“Now none but Christ can satisfy, None other name for me; There’s love, and life, and lasting joy, Lord Jesus, found in Thee.” A shrewd general always seeks to seize upon the strongest positions; so wherever there is a rich promise to believers, Satan tries to distort it, so as to make it a source of discouragement. Accordingly, he has made many believe that the words, “He that soweth to his flesh shall of the flesh reap corruption,” mean that they must all their lives, even after being born of the Spirit, suffer the consequences of their former life of sin. Some have supposed that even in eternity they would have to bear the scars of their old sins, saying, “I can never hope to be what I should have been if I had never sinned.” What a libel on God’s mercy, and the redemption that is in Christ Jesus! That is not the freedom wherewith Christ makes us free. The exhortation is, “As ye have yielded your members servants to uncleanness and to iniquity unto iniquity; even so now yield your members servants to righteousness unto holiness;” but if the one who thus yields himself to righteousness must always be handicapped by his former bad habits, that would prove that the power of righteousness is less than that of sin. But that is not so. Grace abounds over sin, and is as mighty as the heavens. Here is a man who for gross crimes has been condemned to imprisonment for life. After a few years’ imprisonment he receives a free pardon, and is set at liberty. Some time afterward we meet him, and see a fifty-pound cannon-ball attached to his leg by a huge chain, so that he can move about only with the greatest difficulty. “Why, how is this?” we ask in surprise. “Were you not given your freedom?” “Oh, yes,” he replies, “I am free; but I have to wear this ball and chain as a reminder of my former crimes.” One would not think such “freedom” as that very desirable. Every prayer inspired by the Holy Ghost is a promise of God; and one of the most gracious of these is this: “Remember not the sins of my youth, nor my transgressions; according to Thy mercy remember Thou me for Thy goodness’ sake, O Lord.” Ps. 25:7. When God forgives our sins, and forgets them, He gives us such power to escape from them that we shall be as though we had never sinned. By the “exceeding great and precious promises,” we are made “partakers of the Divine nature, having escaped the corruption that is in the world through lust.” 2 Peter 1:4. Man fell by partaking of the tree of knowledge of good and evil; the Gospel presents such a redemption from the fall, that all the black memories of sin are effaced, and the redeemed ones come to know only the good, like Christ, “who knew no sin.”