Salvation from the Presence of Sin

Here is your weekly dose from the dearly departed... A.W. Pink from his work A Fourfold Salvation. Continuing from last week we now look at the final segment part 4 Salvation from the Presence of Sin

We now turn to that aspect of our subject which has to do solely with the future. Sin is yet to be completely eradicated from the believer’s being, so that he shall appear before God without any spot or blemish. True, this is his legal status even now, yet it has not become so in his state or experience. As God views the believer in Christ, he appears before Him in all the excellency of his Sponsor; but as God views him as he yet is in himself (and that he does do so is proved by His chastenings), he beholds all the ruin which the Fall has wrought in him. But this will not always be the case: no, blessed be His name, the Lord is reserving the best wine for the last. And even now we have tasted that He is gracious, but the fullness of His grace will only be entered into and enjoyed by us after this world is left behind.

Those Scriptures which present our salvation as a future prospect are all concerned with our final deliverance from the very inbeing of sin. To this Paul referred when he said, "Now is our salvation nearer than when we believed" (Rom. 13:11)—not our salvation from the pleasure, the penalty, or the power of sin, but from its very presence. "For our citizenship is in heaven: from whence we also look for the Saviour, the Lord Jesus Christ" (Phil. 3:20). Yes, it is the "Saviour" we await, for it is at His return that the whole election of grace shall enter into their full salvation; as it is written, "Unto them that look for Him shall He appear the second time without sin unto salvation" (Heb. 9:28). In like manner, when another apostle declares, "We are kept by the power of God through faith unto salvation, ready to be revealed at the last time" (1 Pet. 1:5), he had reference to this grand consummation of the believer’s salvation, when he shall be forever rid of the very presence of sin.