Just a Thought "26"

Sin entering into the human race through Adam’s transgression brought about more than one type of death, or one type of separation. We can suffer functional death; an inability, separated from the capacity to serve or to please God, this is a functional death.

Then, there’s a relational death, sin brings relational death. Sin, or coming short of the measure of who God is, is that which stood in the way or stood between God and the human race. Sin, coming short of who God is, is something that is true of our lives every second of every day we live.

So, it is not a question of getting new forgiveness for new sin, we had to have someone take care of that sin issue for us, and thank God that he had his son take care of that issue for us. God’s attitude towards a believer, does not fluctuate in response to action, it is not condition on our behavior.

Paul tells us that being justified, judicially in the mind of God through our union with his son, we are made right with God at the point of that union through the avenue of our faith in Christ’s faithful performance on our behalf, rather than peace based upon our performance toward God, results in an unchanging attitude of peace with God for every believer.

God’s attitude of favor toward the believer is based on the conduct of his son on the believer’s behalf. We now have available for the enjoyment of our everyday experience an everlasting peaceful relationship with God. When God looks at the believing sinner, God sees his very own son; Christ’s death was sufficient to satisfy God’s righteous demand for justice.

The issue for life everlasting is not what church we attend or to which denomination we belong or how religious we are or even whether or not we are a good person in the worldly sense of the word good. The issue in eternity will not be how many sins we have committed or how many sins we have promised God we will abstain from committing.

It will not be whether we have walked an aisle, recited a particular prayer, or asked Jesus into our heart. The issue in eternity will be to which man one is related, does one have their identity in the first Adam, or does one have their identity in the second Adam, Jesus Christ.

It is difficult for the human mind, apart from letting divine viewpoint, replace human viewpoint to lay hold of the magnitude of what the grace of God is all about, and what that grace has accomplished on behalf of every signal person who has trust what Jesus Christ accomplished.

Grace is that which God does for the human race through his son, which the human race can not earn, does not deserve and will never merit. Grace is God’s work for people, and encompasses everything we receive from God; he is free to do now for ungodly people who take him at his word.

When a believer’s behavior is consistently inconsistent with what that believer professes to believe, the answer lies in a failure to fully appreciate one or more aspects of the foundational truths.

Only when we come to see ourselves as God sees us and are able to fully appreciate and understand who God has already made us to be and who he’s made us to be in Christ, can we become in our behavior what he wants us to be in the aspect of our lives.

As we understand what God accomplished for us through his son, and build upon that foundation the truths of who he has made us to be by placing us into his son, we begin to view ourselves as God views us, and there is great security to be found in doing so.

As sound doctrine is taken in and fully appreciated, the believer who takes that doctrine in and appreciates it and applies it, begins to grow and mature in what they believe, and as the believer begins to grow and to mature in what they believe, that believer’s mind is being transformed in the process.

Truth designed to give us stability, is truth designed to give us security. God did not intend that believers be insecure, so the security doctrines come first in God’s building process for his grace-age saints.

God stabilizes us in the book of Romans, 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.

The church of our day is best described as the Corinthians epistle equally the Galatians epistle, they are marked by divisions and have reverted to preaching the law. If one has believed Paul’s good news, we must understand that God has predetermined to glorify us.

In fact, he has predestined us to that glorification. We are objects of God’s purpose, because God had a purpose in mind where grace age believers are concerned, and he predetermined through his own decree that his purpose would stand, it will come to pass no matter what.

Put simply, before the founding of the world, God predetermined our destiny, and that destiny is glorification through union with the glorified Christ. God has the resolve and ability, the capacity to accomplish his purpose, by joining us to his son, the glory of God will be praised, because God will glorify the saints of this age.

Realizing the entrapment of the flesh, and therefore the wretchedness of the flesh this side of the redemption of our bodies, helps us realize the direction which truth righteousness comes. We need to change our mind and agree with God and with Paul, that it is totally impossible for us to do enough good.

Paul wanted to be found before God not bearing his own righteousness for his purpose in being there, but having Christ righteousness attributed freely to Paul’s account; the battle within him, proved to him the absolute impossibility of performance based righteousness.

God’s word has the power to change our thinking if we take it in, if we dwell on it, it will change our thinking. Paul knew the word of God has the power of God to do the work of God.

God had to devise a way to predetermine our destiny, and the way he devised to do that was by joining us to, hiding us in our perfectly righteous savior, thus freely crediting to our account Christ righteousness.

Freedom from God’s condemnation is a reality for every single believer not because of any now found performance capabilities, but because we are made the righteousness of God in our union with his perfectly righteous son.