Just a Thought "73"

Romans 6:11 - We need to be focusing on our new identity. Where do you reckon? In your mind. Take an inventory of the facts, to count it up and consider all of the facts and then to come to an appropriate conclusion based upon those facts. Paul is going to great lengths here in Romans Chapter 6 to make his case, that people who fail to conduct themselves properly, fail to understand properly.

That is Paul’s point here in Verse 11, he places the emphasis when it comes to grace behavior on helping us to perceive ourselves in the new identity that is our right now, being IN Jesus Christ. Paul wants us to see ourselves as God already sees us. We need to be focusing on our new identity.

You have to know something, to count up the facts before you can come to an appropriate conclusion based upon what you know to be true. That is why knowledge is absolutely essential. If you have drawn an improper conclusion, Paul would say it is because you have failed to properly consider all of the facts.

Anyone who teaches that God accepts you or blesses you on the basis of how well you dress up the old man up in Christian clothing, or on how well you make the old man perform, that person fails to properly understand that the old man no longer exists in the eyes of God. They spend all of their time trying to perfect the old man.

Reckon ourselves to be now and forevermore alive unto God, we cannot lose it. Behavior did not put us there, behavior cannot take us out of there. Christ will never again have to die for our sins and likewise, we can count on the fact that we will never die for our sins. When Paul tells us to put on the new man, he is not asking us to dress up the old man, he is simply asking us to recognize that the old man no longer exists in the eyes of God. See yourselves as God sees you.

Romans 12:10 - A synonym for the word “preferring” is the word “deference.” Showing deference means putting another person’s interests above your own interest. If preferring others above self is the measure of our love for God, how many of us can truly say we love God with ALL our heart, ALL our soul, ALL our mind? How many of us love others more than we love ourselves?

We do not show deference, we show preference, and the problem is that the one most often preferred in the life of everyone with a sin nature, is self. Whose love was it that restrained our apostle? Was it his love for God, or was it God’s love for Paul? Isn’t serving one another love?

Love is serving others, but notice here in Galatians 5:13, “by love serve one another.” In other wards, by love we are to love, does that make sense? Isn’t that an interesting construction? Through the instrumentality of love, we are to love others. Through the instrumentality of who’s love, is it our love for God that helps us love others or is it God’s love for us that helps us to love others? 

Our reasonable service is a reflection of our appreciation for the fact that the sin question was forever settled. The root cause of our sin is that we love our self and we will not allow anyone to taint that self view. We interpret everything through the sieve of self. We relate what others do, we relate what others say in accordance with their actions and their words substantiate the way we desire to see our self. This is the idolatry mind-set.

Maturity is all about the degree to which you participate in the increase of the Body of Christ unto the deifying of its self in love. The degree to which you participate in that which brings unity to the Body of Christ and edifies the believer to that degree you can consider yourself to be mature. It is much more than taking in knowledge, it is a renewed mind.

1 Corinthians 6:11 - And such were some of you, Paul is going back to this list in 1 Corinthians 6:9-10. “Were” some of you, not that you did these things, you WERE these things. No doubt the carnal saints of Corinth would of found themselves there on this list. Paul is not bringing this list to their attention in order to frighten them with The Second Death.

Paul is bringing to their attention the fact that God is now no longer viewing them apart from righteousness that belongs to his son. If Paul had ceased writing after going through this list of deplorable practices, then we could safely assume that continuing to do these things after believing the good news message would result in a reversal of the offenders salvation or as some teach, perhaps even a lost with a connect with God that must somehow be restored.

But that is not what Paul is saying here at all. Paul is telling these carnal saints at Corinth that the reason these detestable deeds had not and could not result in a lost of their salvation or their fellowship with God for that matter, is because as Carnal as these Corinthians happen to be, they have a holy standing with God through their identity with his son.

And the gift decree of righteousness belonging to the son had been totally and permanently credited to the account of these carnal believers to their account in heaven at the point of their belief. Little wonder that right after listing all these deplorable sins, the apostle Paul follows up immediately with 1 Corinthians 6:12. None of these things can send a believer to The Second Death, they are definitely things all believers should avoid. 

Just a Thought "72"

2 Corinthians 7:1 - Why in the fear of God, because we have the Judgment Seat of Christ to which all those sealed in Christ will be present. This is every believer’s responsibility, we should conduct ourselves in a manner conducive to the job that God’s given us. It is our ambassadorship of the message of reconciliation, how am I to conduct myself given my ambassadorship?

