D. Scott Meadows

“I will accept you with your sweet savor.” —Ezekiel 20:41

The merits of our great Redeemer are as sweet savor to the Most High. Whether we speak of the active or passive righteousness of Christ, there is an equal fragrance.

There was a sweet savor 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 length sweat great drops of blood in Gethsemane, 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 must there be in him to overcome our want of preciousness! What a sweet savor to put away our ill savor! 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!

Mark, believer, how sure and unchanging must be 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. Notwithstanding 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 merit of the Savior coming up, this evening, before the sapphire throne, let the incense of your praise go up also.

On Ezekiel 20.41

Ezekiel 20.33–44 foretells a new exodus for Israel. This had a partial and historical fulfillment in the return of Jews from the Babylonian dispersion back to the land of Israel. It prefigured the NT calling of God’s elect from all the nations into Christ and His Church, the true and spiritual Israel. Therefore, Spurgeon legitimately takes verse 41 to be about Christ and those in Him. Calvin: “Israel is here placed before us in a twofold light: for many were Israelites in name; but here the Prophet is treating of the elect, whom Paul calls a remnant of grace.”

The structure of this devotional message

     I. The sweet savor of our great Redeemer Christ
     A. In His active righteousness
     B. In His passive righteousness
     II. Its preciousness as compensating for our lack
     III. Our assurance from it
     IV. Our musical praises for it

Less familiar terms and concepts

     1. Sweet savor is a sweet or acceptable smell. Associated with sacrifices God accepts, it points especially to Christ (Gen 8.21; Eph 5.2) and what comes to God through Him (2 Cor 2.15).

     2. The active and passive righteousness of Christ. This denotes two aspects of Christ’s fulfilling God’s law: obeying its moral direction and suffering all its penalties for the guilty.

     3. Our lack of preciousness, our ill savor, our great sin, natural unacceptability to God. These are jarring to self-esteem fans, but they reflect the biblical assessment of fallen humanity.

     4. Christian worship as ascending incense. The last paragraph sees the OT burning incense realized in Christian song (cf. Heb 13.15).

Especially important truths

     1. Christ’s substitutionary obedience and atonement. He not only died in the place of believers; He lived in our place. Both His moral praiseworthiness and His propitiation are required as an offering for our acceptance with God.

     2. The believer’s total and unchangeable acceptance in Christ without regard to our performance and failures. Spurgeon brings this out wonderfully in the next to last paragraph. We do not move from a grace-based acceptance at our conversion to a worksbased acceptance in our Christian life. Our acceptance with God is grace, grace, grace, eternally, even in glory.

     3. Christian worship as grateful praise, not meritorious condition for salvation. We do not worship in order to gain salvation. God saves us to induce our worship. The guilt-grace-gratitude (or ruinredemption-religion) pattern of the Heidelberg Catechism and the Reformed tradition is eminently scriptural and God-glorifying. Ω