The work of the Holy Spirit - pagina 409

JUSTIFICATION FROM ETERNITY be declared just by his God,

in order to transact the

369 honorable

business of sanctification.

To prove that this is effected absolutely without our own merit, doing or not doing, and entirely without our actual condition, we refer to the royal prerogative for granting pardon and reinstatement.

Altho,

among

us, decisions of the judiciary are

rendered in

and yet not by the king himself, a certain opposition between the king and the judiciary is thinkable. It might occur that the judiciary declared a man guilty and dishonorable, whom the king wished not to be so declared. To keep the majesty of the crown inviolate in such cases, the prerogative of granting pardon and reinstatement is retained by almost every crowned head; a prerogative which in the present day is narrowly circumscribed, but which nevertheless represents still the exalted idea that the decision of the king, and not our actual condition, determines our lot. Hence a king can either grant pardon, i.e., remit the penalty and release the guilty person from all the consequences of his crime, or, stronger still, he can grant reinstatement, i.e., he can restore the accused and condemned to the condition of one who had never been declared guilty. And this exalted royal prerogative, of which on account of sin there remains in earthly kings but a faint shadow, is the inviolable right in which God rejoices, Himself being the Source and all-comprehending Idea of all majesty. Not you, but He determines what His creature shall be hence He sovereignly disposes, by the word of His mouth, the status wherein you will be set, whether it be of the

name

of the king,

;

righteousness or of unrighteousness.

need not wait he has become conscious, nor even until he is born. This could not be so if justification depended upon something within him. Then he could not be justified before he existed and had done something. But if justification is not bound to anything in him, then this whole limitation must disappear, and the Lord our God be sovereignly free to render this justification at any moment that He pleases. Hence the Sacred Scripture reveals justification as an eternal act of God, i.e., an act which is not limited by any moment in the human existence. It is for It is

also evident that the sinner's justification

until he is converted, nor until

this reason that the child of God, seeking to penetrate into that

glorious and delightful reality of his justification, 24

does not feel

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