Ephesians 4:1 - Your calling has not changed, it cannot change, so conduct yourselves in accordance with your calling. We are called to peace, this is how believers are to relate to other believers, but walk worthy of the vocation that belongs to you, because God has freely given it to you. How can those who have been justified freely, sanctified in Christ, how should those people be conducting themselves?

Colossians 3:14 - Agape is action love. There is a difference between upon and addition to, because when you put on love, you have simply taken all the seven states of mind listed in Colossians 3:12-13, and you have put movement to the attitude. Agape is the functional life of underlying attitude. Paul is saying I have given you the attitude, now let’s put feet to the attitude, grace attitude in action.

God never intended subjective feelings to be a replacement for objective truth, that is why he’s given us his Word. Only when inner peace lines up with the written Word of God Rightly Divided are we headed in the proper direction. Philippians 4:6-7, so when it comes to the peace department, God does NOT lead independently of the Word. So, we not only have peace with God, we can enjoy the peace of God, who shall keep our hearts and minds through Christ in every circumstance that we face.

Romans 6:16 - If sin leads to death, obedience would lead to life is what we would conclude, but that is not what Paul said. Paul did not use life in opposition to death. Is it possible for a believer to sin and have those sins lead to death? Yes! We know that an unbeliever’s sin leads to death, so the universal principle that sin leads to death is true.

How then can a believer die? They can die physically, death can come in many different ways. If you decided every morning to drink a fifth of whiskey, what are you going to do to your body? A believer can die functionally in that they can serve no further useful purpose here on earth, no heavenly purpose on earth to those to whom they become an ambassador.

Galatians 6:8 - We can take this as a general principle. Life, in the physical sense, comes from making proper choices. Death, in a physical sense, can come from making improper choices in our lives. If we continue in a sinful lifestyle, and we continue not bringing the flesh into subjection, we can count on that lifestyle to take a toll on us.

Choices have consequences. The choices we make with serving self have an effect on others which will affect us. Death can take place in so many ways, it could be emotional, it can be relational. We do not need to start pointing at particular sins, but if we are a slave to sin, whatever sin we are serving, the sin that has us in bondage will exact its toll on our flesh.

You did not free yourself from sin, God did that in response to Christ’s faithfulness and your faith in Christ faithful sacrifice to have resolved God’s justice where your sins are concerned. You became a servant to the righteousness that is already yours, but some of us servants do not do a very good job of serving, do we?

Romans 8:1 - There is THEREFORE NOW, the Now pointing back to the reality of our justification and our sanctification. Based on justification and sanctification, Paul often uses that word “therefore” which means he is ready to draw a conclusion. Paul took us through justification through faith, telling us how God has dealt with that problem of sin. And, then he took us through sanctification, the issue with sanctification is not about sin, but about perfection; God perfected us, made us as equally righteous as God himself.

Now, Paul draws it all together, based upon the fact that you are already sanctified, already IN Christ, there is now no condemnation for you. If God sees you IN Christ and he sees you as being complete in your identity with Christ, totally identified with Jesus Christ in every aspect of Christ’s life and relationship with the Father, to condemn you who are IN Christ, would be the same thing as to condemn Jesus Christ. Colossians 2:10

There are those who say the final portion of Romans 8:1 where it says, “who walk not after the flesh, but after the spirit” should not be there at all. However, the thought of not walking after the flesh, but after the spirit does indeed appear down in Verse 4 and is in the manuscript of the Majority text, so that idea is a valid idea. So, rather than ignoring  them altogether, why not just explain them.

Walking after the flesh is not talking about committing sins, but with placing one’s confidence in the capacity of their flesh to provide righteousness through performance. Rather than having Christ’s righteousness freely imputed to their account, the person who is walking after the flesh is the person laboring under the false notion that they can earn their righteousness through their performance. They are laboring under the false notion that there is capacity in their flesh to be right before God, that is precisely what Israel was doing. 

Just a Thought "71"

Romans 16:7 - Andronicus and Junia had believed the truth about Jesus being the messiah prior to Paul’s calling on the Damascus road. A person in Christ’s day could be “in Christ” they could be in Christ in a redemptive sense, since they were earthly kingdom saints. They had become believing participates while the earthly kingdom program was still in operation.

