The Incense of Your Praise – Alistair Begg
The merits of our great Redeemer are as a pleasing aroma to the
Most High. Whether we speak of the active or passive righteousness of Christ,
there is an equal fragrance. There was a pleasing aroma in His active life by
which He honored the law of God and made every precept to glitter like a
precious jewel in the pure setting of His own person.
Such, too, was His passive obedience, when He endured with
unmurmuring submission hunger and thirst, cold and nakedness, and at the end
sweat as it were great drops of blood in Gethsemane. He gave His back to the
smiters and His cheeks to them that plucked out the hair and was fastened to
the cruel wood, that He might suffer the wrath of God in our behalf. These two
things are sweet before the Most High; and for the sake of His doing and His
dying, His substitutionary sufferings and His vicarious obedience, the Lord our
God accepts us.
What a preciousness there must be in Him to overcome our lack of
preciousness! What a pleasing aroma to put away our nasty odor! What a
cleansing power in His blood to take away sin such as ours! And what glory in
His righteousness to make such unacceptable creatures to be accepted in the
Beloved!
Consider, believer, how sure and unchanging is our acceptance,
since it is in Him! Take care that you never doubt your acceptance
in Jesus. You cannot be accepted without Christ; but when you have received His
merit, you cannot be unaccepted. Despite all your doubts and fears and sins,
Jehovah's gracious eye never looks upon you in anger; though He sees sin in
you, in yourself, yet when He looks at you through Christ, He sees no sin. You
are always accepted in Christ, are always blessed and dear to the Father's
heart. Therefore lift up a song, and as you see the smoking incense of the
Savior's merit coming up this evening before the sapphire throne, let the
incense of your praise go up also.
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