PRIZE ESSAY.
Who are they that will Stand Perfect in the Day of Judgment?
Those who will stand perfect in the day of judgment are those who, by the grace of God, have been enabled to trust in, and wait on, the Lord for salvation from sin and its consequences; for, by the Holy Spirit working in them, they see their sin, and feel the anger of God.
"The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked: who can know it?" (Jer. xvii. 9); and, when we see and feel a little of our wickedness, we despair, and Satan begins to torment us, and say, "You are too wicked to go to heaven." But Jesus says, "Him that cometh to Me I will in no wise cast out" (John vi. 37); "Come unto Me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest" (Matt. xi. 28).
Jesus says "heavy laden," showing that, no matter how wicked, how laden, His word to all those who are weary of sin, and "heavy laden" with sorrow for sin, is, "Come, and I will give you rest"—rest from Satan and his temptations, rest from the world and all its busy cares.
His rest is so different from all other, for He says, in John xiv. 27, "Peace I leave with you; My peace I give unto you: not as the world giveth, give I unto you. Let not your heart be troubled, neither let it be afraid."
Those who will stand perfect are those who have been chosen by God as vessels of mercy, for Peter says, "Elect according to the foreknowledge of God the Father, through sanctification of the Spirit, unto obedience and sprinkling of the blood of Jesus Christ."
Then, when sprinkled by the blood of Jesus Christ, they are perfectly free from sin; as the hymn says—
"There is a fountain filled with blood,
Drawn from Immanuel's veins;
And sinners plunged beneath that flood
Lose all their guilty stains."
And this is how God's people stand before Him—