I. "A just God and a Saviour." The grand truth is manifestly this that there is in God an everlasting harmony between the just and the merciful. He is just, not in opposition to salvation, but because He is a Saviour. He is a Saviour, not in opposition to justice, but because He is justice seeking to save. Let us ask, What is God's justice, and what His salvation? (1) God's justice is not merely the infliction of penalty; God's salvation is not merely deliverance from penalty. Justice in God is something far grander than the mere exercise of retribution; it is the love of eternal truth, purity, righteousness; and the penalties of untruth, impurity, unrighteousness, are the outflashings of that holy anger which is founded in His love of the right, the pure, and the true. God's salvation is a deliverance from penalty; it is a salvation from the miseries of sin, and the agonies inflicted on the soul by the remorse of conscience. But it is also the deliverance from evil, salvation from the cruel lusts of wrong; from the bondage of unholy passions growing into the giant life of eternity; from the deep degradation and horrible selfishness of sin. (2) The law, the revelation of justice, came to lead men to God the Saviour. To save men from evil two things are requisite: (i) the sense of immortality; (ii) the sense of sin as a power in life. These the law awakens. (3) Christ, the revelation of God the Saviour, came to glorify God the Just.
II. We infer two lessons from this great truth. (1) The necessity of Christian endeavour. (2) The ground of Christian trust.
E. L. Hull, Sermons,1st series, p. 131.
References: Isaiah 45:22. Spurgeon, My Sermon Notes: Ecclesiastes to Malachi,p. 234; Ibid., Sermons,vol. ii., No. 60; Clergyman's Magazine,vol. ii., p. 277; J. A. Spurgeon, Penny Pulpit,No. 351; J. E. Vaux, Sermon Notes,3rd series, p. 40; G. Brooks, Outlines of Sermons,p. 116; M. G. Pearse, Christian World Pulpit,vol. xxxii., No. 372.Isaiah 46:4. Spurgeon, My Sermon Notes: Ecclesiastes to Malachi,p. 237; Ibid., Sermons,vol. ii., No. 81.