Have you ever got hold of the wonderful truth of being in Christ Jesus? For “there is therefore now no condemnation to those who are in Christ Jesus.” Why? Because there is nothing left to condemn. “Well,” you say, “that is a bold statement.” I do not deny it, for I know the blessedness and joy of it! There is nothing left to condemn—if you are in Christ Jesus.

The truth of the gospel is this, that when the Lord Jesus was upon the cross, not only was He bearing our sins, but He was there made sin by God, and stood identified with all that the first man was, and underwent the judgment of God upon the first man. The history of the first man terminated before God and for faith in the death of the Second Man. Everything was condemned in the cross, and now there is no condemnation left, nothing left to condemn. God has not made light of sin. Christ has borne our sins, and put them away, but more, He has been made sin, and gone down into the depths of the judgment due to sin, and risen up from those depths. He has become my life; I am in Him, and therefore in all the impossibility of condemnation for Him. Sin in the flesh has not been forgiven. God condemned it. God never forgives sin. He forgives sinners, and pardons sins, blotting them out in Christ’s blood, but the evil principle of sin—sin in the flesh—can only end in judgment.

If you are a believer, you are in Christ before God, and hence there is no condemnation, because your very place is in the One who has come out of, and left behind, in the judgment He came out of, all that pertained to your sins and you. And is He going to condemn those for whom He died, for whom He agonized, and for whom He Himself was condemned? Never! Blessed be His peerless name! We may well say, Hallelujah!