Mark, it is not that we ought not to answer to such claims; we most certainly ought. But who among us does? and hence, so far as we are concerned, our ruin and guilt are only made more manifest, and our condemnation more righteous, if we stand upon the claims of Christ, because we have not answered to them. If we are to be saved by our estimate of Christ, by our response to His claims, by our appreciation of His love, we are worse off by far than if we were placed under the claims of the law of Moses. But, blessed be God, it is not so. We are saved by grace,--free, sovereign, divine and eternal grace,--not by our sense of grace. We are sheltered by the blood, not by our estimate of the blood. Jehovah did not say, on that awful night, "When _you_ see the blood, and estimate it as you ought, I will pass over you." Nothing of the kind. This is not the way of our God. He wanted to shelter His people, and to let them know that they were sheltered,--perfectly, because divinely sheltered,--and therefore He places the matter wholly upon a divine basis; He takes it entirely out of their hands, by assuring them that their safety rested simply and entirely upon the blood, and upon His estimate thereof. He gives them to understand that they had nothing whatever to do with providing the shelter. It was His to _provide_. It was theirs to _enjoy_. Thus it stood between Jehovah and His Israel in that memorable night; and thus it stands between Him and the soul that simply trusts in Jesus now. We are not saved by _our_ love, or _our_ estimate, or _our_ anything. We are saved by the blood behind which faith has fled for refuge, and by God's estimate of it, which faith apprehends. And just as Israel, within that blood-stained lintel screened from judgment,--safe from the sword of the destroyer,--could feed upon the roasted lamb, so may the believer, perfectly sheltered from the wrath to come,--sweetly secure from all danger, screened from judgment,--feed upon Christ in all the preciousness of what He is. But more of this by and by. We are specially anxious that the reader should weigh the point on which we have been dwelling, if he be one who has not yet found peace, even as to the question of safety from judgment to come, which, as we shall see (if God permit) ere we close this paper, is but a part, though an ineffably precious part, of what the death of Christ has procured for us.