Present full assurance of soul is the spring of the purest affection and of the freest service. Indeed it is necessary to each of them. The present forgiveness of sins is to be asserted with all confidence.
I ask, What has been the business of the blessed God in this world of ours, if not for the very end of putting us into Such a condition? Our sin brought Him here—and then, the putting away of our sin gave Him His history here, after He had come among us. He died and rose from the dead. For what do I see in that history, the death and resurrection of the Son of God, if I see not the putting away of sin?
As soon as ever sin entered, He was revealed in this connection with us. Not as a Lawgiver or a Judge, but as a Savior. He is seen in the very first promise. It was as a Savior, as the purger of sins, He was revealed then, in the mystery of the bruised heel and the bruised head—and that was His death and resurrection as the Son of God and the Lamb of God. And what, again I ask, do I see in those great facts, if I see not the putting away of sin? How can I, with any reason, with any simplicity of mind, stand before the cross of Christ, and not apprehend the purging of sins there? If I did not apprehend that, everything would and must rebuke the darkness of my soul. Did not the rent veil, accompanied by the rent rocks of the earth and the riven graves of the saints, tell out that the death of the Son of God then accomplished had restored man to God, casting up a highway from the prison-house of him who had the power of death up to the bright heavens, and the throne of the majesty there? Did not the empty sepulcher follow in its appointed day, to bear like witness, and to tell that God was satisfied with the death of Christ, and that it had atoned for sin and made reconciliation? And then did not the gift and presence of the Holy Ghost come, in its due pentecostal hour, to seal the same great fact? And I further ask, What was the preaching, the gospel, the testimony of the apostles immediately afterward, as we have it in the book of the Acts? Surely it is, remission, forgiveness of sins, upon the virtue of the blood or death of Jesus, to all who will receive Him.
All this is truly and indeed so. And now, our souls are to keep this blessed fact, that sin is put away, as in the foreground. It is not to be treated as something which we might be able to descry in the hazy, misty distance, after some anxious scrutiny. It is to be set in the foreground, where the rent veil, the resurrection, the pentecost, apostolic preaching and apostolic teaching have already set it, that we may apprehend it as in the very light of noonday, and possess ourselves of it with all assurance.
Scripture, as one once observed, makes a much simpler thing of the putting away of sin, than our religion makes of it. Scripture puts it at the outset, human religion makes it the great attainment. Scripture puts sin in company with the blood of Christ and it disappears.