This morning, the best sermon that can be possibly preached. It can probably be preached better than I can preach it. Better preachers could preach it a little better. What's going on, Betty? It's working. And I'm sure of that, too, because there's so many, many, many, many better preachers than I am. But they can't preach a better sermon than what I'm going to preach. I'm sure of that. I'm just dead set on it. And I'm just going to use one text. And it comes out of that one text, Romans chapter 8 and verse number 1. Not a better text in the Bible to preach from than this verse right here. Paul had a lot to say from chapter 1 through chapter 7. He is teaching the gospel to the saints at Rome. He had preached the gospel to sinners. Now these sinners have become set apart in the gospel, and he is teaching the gospel. That is what the book of Romans is all about. Paul, rather than preaching the gospel to sinners, is teaching the gospel to saints. And we need to be taught, don't we, the gospel? Notice that I can put that first, and I did. The authorized version, the King James says, there is therefore now. We can turn it around. Therefore, there is now no condemnation. Based on what I've been telling you and how I've developed this thing and showed you what Christ did and the effects of what Christ did and the accomplishments that He made when He came into the world in the incarnation lived as a man, died on the cross, satisfied all the demands of the holy law, and went back to heaven after the resurrection in the forty days, and sat down at the right hand of majesty on high. He's accomplished everything. So there is therefore now no condemnation. And that's the message, no condemnation. I couldn't give you a better word this morning. If you are a believer, I'm talking about if you have come to close with Christ, you are a believer, I could not bring you a better word this morning than what's said right there. What we have here is a declaration of satisfaction. That's what he's saying. He's declaring that God is satisfied. He's satisfied with what Christ did. If you're always trying to figure out how you're going to satisfy God, you're going to stay in a mess. You're going to stay in a state of confusion. If you'll concentrate on what God required and how Christ, the Son, met those requirements fully, finally, faithfully, If you'll concentrate on that and believe it, you'll have some victory in your heart. You're always looking in here to see all this stuff in here that you've got to try to get rid of and do something with and take care of and try to make yourself look better and do this, that and the other, try to work things up and please God. You're just going to go through life miserable. You rest in Christ. That's what the gospel declared. The gospel comes in, it's good news. It's good news that somebody's done something. And he did everything that was necessary to be done for you to rest in what he did. Trust the Lord. That's the gospel. You see, another thing here, in our court of law, What he said here in verse number 1 in our courts of law, it amounts to a not guilty verdict. That's what he said. He said, there is therefore now no condemnation. That's just like the judge handing down a not guilty verdict to the criminal. He's free. It could be, we'll use the term, acquittal. The judge says, you know, when all the evidence has been amassed and brought before me, everybody's heard the evidence, the jury's heard the evidence, and there wasn't enough there to convict the fellow. So the judge says he's acquitted. And so that's what the gospel does for us. The gospel does away with all the evidence against us and the judge, the supreme judge, the court in heaven hands down the verdict and says he's acquitted. That one lawyer that took care of it. One advocate that took care of it. The Lord Jesus Christ is my lawyer. He's my advocate. He took my case. He went to Calvary and he paid my debt and satisfied the demands of the law and honored the law, satisfied justice. And the Father said, I'm satisfied. I'm satisfied. And those that you died for, those that you suffered for, those that you He ransomed, he said, they're acquitted. No charge will be leveled against them. But anyway, he says that in the same chapter here, if you go a little bit further over, he says, Who shall lay anything to the charge of mine alleged? I've justified them. Christ died for them. The case is closed. It doesn't make no difference what the devil says. It doesn't matter what kind of accusations he brings up. And I tell you, he follows me around every day, and he can find all kinds of things to accuse me before God. And I think he probably does. God just shuts his ears and says, I don't want to hear it. He ain't got nothing there. Everything you accuse him of, I've cast over my back. Cast into the sea of forgetfulness. I'm not going to remember him again. Might as well shut up. But he won't shut up. He'll bark in your ears and accuse you all day long. But you remember this text here. There's no condemnation. Every time he comes with an accusation, he says, have you not read? Tell the devil. Have you not read Romans 8.1? There's no condemnation. So what is all this that we're talking about here but the language of the gospel? I'm telling you what, if a man doesn't have this language that I'm trying to share with you this morning in his message, he's not a gospel preacher. He doesn't know the gospel. He doesn't know what the Teleport Center More than likely, he's never felt himself to be one. So this is just gospel language. You see, a sentence of not condemned implies the justification of the