justification on Freedom from Sin

In a way, the Reformation began in one monk's overwhelming guilt. Martin Luther was riddled with guilt and filled with anxiety because he could see that he could not live up to God's standard ...

I tell you this: "To those who have received Christ and believed in his name, God has given the right to be called children of God." And "God shows his love for us in that while we were...

As we try to live a life in obedience to God, the stubbornness of our sins can discourage and frighten us. If we are supposed to have a new heart, why are we still so broken? C.S. Lewis struggled with...

In Isaiah 43:25, God says, “I, even I, am he who blots out your transgressions, for my own sake, and remembers your sins no more.” Here God uses two absolute terms to assure us of the complete removal...

Brothers and Sisters, be reassured. Your sins are not held against you. By the work of God in Christ, you are forgiven. God “has delivered us from the domain of darkness and transferred us to the king...

We affirm the good news that this saying is trustworthy and deserving of full acceptance, that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners. He personally bore our sins in His body on the cross, s...

Leader: There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. For the law of the Spirit of life has set you free in Christ Jesus from the law of sin and death. For God has done wha...

Romans 6 shines a bright spotlight on the dangerous half-truth, currently fashionable, that ‘God accepts us as we are.’ Will ‘God’s acceptance’ do as a complete grounding of Christian ethics? Emphatic...

Leader: God made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God. (2 Cor 5:21, ESV) People: For while we were still weak, at the right time Christ died for the...

Through the death of Christ on the cross making atonement for sin, we get a perfect standing before God. That is justification, and it puts us, in God's sight, back in Eden before sin entered. God...

Much that we have interpreted as a defect of sanctification in church people is really an outgrowth of their loss of bearing with respect to justification. Christians who are no longer sure that God l...

One particularly crafty, if not insidious way a “good works” righteousness can seep into our theology is by positioning faith as the pre-eminent work. We must never forget that faith itself is a...

Justification is the great exchange: our sin for Christ's righteousness.

The Spirit of truth has been given to a people who lacked truth. The Advocate has been sent. We who were once without life have been given new life. For it is by grace we have been saved through faith...

​O my all-merciful God and Lord, Jesus Christ, full of pity: Through Your great love You came down and became incarnate in order to save everyone. O Savior, I ask You to save me by Your grace! If You ...

What can we say, O Lord, to justify ourselves? You shower us with grace upon grace. Your mercies are new every morning. And we find it hard to forgive others. Sometimes we are petty and hold grudges f...

A prayer for All Saints' Day or the following Sunday. Meant to be prayed in unison. An optional section is provided to make this a confession of sin. Almighty God, we were once helpless and wand...

The Lord says, “I will sprinkle clean water on you, and you shall be clean from all your uncleannesses, and from all your idols I will cleanse you. And I will give you a new heart, and a new sp...

As for Christians, well, we really have just one thing going for us. We have publicly declared… that we are desperately in need of Another to give us his righteousness, to complete us, to live in us. ...

Leader: May we go from here knowing we stand upright before the Father because of Christ’s works and not our own. Go, and serve the Lord in the power of the Holy Spirit!

The work of salvation is God’s work from beginning to end. He loved us when we were dead, and made us alive in Christ.

Grace is not only needed for the occasion of conversion, the moment we suddenly (or slowly) come to our senses and realize that we are spiritually bankrupt, having nothing to bring to God and everythi...

There is no justification without sanctification, no forgiveness without renewal of life, no real faith from which the fruits of new obedience do not grow.

Holy God We are holy, Not in the sense of any rightness within us, But because we are in a relationship with you, We are holy because you gift that it is so. We are not called to into a division of us...

Sisters and brothers, hear the Good News of the Gospel of Jesus Christ: “Therefore, since we have been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ. Through him we have als...

Our faith in Christ does not free us from works but rather from the foolish view that works result in our justification.

The prophet Jeremiah reminds us that when it seems all hope is lost, God is still working toward restoration. Friends, believe the Good News today: through the messiah, the righteous branch, our sins ...

We are saved by faith alone, but the faith that saves is never alone.

At the heart of the Protestant faith is the conviction that there is nothing we contribute to our salvation but our sin, no merit we bring but Christ's, and nothing necessary for justification exc...

A conversation in 1784 between Charles Simeon (a Calvinist and believer in unconditional predestination) and John Wesley (a follower of Arminius, who denied unconditional predestination) can help us u...