Quotes from Horatius Bonar – The Everlasting Righteousness (1)
Horatius Bonar was a Scottish Presbyterian who served the Church in the 19th Century. In this book, he seeks to clarify how Christians stand as right before God, through faith in Christ. It’s an encouraging book. It is both richly theological, and deeply devotional. And I’d highly recommend reading materials by Horatius Bonar. Some quotes that caught my attention from The Everlasting Righteousness include the following:
“Man has always treated sin as a misfortune, not a crime; as disease, not as guilt; as a case for the physician, not for the judge.” (pg. 3)
“God comes into court, bringing man and man’s whole case [of sin and guilt] along with him, that upon righteous principles, and in a legal way, the case may be settled, at once in the favour of man and in the favour of God.” (pg. 5)
“Sin is too great an evil for man to meddle with. His attempts to remove it do but increase it, and his endeavors to approach God in spite of it aggravate his guilt.” (pg. 7)
“Only God can deal with sin, either as a disease or as a crime; as a dishonour to Himself, or as a hinderer of man’s approach to Himself. He deals with it not in some arbitrary or summary way, by a mere exercise of will or power, but by bringing it for adjudication into His own courts of law.” (pg. 7)
“As sin is too great an evil for any but God to deal with, so is righteousness too high for man to reach; too high for any but God to bring down and place at our disposal.” (pg. 7-8)
“The flood of evil that has issued forth from one single sin [mankind] has forgotten. The death, the darkness, the sorrow, the sickness, the tears, the weariness, the madness, the confusion, the bloodshed, the furious hatred between man and man, making earth a suburb of hell, – all this is overlooked or misread; and man repels the thought that sin is a crime, which god hates with an infinite hate, and which He, in His righteousness, must condemn and avenge. (pg. 9-10, Horatius Bonar, The Everlasting Righteousness)
“Salvation by substitution was embodied in the first promise regarding the woman’s seed and his bruised heel. Victory over our great enemy, by His subjecting himself to the bruising of that enemy, is then and there proclaimed.” (pg. 16)
“The consumption of Abraham’s sacrifice by the divine fire told him that the divine displeasure which should have rested on him forever, had fallen upon a substitute and been exhausted, so that there remained no more wrath, no darkness, ‘no condemnation’ for him; nothing but deliverance and favor and everlasting blessedness.” (pg. 18)
“With a weak faith and a fearful heart many a sinner stands before the altar. But it is not the strength of his faith, but the perfection of the sacrifice that saves; and no feebleness of faith, no dimness of eye, no trembling of hand, can change the efficacy of our burnt offering.” (pg. 23)
“Faith, in all its degrees, still reads the description, ‘The blood of Jesus Christ His Son cleanseth us from all sin;’ and if at times the eye is so dim that it cannot read these words, through blinding tears or bewildering mist, faith rests itself on the certain knowledge of the fact that the inscription is still there, or at least that the blood itself (of which these words reminds us) remains, in all its power and suitableness, upon the altar unchanged and uneffaced.” (pg. 23, Horatius Bonar, The Everlasting Righteousness)
“The quality or quantity of faith is not the main question for the sinner. That which he needs to know is that Jesus died and was buried, and rose again, according to the Scriptures. This knowledge is life everlasting.” (pg. 25)
“The name Jesus was not given to him merely in reference to the cross, but to His whole life below.” (pg. 27)
“The grave is the awful pledge or testimony to [Christ’s] death as a true and real death; but it forms no part of the substitution or the expiation.” (pg. 37)
“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.” (pg. 45)
“All that makes [Christ] 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.” (pg. 45)
“In one sense I have still the poor sinner, once under wrath; in another I am altogether righteous, and shall be so forever, because of the Perfect One, in whose perfection I appear before God. Nor is this a false pretence 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.” (pg. 45, Horatius Bonar, The Everlasting Righteousness)
“Though the consciousness of communion was interrupted for a time, when He cried, ‘Why hast through forsaken me?’ yet there was no breaking of the bond. There was wrath coming down on Him as the Surety, but love resting on Him as the Son.” (pg. 51)
“‘It is finished’ were his words as [Christ] died. The justifying work is done! If anything else besides this finished work is to justify, then Christ has died in vain.” (pg. 54)
“The standing posture of the ancient priests showed that their work was an unfinished one. The sitting down of our High Priest intimated to all heaven that the work was done, and the ‘eternal redemption obtained.’” (pg. 58)
