teachmevp

Judicial satisfaction for sins is what reconciliation is all about, God is not counting, reckoning, imputing, or charging people’s sins to their account, and for a very good reason, he charged those sins to his son’s account. 
 The doctrinal transaction called Justification has to do with God recognizing someone to be righteous. God will recognize those who take him at his word, concerning the price Christ became on their behalf, to resolve God’s justice for their sins. Justification is a recognition of righteousness that comes from God to those who believe God, it does not go away, it does not abate over time, it is ours forever.

Healthy behaviors result from an identity that is healthy and fully based upon Jesus Christ’s performance on our behalf, as a result, we can begin learning to find rest; who we are has been settled in Christ. It is Christ’s faith that righteousifies those who take their stand with God when it comes to what God has stated his son accomplished for them. 
 It was Christ’s faith and as a result of his faith, his faithfulness that he sacrificed himself and purchased the gift of our salvation. It is our faith in the accomplishment of Jesus Christ’s faithful sacrifice that is the means whereby God acknowledges that we have accepted the gift his son purchased. 
 Therefore, God in his infinite wisdom devised a plan whereby he could take the very faith belonging to his son, along with its resultant faithfulness, and credit that faith and faithfulness to the account of those who believe. 
 Yet, finding rest sounds rather foreign to us, an idea too unrealistic or too good to be true, because somewhere in our life we have been involved in the relationships of our environments that were based on conditions. Many people involved in religion’s domain are dealing with God on the basis of probation, rather than salvation. 
 Then God must make a decision in their minds, whether or not to save that individual. Their suitability for heaven depends upon their turning away from all of their sins. If they will simply dedicate themselves to no longer to sin, that is the idea. 
 Standards may have become so deeply ingrained, that we are not even aware of them, let alone conscious of how to get free from their tyranny, constantly trying to measure up to standards that are higher than we can reach. 
 This is why God allows all kinds of things into our lives, which he uses to strip us of our personal sense of worth. God is making us conformable to the death of Christ, so that in living this experience, we might become conformed in his resurrection. 
 This process is not enjoyable, because it is hard to learn that life cannot be controlled, it is far too spontaneous and rambunctious to be fully understood. 


It arose from the conviction that such an event had actually already taken place with the resurrection of Jesus from among the dead. The resurrection is proof that Jesus is who he claimed to be, and that his sacrifice was pleasing to God. As long as Jesus lay in the tomb, he was just another tragic religious figure who suffered a martyr’s death. 
 In fact, Paul tells us that the resurrection is the greatest display of God’s power ever to be demonstrated, nor can it ever be surpassed. Our decree of judicial perfection in the eyes of God comes not through Jesus’ death for our sins, but through our union with Jesus’ resurrection life.

God wants us to stop putting our faith in ourselves, he wants us to actually come to the place where we literally have no confidence in the flesh, but have full reliance in Christ alone. To bring our body in subjection, as Paul put it, but would he ever be able to do that sufficiently to merit righteousness before God? Absolutely not! 
 That is not the issue, but Paul could do it in appreciation to whatever degree he was capable. A person must understand what it is they are asked to believe, in order to be joined to the body of Jesus Christ. 
 It is unfathomable what God accomplished through his son; Jesus Christ took sinful people’s place, taking the penalty of their sins upon himself, so that those believing this truth can be joined to his body. 
 Paul had been given special divine authority with the understanding that he is our apostle, and that authority carried with it the details of what God expects people to believe today concerning the salvation Jesus Christ purchased for them with his sacrifice.
 Unless people believe Jesus Christ accomplished something where their sins are concerned when he died for those sins, Paul’s good news is hidden to them. Satan’s ministers of righteousness are busy at work within the righteous structure called “religion” in order to keep the meaning of Paul’s good news hidden, to keep people’s eyes blinded to the truth of what Christ really accomplished. 
 Understanding our completeness in Jesus Christ should motivate us to make wise choices. All of us who have been sealed into the body of Christ wants God to be pleased with the decisions that we make, but God has given us the freedom to make our own choices.

