Sin demands to have a man by himself. It withdraws him from the community. The more isolated a person is, the more destructive will be the power of sin over him, and the more deeply he becomes involved in it, the more disastrous is his isolation. Sin wants to remain unknown. It shuns the light. In the darkness of the unexpressed it poisons the whole being of a person. This can happen even in the midst of a pious community. In confession the light of the gospel breaks into the darkness and seclusion of the heart. The sin must be brought into the light. The unexpressed must be openly spoken and acknowledged. All that is secret and hidden is made manifest. It is a struggle until the sin is openly admitted, but God breaks gates of brass and bars of iron (Ps. 107:16). Since the confession of sin is made in the presence of a Christian brother, the last stronghold of self-justification is abandoned. The sinner surrenders; he gives up all his evil. He gives his heart to God, and he finds the forgiveness of all his sin in the fellowship of Jesus Christ and his brother. The expressed, acknowledged sin has lost all its power. It has been revealed and judged as sin. It can no longer tear the fellowship asunder. Now the fellowship bears the sin of the brother. He is no longer alone with his evil for he has cast off his sin in confession and handed it over to God. It has been taken away from him. Now he stands in the fellowship of sinners who live by the grace of God and the cross of Jesus Christ. The sin concealed separated him from the fellowship, made all his apparent fellowship a sham; the sin confessed has helped him define true fellowship with the brethren in Jesus Christ.
Justification
Jennie Allen
We are all hiding from each other with big fig leaves, but God says, “You could stop because I am a way better covering. I have an actual payment for all the sin you are hiding. But it will take coming out from behind your leaves. It will take humility to see that you need Me”
Winnie Banov
In union with Christ, we can be consciously aware that the person we used to be – our old man, our former nature, our old sinful self – was co-crucified with Christ so that the tyranny of sin has been broken over us once and for all. We are no longer slaves to sin. One nail pierced two hands!
Frederick Brotherton ( F. B. ) Meyer
Though justification costs us nothing but the sacrifice of our pride, it has cost Christ His blood.
Martin Luther
Either sin is with you, lying on your shoulders, or it is lying on Christ, the Lamb of God. Now if it is lying on your back, you are lost; but if it is resting on Christ, you are free, and you will be saved. Now choose what you want.
A W Tozer
The doctrine of justification by faith (a Biblical truth, and a blessed relief from sterile legalism and unavailing self-effort) has in our times fallen into evil company and has been interpreted by many in such a manner as actually to bar men from the knowledge of God. The whole transaction of religious conversion has been made mechanical and spiritless. Faith may now be exercised without a jar to the moral life and without embarrassment to the Adamic ego. Christ may be received without creating any special love for Him in the soul of the receiver. The man is saved, but he is not hungry or thirsty after God. In fact, he is specifically taught to be satisfied and encouraged to be content with little. The modern scientist has lost God amid the wonders of His world; we Christians are in real danger of losing God amid the wonders of His Word.
Dan Allender
Although God’s holiness and His law are relentlessly demanding and we cannot, at any moment, live righteously enough in our own holiness to please Him, He provides a way of escape through offering His Son as a covering for our sin.
G. Campbell Morgan
“Out, damned spot!” That is the true cry of human nature. That stain cannot be removed without blood, and that which is infinitely more, and deeper, and profounder, and more terrible than blood, of which blood is but the symbol – the suffering of Deity.
Jerry Bridges
2 Corinthians 5:21 is often called the great exchange, and it works like this. Imagine your life as a moral ledger in which every action, every thought, every word and every motive is recorded. It’s pretty grim… But God takes your sin and removes it from your ledger and charges it to the ledger of the Lord Jesus Christ. The Saviour bears the penalty for all your sin. You then are left with a clean, but empty ledger. So God does something else. He takes the perfect obedience, the perfect righteousness of Christ from his ledger and transfers it to your ledger. In computer terms, you might think of this as copy and paste in the sense that the same righteousness, even though it has been given to you, is still available to every other Christian, and everyone who will come to Christ in the future. Now you have a ledger that no longer catalogues your sin, but instead bears only the record of 33 years of absolutely perfect righteousness. How can God do this? How can a just God completely wipe all sin off your ledger and replace it with the perfect righteousness of Christ? Because we are in Christ. He, as our representative stands justly charged with our sin and pays its penalty through His death. And because he is our representative, God can justly credit his perfect righteousness to us. So we can say as Paul essentially says in Galatians 2:20 that when Jesus died on the cross, we died on the cross. And when he lived a perfect life, we lived a perfect life because we are in Him.
Watchman Nee
We are Christ’s heirs, not through our perfection but by means of His grace.