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Blessed is the man to whom the Lord will not impute sin for his non-imputation belongs to God’s immutable and irrevocable things. When Joseph’s father died the brethren greatly feared that their relationship to Joseph would alter. They were completely wrong. Like them we, too, look on the possession and enjoyment of certain things as some kind of guarantee that God will not mark iniquity, and we, too, fear that their removal shall mark a change in our relationship. But we have to learn that the moveable things flowing from a state of justification can and likely will be taken from us, and when that happens it is our glory that the ground of our peace and forgiveness remains unaffected. We see that they are bound up with our Joseph in heaven; that in point of justification he is our peace, and that we are made to sit in Heavenly places, and so are accepted in the beloved. Peace, joy, liberty, fixedness, sense of security, fruit-bearing and many other choice blessings which we foolishly regard as the root and not the fruit of justification, are among our moveable things, and it is painful for us to part with them. The taking of these from us only serves to enhance the sureness of our Lord’s word of promise. He will not recall it; he will not mark iniquity. We
thought that something more than his word was necessary for our safety. “Thy word forever is settled fast in the Heavens.” We shall not know how completely wrong we were until we are launched from time into the bosom of him who procured a justified state for us and who bespoke his irrevocable forgiveness to us.
He will not impute sin because his everlasting love is in the justification he gives us. The everlasting love of God loved his people when they were under condemnation, but they could not become possessed of and reciprocate his love until they were justified. The love to justify and the love of the person justified is everlasting; God’s love is prior to all created things, and is everlastingly independent of them. Justification is thus primarily of the heart of God, and so is lifted high above all mundane things, powers, and influences. The state of the man so loved can never be affected by any purely physical condition or experience. Both his parents may leave him; his heart and flesh may fail; his mental powers become impaired; he may lose all things; he may lose his life in a violent way; he may die in places and in circumstances forever unknown to men. Like Moses none may know the place of his burial; like Jonah he may have the depths of the seas closing about him. He may even die down there in God’s deep places or in some emblematic way he may leave this life like Elijah, in a chariot of fire; yet nothing can cancel the justification given by God’s love. Love will have its object as love has determined he shall be—justified from all things under the law; justified for ever. What is said of the permanent nature of God’s love in the eighth chapter of Romans can be said of the justified state of the one so loved. “For I am persuaded that neither death nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature shall be able to separate us from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.” Such a love will have its object where it wants him, in the condition it determined for him, and in the state and standing it has procured for him. Love and justice in everlasting harmony speak with one voice when God says, “I will not mark iniquity.” Blessed indeed is that man.
As justification is an act done but once and never requiring to be repeated, we are faced with an interesting question regarding justification and prayer. In prayer to God is it proper for the justified one to ask again and again to be justified as if this blessing were a work and not an act? It may be that we seek no more than a sealing of the past blessing, a revived sense of justification, and a new taste of its pleasures, and in so seeking we cannot do wrong. We ought to be careful, however, for there is such a thing as orthodoxy of the heart expressing itself by unorthodoxy on the lips. Well, then, what is the proper attitude for the justified man in this important matter? We are told to look at the hole of the pit from whence we
were dug, yes, and for all time this must be the gracious habit of the justified man. It is up from the pit of corruption that he has loved us, and to make the love unforgettable we must remember the pit—our own special pit of corruption. It is the difficult work of saving faith to look long and often, with interest and attention, into the pit of nature and at the same time give one to rejoice that one is not in it. To recoil in horror from the miry clay, and at the same time sing the new song that can be sung only when one’s feet are on the rock. To live closely to such scriptures as speak of God’s wrath manifested against all sin, and yet to know that God has justified you personally from all things under the law. No, it is not easy to “join trembling with your mirth,” but saving faith was never given any task to do that was possible to nature. I think I hear the “man” who has been forgiven his sins charging his soul thus—”Be humbled through looking into the pit of corruption, up from which the Lord has loved you; yet I charge you to rejoice in the sure firmness of the rock of justification upon which his grace has placed you. Look at the pit frequently and with increasing interest and attention, yet remember, to the glory of your God, that the man who stands where grace has given you to stand is blessed now and for evermore, since it is written of him that the Lord will not impute his sins unto him.”
Bunyan’s advice on this very thing is so excellent that I feel that I must pass it on. “Think not that to live always on Christ for justification is a low and beggarly thing—a staying at the foundation. For, let me tell you, depart from a sense of the meritorious means of your justification before God, and you will quickly grow light, and frothy, and vain; you will be subject to errors and delusions, for this is not to ‘hold the head’ from which nourishment is administered. Why not live upon Christ alway; and especially as He standeth the Mediator between God and the soul, defending thee with the merit of his blood, and covering thee with his infinite righteousness from the wrath of God and the curse of the law? Can there be any greater comfort ministered to thee than to know that thy person stands just before God; just, and justified from all things that would otherwise swallow thee up? Is peace with God and assurance of heaven of so little respect with thee that thou slightest the very foundation thereof, even faith in the blood and righteousness of Christ.”
And so we leave the blessed man eating and drinking the food which only a justified man can enjoy. “Assurance of God’s love, peace of conscience, joy in the Holy Ghost, increase of grace, perseverance unto the end.” Without doubt there are further blessings, but what they shall be like we cannot tell. This we know, however, they must be wonderful since the heart that plans them is the same as withheld not the Son of his bosom from the imputation of our sin to Him. Having found sin where He himself placed it, on his Son, he dealt with it so thoroughly that though the sins of his people may be sought
after they shall not be found. The same heart placed the righteousness of his Beloved under our names, and eternally having that God-honouring imputation before his eye and under our names he under no circumstances will impute sin to us. As legal barriers our sins have no longer any existence. Well may the whole Church exclaim—”Who is a God like unto thee, that pardoneth iniquity, and passeth by the transgression of the remnant of his heritage? He retaineth not his anger forever because he delighteth in mercy. He will turn again; he will have compassion upon us; he will subdue our iniquities, and thou shalt cast all their sins into the depths of the sea.”—Pennel.