Grace is a much greater motivator, it is the love of God that constrains us, not fear that God is going to strike us dead, or allow us to be a part of the second death if we perform what we should not be performing, or do not measure up through our performance. 
 Are people set apart as holy in God’s sight because of their lack of sin, or are people set apart as holy in God’s sight because he has joined them to his son? God is not giving out his righteousness as a reward to those who are sorry for the past, and who promise to do their best in the future. 
 At the point of our belief in what Christ accomplished where our sins are concerned, we are as closely associated with Christ as anyone could be, we are joined to him. What an ingenious salvation plan, to take someone else that is righteous and join us to that person, therefore what is Christ’s is ours! 
 We need to cease attributing our righteous standing before God to our performance and keep our mind focused solely on how God views us in Christ, that is what grace-life is all about, and we will be victorious in that God’s power can now produce it’s fruit in our life. 
 When God raised Jesus from among the dead, it was God’s stamp of “pain in full” on the invoice of our sin debt. We could not get right with God in a million life times of trial and error, we could never make ourselves right with God; God had to do what we could not do. Now believing sinners can be certain that in Christ, they are justified.

We are not to cleanse ourselves in order to gain something from God, when it comes to our holy standing before him, or to maintain something before God because we have been freely given something, namely a justified and sanctified position in God’s son, Jesus Christ. 
 How can those who have been justified freely, sanctified in Jesus Christ, how should we be conducting ourselves? We should conduct ourselves in a manner that goes sides by side or that goes in hand with what God has already called us to do, our ambassadorship of the message of reconciliation.
 Paul was teaching grace, plus nothing, and that leads people with a sin nature and pride nature to say, Oh, we have got something! If we do not know what Justification and Sanctification are all about, and we think that we are justified on the basis of how we set ourself apart behaviorally, naturally we want other people to set themselves apart, and we want them to have to tow the mark, as you have to tow the mark to keep God happy. 
 May grace never be the cause, although grace is true, may grace never be the cause for a person to think they should now go out and sin all the more. May that type of reasoning not cross our minds, that is not the way a believer should be thinking!
 People do what they want to do, we have always done what we want to do, and people continue to do what they want to do. We would naturally come to be thinking along those lines, if we fail to have an understanding of Justification and Sanctification. 
 Do we sin? But, we are dead to sin! Are we supposed to stop sinning? If we understand what the word “sin” means, coming short of God’s Glory, now that we are dead to sin, can we now measure up to God’s Glory? Positional truth, we were dead in sins, because we had our identity in Adam, Adam in rebellion. 
 We now have a brand new identity, “dead to sin” identity, but those who would die in their sins were those who would continue to have their identity in Adam, Adam in rebellion, understanding identity is key! Failing to understand positional truth will cause much confusion, because we want to go back to practical reality. 


It is surprising how many people think Jesus Christ died for the sins they have committed up to a point, but then, from that point on, they have got to keep those sins taken out of the way. Christ paid the price to deliver the human race from God’s justice, yet, with Christ paying the price necessary to satisfy God’s justice for ALL the sins of ALL the world, there are those who would accuse Paul of lying. 
 A Christ established reconciliation is the core ingredient in Paul’s good news, God has reconciled the world to himself, Paul makes that abundantly clear, God is not imputing people’s sins unto them, because Jesus Christ paid the penalty for those sins. 
 Judicial satisfaction for sins is what reconciliation is all about, God is not counting, reckoning, imputing, or charging people’s sins to their account, and for a very good reason, he charged those sins to his son’s account. 
 The doctrinal transaction called Justification has to do with God recognizing someone to be righteous. God will recognize those who take him at his word, concerning the price Christ became on their behalf, to resolve God’s justice for their sins. Justification is a recognition of righteousness that comes from God to those who believe God, it does not go away, it does not abate over time, it is ours forever.

Not only did Paul face the doctrinally issues that people had then, much as they have now, he had to face the continuing conflict people had with one another in those assemblies. Problems arise, when people arrive, the more people we have, the more problems we will have. 
 Love is what the carnal Corinthians lacked, that lack of love was evidence in the divisions and factions within their fellowships. Love is the bond that unifies and edifies other members of the Body of Christ, love is the operating principle of doctrinal wisdom. 
 The agape behavioral glue that binds together the believer with all their doctrinal knowledge and their positional perfection to other members of the Body of Christ, that is how God designed the new creation in Christ to operate. 
 Love is the behavioral glue, attitudinal adhesive that God intended to keep the Body of Christ functioning smoothly and operation efficiently and effectively. Love is the bond that unifies and edifies other members of the Body of Christ, love is the operating principle of doctrinal wisdom. 
 Did pride not cause the divisions and factions in Corinth over the gifts given as a sign to unbelieving Israel. Pride cause God to turn away from Israel as his chosen channel of blessing and call forth a brand new apostle to initiate a brand new program with the establishment of a brand new creation called the Body of Christ.

