While the spiritual rejoice in deliverance from all condemnation, those who are yet in their sins too often lack conviction and an awareness that they are sinners who will one day stand condemned before a holy God.
They have no condemnation, and that's not good!
Many are ignorant of God's law. They don't know what God requires of them, and often they don't care to know either. Until men are confronted with the demands of God's law they will not awaken to their desperate spiritual plight. The Apostle Paul said, "I had not known sin, but by the law: for I had not known lust, except the law had said, Thou shalt not covet." Romans 7:7.
Others refuse to believe that their disobedience to God's Law is deadly. The Enemy has come to inject doubt in them as he did to Eve in the Garden of Eden, "Hath God said? ... Ye shall not surely die..." But God's Word warns, "Your iniquities have separated between you and your God and your sins have hid his face from you, that he will not hear." (Isaiah 59:2); "If I regard iniquity in my heart, the Lord will not hear me." (Psalm 66:18); "The soul that sinneth it shall die." (Ezekiel 18:4); "The wages of sin is death" (Romans 6:23).
There are those who reject God's Authority. They are like the fool of the 14th Psalm who says, "No God for me!" They deny God's claim on their lives. They distort God's Word and His law. They are a law unto themselves and brazenly declare their innocence. But God's Word declares that one day "every knee shall bow" and "every tongue confess" that "Jesus Christ is Lord!"
When confronted with the claims of the Gospel those who are stubborn are determined to ignore the God's truth. They don't want to believe that sin is fatal and so they don't. Like the famous sculpture they "see no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil." They are like the Sanhedrin, (the Jewish Council) before whom Stephen testified, "You are stiffnecked...always resisting the Holy Ghost." (Acts 7:51)
Some are insensitive to God's Spirit. They have sinned so often, and sinned so much that their souls are callused. My Father used to tell of two lads who had a contest staring at the sun. The boy who stared the longest went blind. Indeed, light is made to be "walked in" not "stared at." If we stare at the light we will finally be blinded to the truth of God's demand.
When people judge themselves by others, they rationalize their sin and throw off any sense of condemnation they may have felt for disobedience to God's law. "We're all sinners" so why feel guilty about sinning? Jesus said, "when the blind lead the blind, they both fall into the ditch together." The songwriter was right, "Turn your eyes upon Jesus!"
Lastly, our generation has only begun to feel the baneful influence of modern psychology that blames condemnation on our heredity or on our environment. If it's heredity--we have a pill that will anesthetize our brains and numb that nagging conviction we call condemnation.
If it's environment--we are taught to avoid those places and people who make us uncomfortable in our sins and to blame our condemnation on the society around us, not on the sin that is within us. (It is our considered opinion that the vast majority--not all but most-- of the psychological woes we are treating today are actually at their root spiritual in nature.)
THE KNOWLEDGE THAT WE ARE
CONDEMNED IN OUR SINS,
THAT WE STAND GUILTY
BEFORE A HOLY GOD, AND
THAT APART FROM SALVATION BY GRACE
THROUGH FAITH
WE ARE CERTAIN FOR HELL
IS THE BEGINNING OF WISDOM.
The sooner we face that fact, repent of our sins, and believe in the Lord Jesus Christ, the sooner we will be forgiven, and born again into the family of God.
The Apostle's testimony of "No Condemnation" would have meant nothing, had he not first been keenly aware of his desperate need for salvation. Only after he lamented, "Oh wretched man that I am, who shall deliver me from the body of this death," could he discover the power of Jesus Christ to deliver him from the guilt, the penalty, yes even the condemnation of sin!
If you are not saved, and you are not condemned, pray God would awaken your lost soul.
If you are not saved, and you wrestle with condemnation, thank God you are awakened to your need.
If you are not saved, and you are sick and tired of sin's condemnation, repent! Turn to the Lord confessing your need for God's forgiveness through the bleeding sacrifice of Christ. And begin at once "walking in the Light," "loving God with all your heart," and "keeping His commandments."
Then you too will sing with Charles Wesley:
No condemnation now I dread;
Jesus, and all in Him, is mine;
Alive in Him, my living Head,
And clothed in righteousness divine,
Bold I approach th’eternal throne,
And claim the crown, through Christ my own.
Amazing Love! How can it be,
That Thou my God, should'st die for me!
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