The just shall live by faith.
Saved By His Life
The death of Christ reconciles the believing sinner to God. You are by nature the enemy of God, and this hatred consists in lack of obedience to His law. Rom. 8:7. God’s law is His life, and His life is peace. Therefore Christ is your Peace, because in Him you are made the righteousness of God and are conformed to His life. In laying down His life, Christ gives it to everyone who will accept it. When you accept it you can say, “I am crucified with Christ; nevertheless I live, yet not I, but Christ liveth in me.” You are reconciled to God, because you have His life. You have simply made an exchange, giving up your life to Christ, and taking His life instead.
When Christ gives Himself to you, He gives His whole life. You get His life as an infant, as a child, as a youth, and as an adult. When you acknowledge that your whole life has been nothing but sin, and you willingly give it up for Christ’s sake, you make a complete exchange, and have Christ’s life from infancy up to adulthood, in the place of your own. So you will necessarily be counted just before God. You are justified, not because God has consented to ignore your sins because of your faith, but because God has made you righteous—a doer of the law—by giving you His own righteous life.
You “have redemption through His blood, even the forgiveness of sins.” Col. 1:14. This shows that when you receive Christ’s life in place of your sinful life then you have forgiveness of your sins. “It is the blood that maketh an atonement for the soul,” “For the life of the flesh is in the blood,” Lev. 17:11. So you have redemption through the blood of Christ and are reconciled to God by His death, because in His death He gives you His life.
When you receive His life by faith you stand before God as though you had never sinned. The law scrutinizes you, and can find nothing wrong, because your old life is gone, and the life that you now have the life of Christ has never done anything wrong. But what about the future? As you have been reconciled to God by the death of His Son, so now you are to be saved by His life which He gave you in His death. How do you retain His life? Just as you received it. “As ye have therefore received Christ Jesus the Lord, so walk ye in Him.” Col. 2:6. How did you receive Him? By faith. So you are to retain His life by faith, “for the just shall live by faith.” Faith in Christ supplies spiritual life just as surely as eating nourishing food supplies physical life. The Savior says to you, “Whoso eateth My flesh, and drinketh My blood, hath eternal life; and I will raise him up at the last day. For My flesh is meat indeed, and My blood is drink indeed.” John 6:54, 55. You eat His flesh, by feeding on His word (verse 63), for it is written that you shall live “by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God.”
“Saved by His life.” What will the nature of that life be? It will be without sin, “for in Him is no sin.” 1 John 3:5. “Sin is the transgression of the law.” Verse 4. Therefore that life will be the righteousness of the law. Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, and today, and forever (Heb. 13:8), and so the life that He will live in you now will be the same life that He lived when He was on this earth two thousand years ago. He came here to furnish a complete example to you of the life of God. The works He did then He will do now in you when you accept Him, and whatever sins He did not commit cannot be committed by you as you fully live His life. Notice some of the particulars of how He lived the law of God.
The ninth commandment: Jesus is “the faithful and true witness.” Rev. 3:14. He “did no sin, neither was guile found in His mouth.” 1 Peter 2:22. You will speak the truth when Christ dwells in you.
The sixth commandment: “For the Son of man is not come to destroy men’s lives, but to save them.” Luke 9:56. He “went about doing good.” Acts 10:38. He came to abolish death, and to bring life and immortality to light through the Gospel. 2 Tim. 1:10. So He will live a life of love and good will to everyone, in your soul as you receive Him.
The fourth commandment: “As His custom was, He went into the synagogue on the Sabbath day, and stood up for to read.” Luke 4:16. He recognized the law of the Sabbath, saying, “It is lawful to do well on the Sabbath days.” Matt. 12:12. He called Himself the Lord of the Sabbath day, because He made it. He never kept a Sunday. Therefore there is no Sunday keeping in His life, to give to you who believe in Him. His life can only impart to you the keeping of the Sabbath day. As He kept the Sabbath when He was on this earth, so He will keep it now in you in whom He lives.
There are many people who love the Lord, who do not yet know that the keeping of Sunday is not part of His life, and consequently they have not yet submitted themselves to Him in this respect. But as they grow in grace and in the knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, they will learn that the keeping of the Sabbath-the seventh day—is as much a part of the life of Christ as is obedience to parents or telling the truth, and they will let Him live this commandment in them also. As you let Christ dwell in you in His fullness you become the child of God, because it is Christ’s life that you live; and the Father will be pleased with you even as He was pleased with His only begotten Son.
Living By Faith- E.J.W., and A.T.J.
HalleluYah! Amen.