Did my Saviour lay down His life for me? Then, how safe am I! We who know the Gospel, see in the fact of the death of Christ a reason that no strength of logic can ever shape, and no power of unbelief can remove, while we should be saved. There may be men with minds so distorted that they can conceive it possible for Christ should die for a man who afterwards is lost; I say, there may be such.

I am sorry to say that there are still to be found some such persons, whose brains have been so addled in their childhood, they cannot see that what they hold is both a preposterous falsehood and a blasphemous libel. Christ died for a man, and then God punishes that man again; Christ suffers in a sinner's stead, and then God condemns that sinner after all! Why, my friends, I feel quite shocked in only mentioning such an awful error; and were it not so current as it is, I should certainly pass it over with the contempt that it deserves.

The doctrine of Holy Scripture is this:  that Christ died in the stead of His people, and that, as God is just, He will never punish one solitary soul of Adam's race for whom the Saviour did thus shed His blood. No, my soul, how shalt thou be punished it thy Lord endured thy punishment for thee? Did He die for thee?

O, my soul, if Jesus was not thy Substitute, and did not die in thy very stead, then He is no Saviour for thee! But if He was thy Substitute, if He suffered as thy Surety, then, who is he that condemneth? Christ hath died, yea, rather, hath risen again, and sitteth at the right hand of God, and maketh intercession for us. There stands the master argument: Christ "laid down His life for us," and "if, when we were enemies, we were reconciled to God, by the death of His Son, much more, being reconciled, we shall be saved by His life." If the agonies of the Saviour put our sins away, the everlasting life of the Saviour, with the merits of His death added thereunto, must preserve His people unto the end.

This much I know, — ye may hear men stammer when they say it — but what I preach is the old Puritanic, Calvinistic, Augustinian, Pauline, Christian TRUTH, — there is not one sin in the Book of God, against any one that believeth. Our sins were numbered on the Scapegoat's head, and there is not one sin, that even a believer could commit that hath power to damn him, for Christ hath taken the damning power out of sin, by allowing it (to speak by a bold metaphor) to damn Himself, for sin did condemn Him; and, inasmuch as sin condemned Him, sin cannot condemn us.

O believer, this is thy security, that all thy sin and guilt, all thy transgressions and iniquities have been atoned for, and were atoned for before they were committed; so that thou mayest come with boldness, though red with all crimes and black with every lust, and lay thine hand on that Scapegoat's head, and when thou hast put thine hand there, and seen that Scapegoat driven into the wilderness, thou mayest clap thine hands for joy, and say "It is finished, sin is pardoned."

This is all I want to know:  did the Saviour die for me? Then I will not continue in sin that grace may abound; but nothing shall stop me of thus glorying, in all the churches of the Lord Jesus, that my sins are entirely removed from me; and, in God's sight I may sing, as Hart did sing: "With Christ's spotless vesture Holy as the Hole One."

O marvelous death of Christ, how securely dost thou set the feet of God's people on the rock of eternal love; & how securely dost Thou keep them there!

Author: C. H. Spurgeon

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