Morning, May 15, edited from Spurgeon’s Morning and Evening

“Through Him everyone who believes is freed [justified] from all things, from which you could not be freed through the Law of Moses.” — Acts 13:39

The believer in Christ receives freedom from the penalty of sin now — a present justification. Faith does not produce this fruit eventually, but now. So far as justification is the result of faith, it is given to the soul in the moment when it closes with Christ, and accepts him as its all in all. Are they who stand before the throne of God justified now?  So are we, as truly and as clearly justified as they who walk in white and sing melodious praises to celestial instruments. The thief upon the cross was justified the moment that he turned the eye of faith to Jesus; and Paul, when aged, after years of service, was not more justified than was the thief with no service at all. We are today accepted in the Beloved, today absolved from sin, today acquitted at the judgment court of God. Oh! Soul transporting thought! There are some clusters of Eshcol’s vine which we shall not be able to gather until we enter heaven; but this is a bough which reaches over the wall. This is not as the food of the land, which we can never eat until we cross the Jordan; but this is part of the manna in the wilderness, a portion of our daily nutrition with which God supplies us in our journeying back and forth. We are now—even now pardoned; even now are our sins put away; even now we stand in the sight of God accepted, as though we had never been guilty. “Therefore there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.” There is not a sin charged in the Book of God, even now, against one of his people. Who dares to lay anything to their charge? There is neither speck, nor spot, nor wrinkle, nor any such thing remaining upon any one believer in the matter of justification in the sight of the Judge of all the earth. Let our present privilege awaken us to present duty, and now, while life lasts, let us spend and be spent for our precious Lord Jesus.