Jesus Is Our Justification.

 

Jesus Is Our Justification.

(Excerpt) 

We sang tonight, "My Sin is Nailed to His Cross." He says that our old man was crucified with Him. That is true, but it is not raised with Him. Christ came to minister, and not to be ministered unto, but He came to minister to us and not to be the minister of sin. Therefore when we and the body of sin together are crucified with Christ and are buried together, we are raised up to walk in newness of life, but the body of sin remains buried, so we are free from it. Now what follows?

There is therefore now no condemnation to them which are in Christ Jesus, who walk not after the flesh but after the Spirit. For the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus hath made me free from the law of sin and death. For what the law could not do, in that it was weak through the flesh, God sending His own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh and for sin condemned sin in the flesh: that the righteousness of the law might be fulfilled in us, who walk not after the flesh but after the Spirit. For they that are after the flesh do mind the things of the flesh; but they that are after the Spirit, the things of the Spirit.

In these verses we have that which, if we will hold it in our minds and believe that Jesus is able to save us by faith, will be to us a sure rock upon which we can build.

"There is therefore now no condemnation to them which are in Christ Jesus." In these words lies a practical thought and from it arises a question which troubles many. They say, "I believe all that in theory, I am fully in harmony with that and I know that Christ can cleanse from sin. I believe that if I confess my sins, He is faithful and just to forgive me and to cleanse me from all unrighteousness. But the question in my mind is, Have I confessed all my sins? That is what gives me trouble; if I was only sure that I had confessed all my sins, then I could claim that promise and believe that there was no condemnation for me."

Now this is something that troubles very many--How are we going to know that we are not under condemnation? We cannot charge God with having left the matter so indeterminate that it is impossible for us to know whether we are condemned or not, therefore it must be that we can find out. We may put it this way: "I have confessed all the sins that I know of, everything that the Lord has shown me; and when the Lord shows me something else, I will confess that." Of course confess everything the Lord shows you: but, brethren, don't stop half way. "If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins, and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness." Then when you have confessed a sin, believe that God forgives it, and take His peace into your hearts and if He shows you other sins, confess them, believe that they are forgiven, and have His peace still. But there are scores of honest souls who deprive themselves of a blessing and finally go into darkness because when they have confessed their sins, they do not take the forgiveness and thank God for the freedom that must follow.

Now the idea conveyed in that expression, that we have confessed all the sins we know of but still we dare not acknowledge freedom from condemnation, for fear that there are other sins that we do not know about and therefore have not confessed is really bringing a serious charge against God. It is making the Lord out to be the forgiver of the man who has the best memory. But was it your memory alone that enabled you to remember those sins that you did confess? Who quickened and spurred up your memory? It was the Spirit of God that showed those sins to you. Now are we going to charge God with doing a partial work? He sent His Holy Spirit to show you those sins. Shall we say then that He kept back a part of them, that He did not reveal to us? He showed us just what He wanted us to confess and when we have confessed them, we have met the mind of the Spirit of God and we are free.

Suppose that I have injured one of you; I may have been pursuing a systematic course of evil toward you--accusing you falsely, trying to injure you in your business, trying to provoke and irritate you in every way possible, doing everything I could against you day by day and week by week and month by month. By and by my eyes are opened, and I see the meanness of that course. I feel all broken down because I have lent myself to such a mean way of acting, and I come to you and acknowledge what I have been doing. You can see in a moment that I am all broken down over it and that I really feel that I have done wrong.

Some of us here have had occasion to forgive people who came to us in just that way. Now has it been our custom when they come in that contrite way to stand coolly back and let them tell the whole story from beginning to end and rack their minds to try to remember everything that they have done in detail, so that they may confess it? Then when they think they have told it all and ask for your forgiveness, do you stand back still and remind them that there was another little thing which they have missed and tell them that you would like them to confess that too? Then when they have told you everything that they can think of and that you can remind them of, do you say, "Well, I guess you have confessed it all, so I will forgive you"? There is not a person in this house that would do that.

When I settled that question for myself, I thought, I have no business to make myself out any better than God. When anyone comes to me or to you all broken down and confesses his wrong, we forgive him freely, and before he has told half what he might tell, we tell him that it is all right, that he is forgiven and to say no more about it.

That is just what God does. He has given us the parable of the Prodigal son, as an illustration of how He forgives. His father saw him a great way off and ran to meet him. I am so thankful that God does not require me, before I can be forgiven, to go back and take up every sin that I have ever committed and confess it. If He did, He would have to lengthen my probation longer than I believe He possibly can, for me to repeat the smallest part of them. Well may David say, "For innumerable evils have compassed me about: mine iniquities have taken hold upon me, so that I am not able to look up; they are more than the hairs of mine head: therefore my heart faileth me." Psalm 40:12. Yes, our sins are "innumerable," but "the sacrifices of God are a broken spirit"; a broken and contrite heart He will not despise. We take hold of the sacrifice of Christ, take it into our very selves, and thus we make a covenant with God by sacrifice.

The Lord forgives freely, and we can know it. God shows us the representative sins of our lives. Sins that stand out prominent--they stand for our whole sinful nature and we know that our whole life is of that same sinful character. We come and confess the sins. Shall we charge God with saying, "I have shown you those sins and you have confessed them; but there are some other sins, and I will not show you them, but you must find them out for yourself, and until you do I will not forgive you." God does not deal with us in that way. He is infinite in love and compassion. "Like as a father pitieth His children, so the Lord pitieth them that fear Him."

Now another point: "There is therefore now no condemnation to them that are in Christ Jesus, who walk not after the flesh, but after the Spirit." People say, "I have taken Christ and now I look back and trace my life history through the day or the week and I cannot see anything but imperfection in what I have done and then the feeling of condemnation comes over me and I can't stand free. How can I say, There is no condemnation for me, when I see these failures?" This is a subtle deception of Satan, to deprive us of acceptance and peace with God. Do we expect to be justified by those deeds? If we do, we make a grand mistake in the beginning. "By the deeds of the law there shall no flesh be justified in His sight." To Jesus we must look for our justification and to Him 

alone.

Excerpts - 1891 GC Sermons - E.J. Waggoner Study # 12