Paul has something he can not escape, the struggle that was taking place with him, his flesh as opposed to God’s power from on high dwelling within him. The very fact this saved person continues to possess a sin nature or self bent always opposing that which God desires, is the very thing that keeps a saved person from accomplishing righteousness through performance. 
 It is one thing to begin right, then to hear false doctrine and move out in the left field somewhere, because we are hearing something after we have believed Paul’s good news. It is another thing to have never heard the proper good news of Paul to begin with, and to have begun with the thinking that we were earning God’s favor through something that we did or we would do.
 Paul showed how some people become content to trust in their own obedience in order to stand justified in the eyes of a perfectly just God, they were crediting their righteous works for a superior position before God. We see that these people had chosen to believe a wrong message, they had believed correctly to begin with, and then they had chosen to believe those who used the scriptures to steal and hide the truth of a perfectly justified status before God by grace alone through faith alone in the accomplishments of Jesus Christ.

Traditionalists read “eternal punishment” as “eternal punishing.” When the adjective “aionios” meaning eternal or everlasting, is used in the Greek with nouns of action, it has reference to the result of the action, not the process. The wicked will not be passing through a process of punishment forever, but will be punished once and for all with eternal results. Look forward to reading your commentary.

Traditionalists read “eternal punishment” as “eternal punishing.” When the adjective “aionios” meaning eternal or everlasting, is used in the Greek with nouns of action, it has reference to the result of the action, not the process. The wicked will not be passing through a process of punishment forever, but will be punished once and for all with eternal results. 
 The destruction of the wicked is eternal “aionios,” not because the process of destruction continues forever, but because the results are permanent. “Eternal” often refers to the permanence of the result, rather than the continuation of a process. 
 It is evident that the fire that destroyed Sodom and Gomorrah is eternal, not because of its duration, but because of its permanent results. Great writing, share more. People need to hear more about the permanent resutts results, rather then the continuation of a process. Share more about "age". Thanks for reading my posts.

Redemption and forgiveness, this is a major focal point of the secret, when it’s come to what God is now revealed, sin no longer being the issue with God, we already have redemption and forgiveness. 
 It’s not things we need to seek from God, but things God’s already accomplished for us, we need simply believe they are ours in order to appropriate in our own thinking, what has already been accomplished on our behalf. 
 Our redemption is complete, our forgiveness is all complete, all upfront, both are past tense accomplishments that Paul would have us acknowledge and proclaim, who accomplished them for us, our Savior, Jesus Christ. 
 Israel was continually being called upon to repent, to change their thinking. John called upon the nation to repent, the 12 called upon Israel to repent, and Jesus called upon the nation to repent, God wanted them to change their thinking about the source of their righteousness and the identity of their Messiah. 
 Righteousness could never come from them, and that is where they had to change their thinking, this was the change of mind confession that God wanted his earthly nation to make. What do most church people think when they hear the word repentance? 
 Most would say to repent means to have Godly sorrow that leads to repentance. Others would say that to repent means to turn around and go the other direction, sin no more, is that not what first comes to mind when we see the word repentance from our religious upbringing, this is what is commonly taught in the hallways of religion. 