“There are degrees of rest for the soul, and it is in proportion as we comprehend the perfection of the work on Calvary that our rest will increase.” (pg. 60)
“We are never done with the cross, nor ever shall be. Its wonders will be always new, and always fraught with joy.” (pg. 61, Horatius Bonar, The Everlasting Righteousness)
“The building, be it palace or temple, can never be separated from its foundation, however spacious or ornate its structure may be. So, never shall the redeemed be independent of the cross, or cease to draw from its fulness. (pg. 64)
“His grace is righteous grace; it is grace which condemns the sin while acquitting the sinner; nay, which condemns the sin by means of that very thing which brings about the acquittal of the sinner. His pardon is righteous pardon, and therefore irreversible. His salvation is righteous salvation, and therefore everlasting.” (pg. 68)
“It is as a righteous Judge that God justifies. He is ‘faithful and just’ in forgiving sin (1 John 1:9). By His pardons He magnifies his righteousness; so that he who goes to God for forgiveness can use as his plea the righteousness of the righteous Judge, no less than the grace of the loving and merciful Lord God.” (pg. 68-69)
“No sin can be too great for pardon, and no sinner can be too deep or old in sin to be saved and blest; because the righteousness out of which the salvation comes is infinite.” (pg 69, Horatius Bonar, The Everlasting Righteousness)
“From the moment that we receive the divine testimony to the righteousness of the Son of God, all the guilt that was on us passes over to Him, and all His righteousness passes over to us; so that God looks on us as possessed of that righteousness, and treats us according to its value in His sight.” (pg. 71)
“We get the benefit of his perfection in all its completeness; not as infused into us, but as covering us…” (pg. 73)
“For faith is no work, nor merit, nor effort; but the cessation from all these, and the acceptance in place them what another has done,—done completely, and forever.” (pg. 75)
“The simplest, feeblest faith suffices, for it is not the excellence of our act of faith that does aught for us, but the excellence of Him who suffered for sin, the just for the unjust, that he might bring us to God.” (pg. 75)
“His perfection suffices to cover not only that which is imperfect in our characters and lives, but that which is imperfect in our faith, when we believe on His name.” (pg. 75)
“It is as the unrighteous that we come to God; not with goodness in our hands as a recommendation, but with the utter want of goodness; not with amendment or promises of amendment, but with only evil, both in the present and the past; not presenting the claim of contrition or repentance of broken hearts to induce God to receive us as something less than unrighteous, but going to Him simply as unrighteous; unable to remove that unrighteousness, or offer anything either to palliate or propitiate.” (pg. 76, Horatius Bonar, The Everlasting Righteousness)
“He who comes [thinking of himself] as partly righteous is sent empty away. He who comes [to God] acknowledging unrighteousness, but at the same time trying to neutralize it or to expiate it by feelings, and prayers, and tears, is equally rejected. But he who comes as an unrighteous man to a righteous yet gracious God, finds not only ready access, but plenteous blessing. The righteous God receives unrighteous man, if man presents himself in his own true character as a sinner, and does not mock God by pretending to be something less or better than this.” (vs. 78)
“Jehovah is satisfied, more than satisfied, with Christ’s fulfilling of the law which man had broken. For never had that law been so fulfilled in all its parts as it was in the life of the God-man. For man to fulfil it, would have been much; for an angel to fulfil it would have been more; but for Him who was God and man to fulfil it, was yet unspeakably more. So satisfied is Jehovah with this divine law=fulfilling, and with Him who so gloriously fulfilled it, that He is willing to pass from or cancel all the law’s sentences against us; nay, to deal with us as partakers of or identified with this law-fulfilling, if we will but agree to give up all personal claims to his favour…” (pg. 80-81)
“[God’s] righteousness is ‘reckoned’ or ‘imputed’ to all who believe; so that they are treated by God as if it were actually theirs. They are entitled to claim all that which such a righteousness can merit from God, as the Judge of righteous claims. It does not become ours gradually, or in fragments or drops; but it is transferred to us all at once.” (pg. 82-83)
“To be righteous according to the righteousness of the first Adam, would have been much; but to be righteous according to the righteousness of the last Adam, the Lord from heaven, is unspeakably and inconceivably more.” (pg. 86-87, Horatius Bonar, The Everlasting Righteousness)
