The Lord our Righteousness

“Can believers fall away from grace and be lost forever?” We may perhaps say that the question ought not to be considered from such an abstract and speculative standpoint. We ought not to ask, “Can they”? but “Will they”? Will those that have tasted that the Lord is gracious, and have experienced the sweetness, strength, and satisfaction of His presence, leave Him? Surely not. If the matter were considered solely from the standpoint of abstract possibility; if sin be conceived of as going on unchecked and unhindered, there could not be a doubt that a Christian could fall away and be lost; but we are not to consider this matter in any such speculative and impossible way, but instead to remember the provision God makes, and the means He uses to prevent lapses from Himself. We may assuredly say if we will, “I have a logical conviction that in myself I can fall away, but I also have a moral conviction that, by God’s grace, I shall not fall away.” The Christian is never to be considered in himself, and by himself, but as he is in Christ by God’s grace, and with all the safeguards and privileges of Divine power surrounding and supporting him.

Faith in man answers to grace in God. Faith is the correlative of Promise. Faith renounces self and receives the Saviour. There is, therefore, no merit in faith; it is only the instrument, not the ground, of Justification… or, as we may put it, we are not justified by faith, but by Christ through faith. Faith is nothing apart from its Object, and it is only of use as it leads us directly to Him Who has wrought a perfect Righteousness, and as it enables us to appropriate Him as “The Lord our Righteousness.”