owest.” If we have to pay for ourselves, it will be forever too late….

Blessed are they who receive the letter of guilt in this life. No, we do not mean those people who by their contemplation and conscience convictions have come so far that they could write such a letter of guilt themselves. These people write a letter of guilt to themselves. Behind this letter of debt, however, there is no creditor. These are the people who always talk about guilt, but they can live with it. They think that by talking about their debt they are already redeemed, but all their talk about needing a Saviour is just lip language. Oh, they will be deceived.

It is so different with the true people of God. They receive the letter of guilt from God. He is a God who demands by virtue of His justice. These are people who can no longer find rest day or night because they live with an outstanding debt. God demands and He cannot be satisfied with works and righteousness. Everything is knocked out of their hand; everything is too short. Then they experience “neither is there any rest in my bones because of my sin.”

And if these guilt-stricken sinners are once privileged to cast an eye outside of themselves and look by faith upon Zion’s paying Surety, then the battle is about whether their guilt has been paid. Certainly, they believe that the guilt is paid for all God’s elect, but…do they themselves belong to those happy people? Oh, how indispensable that Surety becomes to them. How necessary the application of His righteousness becomes to them.

May these people, who go through life as an unhappy people, be privileged to look at Golgotha’s cross on Good Friday, at that accursed tree from where it is called out to them, “It is finished.” There it sounded: I have paid the debt; I am the Lamb of whom Isaiah exclaimed, “the chastisement of our peace was upon Him; and with His stripes we are healed.” Oh people, look upon that Lamb. Yes, may the hour of liberation come for you—the hour to find salvation in Jesus when perishing under God’s law—to receive life from Jesus in the cutting off of your own life; to be crucified with Him and to be raised with Him. He testified, “I am alive for evermore.” Do not fear because Jesus is alive. And no matter how poor, miserable, oppressed, and readyto-die you are, carrying nothing but death in yourself: Jesus is alive and we with Him. He is our life and our salvation.

His holy Name remember,

Ye saints, Jehovah praise;

His anger lasts a moment,

His favor all our days;

For sorrow, like a pilgrim,

May tarry for a night,

But joy the heart will gladden

When dawns the morning light.

—Psalter 77:2

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