How a Just God Can Forgive

“It was to show his righteousness at the present time, so that he might be just and the justifier of the one who has faith in Jesus.” — Romans 3:26 (ESV)

To be “justified” means to be counted right — not guilty — before God. Spurgeon points out that you can’t do it for yourself (you’d just be fooling yourself), and other people can’t do it for you either: some will praise you for small favours and others will run you down for less. Only one opinion counts. “It is God that justifieth.” And only God can, because your sin is against him. If someone hurts you, only you can forgive them; a stranger can’t do it on your behalf. That’s why no priest or go-between can stand in for you, he says — “you had better see to your soul’s matters yourself.” Look at Saul, who hunted Christians like a wolf among sheep, and became the greatest preacher of this very message. Or think of the prodigal son in Jesus’ story: his father ran to welcome him home with as much love as if he had never left — so much that the older brother grumbled. Spurgeon applies it straight to you: if you come back to God, “He will treat you as if you had never done wrong!”

And when God does it, it is settled. “If the Judge acquits me, who can condemn me?” Spurgeon tells his own story here. As a teenager he was crushed by guilt; life was a misery. Then he heard the words, “Look unto me, and be ye saved, all the ends of the earth.” “I looked, and in a moment the Lord justified me.” He says he became as sure he was forgiven as he had been sure he was condemned — on the same evidence, God’s word.

But that raised a hard question, one he couldn’t shake. In those dark months he had actually felt that God ought to punish him. Forgiveness that just shrugged at sin wouldn’t have satisfied his conscience. So how can God be just and still let the guilty go? The answer, he says, is something no one could have invented: the Judge’s own Son took the sentence. Jesus “bore my sin in His own body on the tree.” God didn’t lower the standard or blunt the sword; the penalty was really paid, by someone who could pay it. “God will spare the sinner because He did not spare His Son.” And if Jesus died in your place, why should you die too?

Then the picture: a shipwreck, and a lifeboat alongside. “I have nothing with me,” you say. Nobody asked you to bring anything. People escaping for their lives leave even their clothes behind. “Leap for it, just as you are.” And Spurgeon puts himself in the boat beside you: his only hope is the cross, and “if you perish trusting Him, I must perish too.”

Now — what is this actually about? Real forgiveness doesn’t pretend sin didn’t matter; it means someone paid for it. You probably know the difference. When someone says “it’s fine, whatever” about something that clearly wasn’t fine, it doesn’t actually feel like forgiveness — it feels like they didn’t take you seriously. Deep down we know wrong has a cost. Spurgeon’s whole point is that at the cross God takes your wrong completely seriously and lets you go free, because Jesus carried the cost himself.

That’s why being justified by God is more solid than any amount of being liked, being told you’re a good person, or trying to feel okay about yourself. Those verdicts change with the weather. God’s doesn’t — it rests on something already done. Spurgeon even says a forgiven sinner stands on surer ground than someone trying to be good enough, because the one trying could never be sure he had done enough. Grace isn’t only kinder than effort; it is more certain.

One thing to do this week: read one of the accounts of Jesus’ death slowly — Luke 23 is a good one. When you reach the cross, stop and say to yourself, honestly and personally: “That was the cost of what I’ve done, and he paid it.” Then do what Spurgeon did. Don’t analyse it to death. Look.