The Courtroom of Grace: Declared Not Guilty

Scripture:

Romans 8:1–2

1 Therefore, there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus, 2 because through Christ Jesus the law of the Spirit who gives life has set you free from the law of sin and death. (NIV)

Devotional Reflection:

We don’t always recognize the legality of salvation. The Lord is the Judge, but also the founder of the cosmic state. He is the King, but He wrote the laws and established the judgments against lawbreakers. And Paul is drawing our attention back to this idea of the legality of salvation.

Before Christ, we were judged guilty as lawbreakers. We have all sinned and fallen short of the glory of God. Guilty is the verdict. The judgment has also been established from the beginning. The Lord told Adam that if he broke the law and ate from the forbidden tree, he would die. The wages of sin is death. Every soul is on death row, waiting for the day of execution.

He is Judge, but also Father. He has to sit in His place of authority and declare His own children guilty and sentence them to death. As the founder of this cosmic state, He has the authority to make the laws, so He established another law. This is the law of the Spirit. The law of the Spirit was foreshadowed in the Old Testament. It was a law of exchange. In the Old Testament, a person could offer a lamb without defect in exchange for the grace of God. The lamb symbolically represented their lives and the sin they had committed. They offered a lamb to be punished and received forgiveness and grace.

In the New Testament, when a person chooses to believe that Jesus is the Lamb representing their life and sin in exchange for forgiveness and grace, all their sin has been removed. Not that sin never existed, but that it is no longer counted against them. Spiritually, and legally in the cosmic court of God, there is not a single sin attributed to them. It was exchanged for grace, and their sin was punished.

God, as our Judge, is just. He will not punish the same sin twice. Once our sin has been punished through the death of Christ, from a spiritual legal perspective, we are credited as being without sin. This cleansing of sin allows us to commune with the Holy Spirit, and we move from being under the law of sin and death to the law of the Spirit of life. And when we are pronounced innocent, God cannot hold our sin against us without violating His own justice.

No matter the sin of our past, nor of our future, we have been pronounced legally innocent of all sin. This does not mean future sin is irrelevant, but that its penalty has already been accounted for in Christ for those who remain in Him. Paul goes on to teach us that so long as we live in the Spirit, we remain innocent. Living in the Spirit is not living without sin—that’s impossible. Living in the Spirit means responding rightly to our sin through sincere confession and a sincere determination to live again in the Spirit from that moment on.

God doesn’t condemn us because we are legally declared “not guilty,” and if we condemn ourselves, we are denying the legality of Jesus’ work on the cross and our communion with God.

Prayer

Lord, thank You for declaring me not guilty through Jesus Christ. Help me to live in the freedom You have given, not returning to condemnation but walking in Your Spirit. Teach me to respond rightly when I fall, and to remain close to You in grace and truth. Amen.

---

Start Your Day with Jesus

Pastor Lee sends out daily devotions Monday through Friday to your inbox at 6am.

Check your spam folder if you don't see them.

Subscribe