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The most wonderful plan!
Spurgeon, "ANOTHER AND A NOBLER EXHIBITION"
Through the great scheme of 'salvation by the atonement',
God is MORE glorified than he would have been if there had
been no fall, and consequently no room for a redemption.
It was within the compass of the power of God to make
'infallible creatures' that would love him-- to make beings
that would be attached to him by the very closest ties.
But I do not see how omnipotence itself, apart from 'the fall
and the redemption' by the sacrifice of Christ, when he gave
himself to die for us; could have made such creatures as the
redeemed will be in heaven.
Brethren, if we had never fallen and never been redeemed,
we could never have sung of redeeming grace and dying love!
We could not have known the heights and depths, and lengths
and breadths of the love of Christ which passes knowledge.
Feasted with heavenly food, we might have admired his bounty,
but not as we now do when we eat the flesh of Christ, made to
drink the wine pressed from heaven's own clusters.
We might have blessed the giver of the feast, but not as we now
can do, when we drink the blood of Jesus as our sweet wine;
pure and holy. We could have praised him, and we should have
done so, but not as we now can, when we have "washed our
robes and made them white in the blood of the Lamb."
This seems to be the most wonderful, the most godlike,
the most divine plan-- that a sinful creature shall discover
the justice of God through the punishment being laid upon
a substitute; and that he shall learn the love of God through
that substitute being God himself!
In heaven this redeemed creature shall feel that it owes nothing
to itself, nothing to its own natural efforts, but all to him who
loved it and who bought it with his blood; and therefore this
grateful being shall praise God after the most superior sort--
"Worthy is the Lamb that was slain to receive honor,
and blessing, and majesty, and power, and dominion
for ever and ever!"
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