Below is an excerpt from Horatius Bonar’s (1808-1889) incredible book “Everlasting Righteousness.” It’s available on Amazon in paperback and in Kindle format for 99 cents.

It has sky-rocketed into my top 10 list of “best books.” Listen to Bonar explain how in the crucifixion of Jesus “both law and love triumph”:

The reconciliation God has accomplished; and, in the accomplishment, both law and love have triumphed. The one has not given way to the other. Each has kept its ground; nay, each has come from the conflict honored and glorified. Never has there been love like this love of God; so large, so lofty, so intense, so self-sacrificing. Never has law been so pure, so broad, so glorious, so inexorable. There has been no compromise. Law and love have both had their full scope. Not one jot or tittle has been surrendered by either. They have been satisfied to the full; the one in all its severity, the other in all its tenderness. Love has never been more truly love, and law has never been more truly law, than in this conjunction of the two. It has been reconciliation, without compromise. God’s honour has been maintained, yet man’s interests have not been sacrificed. God has done it all; and He has done it effectually and irreversibly.

Man could not have done it, even though he could have devised it. But truly he could do neither. God only could have devised and done it. He has done it by removing the whole case into His own courts of law, that it might be settled there on a righteous basis. Man could not have gone into court with the case, save in the certainty that he would lose it. God comes into court, bringing man and man’s whole case along with Him, that upon righteous principles, and in a legal way, the case may be settled, at once in favour of man and in favour of God. It is this judicial settlement of the case that is God’s one and final answer to man’s long unanswered question, “How shall man be just with God?” “Wherewith shall I come before the LORD, and bow myself before the high God?” (Micah 6:6).

God provides the basis of the reconciliation; a basis which demonstrates that there is no compromise between law and love, but the full expression of both; a basis which establishes both the authority and the paternity of Jehovah, as Lawgiver and Father; a basis which reveals in infinite awfulness the exceeding sinfulness of sin, the spotless purity of the statute, the unbending character of God’s governmental ordinances; and which yet secures, in and by law, the righteous overflow of His boundless love to the lost sons of Adam.