Evening
Time: 12:43 PM PST
"Who shall lay anything to the charge of God's elect?" --Romans 8:33
Most blessed challenge! How unanswerable it is! Every sin of the elect was
laid upon the great Champion of our salvation, and by the atonement carried
away. There is no sin in God's book against His people: He seeth no sin in
Jacob, neither iniquity in Israel; they are justified in Christ for ever. When
the guilt of sin was taken away, the punishment of sin was removed. For the
Christian there is no stroke from God's angry hand--nay, not so much as a single
frown of punitive justice. The believer may be chastised by his Father, but God
the Judge has nothing to say to the Christian, except "I have absolved thee:
thou art acquitted." For the Christian there is no penal death in this world,
much less any second death. He is completely freed from all the punishment as
well as the guilt of sin, and the power of sin is removed too. It may stand in
our way, and agitate us with perpetual warfare; but sin is a conquered foe to
every soul in union with Jesus. There is no sin which a Christian cannot
overcome if he will only rely upon his God to do it. They who wear the white
robe in heaven overcame through the blood of the Lamb, and we may do the same.
No lust is too mighty, no besetting sin too strongly entrenched; we can overcome
through the power of Christ. Do believe it, Christian, that thy sin is a
condemned thing. It may kick and struggle, but it is doomed to die. God has
written condemnation across its brow. Christ has crucified it, "nailing it to
His cross." Go now and mortify it, and the Lord help you to live to His praise,
for sin with all its guilt, shame, and fear, is gone.
"Here's pardon for transgressions past,
It matters not how black their cast;
And, O my soul, with wonder view,
For sins to come here's pardon too."