Charles Stanley Todays InTouch: Guilty No More Are you free from the burden of guilt? Romans 5:6-11(The Message) 6-8 Christ arrives right on time to make this happen. He didn’t, and doesn’t, wait for us to get ready. He presented himself for this sacrificial death when we were far too weak and rebellious to do anything to get ourselves ready. And even if we hadn’t been so weak, we wouldn’t have known what to do anyway. We can understand someone dying for a person worth dying for, and we can understand how someone good and noble could inspire us to selfless sacrifice. But God put his love on the line for us by offering his Son in sacrificial death while we were of no use whatever to him. 9-11 Now that we are set right with God by means of this sacrificial death, the consummate blood sacrifice, there is no longer a question of being at odds with God in any way. If, when we were at our worst, we were put on friendly terms with God by the sacrificial death of his Son, now that we’re at our best, just think of how our lives will expand and deepen by means of his resurrection life! Now that we have actually received this amazing friendship with God, we are no longer content to simply say it in plodding prose. We sing and shout our praises to God through Jesus, the Messiah! How can we say that the Lord has declared us “not guilty” of our sin? The first thing we have to understand is that this act was completely God’s doing. We can do absolutely nothing to remove the stain of our own sin. It is for this reason that the Father sent His Son into the world. The one satisfactory payment for sin is death (Rom. 6:23), and because God wanted to spare us that punishment, He provided the only way out. He gave the perfect sacrifice: His son, Jesus Christ (Rom. 5:8). What did this loving act accomplish? It enabled us to approach almighty God as clean, pure, and holy men and women. Our purity is not related to anything we ourselves have done; it is due exclusively to the fact that we have been purified in Jesus’ blood. That’s why we can say we have been “washed in the blood,” which is the only way the stain of sin can be removed. When we come into a saving relationship with Jesus, the first thing to happen is that we are justified—in other words, God declares us “not guilty.” This means that as believers, we can stand in the presence of a perfect, holy God, because He now sees us as His own children. Am I saying we’ll never sin? No. However, when we place our faith in Jesus Christ as Savior, the penalty for all of our sin—past, present, and future—has been paid, and we will never face God’s condemnation (Rom. 8:1). Thank your heavenly Father today, not only for forgiving your sin, but also for freeing you from the burden of guilt.
Posted on: Tue, 05 Nov 2013 12:49:43 +0000
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