Some have taken that verse and have said that means somebody else was in the Body of Christ before the apostle Paul, not so. Paul used the expression “in the flesh” in more than one way in his epistles. Just as he used the expression “in Christ” in more than one way, context determining the manner of usage. Just as he would “after the flesh” in more than one way. 2 Corinthians 10:3

There came a time when God ceased dealing with the nation Israel as a nation, but understand, that does not mean God ceased dealing with individuals who were Israelites at that time. The religious leadership of Israel never made that confession. For that matter, the vast majority of the nation never made that confession. Leviticus 26:40-46

Yet, attaining and maintaining their promised land would absolutely be depended upon that confession. Is it possible to differentiate in your Bible between scripture about the nation Israel, God’s program with her and the earth, and scripture written about the Body of Christ?

The difficulty for most people, is when it comes to finding that change of program in the book of Acts, that book covers such a lengthy portion of time, but a great change did indeed take place in the book of Acts. God is not dealing with Israel nationally today, he is dealing with all alike in the Age of Grace.

Realizing the entrapment of the flesh, and therefore the wretchedness of the flesh, helps us realize the direction which truth righteousness comes. If there was no battle, there would be no realization of performance incapacity when it comes to righteousness that can be acquired from doing and abstaining from doing.

Change your mind and agree with God and with Paul that it is totally impossible for you to do enough good. Galatians 5:17, is not something to overcome, but it is a reality to be understood, you will never escape. You are locked into the idea that when it comes to performance base righteousness for a right standing before God, YOU WILL NEVER EARN IT!

Religion, of course, views Romans 7:23 and Galatians 5:17 as obstacles to be overcome, not truths to be understood. LISTEN, if you do not understand the entrapment Paul’s talking about here, being locked away from an ability to merit righteousness before God through your performance, if you do not understand the entrapment he has in mind here when he stated, “so that you can not do the things you would,” you do not understand the incapacity of the flesh to please God. 

So prevalent in the religious circles of our society during these past few decades, thinking is God is the power source and you can tap into at will through the power tool God has given you called prayer. Was prayer given for the purpose of prodding God, pleading with God to alter the circumstances of your everyday lives?

When you are going through those difficult times, times that you did not bring on yourself through improper choices, times that life has brought your way because of the sin cursed world in which we live, you can trust God to know what is good for you, even in the face of all of your adverse circumstances.

God does indeed want you to pray, and prayer is indeed a powerful tool that God has given you, but was prayer given for the purpose of prodding God, pleading with God to alter the circumstances of your everyday lives? Or, was prayer given for the purpose of providing peace to the mind of the troubled saint?

There is a tremendous difference in one who believes they can influence God and therefore, alter their circumstances because they are a believer with prayer in hand and a believer who acknowledges that God is in absolute control and already doing what is best on behalf of every believer, no matter how unfortunate the circumstance is that’s at hand.

Reigning in life does not mean the absence of problems. Paul reigned in life in spite of the existence of the numerous and varied distressing circumstances in his life, because Paul understood the truth of 2 Corinthians 4:17. Those things were working for him a far more exceeding eternal weight of glory while he stopped looking at things which are seen, and started looking at things unseen.

Just a Thought "70"

Why is it so important to know and believe Paul’s gospel? It is important to understand the secret that had been given to Paul, what Paul calls: The Gospel of Christ. Paul’s gospel is the power of God unto salvation, Paul tells us, to every one that believes. Romans 1:16

So, when Paul was given this good news message, it was incumbent upon those who heard it, to believe it. The Gospel of Christ is Christ’s sacrifice in light of the Secret that had been given to Paul. John was preaching Christ’s sacrifice in light of Prophecy.

2 Corinthians 5:21 - “That we might be made” is the subjunctive mood. It is not that everyone will be made, it is that those who believe might be made the very righteousness of God in Christ, which is what dwelling with God through eternity is all about. There is no more powerful message than that, God was using Christ’s death for the sins of the entire world as his criteria to no longer impute sins to the world.

If you have yet to believe The Gospel of Christ, you are standing only in the righteousness your flesh has been able to produce for you, which means you have missed the mark of the righteousness God requires for heaven. If you have not yet believed Paul’s good news message, you have not yet accepted the gift of your salvation.

The issue is not our sins today, most people think sin is the issue, so they are looking for ways to keep short accounts. The issue is: In order to dwell with God in eternity future; we have to be as righteous as God, his justice will not allow nothing other, and until you believe what happened to the sins Christ died for concerning yourself, you are not placed into Christ.