sinner. Not condemned implies that you're justified. That's a beautiful term, isn't it? Wonderful term. Very few ever hear it. And the few that hear it have it very seldom ever enlarged or expounded to. I want you to consider with me two or three things here. It won't take me long. I'll give you this message here. I'll give you this sermon. You go home thinking about it. And if you're a believer, you go home rejoicing in it. If you're on the verge of believing, get off the verge and believe. First of all, the believer, consider this, the believer in Christ receives present justification. Present justification. That's what the text is saying. There is therefore what? What's that word? Now. That's present, isn't it? Right now. Right now. There is therefore now no condemnation. You see, faith in Christ Jesus does not produce its fruits in the by and by. A lot of folk think that, Tommy. But no, there's something to be enjoyed, to rejoice in, to glory in presently. There's something to be happy about right now. Heaven came down, and glory filled my soul. That second verse there talks about the doctrine of justification justified freely in His blood. Now, present. Let's go over here to chapter 5. That could be page or two in your Bible. Verse 1. Paul had been dealing with the doctrine of justification. That's from chapter 3 and chapter 4. And he comes to chapter 5, and there's another one of those therefore. Always, when you run up on that, try to figure out why it's therefore. The therefore is there for something that he previously said, established. Therefore being justified, now look at that, by faith. We have, we have now, presently, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ. The moment the sinner embraces Christ, rest his or her soul upon Jesus Christ to be his or her all in all, all that God requires, the moment that faith lays hold of Christ, peace enters in. That's the white flag of surrender goes up, and there's peace with God. The battle's over with. You're no longer at war with the Holy God. So when is a sinner justified? Well, according to this text here, when he believes. I'm not going to get into all these wrangles, these series, these things that these guys like to work around and work with. We're justified in eternity. We're justified at the cross. All that stuff may have something to do with it. But let's stay with the language of the Scripture. Here's the language of Scripture. When's a man justified? When he believes. That's what it says, isn't it? Let's stay with that. That's enough for me to handle. I'm not going to get into all this jargon, this debate, debate, debate, debate. Why debate what's already settled? Just hang right there. Yes, according to the text, he's justified when he believes. The very moment the soul, the sinner, the soul of the sinner closes with Christ and accepts Him. I'm going to use that term there, okay? And accepts Him as his all in all. He's saved. He's justified. What is salvation apart from being justified? That pretty well takes in everything about salvation. If a man is justified, he is justified from all things, which the law could not justify usually. You know, John tells us, the Apostle John tells us over in the book of Revelation, of an innumerable multitude of redeemed that they presently stand before the throne of God. Right now they're there, standing before the throne, before the Lamb. Are they more justified than the sinner who just now believes Well, some of them have been there for centuries. They've been before the throne. They've been worshiping the Lamb for centuries. Are they more justified than, say, there's one right here that just now believed. And it could happen right here, you know. While I'm preaching, you could come to faith in Christ. Coming to faith in Christ is not coming now a year. I want you to understand this. Faith in Christ is not coming down here. I've got nothing to do with it. I'm preaching the Word of God. Faith comes by hearing. But the hearing is with you. And the believing is with you. And the believing can take place right there. Right there. All joining the church is, all coming in identification with the church is just telling folks what you've already done in your heart. Come to faith in Christ. It won't help you a bit to come down here. It will not. If you believe right there, sitting right there where you are, you coming down here won't add a thing to it. It won't justify you no more. than what faith just did for you. The point I'm trying to get across is, present justification is in Christ. It's trusting in Christ. The moment that a person just simply, simply believes Christ, accepts Christ to be his all in all, It's justified. No condemnation. It's removed. Never, ever to be brought back and applied again. Let me give you an illustration. You go over to II Timothy chapter 4, and Paul is concluding his letter, and he's concluding his ministry. He talks about how that the Lord has called him to preach, and he preached. And he's given a testimony there, how that he was faithful to the preaching of the Word of God, writing to Timothy and telling Timothy, you follow this pattern, you be faithful. You preach where it's accepted or rejected. You preach in season, out of season. He said, there's going to come a time when they'll not endure sound doctrine, but preach it anyway. Preach it anyway. He said, for me, I've fought a good fight. I've run my race. I've stayed on course. I've kept the faith. He's talking about the doctrine of the gospel. I've kept the faith. His horse is laid up for me. He says, The time of my departure is at hand. Henceforth there is laid up for me a