Morning, May 15
Go To Evening Reading
“All that believe are justified.”
Acts 13:39
The believer in Christ receives a present justification. Faith does not produce this fruit by-and-by, but now . So far as justification is the result of faith, it is given to the
soul in the moment when it closes with Christ, and accepts him as
its all in all. Are they who stand before the throne of God justified
now?—so are we, as truly and as clearly justified as they who walk in white
and sing melodious praises to celestial harps. The thief upon the
cross was justified the moment that he turned the eye of faith to
Jesus; and Paul, the aged, after years of service, was not more justified
than was the thief with no service at all. We are today accepted in the Beloved, today absolved from sin, today acquitted at the bar of God. Oh! soul-transporting thought! There
are some clusters of Eshcol’s vine which we shall not be able to gather till we enter heaven;
but this is a bough which runneth over the wall. This is not as the
corn of the land, which we can never eat till we cross the Jordan;
but this is part of the manna in the wilderness, a portion of our
daily nutriment with which God supplies us in our journeying to and
fro. We are now —even now pardoned; even now are our sins put away; even now we stand in the sight of God accepted, as though we had never been
guilty. “There is therefore now no condemnation to them which are in Christ Jesus.” There is not a sin in the Book of God, even now , against one of his people. Who dareth to lay anything to their charge?
There is neither speck, nor spot, nor wrinkle, nor any such thing
remaining upon any one believer in the matter of justification in
the sight of the Judge of all the earth. Let present privilege awaken
us to present duty, and now, while life lasts, let us spend and be
spent for our sweet Lord Jesus.