While traveling in a train I was led to offer my fellow travelers some tracts. Three refused them, while four accepted them. After a little, one of them said, pointing to a paragraph in the tract I had given him,
“Do you believe that?”
“Yes, thank God,” I replied. The paragraph was as follows,
“Now if I fail, if I sin, my standing before God is not altered in the slightest. It is in Christ, and hence it never changes.”
Of course this was written about a child of God, a believer; and the tract went on to show, that if a believer sins, he has an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous (1 John 2:1), and through His advocacy the erring child is brought to confess and judge his sin, and communion is restored.
If this were not so, every time the believer sins, he would need to be washed over again in the blood, and that would necessitate Christ dying again, as “Without shedding of blood is no remission” (Heb. 9:22).
The truth is, the Lord Jesus bore all the believer’s sins when He was on the cross, and that one blood-shedding has put them away forever from before God as Judge, and He has now become the believer’s Justifier, the one who will not impute sin to him who believeth. (Compare Rom. 3:24-26; 4:5-8, and 8:33).
But God is Father, as well as Justifier. And as Father, He notices and corrects all wrong that His children do. Hence, even an evil thought will interrupt communion with the Father; but nothing, blessed be God, can ever alter our standing before the Justifier. He has justified the believer, and that forever.
Now, notice 1 John 2:1, “These things write I unto you, that YE SIN NOT.” Grace does not set us free from God’s judgment to live in sin, as unconverted people think, but grace sets us free from sin, to live to God. “Now being made free from sin, and become servants to God, ye have your fruit unto holiness, and the end everlasting life” (Rom. 6:22).
After a little I pointed to “There is therefore now no condemnation to them which are in Christ Jesus” (Rom. 8:1).
Dear Reader, do you know the blessedness of the man whose sins are not only forgiven, but to whom God will not impute sin? (Rom. 4:6-8).