March 28, Evening

C. H. Spurgeon · Modern retelling

"I will accept you with your sweet savour." — Ezekiel 20:41 · KJV

The merits of our great Redeemer are a sweet fragrance to the Most High. Whether we speak of the active or the passive righteousness of Christ, there is equal fragrance. There was a sweet fragrance in His active life, by which He honored the law of God and made every precept 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 length sweat great drops of blood in Gethsemane, gave His back to the smiters and His cheeks to those who plucked out the hair, and was fastened to the cruel wood, that He might suffer the wrath of God on 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 preciousness must be in Him, to overcome our lack of preciousness! What a sweet fragrance, to put away our ill savor! What cleansing power in His blood, to take away sin such as ours! and what glory in His righteousness, to make such unacceptable creatures accepted in the Beloved! Mark, believer, how sure and unchanging our acceptance must be, 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. Notwithstanding all your doubts and fears and sins, Yahweh's gracious eye never looks on 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, 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 rising this evening before the sapphire throne, let the incense of your praise go up also.