Ephesians 1:13-14 - The security all believers have in that the indwelling resurrection power of God guarantees that those who have believed Paul’s good news message can never be lost, they belong to God. The seal is the safeguarding device, the securing device, used to preserve the contents.
God’s energizing power from on high is the seal that God uses to secure all who believe in this dispensation of grace. Earnest means a pledge in the sense that an advance deposit has been made as the security guaranteeing the fulfillment of that which has been promised to those who have been sealed.
According to Paul, the indwelling of God’s energizing power from on high is both God’s seal and his deposited pledge that all believers are forever his and are destined to inherit eternal life. God’s energizing power from on high works in us, but only to the degree that we are willing to yield ourselves to God’s use in our ministry of reconciliation.
Paul doesn’t tell us that we are filled with God’s energizing power from on high, but instead, Paul is telling us that we should be filled with God’s energizing power from on high. In other words, we should allow God’s energizing power from on high to be in control of our lives. Of course, the degree to which we do that is up to us.
Romans 6:23 - They will continually want us to do this and stop doing that, in order to keep God happy with us when the reality is: God couldn’t be any happier with us than he is; Christ having taken our sin debt upon himself, and we having trusted what happened where our sins are concerned.
We can now serve God out of appreciation rather than apprehension. Sin is gone as far as the judicial aspect of sin from God’s vantage point. It is taken care of once and for all! People will suffer the second death not because of the sins God’s son pain for. They have kept sin on the table of God’s justice their entire lifetimes and sat under ministers of righteousness who have led the way.
We need to be less interested in trying to become something, or trying to do something, and we need to become a whole lot more interested in learning about who we already are, that is the key. Paul could not escape his sinful nature no matter how fervently he tried. Our fleshly bodies will never be worthy of heaven in that they will never be able to perform to the measure of the righteousness that is true of God.
We are alive because of our identity in Christ, not at all because of our practice. As we understand what God accomplished for us through his son, we build upon that foundation the truths of who he has made us to be when he placed us into his son, we begin to view ourselves as God views us, and there is great security to be found in doing so.
Romans 5:10 - Why not consider your relationship with God to be based solely on your new identity. Why not come to the understanding that God now relates to you the only way he can relate to you and that is according to your new identity in his son. All of the human race are in need of a justification that will come totally apart from anything that they can do.
Paul wants the human race to know at one point in time something was true, but now something else is true. God alone decided to make peace with the human race, while the human race is an active enemy to God. Certainly the bible shows that God does not like the actions of the human race, but God reconciled himself to his enemies while they are still in hostility.
These are important words; God’s reconciliation to the human race took place when the human race was actively his enemy, not after the human race repented. The entire human race is guilty when it comes to human merit, performance, and production, and continually coming short of the righteousness of God himself. God cannot relate to you, he will not relate to you according to your former identity in Adam, that Identity disappeared the instant you took God at his word concerning Paul’s good news message.
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