“It is not imply because of this righteousness that Jehovah justifies; but by legally transferring it to us, so that we can use it, and plead it, and appear before God in it, just as if it were wholly our own.” (pg. 87)
“This righteousness of God was no common righteousness. It was the righteousness of Him who was both God and man; and therefore it was not only the righteousness of God, but in addition to this it was the righteousness of man. It embodied and exhibited all uncreated and all created perfection. Never had the like been seen or heard of in heaven or on earth before. It was the two-fold perfection of Creatorhood and Creatorship in one resplendent centre, one glorious Person; and the dignity of that Person gave a perfection, a vastness, a length and breadth, a height and depth, to that righteousness which never had been equalled, and which never shall be equalled for ever.” (pg. 89)
“The Judge must either be the justifier or the condemner. That Judge is Jehovah. It is His office to condemn, it is His office also to justify. He does not condemn by infusing sin into the person who appears before Him; so He does not justify by infusing righteousness into the sinner whom He acquits.” (pg. 94-95, Horatius Bonar, The Everlasting Righteousness)
“For while all that the believing man receives, he receives from GRACE; yet it is no less true that all that he receives, he receives from RIGHTEOUSNESS; from the hand of a righteous God, acting according to the claims of a righteousness which is absolutely divine and perfect.” (pg. 102)
“He who refuses to be represented by another before God, must represent himself, and draw near to God on the strength of what he is in himself, or what he has done.” (pg. 102)
“Recognition of the PERFECTION of the Lord Jesus Christ, as to personal excellency, official suitableness, and vicarious value, is that only which satisfies the heart and conscience of the sinner.” (pg. 104)
“The assumption of all our legal responsibilities by a divine substitute is that which brings us deliverance.” (pg. 105)
“Faith connects us with the righteousness [of the Son of God], and is therefore totally distinct from it. To confound the one with the other is to subvert the whole gospel of the grace of God. Our act of faith must ever be a separate thing from that which we believe.” (pg. 108, Horatius Bonar, The Everlasting Righteousness)
“God reckons the believing man as having done all righteousness, though he has not done any, and though his faith is not righteousness.” (pg. 108)
“Faith does not justify as a work, or as a moral act, or a piece of goodness, nor as a gift of the Spirit, but simply because it is the bond between us and the substitute; a very slender bond in one sense, but strong as iron in another.” (pg. 108)
“The work of Christ for us is the object of faith; the Spirit’s work in us is that which produces this faith: it is out of the former, not out of the latter, that our peace and justification come.” (pg. 108)
“By a natural figure of speech, faith is often magnified into something great; whereas it is really nothing but our consenting to be saved by another: its supposed magnitude is derived from the greatness of the object which it grasps, the excellence of the righteousness which it accepts. Its preciousness is not its own, but the preciousness of Him to whom it links us.” (pg. 109)
“Faith is not our physician; it only brings us to the Physician. It is not even our medicine; it only administers the medicine, divinely prepared by him who ‘healeth all our diseases.’” (pg. 109, Horatius Bonar, The Everlasting Righteousness)
“Our faith is but our touching Jesus; and what is even this, in reality, but His touching us?” (pg. 110)
“Faith is not our saviour. It was not faith that was born at Bethlehem and died on Golgotha for us. It was not faith that loved us, and gave itself for us; that bore our sins in its own body on the tree; that died and rose again for our sins. Faith is one thing, the Saviour is another. Faith is one thing, and the cross is another. Let us not confound them, nor ascribe to a poor, imperfect act of man, that which belongs exclusively to the Son of the living God.” (pg. 110)
“Faith is not perfection. Yet only by perfection can we be saved; either our own or another’s. That which is imperfect cannot justify, and an imperfect faith could not in any sense be a righteousness.” (pg. 110)
“An imperfect faith may connect us with the perfection of another but it cannot of itself do aught for us, either in protecting us from wrath of securing the divine acquittal.” (pg. 110)
“All faith here is imperfect; and our security is this, that it matters not how poor or weak our faith may be: if it touches the perfect One, all is well.” (pg. 110-111)
“God has asked [for] and provided a perfect righteousness; He nowhere asks nor expects a perfect faith.” (pg. 111)
