Charles Spurgeon puts it like this in
Morning & Evening, Daily Reading
(Christian Focus Publications, 1994): “Christ has paid the debt of his
people to the last jot and tittle, and received the divine receipt; and
unless God can be so unjust as to demand double payment for one
debt, no soul for whom Jesus died as a substitute can ever be cast into
hell…. If God is just, I, a sinner, alone and without a substitute, must be
punished; but Jesus stands in my place and is punished for me; and
now, if God is just, I, a sinner, standing in Christ, can never be punished.
God must change his nature before one soul for whom Jesus was a
substitute can ever by any possibility suffer the lash of the law.
Therefore, Jesus having taken the place of the believer—having
rendered a full equivalent to divine wrath for all that his people ought
to have suffered as the result of sin, the believer can shout with glorious
triumph, “Who shall lay anything to the charge of God’s elect?” Not
God, for he has justified; not Christ, for he has died, “yes rather has
risen again.” My hope does not live because I am not a sinner, but
because I am a sinner for whom Christ died; my trust is not that I am
holy, but that being unholy, he is my righteousness. My faith does not
rest upon what I am, or shall be, or feel, or know, but in what Christ is,
in what he has done, and in what he is now doing for me.”
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