Death, as we know it, would indeed be the end of our existence were it not for the fact of the resurrection. It is the resurrection that turns death into a temporary sleep, so to speak. The second death differs from the first death, not in nature, but in results. 
 The first death is a temporary sleep, because it is followed the the resurrection. The second death is permeant and irreversible extinction, because there is no awakening. The second death is the death resulting from the final judgment which prevents evildoers from living in the new earth to come, a punishment that ultimately results in eternal, irreversible death. 
 The stern punishment awaiting the enemies of righteousness, whose temporary resurrection results only in a return to death and its punishment, their full and final defeat. The wicked will be resurrected mortal in order to receive their punishment which will result in their ultimate annihilation. 
 In the Old Testament, the word “sheol” is the underground depository of the dead. There are no immaterial, immortal souls in sheol, simply because the soul does not survive the death of the body. Nowhere in the Old Testament is the abode of the dead regarded as a place of punishment or torment. 
 The concept of an infernal ‘hell’ developed in Israel only during the Hellenistic period. The condition of the dead in sheol, the realm of the dead, is one of unconsciousness, inactivity, a rest or sleep that will continue until they are resurrected. The prospect that one day a vast number of people will be consigned to the everlasting torment of hell is most disturbing. 
 Traditionalists read “eternal punishment” as “eternal punishing.” When the adjective “aionios” meaning eternal or everlasting, is used in the Greek with nouns of action, it has reference to the result of the action, not the process. The wicked will not be passing through a process of punishment forever, but will be punished once and for all with eternal results. 
 The destruction of the wicked is eternal “aionios,” not because the process of destruction continues forever, but because the results are permanent. “Eternal” often refers to the permanence of the result, rather than the continuation of a process. 
 It is evident that the fire that destroyed Sodom and Gomorrah is eternal, not because of its duration, but because of its permanent results. “And others save with fear, pulling them out of the fire” (Jude 23a). The fire to which Jude refers is obviously the same kind of fire that consumed Sodom and Gomorrah. 
 It is evident that the fire that destroyed Sodom and Gomorrah is eternal, not because of its duration, but because of its permanent results. It is important to note that the Greek word “aionios” literally means “lasting for an age.” 
 Roman emperors being described as “aionios”; what is meant is that they held their office for life. Unfortunately, the English words “eternal” or “everlasting” do not accurately render the meaning of “aionios”, which literally means “age-lasting.” 
 The notion of the eternal torment of the wicked can only be defended by accepting the Greek view of the immortality and indestructibility of the soul, a concept which is foreign to Scripture. Everlasting torture is intolerable from a moral point of view, because it pictures God acting like a bloodthirsty monster who maintains an everlasting Auschwitz for his enemies, whom he does not even allow to die. 
 Consider the moral implications of the traditional view of hell, which depicts God as a cruel torturer who torments the wicked throughout all eternity. The thought of such a torment being deliberately inflicted by divine decree, is totally incompatible with the idea of God as infinite love. 
 Many Christians will be sorely disappointed to discover that their beliefs in the afterlife are a delusion. When this happens, it will cause personal crisis to Christians accustom to believing that at death their souls break loose from their bodies and continue to exist either in Heaven or in the torment of Hell. 
 Redemption is the restoration of the whole person, and not the salvation of the soul apart from the body. If at death the soul of the believer goes up immediately to Heaven to be with Jesus, one hardly can have any real sense of expectation for Jesus to come down to raise the dead believers that were in Jesus, and transform the living believers that are in Jesus. 
 Traditionally, evangelical and other religious persuasions teach, that at the resurrection, their material bodies are reunited with their souls, thus intensifying the pleasure of Heaven or the pain of Hell. Why are evangelicals so adamant in refusing to reconsider the Biblical teachings on the restoration of the whole person? 
 To abandon souls being reunited with their bodies, also entails abandoning a whole cluster of doctrines resulting form it. The total impact of dividing humans into body and soul has promoted all sorts of false dichotomies in Scripture. To be an “Evangelical” means to uphold certain fundamental traditional doctrines without questioning. 
 Any one who dares to question the Biblical validity of a traditional doctrine can become suspect as a “heretic.” It is impossible to estimate the far-reaching impact that the doctrine of unending hellfire has had throughout the centuries in justifying religious intolerance, torture, and the burning of “heretics.” The rationale is simple: If God is going to burn heretics in Hell for all eternity, why shouldn’t the church burn them to death now?

Reconciliation simply means a change in status, and it is a major issue recognizing reconciliation. Reconciliation from God’s advantage point is an accomplished fact, and God is reconciled where the totality of the sin debt of all men is concerned. 
 None of us measure up to the perfection of God, and the only reason God could say through Paul, “Grace and Peace be unto you” is because his son fully paid the price. How many of us have grown up with the idea that God has to make a decision at some point in our life whether or not to forgive us for our sins? God forgiving us is not something he must decided to do. 
 The truth Paul has proclaimed in all of his epistles is we could not get right with God in a million life times of trial and error. We could never make ourselves right with God, and he had to do what we could not do for ourselves. God had to make us right with him, and he did so through the finished work of his perfectly righteous son. 
 How many of our sins were future when Christ died for our sins? All of them were future, and God placed them all on his perfectly righteous son. Christ’s test score is written on our paper, it is an amazing transfer. The issue of sin was settled as a result of Christ’s death, it is a son issue today, not a sin issue. 
 Will we accept what Jesus Christ accomplished as a result of his death or will we reject it, the son is the issue with God today. God’s attitude of love forces no one to take him at his word. God gives all the choice to accept what Christ accomplished on their behalf today, or to reject it. 
 God purchased men out of sins dominion, never to be returned to the market place of sin again. By removing the sin issue from the table of God’s justice, God effectively canceled Satan’s ownership of all mankind. Reconciliation has to do with God’s justice being satisfied for sins, reconciliation is a sin issue. 
 Many teachers will tell us that we can be reconciled, but that is not true, reconciliation was accomplished as a result of Christ’s death, where Christ became sin for the entire human race. Our sins were not stored on Christ to be brought back later; our sins were paid for by him, and he satisfied totally the justice of God for those sins. 
 Justification, on the other hand, is something entirely different; it has to do with a judicial decree of the very righteousness of God himself freely attributed to our account. No one can receive that unless that person is placed into Christ. Being placed into Christ, joined to Christ is the method whereby God justifies us; or righteousifies us. 
 We must believe that Christ put our sins (past, present and future) away forever as a result of his death, in order to be placed into Christ to have righteousness freely attributed to our account.