“An earthenware pitcher can convey water to the traveller’s thirsty lips as well as one of gold; nay, a broken vessel, even if there be ‘but a sherd to take water from the pit’ (Isa. xxx. 14) will suffice. So a feeble, very feeble faith, will connect us with the righteousness of the Son of God; the faith, perhaps, that can only cry, ‘Lord, I believe; help mine unbelief.’” (pg. 111, Horatius Bonar, The Everlasting Righteousness)
“Faith can expiate no guilt; can accomplish no propitiation; can pay no penalty; can wash away no stain; can provide no righteousness. It brings us to the cross, where there is expiation, and propitiation, and payment, and cleansing, and righteousness; but in itself it has no merit and no virtue.” (pg. 112)
“And as faith goes on, so it continues; always [as] the beggars outstretched hand, never the rich man’s gold; always the cable, never the anchor; the knocker, not the door, or the palace, or the table; the handmaid, not the mistress; the lattice which lets in the light, not the sun.” (pg. 112)
“Faith does not come to Calvary to do anything. It comes to see the glorious spectacle of all things done, and to accept this completion without a misgiving as to its efficacy. (pg. 116)
“Faith is the acknowledgment of the entire absence of all goodness in us, and the recognition of the cross as the substitute for all the want on our part.” (pg. 116-117)
“There is no dividing or sharing the work between our own belief and Him in whom we believe. The whole work is His, not ours, from first to last.” (pg. 117)
“At no times in the saint’s life does he cease to need the cross; though at times he may feel that his special need, in spiritual perplexity or the exigency of conflict with evil, may be the incarnation, or the agony in the garden, or the resurrection, or the hope of the promised advent, to be glorified in His saints, and admired in all them that believe.” (pg. 117, Horatius Bonar, The Everlasting Righteousness)
“Justification by any kind of infused or inherent righteousness is wholly inconsistent with the service of the services of the tabernacle, most of all justification by an infused resurrection-righteousness.” (pg. 120)
“Let it be granted that Christ in us is the source of holiness and fruitfulness (John xv. 4); but let it never be overlooked that first of all there must be Christ FOR US, as our propitiation, our justification, our righteousness.” (pg. 121)
“He is risen! He has tasted death, but He has not seen corruption; for He is the Holy One of God, and upon holiness corruption cannot fasten.” (pg. 134)
“[Christ’s] immortality has not unlinked Him from those who are still here in flesh. His risen life has not shaken or loosened the relationship He bears to the unrisen. All that He was before, He is still, with something superadded of new love, new power, new perfection, new glory. The difference between his unrisen and his risen life is only that between the sun at dayspring and at noon.” (vs. 138)
“The more that we realize our own mortality, the more let us feel the preciousness and suitableness of His immortality as the risen One; and the more let us realize the identity between us and Him, in virtue of which not merely we shall rise, but we have risen with Him.” (pg 138)
“For [Christ] resurrection was joy, not merely because it ended his connection with death, but because it introduced Him into the fulness of joy,— a joy peculiar to the risen life, and of which only a risen man can be capable. Into the joy of His risen life we in some measure enter here by faith; but the fulness of that risen joy is yet in reserve for us, awaiting the resurrection of the just, when the body as well as the head shall have done with tribulation and with death for ever.” (pg. 139, Horatius Bonar, The Everlasting Righteousness)
“The hope of which we are partakers through the risen life of the second Adam far transcends any hope which the unrisen life of the first Adam could have given. It is the hope of an inheritance, a kingdom, a city, a glory, such as belongs only to the risen offspring of the second Adam, such as can be possessed only by the redeemed and the risen. The resurrection of the Son of God is to us the earnest and the pledge of this blessed hope.” (pg. 139-140)
[Easter] “The oftener that we visit His empty tomb, and see for ourselves that he is not here, He is risen, the more shall we be penetrated by that wondrous truth that we are risen with Him, and that this fellowship in resurrection is as truly the source of spiritual life, health, and holiness, as of joy unspeakable and full of glory.” (pg. 141)
“God has given us this gospel not merely for the purpose of securing to us life hereafter, but of making us sure of this life even now.” (pg. 143)
“It is a true and sure gospel; so that he who believes it is made sure of being saved. If it could not make us sure, it would make us miserable; for to be told of such a salvation and such a glory, yet kept in doubt as to whether they are to be ours or not, must render us truly wretched. What a poor gospel it must be, which leaves the man who believes it still in doubt as to whether he is a child of God, an unpardoned or a pardoned sinner!” (pg. 143)
