CLEARANCE AND EXCESS

CLEARANCE AND EXCESS

I think you misapprehend my statements. ‘Clearance’ has to do with guilt, and there can be no excess there. In Romans 3: 25 there is forgiveness, in Romans 4: 25 there is clearance, but this does not go beyond guilt. In Romans 5: 20 we get excess, “where sin abounded, grace did much more abound”.

We now come to the lost condition of man. It is sin now, and not sins. The law exposed the sin, sin is in the flesh even when not exposed, “By the law is the knowledge of sin” (Romans 3: 20). Now there is excess. In the case of guilt or sins there was clearance, but in the matter of sin I am transferred from that condition into one far and away greater than the one I lost. I am now through grace in Christ’s life, and thus in the justification of that life, and that is the righteousness of God. “The law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus hath made me free from the law of sin and death” (Romans 8: 2). We are cleared of sins, but sin is condemned; that state has been judicially terminated in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ. I am forgiven my sins, and I am in a new state, greatly in excess of the one in which I was lost. I am not only a tenant forgiven all rent and arrears, and thus perfectly clear, but I am no longer a tenant good or bad, I am a son, and this is a wonderful excess on a tenant, however good his terms as a tenant might be. In Romans we touch Jordan, in Colossians we are over Jordan.

I am glad that the Lord blessed you at the conference, may He increase it. I do not at present see my way to Scotland. May you live in “the liberty wherewith Christ has made us free” (Galatians 5: 1). You will see more on this subject in a tract, entitled, ‘Steps in Light’, which are notes of my lectures.