to that as to all other of His commands. The fact of the command
involves the power to obey. Our will, therefore, our choosing power,
must be put on the believing side, and not on the side of unbelief. It
is not that we are required to believe without evidence. It is that our
depraved hearts are not willing to believe when the evidence is ample.
And, therefore, our eternal destiny is made to hinge on our obedience
to the positive command, "Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ." The great
and crying sin of our fallen humanity is unbelief. It is this that has
sundered us, as a race, from our union with God, and it is faith which
is to be the bond by which we may again be reunited to Him. "He that
believeth not the Son is condemned already."

Repentance and faith are the conditions on which God promises to give
us the grace of justification. This is pardon for all our past sins.
God, for Christ's sake, looks upon us as though we had not sinned. He
accounts us just, for Jesus' sake, although we are not just in reality.
And herein it is that gospel justification differs from legal
justification. The individual who is accused of crime and who is
brought into court and determined, by a jury of his peers, not to be
guilty, is at once acquitted and released from all penalty. He is
justified solely on the ground of his innocence. But no man ever has
been or ever will be justified in the court of heaven on the ground of
his innocence. Every responsible human being has broken the law of God.
"All have sinned and come short of the glory of God." And none of those
who have broken the law can be justified by the law, that is to say,
not one. The law justifies those, and those only, who keep it. None of
us have kept it, not one of the race of men save only the man Christ
Jesus. The law condemns all those who break it. All the race of men
have broken it save only the man Christ Jesus. Therefore, all are under
condemnation. But condemnation is incompatible with justification.