No Salvation without Substitution by J.E. Conant

• Title Page
• Introduction
• The Nature of God
• The Nature of Moral Being
• The Nature of Sin
• The Nature of Moral Government
• The Nature of Justice
• The Nature of Mercy
• The Nature of Substitution
• The Nature of Grace
• The Nature of Salvation

Note the underlying principles behind this incident. First, there is a law that says to debtors to banks, for the sake of the depositors who have committed to them their financial welfare: “Pay up, or judgment.”

Next, Mr. Clay was helpless to pay up, and so he faced judgment. Then his friends, by voluntarily suffering personal loss, had become his substitutes and met his obligation for him.

Then Mr. Clay, when told the good news, believed it, and accepted what his friends had done for him. He did nothing financial to merit this gift of money, yet in simply accepting what his friends had done in his name, he was fully justified before the banking laws in the names of his friends, and acquitted of all obligation. His conscience toward the bank was now clear, and the law could never touch him for that debt.

Just so the whole race had an obligation before God. But through bankruptcy, payment was forever impossible. God had said: “Pay up, or judgment,” so judgment hung over the race. Then because there was no one else who could qualify to pay the debt, God Himself, in His Son, met that obligation for the whole race at Calvary.

Man did nothing to meet it, for he had nothing to pay. So God did it all, and the transaction is forever closed for the whole race. Man has now simply to receive what God has done, just as Mr. Clay received what his friends had done. If we accept it by receiving Christ, God accepts us. If we reject it by refusing Christ, God will be compelled to reject us. Not because we have broken the Commandment, even all ten of them, but because we have refused to accept what He has done for us.

Can you turn down a salvation like that? Can you refuse a pardon which has already been provided for you, and is being offered on the simple condition of acceptance. Can you turn Christ’s sufferings for you into a useless and eternal waste?