crown of righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous judge, shall give to all those that love his appearing. And so it wasn't just a little while, and the executioner came and took Paul out of that old dungeon in Rome, and took him up, laid his head across the block, and the guillotine dropped and severed the great apostle Paul from his head. The body was put to death, but his soul was in the presence of God. To be absent from the body, he had already been told to be present with the Lord. He had been looking forward to that. Paul was a faithful, consecrated preacher of the gospel. For thirty-some odd years he preached faithfully. He covered Asia. I'm talking about he covered Asia primarily on foot three times preaching the gospel. That's a lot of traveling. But he got the job done. He served God faithfully, devotedly. All right, let's leave Paul and go back over here Matthew chapter 27 or Luke 23 would be the best place. And think about what's happening on Calvary's cross, on Calvary's brow. They take three victims up to Calvary. Three victims with three crosses. And they hang those victims up in the air on those crosses. One of them is our Lord. He's in the middle. Two of them are thieves. That was their occupation. That's what they did. They were thieves. They were notorious thieves. Could have been murderers. I don't know what all kind of crimes they might have committed. But they'd been found guilty of being robbers, thieves. And both of them were railing upon our Lord Jesus Christ with the crowd, you know. Whatever the crowd said, they echoed it. They assented to it. They amened it. And all of a sudden, one of them got quiet. All of a sudden, he got quiet. Something pierced his conscience. And he began to rebuke the other thief. He said, we're getting our justice. This man has done nothing amiss, nothing whatsoever to have this torment, this punishment. brought upon him. We're getting out of view. He's not. And so then he turns from that thief and he looks to the Lord. He said, Lord, would you remember me when you come into your kingdom? Jesus said, I will. Jesus said, looked at the thief, he said, today shalt thou be with me in paradise. Today! I mean, that thief was in heaven with Christ before they took his body off the cross. Let me ask you, was Paul any more justified, who spent all those years in service to God, than that thief who never spent one day, not a day in service to God? No, sir. No, sir. Justification is number one. It's present. But let me give you something else to think about. You see, the day I believed, I was accepted in the Beloved. The day that I believed, my sins were absolved. And the day that I believe I was found innocent in the sight of a holy God, presently, then and there, nothing's been added to it. I've been preaching now for 42 years. Not a thing has been added to my justification. No more justified today than it was back then, brother Charles. And I'm just as justified then as I am today. And I'll be just as justified a billion years in eternity as I am today. So I'm justified. That means no condemnation. Condemnation has been removed. That's good news, folks. I'm telling you, I'm telling you, I believe it with all my heart. There's better preachers that can come and preach this better than I can, but there's no better message than what I'm telling you this morning. If you're not getting much out of it, get your copy and take it home, put it up on the shelf, and one of these days, Lord, I'll move on and you take it down and listen to it again. All right, second thing, the believer. The believer in Christ Jesus received not only present justification, but continual justification. You see, the day that I believed, the verdict came down from the high court of heaven. And the verdict was not guilty. God said he's not guilty. That's the day I believed. You see, what happened was, when I believed, My guilt was passed over upon my substitute, which is Christ. And He had already paid my debt 2,000 years before. He had paid my debt. And when I believed on Jesus Christ as being my hope of heaven, my hope for eternity, The verdict was brought down from heaven by the Holy Ghost, and my conscience was made aware that the Holy Judge in heaven said he's not guilty. He's not guilty. My son Cookie's guilt is passed all upon him, never to be remembered against him again. Not guilty, he said. The prisoner is innocent. He may go forth free. I thought about this yesterday. I got a little old bird feeder out in front of the house up there. The birds love that feeder. I got three or four in a bag, but they love that feeder better than any of them, for some reason or another. It's kind of open. Nothing bothers them. And I'll fill that thing up, and it'll empty out. I'll fill the others up. I'll fill it up two or three times probably before I fill the others up. But anyway, I don't know if it's the same little old sparrow or not. Surely it's not. Surely it's a different one. But that thing gets down empty and a little bird, a little bird, not a big bird, the opening for the feed to come out, It's large enough that little bird, he goes to peck it inside and peck it inside and don't pay any attention. Before he knows it, he's inside the feeder. And he doesn't have enough cysts to go back out the way he came in. And Patsy said, you got a bird that's caught in the feeder again out there. She told me yesterday. I said, yeah, I knew it was because it was getting low and I hadn't had time to fill it up. I said, I knew it happened. So I had to go out there and take that thing apart from the bottom and to take those bolts out and drop it down