While traveling in a train I was led to offer my fellow travelers some tracts. Three refused them, while four accepted them. After a little, one of them said, pointing to a paragraph in the tract I had given him,
“Do you believe that?”
“Yes, thank God,” I replied. The paragraph was as follows,
“Now if I fail, if I sin, my standing before God is not altered in the slightest. It is in Christ, and hence it never changes.”
Of course this was written about a child of God, a believer; and the tract went on to show, that if a believer sins, he has an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous (1 John 2:11My little children, these things write I unto you, that ye sin not. And if any man sin, we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous: (1 John 2:1)), and through His advocacy the erring child is brought to confess and judge his sin, and communion is restored.
If this were not so, every time the believer sins, he would need to be washed over again in the blood, and that would necessitate Christ dying again, as “Without shedding of blood is no remission” (Heb. 9:2222And almost all things are by the law purged with blood; and without shedding of blood is no remission. (Hebrews 9:22)).
The truth is, the Lord Jesus bore all the believer’s sins when He was on the cross, and that one blood-shedding has put them away forever from before God as Judge, and He has now become the believer’s Justifier, the one who will not impute sin to him who believeth. (Compare Rom. 3:24-26; 4:5-824Being justified freely by his grace through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus: 25Whom God hath set forth to be a propitiation through faith in his blood, to declare his righteousness for the remission of sins that are past, through the forbearance of God; 26To declare, I say, at this time his righteousness: that he might be just, and the justifier of him which believeth in Jesus. (Romans 3:24‑26)
5But to him that worketh not, but believeth on him that justifieth the ungodly, his faith is counted for righteousness. 6Even as David also describeth the blessedness of the man, unto whom God imputeth righteousness without works, 7Saying, Blessed are they whose iniquities are forgiven, and whose sins are covered. 8Blessed is the man to whom the Lord will not impute sin. (Romans 4:5‑8), and 8:33).
But God is Father, as well as Justifier. And as Father, He notices and corrects all wrong that His children do. Hence, even an evil thought will interrupt communion with the Father; but nothing, blessed be God, can ever alter our standing before the Justifier. He has justified the believer, and that forever.
Now, notice 1 John 2:11My little children, these things write I unto you, that ye sin not. And if any man sin, we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous: (1 John 2:1), “These things write I unto you, that YE SIN NOT.” Grace does not set us free from God’s judgment to live in sin, as unconverted people think, but grace sets us free from sin, to live to God. “Now being made free from sin, and become servants to God, ye have your fruit unto holiness, and the end everlasting life” (Rom. 6:2222But now being made free from sin, and become servants to God, ye have your fruit unto holiness, and the end everlasting life. (Romans 6:22)).