The message is so familiar to us that we may easily fail to realise its essential greatness and wonderfulness when first proclaimed.  That God should give righteousness, that it should be ‘of God,’ not only as coming from Him, but as, in some real way, being kindred with His own perfection; that it should be brought to men by Jesus Christ, as ancient legends told that a beneficent Titan brought from heaven, in a hollow cane, the gift of fire; and that it should become ours by the simple process of trusting in Jesus Christ, are truths which custom has largely robbed of their wonderfulness.  Let us meditate more on them till they regain, by our own experience of their power, some of the celestial light which belongs to them.

Observe that in verse 22 the universality of the redemption which is in Christ is deduced from the universality of sin.  The remedy must reach as far as the disease.  If there is no difference in regard to sin, there can be none in regard to the sweep of redemption.  The doleful universality of the covering spread over all nations, has corresponding to it the blessed universality of the light which is sent forth to flood them all.  Sin’s empire cannot stretch farther than Christ’s kingdom.

IV.  Paul’s view of what makes the Gospel the remedy.

In verses 21 and 22 it was stated generally that Christ was the channel, and faith the condition, of righteousness.  The personal object of faith was declared, but not the special thing in Christ which was to be trusted in.  That is fully set forth in verses 24-26.  We cannot attempt to discuss the great words in these verses, each of which would want a volume.  But we may note that ‘justified’ here means to be accounted or declared righteous, as a judicial act; and that justification is traced in its ultimate source to God’s ’grace,’—­His own loving disposition—­which bends to unworthy and lowly creatures, and is regarded as having for the medium of its bestowal the ‘redemption’ that is in Christ Jesus.  That is the channel through which grace comes from God.

‘Redemption’ implies captivity, liberation, and a price paid.  The metaphor of slaves set free by ransom is exchanged in verse 25 for a sacrificial reference.  A propitiatory sacrifice averts punishment from the offerer.  The death of the victim procures the life of the worshipper.  So, a propitiatory or atoning sacrifice is offered by Christ’s blood, or death.  That sacrifice is the ransom-price through which our captivity is ended, and our liberty assured.  As His redemption is the channel ‘through’ which God’s grace comes to men, so faith is the condition ‘through’ which (ver. 25) we make that grace ours.

Note, then, that Paul does not merely point to Jesus Christ as Saviour, but to His death as the saving power.  We are to have faith in Jesus Christ (ver. 22).  But that is not a complete statement.  It must be faith in His propitiation, if it is to bring us into living contact with His redemption.  A gospel which says much of Christ, but little of His Cross, or which dilates on the beauty of His life, but stammers when it begins to speak of the sacrifice in His death, is not Paul’s Gospel, and it will have little power to deal with the universal sickness of sin.