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Your salvation is in Christ, and that salvation is marked —

I. BY CLEARNESS. "Who shall ascend into heaven?" etc., is the language of one bewildered. Salvation is felt as a difficult and perplexing problem. The apostle reminds us that it is plain and intelligible. In ver. 9 you have the Apostle's Creed.

1. It is a definite creed. A dying German metaphysician exclaimed, "Only one man in Germany understands my philosophy, and he doesn't understand it." But we are not called upon to struggle with incomprehensible speculations, but to receive simple, historical facts. To believe in the Christ: His incarnation, His atoning death, His resurrection, His reign at the right hand of God, dispensing grace and joy to all who trust in Him.

2. It is a simple creed. But you say, "It is full of mysteries." True, but you are called upon to rest in the facts, not to understand the mysteries. "With the heart man believeth unto righteousness." Thousands of men enjoy the sunshine who know nothing of astronomy; admire the rainbow knowing nothing of optics. God will some day reveal more fully the philosophy of redemption, but to-day I am to take God at His word, and leave the mysteries. Believe that in your lost estate God loved you, that He worked out your salvation in Christ, that if you only rest in Christ God will not cast you out. "If thou shalt believe," etc.

3. It is a short creed. Dr. Porson declared he should require fifty years to satisfy himself on all points of divinity, but in five hours you may grasp the truth which saves the soul. There is no intellectual impossibility. It is not as difficult to become a saint as to become a Homer or Newton. We cannot write an "Iliad" or a "Principia," but we can believe that God loves us, and that He for Christ's sake blots out our sin.

II. BY NEARNESS. "The word is nigh thee," etc. It is not in the heights or depths. Our poet says, "A man's best things lie nearest him, lie close about his feet." It is so in daily life, and also in spiritual things.

1. All we need for the healing of our nature is here. Some maintain that we need never have recourse to foreign drugs, that God has planted in each locality the very plants which can cure the diseases of that locality. "God put such and such a plant that heals sore throats by the riverside," they tell us, "because where the bane is, the antidote is." However this may be, it is a grand thing to know that the Plant of Renown, the Tree of Life whose leaves are for the healing of the nations, is close to us.

2. All we need for the perfecting of our life is here. In the third verse we read of Israel "going about to establish their own righteousness." A plant has not to go about looking for the sunshine, the dew, the rain; all that it has to do is to bare its heart and take in the precious influences which wait upon it. So the truth which saves, the love which purifies, the faith which uplifts, the power which perfects, are all about us, waiting only the opening of our heart to take them in. By this time a great number of our rich countrymen have left us for milder climes; but the poor and busy amongst us cannot take our flight to find health and life beyond the sea — we must stay where we are, and die, it may be, under the rigours of an English winter. But, thank God, the poorest of us for our spiritual health and salvation need not to cross the sea. "Say not who shall ascend into heaven, or go beyond the sea." The world of health and blessing is about us already. Men are seeking for truth and power as if they were up in the sky, down in the depths; but the saving truth has been in our lips, the saving grace in our heart from childhood, and all we have to do is to realise that language, to exercise that grace. The Redeemer is not distant geographically, nor historically. The difficulty is not to find Christ, but to avoid Him. The word of salvation is in thy mouth, the power in thine heart — believe it, use it, and you shall know your Saviour nigh at hand and not afar off.

III. BY FREENESS. "Who shall ascend," etc. Some impossible task is contemplated. But the argument is, all has been done already; all we have to do is gratefully to accept what is pressed upon us. Justification and eternal life are free gifts. I know that men do not like to think so; they fancy they can work up to them, but this is in strict consistency with God's method of action in the intellectual world. Men may work day and night, know well the theory of their art, strictly observe rule and order, but it is all to little purpose if they are not originally gifted men. Did the poor ploughman Robert Burns "learn" to make poetry? Did that tinker of Bedford "learn" to dream? No; they were gifted, and it was easy to them to sing, to write, to paint the very grandest things the world has ever seen. So it is with true righteousness. Genius, however, is to the few, but the same Lord over all is rich in grace to all who call upon Him. Some of you have long sought to fulfil the law, and you have miserably failed. You could not climb the sky of moral perfection, you could not penetrate its depths; but find in Christ abundance of grace and the gift of righteousness, and you shall delightfully fulfil the commandment in all its heights and depths.

(W. L. Watkinson.)

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KJV: For Moses describeth the righteousness which is of the law, That the man which doeth those things shall live by them.

WEB: For Moses writes about the righteousness of the law, "The one who does them will live by them."