Morning & Evening Devotional Reading–

July 27– Evening

by C. H. Spurgeon, revised and edited by W. C. Neff

“Who will bring any charge against God’s elect.”

—Romans 8:33

What a blessed challenge! How unanswerable it is! Every sin of God’s chosen ones was laid upon the great Champion of our salvation, and was, by his atonement, carried away. There is no sin in God’s book against His people. They are declared righteous in Christ forever.

When the guilt of sin was taken away, the punishment of sin was removed. For the Christian there is no stroke to fear from God’s angry hand—no, not so much as a single frown of punitive justice. The believer may be disciplined by his Father in love, but God the Judge has nothing to say to the Christian, except “I have absolved you; you are acquitted.”

For the Christian there is no penalty of death in this world, much less any second death to fear. He is completely freed from all the punishment as well as the guilt of sin, and the power of sin is removed too. Sin may stand in our way and agitate us with perpetual warfare; but sin is a conquered foe to every soul in union with Jesus. There is no sin that a Christian cannot overcome, if he will only rely upon his God to do it. Those who wear the white robes 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; we can overcome through the power of Christ.

Hold onto it, dear Christian! Your sin is condemned. It may kick and struggle, but it is doomed to die. God has written condemnation across its forehead. Christ has crucified it, “nailing it to his cross.” Go now and kill it, and the Lord will help you live to his praise, for sin with all its guilt, shame, and fear, is gone.

“There is a pardon for transgressions old; it matters not how dark their mold;

 And more than that, my soul, is true; my future sins are pardoned too.” [M&E]