Attitude always precedes action, worry never robs tomorrow of it’s sorrow, it only saps today of it’s joy, we all have worries and care, the only impact worry will ever have is on our health. 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. 
 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. 
 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 the human race can not earn, does not deserve and will never merit. 
 The truth Paul has proclaimed in all of his epistles is we could not get right with God in a million life times of trial and error, we could never make ourselves right with God, God had to do what we could not do for ourselves. 
 Truth designed to give us stability, is truth designed to give us security, God did not intend that believers be insecure, 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. 
 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, 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.

Some people are extremely proud of their humility, there are those who put on a show humility for the sake of elevating self. The selflessness Paul has in mind in his epistles does not point to itself, it does not tell others how selfness it is in order to call attention to it’s self, it does not seek a response from others, it does not have to make an appeal to the emotions of others for the purpose of calling attention to it’s self, true selflessness would point to the selflessness of someone else, rather than it’s self. 
 One serving of self, leads to another serving of self, words spoken in haste, lead to other words spoken in haste, harmful words to further harmful words, we serve the sin nature rather than our Savior, as we serve self, rather than the Body of saints to whom we are as equally and intimately joined, as we are joined to our Savior. 
 Apart from trusting Jesus Christ as Savior, human righteousness comes from self-interest-motivation, it is self-glorifying, and while it may be of earthly benefit, that will not cut it when it comes to meeting the demands of God’s perfect justice. We cannot use experience to prove the validity of our doctrinal position, we must always use doctrine to prove the validity of our experience. 
 Emotion can lead us down the path, and will oftentimes, most likely lead us down the wrong path, when emotion becomes the governor of our intellect, rather than the doctrinally governed intellect becoming the ruler of our emotions. Emotion should never be the fuel, we should never be emotionally driven, but doctrinally driven. Unbelievers and believers alike struggle with the innate sense of right and wrong, and they are drawn toward that desire to fulfill the lusts of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life, that is the sin nature working in opposition to the conscience, to have a person go in a direction contrary to that inner sense of right and wrong that is common to all humankind.

God has a plan for heaven that pertains to you and I. That pertains to people today who will take God at his message through the apostle of the Gentiles, the apostle Paul. Satan and his forces are so obsessed with stealing Paul’s gospel, obsessed with keeping it hidden so people do not discover it. 
 As long as people do not discover Paul’s gospel, as long as they are steered away from the true gospel they cannot believe Paul’s gospel. Satan and his forces are playing a cover up game with Paul’s gospel, because they have a desire to keep people lost. 
 For example, Satan and his forces have deceived a great many people into believing a negative view of the body in contrast to the soul, and a concept of salvation as interior experience rather than total transformation. A great many people have been deceived into believing that their nature is dualistic, that is, consisting of a material, mortal body and a spiritual, immortal soul. 
 They generally envision a destiny where their immortal souls will survive the death of their body and will spend eternity in the bliss of heaven or in the torment of hell. These people have been taught that death is the separation of the immortal soul from the mortal body, so that the soul survives the body in a disembodied state. 
 By death, the soul is separated from the body, but a resurrection God will give incorruptible life to the body, transformed by reunion with the soul. Worst of all, dualism has given rise to the sadistic teaching that God makes the wicked suffer unending conscious torment in hell, which has been such a burden to the Christian conscience and such unnecessary offense to many seekers. 
 Dualism has done such a serious harm in weakening our blessed hope of Christ ‘s appearing and in distorting our understanding of our citizenship in heaven. The Bible never sees the flesh and the soul as two different forms of existence. Rather, they are manifestations of the same person, the ancient Hebrews could not conceive of one without the other. 
 The two are indissolubly connected because the body is the outward form of the soul and the soul the inward life of the body. The body and soul are an indivisible unity; people are seen from two different perspectives. The body is the physical reality of human existence; the soul is the vitality and personality of human existence. 
 “For the soul of every creature is the blood of it,” the phrase “every creature” suggests that the reference to blood apply to both humans and animals. We have here a most important insight revealed into the essence of human nature; soul and blood are identical. 
 The fact that a person consists of various parts which are integrated, interrelated and functionally united, leaves no room for the notion of the soul being distinct from the body and thus removing the basis for the belief in the survival of the soul at the death of the body. The first death is a temporary sleep because it is followed by a resurrection. The second death is permanent and irreversible extinction because there is no awakening.

