Surety. This is a word we don't hear often today, except perhaps in legal matters. There it means a pledge, guarantee, or bond. And a "surety" can be in the form of a person who has pledged or made himself responsible for another. In the gospel we learn that Jesus Christ is the surety for the believer. He stands in our place, our substitute, who represents us before God, bears our sin, gives us his righteousness, and becomes the guarantor of the work of God in us. And this truth gives us the freedom to live before the Lord in security and with assurance of final salvation. "In the law of works there was no provision made for a surety; but it did not absolutely exclude one: therefore it left room for the covenant of grace, in which a provision was made in the person of Jesus Christ, for securing the divine honor of this holy law. He undertook to stand up in man’s place and stead, to magnify the precepts of the law in his life, and to glorify the penalties of the law in his death, that not one jot or tittle of it might fail till all was fulfilled. And as he was God over all, blessed for ever, his life and death put everlasting honor upon the divine law. His obedience was of inestimable value, and his sufferings were infinitely sufficient to take away sin. Christ is now the end of the law for righteousness. He answered the end of the law for his people, by obeying and suffering for them. And every one of them can now plead by faith a perfect fulfilling of all the precepts, a perfect suffering of all the penalties in the person of their divine Surety."
~ William Romaine, The Walk of Faith (London, 1771)
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