SINS AFTER CONVERSION

SINS AFTER CONVERSION

What becomes of the sins which we commit since new birth - since we became christians?

I am not surprised at your question, or that it should be an anxious one to you: nay rather, I am glad that it is an anxious one, for it shews that you desire to maintain a good conscience before God. I think very often that saints, while professing to know more than your question supposes, in reality know not its answer, and sometimes seek not its answer, for they allow time or happy seasons to wear out the remembrance of the evil that had wounded their conscience. I think it an all-important subject, and one on which the strength and comeliness of our walk depends.

When I, in the midst of my sins, believe in Christ, God, because He can do so justly, justifies me. He has established righteousness through Christ. God is now just to justify, as He was just before to condemn. The Son came forth to do the Father’s will - the will of God, and thus to give a righteous warrant for the expression of God’s love, which, though it existed, could not have been expressed before there was righteousness for God to act on; not only righteousness for me, but righteousness through which God could express His heart to me - a lost one in my misery - now awakened like the thief on the cross, to believe on His Son. I look by faith on Him, by whom the righteousness is declared, “Whom God hath set forth to be a propitiation through faith in his blood” (Romans 3: 25). I am accepted in the Beloved, not because I am righteous, but because God is just, to accept me in the Beloved, who enabled Him in righteousness to meet me - a sinner believing in Him who effected it, and through whom I am the righteousness of God in Him. The righteousness is on God’s side and effected for God. Faith in Christ in me reckons ^[p. 204] me with Him who effected it, and thereby I am in the very righteousness in which God is now just to justify and accept me. It is a righteousness suiting God, who can receive His prodigal son. I, believing in Christ, am through grace, accepted - made meet for the inheritance of the saints in light. The thief on the cross believed in Christ, and though very ignorant, that did not set him any lower than the place which God in His love had provided for him. His sins were gone and he was to be with Christ that day in the third heaven, enjoying the love of the Father in all its greatness. He had much to learn and to know of Christ when he got there; the way and manner by which all difficulties to his reaching such a height were removed; how Christ had by one offering perfected them that are sanctified - all this must have been learned after he was in the third heaven, for surely it was not learned on this side; just as Moses and Elias doubtless learned more perfectly of Christ’s decease on the mount of transfiguration than they had ever done before. All this shews, that being introduced by Christ into the place which the Father’s heart desired for us, we learn how fully Christ has secured our title to be there. The blood was sprinkled seven times on the mercy-seat (”propitiation” same word) in the holiest of all, and it is in the holiest of all that I am most fully assured of my title to be there, and that in God’s sight (not mine so much, though I there see it as He sees it) “the blood of Jesus Christ his Son cleanseth us from all sin” (1 John 1: 7). It is a discovery on my part, and not anything of the nature of a performance; I discover the greatness of my title where I am most in the result of what Christ accomplished. When I am nearest to God; when I have reached the point where Christ according to the love of God has travailed to bring me - even to the Father - in Himself - then do I best know how fully entitled I am to be there; the very nearness increases the sense of title.

^[p. 205] Now, supposing I sin. I lose the sense of my place - this given place of nearness to God. I remember I had a place there. I have sinned, and I have lost it. I seek restoration. The word of God exposes and convicts me. Where do I look? Who is before God? What is the revelation to me now having to do with God, and knowing Him? Why, that I “have a great high priest, that is passed into the heavens, Jesus the Son of God” (Hebrews 4: 14). Christ is my link to God, He effected all for God. He is my Advocate, or Paraclete, or Patron, with the Father: I see Him there as the righteous One, by whom I have been brought nigh to God; by whom I have found myself in the wealthy place before God. I see Him there; He presents me before God, holy, unblameable, unrebukeable, when in faith; but not without confession of the evil by which I have lost the enjoyment of my high place. When I confess, I admit the sin for which Christ was God’s sacrifice to put away all sin, and mine too. I write this sin on myself before God and according to the terms of my confession - the larger the characters in which I write it, the greater my sense of exoneration. Why? Because God “is faithful and just to forgive us our sins, and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness” (1 John 1: 9). I discover in another and a more distinct way how God has established righteousness in Christ. I am enlarged in my soul to a sense of the ground on which He can exonerate me because I confess the guilt which God has already judged in His own Son; and through whom He is just to justify me so that after real restoration, I am stronger than ever in His grace: and if it be otherwise, the restoration is not genuine. I discover what the grace of God is to me practically in myself, even as the thief knew it in its effects.