Declared Righteous and Rescued From The Declaration of Condemnation

The word condemnation carries a terrible weight. Formally, it means to declare someone guilty of a specific crime. As a judge hands down his sentence, he might sternly shout to the defendant, “You are condemned for the murder of your neighbor!” When he does that, he is declaring the criminal’s guilt to the world.  He is also declaring the finality of his punishment.  The condemnation publicizes the criminal’s guilt, but it also serves to fill his ears with the certainty of whatever punishment is coming. The same holds true for the physical structures we build. When a house is condemned, it serves as a public declaration to the community that the city now possesses the building, as well as an announcement that the structure is so unsafe, so unsanitary, or in such a state of disrepair that it must be destroyed and replaced with something else. When a building is condemned, it is illegal for people to occupy it. Condemnation, then, is a separation from free life and goodness for the criminal, and a death sentence for a piece of architecture because it removes any semblance of its spirit or animation when it bans people from its inner sanctums. 

All human beings are sinners (Romans 3:9-12). Because of that, all human beings are condemned – except for those humans who have placed their trust in Jesus. Paul tells us the magnificent news in Romans 8:1 that there is no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus! Instead, believers are declared righteous by God because of their trust in Christ and his work on the cross (Romans 3:24-28). Even though Christians remain prone to sin, God sees them as he sees Jesus.  Prior to our acceptance of the gospel, we faced future condemnation – to be rightly declared guilty – because of our sin. Because of that sin, we would have been sentenced to a punishment of permanent separation from the goodness of God, and the removal of any spiritual holiness from our being. We would be condemned criminals, and lifeless buildings. Praise God, Jesus died in our place and we no longer face condemnation!  

The reason that such a truth is so overwhelmingly good news is that we are not yet wholly righteous.  We are only declared so while God is in the process of making us actually righteous by conforming us to the image of his son. Our freedom from condemnation is a gracious and beautiful part of that process. One Reformed Christian thinker put it this way, “The Gospel frees us to confess our sins without fear of condemnation.” Because we know that God loves us, and that he has arranged for our punishment to be paid so that we don’t have to, we can boldly approach him and confess our sins to him without dread of prison, guillotine, or bulldozer. Like a compassionate and skillful surgeon he excises from us the cancers that spawn those sins which so easily control us. He also provides salve and anodyne for us as we recover from the light and momentary pains of those excisions (2 Corinthians 4:16-18). 

If you trust Christ, you are not a condemned criminal, or a building devoted to destruction. You are being made righteous, and new, and set apart from a condemned world. Praise Jesus!