As believers, when we stand before the Heavenly Court of our Father, we are found innocent. Jesus bore our guilt and paid the price we would have paid.
As a result, God said He would remember our sin no more (Hebrews 10:17).
There is no more record of our sins and our transgressions of God’s Law. We are acquitted and free!
“You were dead because of your sins and because your sinful nature was not yet cut away. Then God made you alive with Christ. He forgave all our sins.
He canceled the record that contained the charges against us. He took it and destroyed it by nailing it to Christ’s cross” (Colossians 2:13-14 NLT).
In a natural court, once a defendant has been found innocent, orders are sent throughout the judicial system requiring all charges against this person
be expunged. This means that all accusations against the defendant are to be permanently removed from his or her record.
The same thing happened in the Father’s Heavenly Court when we were found innocent by virtue of the blood of Jesus. There is now no condemnation or accusation
held against us, nor is there even a record in Heaven that were ever accused of anything! It’s just as if we had never sinned or missed the will of
God even once in our entire life. The Father sees us in the light of Jesus’ perfect and complete work of redemption.
“There is therefore now no condemnation to those who are in Christ Jesus, who do not walk according to the flesh, but according to the Spirit” (Romans
8:1 NKJV).
The Ben Campbell Johnson paraphrase of this verse is very powerful: “Now there is no accusing voice nagging those who are united to Jesus Christ.”
Once we have put on the new life in Christ, we are acquitted; our sins are expunged; and the voice that accuses us is silenced!
God is not holding our sin against us. He has freed us from living condemned by sin. Of course, knowing that we’re going to be forgiven doesn’t give us
a license to continue in sin. It is actually our license to receive God’s unconditional love, to live in His victories, and to walk in the liberty
of His finished work.
God’s laws are now written in our hearts, and with those laws we receive the power of the Holy Spirit to live free from sin.
In conclusion, in Romans 7:6 the Apostle Paul describes the Christian life as it now relates to the Law:
“But now we have been released from the law, for we died with Christ, and we are no longer captive to its power. Now we can really serve God, not in the
old way by obeying the letter of the law, but in the new way, by the Spirit” (NLT).
We are dead to sin, to the Law, and to all condemnation over sin. We are now alive in Christ and have received right-standing in the presence of our holy
God.
All of this has been done to bring us back to the place where God’s blessing would freely reside on us and in us. We must grasp this
truth, then enter into the rest of faith where we are accepted, acquitted, and blessed in all realms of life by the redemptive work Jesus finished
for us.
