Just a Thought "27"

When Paul says putting off the body of the sins of the flesh, he is talking about the whole body, the whole sin debt, all of our sins, are sins cut off from us!

All our sins from the front of our life, to the back of our life, they have been completely cut away from us through the cutting off, the circumcision, actually the death of Jesus Christ, never to be joined to us again, another wards, God can no longer see them.

God no longer sees us in our identification with sin, since the initial point of our belief, he sees us in our identification with his son, all the sins Christ died for are sins which are forever dead in their ability to stand between the sinner and the Savior.

No matter how the world comes down on us or how the world views us, how our friends view us or cease viewing us, God views us in a way which is incomprehensible to the world.

We are not in the process of becoming something new and different, we are not even in an instantaneously cleaned up version of the former creation, we are not a sinless version of who we once were, we are at the very instance of our belief, a brand new creation, God sees us in a brand new way.

In the fact, that it is called a new creation, it tells us this new creation, as God sees it, is not an extension of some former creation. In other wards, we are not an extension of believing Israel time past carried on over in some spiritual form to the age of grace, can not be.

We are not now, nor will we ever be spiritual Israel, God has designed believers to be a brand new unique  organism operating as a living breathing manifestation of Christ’s Body right here on planet earth.

We are not called to be saints, we are called saints, sainthood is not earned at all. It is not something to be sought after as though it could be attained to or something that only comes for a select few. According to the apostle Paul, we have how much forgiveness, total forgiveness.

God knows what his son accomplished on our behalf where all of our sin debt is concerned and he is satisfied that all of that sin has already been judge on his son, leaving no judgment for us where our sin is concerned.

Justification is a legal act, wherein God deems the sinner righteous on the basis of Christ’s righteousness. Justification is not a process, but is a one-time act, complete and definitive.

In Romans, we learn God could not declare us to be right on the bases of who and what we are from the practical standpoint of our lives; we are everything but perfectly right. God could only declare us to be right on the bases of who and what he is, not on the bases of who and what we would be apart from him.

The only way God could declare us right in his sight is to join us, to actually immerse us into the only one who ever was perfectly just through performance, and that was Jesus Christ himself.

God had to devise a way to see us that way, 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 new found performance capabilities, but because we are made the righteousness of God in our union with his perfectly righteous son.

On top of that, everything necessary to prove to us beyond any shadow of doubt, and to prove to Satan and his rebellious forces that we are totally secure in our union with God’s son, we need nothing more, God supplied every need already.

There were a lot of people in Paul’s day and in our day trying to earn their righteousness before God by way of their performance. They thought God would measure their do’s and don’ts and thought they were actually measuring up. God would considered them righteous worthy of his attendance, worthy of being in heaven.

In fact, they were bragging, boasting about their achievements as though God could do nothing other than to declare them righteous because they deserved just such a declaration. Paul warned to guard against those who would promote a righteousness through performance idea.

It is up to those of the world to either accept or reject their redeemer, but that does no less make him their redeemer. When we accept our redeemer and the price he paid, the ransom he paid, then we are joined to Christ and we have his righteousness attributed to our account.

Those who reject the gift are thumbing their noses at the one who died to paid that price for their redemption. The price was paid for all, and through that payment Christ redeemed the entire human race from the sin barrier that separated the world from God. It is now a son issue, not a sin issue.

Will those of the world accept or reject the payment Christ made for their redemption? Those who reject their redeemer will face the ultimate consequences of that rejection. God did for us what we could never do for ourselves, he took all of our performance off of us and put it onto Jesus Christ and judged him for our faulty performance.

The only thing God is asking us to believe to be placed into his son, is to take him at his word concerning what his son did where our sins are concerned. The instance we take our stand with God, we are not only saved, but sealed until the day of redemption of these earthly tents in which we dwell.

Flesh wants to say if I broke it, I can fix it. God is not asking us to turn from anything to be saved, he is asking us to believe Christ accomplished salvation for us and we are simply to believe it. Christ did it all, there is nothing left for us to do, God did all the giving, we do only all the receiving, faith is taking God at his word concerning what his son did on our behalf.