Spurgeon: July PM
* 07/27/PM
"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."