to let him out. He's trying to go out the top of it. You can't get out the top of it. It's glass up there, you know. He's going up. But I get it down and turn it up sideways and there he goes. He goes out. And it's just like he's saying, free, free, free, free. And that's what happened to me when the Lord sent down the not guilty verdict to let the prisoner go. I've been shouting free ever since. I'm free. There's no condemnation. It's a continual justification. Continual justification. You see, many years have passed since that day that I believed. There have been many ups and downs. There have been many setbacks. I'm telling you, I'm telling you, it's a struggle. There have been many sins. I wished I hadn't committed them. I really do. I wished I could get over this thing of sinning. But it's there. And I find myself Constantly confessing and repenting. And all the time I know that my father says, son, they're not there. I put them on my son. He bore them away to Calvary's cross. He washed them away by his blood. I took them off him once he had satisfied my law and honored my law and satisfied my justice. I took them off of him. And I cast them into the sea behind me. And they're in the depths of the sea. They won't come back up again. There's no condemnation. You're free! You're free, you're free, you're free. And I'm going to tell you, though all these years have gone by and all this stuff has been done, I'm guilty. Personally, experimentally, I know. I've done things I ought not to do. I'll do things today and do things tomorrow I ought not to do. But God won't have to justify me again. I'm continually justified in His sight. And I'm just as justified today as I was the day I believed. No, sir, from the throne of God, my advocate, The Lord Jesus Christ, my lawyer, He continues to thunder as my lawyer. Every time an accusation is brought against me, He thunders. He is not condemned. His sins have been pardoned through mine. sacrifice and substitution. How long should we live? We do not know, do we? But if we through some strange mystery turn, some turn of providence, should live the age of old Methuselah. He's the oldest fellow to ever live, wasn't he? 969 years. I don't think we'll live that long. But in the strange mystery of providence, if we should, it shall still stand, he that believeth on me is not condemned. Justified. You see, the robe of Christ's righteousness which I wear, been imputed to me, shall never wear thin. It's never threadbare. It's just as new and fresh this morning as it was the day that Christ put it on me. No condemnation. The believer in Christ has received complete justification. Therefore, there is now no condemnation. Therefore, there is now, nor ever shall be, condemnation to those who are in Christ, who walk not after the flesh, but after the I say this because he is our righteousness. We're justified in the righteousness of the Lord Jesus Christ. The poor old Jews, Paul, oh, he burdened for them. He tried to warn them in the ninth chapter of this same book here, the tenth chapter. They go about trying to establish their own righteousness. Do you know folks like that today? Oh, I wish I could talk to them. I really do. I wish I could gather them all up and just talk to them and tell them, look, you're going the wrong direction. You'll never amass a righteousness. You're never going to be good enough. You're not going to do enough good deeds and you're not going to be religious enough to please God and to merit salvation. That's what they're trying to do. They're trying to merit salvation. Christ is my merit. Christ is my righteousness. Christ is my goodness. Christ is my holiness. It's all in Christ. And I say that this condemnation is gone, never to return, because He is my righteousness. And listen to me, if the self-existent, everlasting, immutable Jehovah, of whose years there is no end, and of whose strength, faintly if not, if He be my righteousness in which I am justified, it must be complete. It must be complete. Can you add anything to God? Oh, no. No, sirree, God is God. And if my righteousness is Him, it's completed. Can you think of anything better to tell somebody than that? I can't. No, sir, he that believeth on him is not condemned. That's all I need to tell you. And I know that there are some muddle-brains out here who think it possible for you to be half condemned and half accepted. Well, you listen to us. They're sort of muddled up, aren't they? Where in the world do you get such an idea? It doesn't come from the Scripture. I challenge you, take the Bible and show me that in the Bible, you won't be able to do it. No such thing as a half condemned and a half not guilty or a half accepted. It's either one or the other. It's complete. I'm talking to you. What I'm saying, it's complete. There's absolutely nothing like any such thing in the Bible. What kind of a state would that bring a fellow into, to go around thinking that he's half condemned and half accepted? I'd be a confused state, wouldn't you? a confused state. Yes, sir. There's nothing, I say, like that taught in the Holy Scriptures. It is altogether apart from the doctrine of the gospel, which is no gospel at all. No, sir. He that believeth is not condemned. You got that down, haven't you? Now, the devil, with men and demons teamed together to bring all their vile accusations against us. They're going to do it. He's going to do it. But I'm going to tell you, he'll never mount enough evidence to convict the sinner who has cast all his hope upon Christ. It shall ever stand. Just stand on it. He that believeth on me is not condemned. Lord, bless it to your heart.