July 27, Evening

C. H. Spurgeon · Modern retelling

"Who shall lay anything to the charge of God's elect?" — Romans 8:33 · KJV

What a blessed challenge, and how unanswerable! 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 sees no sin in Jacob, neither iniquity in Israel; they are justified in Christ for ever. When the guilt of sin was taken away, its punishment was removed; for the Christian there is 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 him 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 freed from the punishment as well as the guilt of sin, and its power is broken too. Sin may stand in our way and vex us with perpetual warfare, but to every soul in union with Jesus it is a conquered foe. There is no sin a Christian cannot overcome if he will rely upon his God. 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. Believe it, Christian: your sin is a condemned thing. It may kick and struggle, but it is doomed to die; God has written condemnation across its brow, and 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. There is pardon for every past transgression, however black its cast; and, O my soul, wonder at this — for the sins to come there is pardon too.