“Salvation by believing, and assurance only by means of working, are not very compatible.” (pg. 153)
“If God is for me, and I am for God, all is well. If God is not for me, and if I am not for God, all is ill.” (pg. 163)
“…[T]rue religion is the fruit or result of peace found, not the way to it, or the price paid for it.” (pg. 169)
“Peace with God is our anchor in the storm; our strong tower in adverse times; the soother of our hearts, and the dryer up of our tears.” (pg. 172, Horatius Bonar, The Everlasting Righteousness)
“Peace does not save us, yet it is the portion of a saved soul.” (pg. 173)
“Assurance does not save us; and they have erred who have spoken of assurance as indispensable to salvation. For we are not saved by believing in our own salvation, nor by believing anything whatsoever about ourselves. We are saved by what we believe about the Son of God and His righteousness. The gospel believed saves; not the believing in our own faith.” (pg. 173)
It was intended not merely that [every believing sinner] should be saved, but that he should know that he is saved, and so delivered from all fear and bondage, and heaviness of heart.” (pg. 174)
“…[F]aith is truly a ceasing from work, and not a working; it is not the doing of anything in order to be justified, but the simple reception of the justifying work of Him who ‘finished transgression and made an end of sin…” (pg. 176)
“To say to a groping, troubled spirit, You must first believe before you can work, is no more to encourage ungodliness or laxity of walk, than to say to an imprisoned soldier, You must first get out of your dungeon before you can fight; or to a swimmer, You must throw off that millstone before you can attempt to swim; or to a racer, You must get quit of these fetters before you can run the race.” (pg. 177)
“In another’s righteousness we stand; and by another’s righteousness we are justified. All accusations against us, founded upon our unrighteousness, we answer by pointing to the perfection of the righteousness which covers us from head to foot, and in virtue of which we are unassailable by law, as well as shielded from wrath.” (pg 179)
“We are justified that we may be holy. The possession of this legal righteousness is the beginning of a holy life. We do not live a holy life in order to be justified; but we are justified that we may live a holy life.” (pg 181)
“Love, as a motive, is far stronger than law; far more influential than fear of wrath or peril of hell. Terror may make a man crouch like a slave and obey a hard master, lest a worse thing come upon him; but only a sense of forgiving love can bring either heart or conscience into a state in which obedience is either pleasant to the soul or acceptable to God.” (pg. 181, Horatius Bonar, The Everlasting Righteousness)
“The love of God to us, and our love to God, work together for producing holiness in us.” (pg. 183)
“No fear of wrath can make us holy. No gloomy uncertainty as to God’s favour can subdue one lust, or correct our crookedness of will. But the free pardon of the cross uproots sin, and withers all its branches. The ‘no condemnation to them that are in Christ Jesus’ is the only effectual remedy for the deadly disease of an alienated heart and stubborn will.” (pg. 185-186)
“Sensuality, luxury, and the gaieties of the flesh have lost their relish to one who has tasted the fruit of the tree of life. (pg. 196)
“The life of the justified should be an earnest one. For everything connected with his acceptance has been earnest on the part of God…” (pg. 197)
“The life of the justified should be a generous one. All connected with his justification has been boundless generosity on the part of God… The gifts of God have been all of them on the most unlimited scale; and shall not this boundless liberality make us liberal in the highest and truest sense?” (pg. 198-199)
“Selfishness, self-love, self-seeking, have been in all ages the scandal of the church of God.” (pg. 200)
“To love warmly, to give largely, to sympathize sincerely, to help unselfishly; these are some of the noble fruits to be expected from the belief of a love that passeth knowledge.” (pg. 200)
“To substitute the church for Christ, or the priest for the herald of pardon, or the rite for the precious blood, or the sacrament for the living Christ upon the throne, or the teaching of the church for the enlightenment of the Holy Ghost,— this is to turn light into darkness, and then to call that darkness light.” (pg. 205)
“The life of the justified must be one of praise and prayer. His justification has drawn him hear to God. It has opened his lips and enlarged his heart. He cannot but praise; he cannot but pray. He has ten thousand things to ask for; he has ten thousand things for which to give thanks.” (pg. 207, Horatius Bonar, The Everlasting Righteousness)
(1) Bonar, Horatius. The Everlasting Righteousness. 1874. Carlisle, PA. The Banner of Truth Trust, 1993.
