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freely by His grace, and, though here on earth they are not freed from the
punishment and death which their past sins have deserved, yet to them their
sufferings and all other things 'work 1 together for good,' because
they now love God. Thus temporal punishment, and even undeserved suffering
inflicted upon true Christians by the enemies of God, cause them to draw nearer
to Him and in Him find help and rest and peace. Having received the new birth,
having turned from Satan to God and become spiritual children 2 of
God, they are therefore delivered from the final and hopeless destruction and
the outer darkness 3 which would otherwise have been their let in the
day of judgement, and are made heirs, through God's grace, of eternal holiness
and endless bliss in that abode where nothing that defiles can enter.4
Therefore it is that John the Baptist, when he had learnt that the Lord Jesus
Christ was the Saviour of the whole world, said: 'Behold,5 the Lamb
of God, which taketh away the sin of the world.' By calling Christ the Lamb of
God, John meant that He was the true Paschal 6 Lamb, the true
sacrifice for men's sins, who would lay down His most precious life as a ransom
7 for sinners, in order to bring them to repentance and to cleanse
them from their sins. So also St. John
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DOCTRINE OF THE HOLY TRINITY
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in his first Epistle says: 'My 1 little children, these things
write I unto you, that ye may not sin. And if any man sin, we have an Advocate
with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous: and he is the propitiation for our
sins; and not for ours only, but also for the whole world.' So also in another
place it is written of God that He 'foreordained 2 us unto adoption
as sons through Jesus Christ unto himself, according to the good pleasure of his
will, to the praise of the glory of his grace, which he freely bestowed on us in
the Beloved: in whom we have our redemption through his blood, the forgiveness
of our trespasses.'
Now; since it was contrary to the requirements of God's infinite holiness and
complete justice that sin should be forgiven and that men should escape from
eternal ruin and misery in any way but one, and since it was impossible for men
to become acceptable to God and heirs of everlasting salvation, and to enjoy
pure and perfect happiness in His holy presence, in any other manner than in
that one, therefore the Most Merciful God has provided that way of salvation for
His creatures to walk in, and has revealed it to us in the holy Scriptures.
Hence it is that the Lord Jesus Christ Himself has said in the Gospel: 'I 3
am the way, and the truth, and the life.' For Christ, being without sin, and
possessing perfect manhood as well as perfect Godhead, being better
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