# “This is the summit of all blessing” by Horatius Bonar

- Link: https://tollelege.net/2008/12/31/this-is-the-summit-of-all-blessing-by-horatius-bonar/
- Published: 2008-12-31T15:07:47-06:00
- Author: tollelege

“Acceptance, and completeness in our standing before God, are attributed to the 
cross and blood and death of the Divine Substitute. Poor as my faith in this Substitute
may be, it places me at once in the position of one to whom ‘God imputeth righteousness
without works.’ God is willing to receive me on the footing of His perfection ; 
and if I am willing to be thus received, in the perfection of another with whom 
God is well pleased, the whole transaction is completed. I AM Justified By His Blood.‘
As He is, so am I (even) in this world,’—even now, with all my imperfections and
evils.

To be entitled to use another’s name, when my own name is worthless; to be allowed
to wear another’s raiment, because my own is torn and filthy; to appear before God
in another’s person,— the person of the Beloved Son,—this is the summit of all blessing.
The sin-bearer and I have exchanged names, robes, and persons! I am now represented
by Him, my own personality having disappeared; He now appears in the presence of
God for me.

All that makes Him precious and dear to the Father has been transferred to me. His
excellency and glory are seen as if they were mine; and I receive the love, and 
the fellowship, and the glory, as if I had earned them all. So entirely one am I
with the sin-bearer, that God treats me not merely as if I had not done the evil
that I have done; but as if I had done all the good which I have not done, but which
my substitute has done.

In one sense I am still the poor sinner, once under wrath; in another I am altogether
righteous, and shall be so for ever, because of the Perfect One, in whose perfection
I appear before God. Nor is this a false pretense or a hollow fiction, which carries
no results or blessings with it. It is an exchange which has been provided by the
Judge, and sanctioned by law; an exchange of which any sinner upon earth may avail
himself and be blest.”

–Horatius Bonar, _The Everlasting Righteousness; or, How Shall a Man be Just with
God?_ (Carlisle, Pa.: Banner of Truth, 1874/1993), 44-5.

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