August 8, 2002
Reading: Romans 3: 21-26

 

“Being justified freely through His grace” (24)

 

I remember seeing a bumper sticker that read, “I’m not perfect, just pardoned.” While I understand the intention of this statement, it concerns me because it leaves the reader with an incomplete thought. That God has pardoned all those who come to Him in faith is a phenomenal fact, but it does not explain the reality of justification. The reality is, by a miracle of sovereign grace, even our guilt is removed! When a criminal is pardoned, his sentence is waived, but he remains guilty of the crime. When God pardons His people, the guilt is removed. Jesus Christ took our guilt upon Himself as well as our sins. Now, when God looks on His people, He sees the righteousness of His Son, not our guilt. The blood of Christ makes us guiltless before God. “There is therefore, now no condemnation to those who are in Christ Jesus” Rom 8:1.

When Jesus took my sin upon Himself, my guilt was also imputed to Him. God’s justice can never file the charge of “guilty” against His people, for Christ assumed our guilt and suffered the full intensity of His Father because of it. What immense love and grace that we can stand before the intense holiness of God and be declared, “Not Guilty.”

 

“O Lord, No day of my life has passed that has not proved me guilty in Thy sight.

Prayers have been uttered from a prayerless heart; Praise has been often praiseless sound; My best services are filthy rags. Blessed Jesus, let me find a covert in Thy appeasing wounds. Though my sins rise to heaven, Thy merits soar above them; though unrighteousness weighs me down to hell, thy righteousness exalts me to thy throne. All things in me call for my rejection. All things in thee plead my acceptance. I appeal from the throne of perfect justice to thy throne of boundless grace. Grant me to hear thy voice assuring me: that by thy stripes I am healed, that thou was bruised for my iniquities, that thou has been made sin for me that I might be righteous in thee, that my grievous sins, my manifold sins, are all forgiven, buried in the ocean of thy concealing blood. I am guilty, but pardoned, lost but saved, wandering, but found, sinning, but cleansed.

Give me perpetual broken-heartedness, Keep me always clinging to thy cross, Flood me every moment with descending grace, Open to me the springs of divine knowledge, sparkling like crystal, flowing clear and unsullied through my wilderness of life.”

Puritan Prayer