“Can you tell me what it means to stand justified before God?” said an anxious soul to me. “I can understand how we may find forgiveness through the finished work of Christ, but how is it that a sinner can come into the presence of God not only saved from hell, with sins forgiven, but in the happy liberty of one who is justified, or looked upon as though he had never sinned―a new creature altogether?”
“Simply,” I replied, “by possessing the life of One who was raised again for our justification. We read in Romans 4: ‘Who was delivered for our offenses’―we find forgiveness there; but further – ‘was raised again for our justification.’ Now this is a life totally disconnected from our old state as sinners; a resurrection life, on the other side of death and judgment.”
“Do you mean that the life we get by believing in Jesus is not a forgiven life, but a new one entirely, and hence a justified one?”
“Exactly so, for Christ is our life before God, nor does He see us apart from Him. But let us take an example. My watch is stolen by one who is afterward apprehended and brought before me, a guilty convicted criminal. There he stands, exposed to my just wrath and condemnation. In my compassion I forgive him, setting him at liberty. But does this justify him for the future as to life and character? Not at all―for it is out of my power to do so. He remains merely a forgiven thief, and nothing more or less, to the end of his days.
“But then, let us suppose that in answer to the just claims of the law the thief has to go to death to expiate his crime. This indeed is the end of his thieving life; death has brought it completely to a close.
“But now a mighty power appears on the scene, and quickens him into life again. Is this the old forgiven thief ― life raised once more? Ah, no! death made an end of that; the law spent its utmost force and power upon it when it put him out of existence, and his raised life is a perfectly justified one, on the other side of condemnation and death.
“How boundless the liberty and blessing death has wrought for us whom God has thus placed beyond the reach of the just judgment of law upon a condemned life―for I understand now the Scripture which says, `ye also are become dead to the law by the body of Christ’; and again, ‘I through the law am dead to the law, that I might live unto God.’ It is clear also that we are justified by faith, and not by the works of the law, ‘for by the works of the law shall no flesh be justified.’”
But will you tell me how it is that so many Christians are not enjoying all that the death and resurrection of Christ has done for them, and are constantly weighed down in spirit over a sinful nature and many failures? like the one in Romans 7, who cries out, ‘O wretched man that I am.’”
“Because they do not see that though the law is in full force as being ‘holy, just, and good,’ they have died out from under its power in the Person of Christ, who in death met fully and forever its righteous requirements, and that in Him risen they have a life which in itself meets these requirements, constantly rising up to delight the heart of God. In this life we not only stand justified, but being in itself of God it delights in holiness.”
“Is this, then, what Paul means in Galatians 2, where he says, ‘I am crucified with Christ; nevertheless, I live: yet not I, but Christ liveth in me’?”
“It is, indeed; for nothing short of death can bring us deliverance from our former state, introducing us into the liberty of another. Death was the penalty of a broken law, for ‘Cursed is every one that continueth not in all things that are written in the book of the law, to do them.’
“In Jesus, as God’s spotless Lamb, and our Substitute, we behold Him who went into death, and thus redeemed us from the curse of the law, being made a curse for us. This risen life is ours today, and hence Paul could triumphantly exclaim, ‘yet not I, but Christ liveth in me.’ In Him, also, we are not only dead to the law but to an earthly religion, or worldly ordinances, which were contrary to us; and to the world itself as things `not of the Father.’ Paul could rejoice in being crucified to one and all of them.”
“It must give unspeakable rest to the heart to know that in virtue of God’s own ransom, even Him who has been set forth a propitiation through faith in His blood, we not only stand justified freely by His grace, but God Himself is just while He justifies, because of the value of that blood to Him.”
“We should never separate the truth contained in the Scripture first referred to, as to forgiveness and justification, but should ever grasp both sides as the fullness of God’s glad tidings; even as Paul, in giving it forth, says, ‘through this man (Christ Jesus) is preached unto you forgiveness of sins, and by Him all that believe are justified.’ Forgiveness is one side, and this eases the conscience from the burden of guilt, meeting its need; but if we stop short of justification, or realizing what our new life is, and where it places us, we not only miss the liberty which is ours to enjoy, as a heavenly people whose life is hid with Christ in God, but our walk as Christians remains more or less a worldly one―for we fail in making Him who is our life an object for the heart. Alas! how very many thus have Christ for the conscience, and do not know Him as the all-satisfying portion for the heart.”
“Does not this arise from failing to apprehend what we are introduced into, as well as delivered from, as children of God?”
“It does truly; for if we have been delivered from sin and sins, and introduced into a new creation scene, the measure of our separation to God from all that delights the old nature is Christ, our life, where He is, who becomes the center of our heart’s affections as a living person, and the one object before us.”
“You mentioned the old nature just now as that within us still inclined to be active. What power are we to bring practically to bear upon this?”
“The power of death ― for death is the weapon which God has placed in our hands to mortify our members with, just as Samson, in slaying the ‘heaps upon heaps,’ grasped the thing which had died to minister death to so many. As a matter of fact we, as Christians, still possess the old nature or principle of evil, which Scripture calls ‘the flesh,’ but as a matter of faith we have died out of it with Christ (our old man is crucified with Christ), and hence our power practically against it is to reckon it dead” (Rom. 6:22God forbid. How shall we, that are dead to sin, live any longer therein? (Romans 6:2))
“How blessed thus to find on the authority of God’s changeless Word, all that is ours through identification with Him whose love for us many waters could not quench.”
“Blessed, indeed! and the conscious appropriation of it brings peace ― real and abiding ― for ‘being justified by faith we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ.’”
“The Lord is risen: The Red Sea’s judgment flood
Is passed, in Him who bought us with His blood.
The Lord is risen: We stand beyond the doom
Of all our sin, through Jesus’ empty tomb.
The Lord is risen: With Him we also rose,
And in His grave see all our vanquished foes.
The Lord is risen: Beyond the judgment land,
In Him, in resurrection-life, we stand.
The Lord is risen: Shut in are we with God,
To tread the desert which. His feet have trod,
The Lord is risen: The Sanctuary’s our place,
Where now we dwell before the Father’s face.
The Lord is risen: The Lord is gone before,
We long to see Him, and to sin no more!
The Lord is risen: Our triumph shout shall be,
Thou hast prevailed! Thy people Lord, are free!’”
E.