God: "I looked for someone to take a stand for me, and stand in the gap" (Ezekiel 22:30)
But why is faith the means of justification? Simply because it is the action of union with Jesus Christ. Faith is our coming to Him, our trusting Him, our resting in Him. The moment we are united to Him, we are immediately endowed with all that He has secured for us. We are immediately justified before we have done a single good deed, because we are His and He is God's. Just as a very poor woman is a very poor woman until the very moment that she marries a wealthy man. But at the moment that she becomes his wife, she becomes a wealthy woman. It is by means of her acceptance that she becomes a wealthy woman, but her acceptance does not make her a wealthy woman; it is her husband's wealth that makes her so. So faith does not justify; Christ justifies. But faith is the act of union with Christ.
1. A losing our first love – When iniquity abounds, the love of many waxes cold (Rev 2:4; Mat 24:12). The affections get dull and blunted.
2. Losing the edge of our conscience – The conscience ceases to be sensitive and tender. It does not shrink from sin as it used to do.
3. Callousness as to truth – We get so familiarized with truth that it ceases to affect us. It loses its power over us.
4. Insensibility to sin – Our own evils are not felt as they used to be; sin itself is not so hated and shunned as formerly.