It was God’s plan before the creation of the world, that humankind’s fingerprints would not be found on humankind's salvation. Romans is designed to grow us up in faith doctrine. God has always used faith in every age, he has always used faith or what a person believes as the criteria necessary to effect salvation for humankind.

Paul wants us to know how a person is saved. He wants us to understand the basis by which God provides eternal security, not only has provided the gift of salvation; but provides eternal security to all those who place their faith in what the sacrifice of his son accomplished.

When a person takes God at his Word, no matter what age, whatever the Word was when it was revealed, God considered that person to have faith and salvation has always come through faith. We become a new creation, because we become immersed not into water at all.

We become immersed into our Savior at the second we take God at his Word and accept for ourselves, taking our stand where God takes his stand, concerning what his son accomplished for us. It is God’s sovereign right to chose the criteria, and he chose to use the criteria of belief.

God’s plan called for salvation to be a gift offered to the human race, the gift has already been purchased for everyone. The Bible gives us numerous verses to verify that it is not what a person does, not what a person promises to do, commits to do, that accesses the gift Christ purchased. 

No matter what you have been taught to believe, there was no point in your life when God had to make a decision whether to save you or not. Where would God put those sins if he waited till point B in your life? Wow! What good news the world could hear, someone has paid their debt already.

Love does not force itself. God is equally as much love as he is just. So, he does force his gift on anyone, Paul clearly teaches that you have to accept that gift. God offers his gift freely to the world, but he did indeed accomplish it for the world. The issue is: What will you do with what Jesus Christ accomplished, where your sins are concerned. 

God has no place to put those sins, if he takes them off of your life at point B. Christ became the High Priest, God accepted the payment; the writer of Hebrews tells it to the Israelites. The issue of sin has been resolved, and it was resolved for you before you were ever born. God has been waiting all this time for you to come to accept the salvation that was already purchased for you. 

Depending upon where you go to church, finding out what you have to do to get God to say, “Yes.” There is insecurity in that message. These are the doctrines people are tossed to and fro by, as they hear these things and fail to understand the good news of reconciliation. You accepted the gift of that salvation for you at some point, when some ambassador of Christ told you about it. 

Just a Thought "69"

We need to be justified, because our own performance and our own production, even when accompanied by our most sincere promises and pledges to God is insufficient to accomplish for us a just standing in the eyes of a perfectly just God. We do not seek after God, God seeks after us and he does so through is Word. He seeks after us through people who are proclaiming his Word.

None of us, even after we have accepted the gift of salvation have a full understanding of the things of God. Let no one convince you otherwise, in fact, we are told to study in order to gain understanding, but the truth is, none of us have arrived.

The human race has become quite adept at mixing poison with their speech. The words come out designed to appeal innocuous, but lo and behold, there is something hidden under the lips of sinful people. While their words may appear harmless and unoffending, oftentimes these words are not benign words at all.

They are insidiously designed by the speaker to be laced with character venom, so as to contaminate the object of the speech. What does scripture say about a corpse that has been in the grave longer than three days? It stinks. Everywhere people go, you can see the results of their having been there, the footprint of sin is easily traced to the sinner.

Knowing you are complete in Christ, how would love operate? God’s will for you is to be mature not only in the knowledge of his Word, but in the application of that knowledge through the avenue of love. Knowledge finds expression through our behavior. To serve Christ today, you must serve the earthly manifestation of Christ’s Body.

Knowing you have perfect righteousness in the son, how should you operate positively on behalf of others? Knowledge and love application of that knowledge is the idea behind growth, one without the other is entirely useless. Separation from the world means, growth requires something where the believer and the world is concerned.

A coin accomplishes nothing till it is spent, practical holiness is the hallmark of maturity; maturity demands it, you can not be mature apart from it. Practical holiness is that which will get you rewarded at The Bema Seat of Christ. Love will never show up empty handed where Bema Seat rewards are concerned, love always edifies and unifies.

To worship at the altar of the flesh, is to allow experience to trump truth, and to allow experience to trump truth, is to allow emotion to trump truth, and when experience becomes king in a person’s life, experience is determining that person’s doctrine, rather than that person’s doctrine determining the validity of their experience.

The dispensing of the grace of God. You see, God does not bring armies of insects on people today, he is not sending calamity of any kind on people today, whether it be by climate disaster, financial upheaval, or whatever else might be attributed to God’s hand of judgment on a Christ rejecting world. Why?

