2:13, 14.

Every son and daughter of Adam's lost race is judgment bound, to answer
before the bar of God the demands of the perfect law. Divine justice
cannot abate one jot or tittle of the requirements of the holy law, nor
by any means clear the guilty. But divine mercy has provided the way by
which God can "be just, and the justifier of him which believeth in
Jesus."

[Illustration: THE GIFT OF GOD

"God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son." John
3:16.]

[Illustration: CHILDLIKE FAITH

"Except ye be converted, and become as little children, ye shall not
enter into the kingdom of heaven." Matt. 18:3.]

JUSTIFICATION BY FAITH

"How should man be just [righteous] with God?" asked the patriarch Job.
It has been the vital question ever since Adam sinned, and lost his
righteousness and forfeited his life. The answer of Scripture is:--

"Therefore being justified by faith, we have peace with God through our
Lord Jesus Christ." Rom 5:1 "By grace are ye saved through faith; and
that not of yourselves: it is the gift of God: not of works, lest any
man should boast." Eph. 2:8, 9.

In the beginning, life and righteousness were the gift of God to man.
Only the Creator could bestow the gift at the first; when lost, only
creative power can restore it.

Man Cannot Justify Himself

The law of God declares all men sinners. Not only did Adam's posterity
inherit of necessity a sinful nature, but every soul of man has wrought
sin as the fruit of that nature.

"As by one man sin entered into the world, and death by sin; and so
death passed upon all men, for that all have sinned." Rom. 5:12.

"There is no difference," Jew or Gentile, bond or free, they are in the
same lost condition; "for all have sinned, and come short of the glory
of God." Rom. 10:12; 3:23.

The sinner finds himself a transgressor, condemned to death by a holy
law. He turns to it with the thought, "I will do what it says, and
become righteous and win life." But he cannot undo the fact that he has
sinned. A holy law can only cry, "Guilty! guilty!" to one who has
transgressed it. The law declares righteousness; it cannot give it. As
the Scripture says:

"We know that what things soever the law saith, it saith to them who are
under the law: that every mouth may be stopped, and all the world may
become guilty before God. Therefore by the deeds of the law there shall
no flesh be justified in His sight: for by the law is the know