“It has been my joy to preach to you for many years the blessed doctrine of substitution.

Now, if Jesus became our Surety and our Substitute, and suffered in our stead, it is an inevitable consequence that we cannot suffer punishment, and that the sin laid upon our Surety cannot now be laid upon us.

If our debt was paid, it was paid, and there is an end of it; a second payment cannot be demanded.

No criminal can be hanged a second time; one death is all the law requires: believers died in Christ unto sin once, and now they penally die no more. Our condemnation has spent itself upon our gracious representative.

The full vials of divine wrath against sin have been poured upon the head of the great Shepherd, that His sheep might go free; and therein is our joy, our comfort, our security.

‘There is therefore now no condemnation to them which are in Christ Jesus.’ (Romans 8:1)

Bow your heads in worship, ye that are in Him.

Render an ascription of blessing and praise and glory unto Him who took you unto Himself, and then bore your sins in His own body on the tree, so that you might be delivered from condemnation through His sufferings and death.

Thus, by faith we are in Christ Jesus, and the assurance of our safety is enlarged by a consideration of His federal headship, our vital oneness with Him, our mystical marriage to Him, and His finished work on our behalf.”

–Charles H. Spurgeon, “In Christ No Condemnation,” in The Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit Sermons, vol. 32 (London: Passmore & Alabaster, 1886), 475.