Spurgeon: May AM
* 05/15/AM
"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 to-day accepted in the Beloved,
to-day absolved from sin, to-day 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.