Pastor's Power Points

No Condemnation

There is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.
Romans 8:1

To live the life of a condemned man is to live under a cloud of guilt with the stigma of a convicted criminal and in certain prospect of due punishment. A standard has been violated and judgment is just. There is not much hope in that.

 Standing in bright contrast to that dark rut is the justification of the one who entrusts himself by faith to the Redeemer of mankind. Where there is justification there is no condemnation – there is no longer punishment to be meted out following a guilty verdict. Where there is the forensic truth of being judicially declared righteous, there also follows a practical force of not being condemned.  There is a life of liberty where the justified does not live the life of the condemned – the cloud of guilt, the stigma of conviction and the prospect of punishment – but a soul set free to live up to its intended design.

 It was in this light that the Son of God Himself declared: God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him. God’s primary desire is not to condemn, but to save and reconcile the sinner to Himself. Condemnation, however, is necessary for the faithless, thus unjustified, because of the absolute holy essence of the Creator. Whoever believes in him is not condemned, but whoever does not believe is condemned already…. Without the faith of committing oneself to the Creator in His redemptive work one lives the life of a condemned man.

 But justification in Christ provides the only remedy, and embraced in its reality the believer lives, not under a cloud of guilt, but in the light of His righteousness; not with the stigma of conviction, but in the status of the elect – God’s own special people set apart; not in the prospect of due punishment, but in confident expectation of divine presence.

 The fact that we are free from condemnation ought to make us an attractive people if we indeed live according to such an exalted position. What excellence – what surpassing worth!