God is NOT imputing people’s sins unto them today, because he imputed them to somebody else. Why all the turmoil and distressful circumstances in the world today? It is the age of sin, it is sin in the world, and sin playing itself out; the natural consequence of the sin of the world.

The apostle of the age of grace, delivers to us the truth that God is not bringing special judgments on the world today. The things that are occurring in our world today come as a natural result of the sin-cursed world in which we live, not from special judgments.

God is not trying to get even with people today because of their sins, and he is not calling down some special bad thing; some adverse situation, in order to teach certain individuals a lesson. God does not teach through special judgments during the Age of Grace, he teaches us through his written Word today.

Paul says, “It stablished us.” It stabilizes believers today, it is the Word that does the stabilizing work of God, so that we are able with the Word, hold up under what is happening today. God has given you what you need to endure whatever you face in this life, whether it be best circumstances or worse circumstances from our perspective. We take it in, it sustains us and builds us up, it fortifies us. 

Just a Thought "68"

We have things happen in our lives, we have negative things happen in our lives as believers, but the same negative things happen to non-believers. There is no testing, no temptation taking place today such as is not common to all the human race.

Forgiveness is all upfront, it covers all and you stand in the eyes of God having trusted in what our Savior accomplished on our behalf. You stand more than forgiven, you stand JUST in God’s eyes. Too many people are trying to Christianize the flesh, we are suppose to change our thinking, it all starts with our thinking.

Love, the behavioral glue that binds together the believer to other members of the Body of Christ, that is how God designed the new creation in Christ to operate. Love is the attitudinal adhesive God intends to keep the Body of Christ functionally smoothly and operating efficiently and effectively. Love is the bond that both unifies and edifies the members of the Body of Christ.

Satan would have you think your salvation is not complete. Satan would have you believe, Yes, Jesus died for your sins. Yes, he was buried. Yes, he was raised from among the dead, but your justification was not complete. So Satan would have you believe there is still forgiveness that must be obtained from time to time on the installment plan.

That is Satan’s gospel. Some people go weekly to get absolution for their sin, some groups do that nightly. Some people wear that forgiveness belt around them all day long, less they cross that imaginary line they have got in their mind, where they might cross that line and God changed his mind and cast them away.  You are justified because of Paul’s good news, but what gospel have you believed? God would say, “You are already forgiven, why you coming for forgiveness?”

Maturity is all about the degree to which you participate in the increase of the Body of Christ unto the deifying of its self in love. The degree to which you participate in that which brings unity to the Body of Christ and edifies the believer to that degree you can consider yourself to be mature.

It is much more than taking in knowledge, it is a renewed mind, it is taking in that knowledge, that knowledge might be put to use. Doctrine governs the intellect; the intellect governs the will; the will governs the emotions. There is one basic principle we can apply to every situation in our life, will Christ be magnified in my choice.

Give up serving self and that will be the best service to self you could ever give yourself, you will find true freedom and joy to be the ultimate result. We serve others today motivated by appreciation in the fact that God loves them, we are intricately joined to them, just as we are joined to Christ.

The law had apprehension as a motivation factor. Our labor of love under the Age of Grace has had the apprehension aspect removed entirely. We are to serve others today based on how God expressed his love to others through Christ and what he accomplished for them, who he made them and us to be in our savior by joining us to our savior.

Self is that which stands in the way of growth completeness, the idolatrous mind-set of people. Every believer has a part to play when it comes to that which edifies and unifies the Body of Christ, but attitude is that which instigates action. When it comes to maturity, Paul begins with the inter thought life, never with the outward action.

There is a difference in what the Bible calls the flesh and what it calls the old man, these are not the same terms. The flesh, we all have that bent towards satisfying the lust of our flesh toward serving ourselves. We all have the flesh to contend with, it is alive and functioning in everyone us, none excluded.

Paul would have us understand while we still contend with our flesh, our sin bent, God eradicated our identity with it as far as our righteous standing before him is concerned and our identity in the Bible calls that the old man, that is gone, crucified.

So, while we continue to have and will continue to have to contend with the flesh, God no longer sees us in our identity with the flesh. God’s sentence on the flesh was not reformation, it was total eradication. That sentence was carried out when we died with Christ. God had no intention of repairing the old man.

