Evening, July 27
Go To Morning Reading
“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 forever. 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.”