Foundation of Comfort

 What comfort can be wanting, when we can look upon Christ crucified as our surety, and look upon ourselves as crucified in him; when we can consider our sins as punished in him, and ourselves accepted by virtue of his cross? It was not an angel which was crucified for us, but the Son of God; one of an equal dignity with the Father; one that shed blood enough to blot out the demerit of our crimes, were they more than could be numbered by all the angels of heaven, if all were made known to them. He was not crucified for a few, but for all sorts of offences. When we shall see judgments in the world, what comfort can we take without a knowledge and sense of a crucified Christ? What a horror is it for a condemned man to see the preparation of gibbets, halters, and executioners? But when he shall see a propitiation made for him, the anger of the prince atoned, the law some other way satisfied, and his condemnation changed into reremission; all his former terrors vanish, and a sweet and pleasing calm possesseth him. With this knowledge and sense we should not be much terrified at the approaches of death in our last gasps, when we consider itself gasping under the weight of the cross. The blood of Christ is as a balsam dropped upon the points of the arrows of death. That, by removing the guilt of sin, pulled out the sting of death. When we tremble under a sense of our sins, the terrors of the judge, and the curses of the law, let us look upon a crucified Christ, the remedy of all our miseries. His cross hath procured a crown, his passion hath expiated our transgression. His death hath disarmed the law, his blood hath washed a believer's soul. This death is the destruction of our enemies, the spring of our happiness, the eternal testimony of divine love. We have good reason, as well as the apostle, to determine with ourselves, to know nothing but Jesus Christ, and especially him crucified.    Charnock