Christ had to crucify our identity with the flesh, the old man. Paul wants us to agree with God to reckon our identity with our flesh as dead and gone. God has no plan to clean the old man up and make the old man more presentable, his intention was to kill the old man.

Every believer is standing in the gift degree of righteousness, the very perfect righteousness as God’s perfectly righteous son. If your life is hid with God in Christ then how does God view you? God views you in his son. If God’s energizing power from on high resides in every believer, no believer out of the loop, then how many believers are in the flesh? None! 

Just a Thought "67"

The body of doctrine Paul taught renews our thinking, because in this dispensation God is not giving us experiences to look at, he is giving us doctrinal truths to learn. It is the Word of God, that does the work of God, because it contains the living water whereby people have their minds renewed today.

The Word of our salvation washes away any notion of self-cleansing for righteousness as an approach to God. Paul’s writings rinses any notion of people’s production as the basis of a right standing before God right down the drain and leaves the believer standing only in the purified state of Christ’s righteousness.

Only when the truth of reconciliation achieved through Jesus Christ is believed, does a new creation become a reality as far as that individual is concerned. The new creation hinges upon the acceptance of Christ’s sacrifice, that it accomplished reconciliation. The new creation is who you stand to be in Christ. A new creation is your new identity in Jesus Christ.

The new creation is not how you perform in a different way, or make commitments to perform differently, it all has to do with your being placed into Christ, that is the new creation. When a person believes in the reality of reconciliation, that person becomes an instantaneous member of the new creation called the Body of Christ; joined to him.

Cease attributing your righteous standing before God to your performance and keep your mind focused solely on how God views you in Christ. That is what grace life is all about, and you will be victorious in that God can now produce his fruit in your life. If your flesh could perform sufficiently, Christ’s sacrifice would never have been a necessity.

Superstition falls under the deception heading of the religion of our last days, Satan has as much a field day with superstition as he does with counterfeit miracles. How do we know what is not so? It’s not so much the things we do not know that get us into trouble, it’s the things we know that just is not so.

Superstition is all that is required for many people to come to believe that supernatural events are actually taking place, they believe the Holy Spirit is involved. There is a tendency of people’s preconceptions to bias their interpretations of what they see, superstitious mind set can make something out of nothing, in order to validate a belief.

People will tend to engage in a search for evidence that is bias towards confirmation of their beliefs. They engage in evidence that tends to confirm their previously held belief, not fully utilizing all the information that is out there. Only searching out that which agrees with their cause, avoiding information that might dis-confirm their cause.

The tendency of the human mind is to seek out information that supports their belief and attribute a great deal of weight to that when they find it, while they discount or ignore evidence that goes contrary to the belief they hold. If they expect to see Mary make an appearance on a grill cheese sandwich, they will see the outline of Mary;  setting their criteria so broadly that their preexisting beliefs is validated no matter what the outcome.

Colossians 2:8 - Not about to give up their traditions, because previous held beliefs, especially superstitious beliefs, are a most difficult thing to discard. The bias effect of second hand information. “They say” secondary experience, testimonial seasoning of superstition, the story validated the point someone wishes to promote.

Ephesians 5:30 - Nowhere in the Word of God are we told that we are joined to God, of his flesh, and of his bones, because God’s body is composed of a substance called spirit. We are members of Jesus Christ’s body, because we have been joined to him through the identifying work of God through his energizing power from on high.

That energizing power from on high is in all who have taken God at his Word, as to what Christ accomplished when it comes to the resolution of God’s justice where our sins are concerned. It is because of Adam’s transgression, sin entered into the human race, but following right on the heels of sin entering into the human race, death by sin.

The issue for life everlasting is not what church you attend or to which denomination you belong or how religious you are or even whether or not you are a good person in the worldly sense of the word “good.”

The issue in eternity will not be how many sins you have committed or how many sins you have promised God you will abstain from committing. It will not be whether you have walked an aisle, recited a particular prayer, or asked Jesus into your heart.

The issue in eternity will be to which MAN are you related?Do you have your identity in the first Adam, or do you have your identity in the second Adam, Jesus Christ, you cannot be identified in both. When Paul talks about a new creature, old things being past away, all things become new, he is not talking about sin in an individuals life, he is talking about all that we were prior to salvation in the first Adam. 

Once saved, we are no longer in the first Adam, we are at the initial point of our belief in the second Adam, Jesus Christ. In God’s eyes we are no longer who we once were, we are now the new creation being forever joined to our savior.