Devotional: Present and Complete Justification Before God

[I have enjoyed the Morning and Evening devotionals of the late 1800’s Particular Baptist preacher, Charles Haddon Spurgeon, but find them a bit archaic in presentation. So I have re-written them in more modern fashion for modern ears, in some cases even modifying them.]

³⁸ Therefore let it be known to you, brethren, that through this Man is preached to you the forgiveness of sins; ³⁹ and by Him everyone who believes is justified from all things from which you could not be justified by the law of Moses. (Acts 13:38,39, NKJV)

The believer in Christ receives a present justification. Faith does not produce this fruit by-and-by, but now. So far as justification is the result of faith, it is given to the soul in the moment when the soul comes to agreement with Christ, and accepts him as its all in all. Are they who already stand before the throne of God justified now? So are we, as truly and as clearly justified (declared righteous by a holy God) as they who walk in white and sing melodious praises accompanied by celestial harps. The thief upon the cross was justified the very moment that he turned the eye of faith to Jesus. Paul, the 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 (Ephesians 1:6), today we are absolved from sin, today we are fully acquitted at the judgment bar of God.

Oh, soul-transporting thought! There are some clusters of Eshcol’s vine (“They [the Israelite spies in Canaan] came to the valley of Eshcol, and cut down from there a branch with one cluster of grapes, and they bore it on a staff between two; they brought also of the pomegranates, and of the figs” Numbers 13:23) which we shall not be able to gather till we enter heaven; but this is a bough which runs over the wall, the wall that separates heaven from earth. This is not like the corn of the land (Joshua 5:11), which we can never eat till we cross the Jordan River into the promised land. Rather, this is part of God’s provision of the manna in the wilderness, a portion of our daily nutriment with which God supplies us daily in our journeying to and fro. 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. “There is therefore now no condemnation to those who are in Christ Jesus” (Romans 8:1). There is not a sin in the Book of God, even now, against one of his people.

“Who shall bring a charge against God’s elect?” (Romans 8:33). 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 present privilege awaken us to present duty, and now, while life lasts, let us spend and be spent for our sweet Lord Jesus.