There are many who are really looking to Jesus, and believing in Him, and yet they have, deep down in their hearts, a sort of dread of meeting God. It is not that they doubt their salvation, or that they are not really saved. By no means. They are saved, inasmuch as they are looking to Christ by faith; and all who so look are saved by Him with an everlasting salvation. All this is most blessedly true; but still there is this latent fear or dread of God, and a shrinking from death.
They know that Jesus is friendly to them, inasmuch as He died for them; but they do not see clearly the friendship of God as expressed in the act of His raising up Jesus our Lord from the dead. Thus it is, we feel persuaded with hundreds of true saints of God. They do not see God as the condemner of sin and the Justifier of the believing sinner.
They are looking to Christ on the cross, to screen them from God as a Judge, instead of looking at God as a Justifier, in raising up Christ from the dead. Jesus “was delivered for our offenses, and raised again for our justification.” Our sins are forgiven; our indwelling sin, or evil nature, is condemned or set aside. It has no existence before God. It is in us, but He does not see us in it. He sees us only in a risen Christ; and we are called to reckon ourselves dead, and, by the power of God’s Spirit, to mortify our members, to deny and subdue the evil nature which still dwells in us, and will dwell until we have passed out of our present condition, and find our place forever with the Lord.