Looking unto Jesus a view of the everlasting gospel, or, the souls eying of…

2. Another Design of Christ's death, was to free us from sin: not only would he remove the effect, but he would take away the cause also: Whom God hath set forth to be a propitiation—for the remission of sin. ¹—Behold the Lamb of God which taketh away the sins of the world.—He hath made him to be sin for us, who knew no sin, that we might be made the righteousness of God in him.—Once hath he appeared to put away sin by the sacrifice of himself.—And the blood of Jesus Christ his Son cleanseth us from all sin. This was the plot, which God by an ancient design aimed at in the suffering of Jesus Christ; that he would take away sin: And thus Faith must take it up, and look upon it. When Peter had set forth the heinousness of the Jews sin, in killing Christ, he tells them at last of that design of old; All this was done, said he,² by the determinate counsel of God. His meaning was first to humble them, and then to raise them up; q. d. It was not so much they that wrought his death, as the Decree of God, and the agreement of God and Christ: there was an ancient contrivement that Jesus Christ should die for sin, and that all our sins should be laid on the back of Jesus Christ: and therefore he seems to speak comfort to them in this; that howsoever they designed it, yet God and Christ designed a further end in it than they imagined, even to remission of sins: Who was delivered to death for our sins, ³and rose again for our justification. The death of Christ (as one observes) was the greatest and strangest design that ever God undertook, and therefore sure he had an end proportionable to it; God that willeth not the death of a sinner, would not for any inferior end, will the death of his Son, whom he loved more than all the world besides; it must needs be some great matter for which God should contrive the death of his Son; and indeed it could be no less than to remove that which he most hated, and that was sin. Here then is another end of Christ's death, it was for the remission of sin one main part of our justification.

2. Another Design of Christ's death, was to free us from sin: not only would he remove the effect, but he would take away the cause also: Whom God hath set forth to be a propitiation—for the remission of sin.