It is simply been given to man to either accept or reject what Christ has already accomplished in this age of grace. The believer today then, is to be based upon appreciation of what Christ has already done, and the security that we have in him, rather than apprehension based upon a supposition of what God may or may not do in the future for us. 
 Many people involved in religion’s domain are dealing with God on the basis of probation, rather than salvation. Then God must make a decision in their minds, whether or not to save that individual. Their suitability for heaven depends upon their turning away from all of their sins. 
 If they will simply dedicate themselves to no longer to sin, that is the idea. God testing over and over again the validity of that dedication. Then God will know if they are truly devoted to him, then he will be able to finally make a decision as to whether or not they are heaven worthy. 
 That is the idea in and in most people’s minds; it is the idea being promoted by ministers of righteousness. That is probation, not salvation. God is not testing or proving people today, in order to make a final decision as to whether or not to save them, or to keep them saved. 
 All the saving work that God could possibly do, he has already done through Christ. God now holds forth the reconciliation that Christ has accomplished, in his mind, offering man the choice to either accept or reject that gift of salvation. Appreciation based on the reality of salvation, not apprehension based on religion’s message of probation.

Salvation is not doing; it is believing! It is counting what God believes to be true for you and about you as true for you and about you. Our performance is not the source of our righteousness before God; the only righteousness God can recognize is our position in Jesus Christ when it comes to mankind and mankind’s indwelling sin nature in the flesh. 
 To believe that what you are doing and what you are restraining yourselves from doing is the way you are earning your righteous standing with God, you have got to put a lot of confidence in your flesh to do that; religiondumb is doing that! Those who are IN Jesus Christ are those who are NOT walking after the faulty assumption that their righteousness is related to their performance, that was Israel’s problem. 
 Those who are IN Jesus Christ are those who place no confidence in their flesh, but understand, as Paul understood, that in their flesh dwells no good thing. The sanctification that comes by way of being placed INTO Christ - joined to Christ - is positional truth. A sanctified position IN Christ comes not as a result of behavior, it comes as a result of belief! God is not looking at how well we adhere to any standard. 
 God is not looking at our production. God is not looking at our behavior in order to view us as being in favor with him. What a marvelous plan God had for us! God has kept the fingerprints of the guilt-worthy off of the righteousness he designed for the guilt-worthy. God’s reconciliation to man is from God’s side only. 
 God alone decided to make peace with man, while man is still very much ungodly, a sinner, and while man is an active enemy to God. This one-sided reconciliation on God’s part is self-evident proof of God’s superabundant love to man. 
 As far as God is concerned, he loved man so much that he was willing to let his own son die for sinful man, and have his son pay all the penalties of their sins, forget their rebelliousness and overlook their hostility, while they were still sinners, still rebellious, and still hostile. God made up his mind to become completely reconciled to mankind before man made any signs of making peace with God. 
 God has told the world through Paul’s teaching’s, that he has reconciled himself to them because of his love for them, and it was God alone who did this harmonious act; they have had nothing to do with it, all they have had to do is to receive the reconciliation that God has made with mankind. God has one-sidedly reconciled himself to mankind through what the death of his son accomplished; all sins and hostility are paid for as far as God is concerned. 
 Many people involved in religion’s domain are dealing with God on the basis of probation, rather than salvation. Then God must make a decision in their minds, whether or not to save that individual. Their suitability for heaven depends upon their turning away from all of their sins. 
 If they will simply dedicate themselves to no longer to sin, that is the idea. God testing over and over again the validity of that dedication. Then God will know if they are truly devoted to him, then he will be able to finally make a decision as to whether or not they are heaven worthy. That is the idea in and in most people’s minds; it is the idea being promoted by ministers of righteousness. 
 That is probation, not salvation. God is not testing or proving people today, in order to make a final decision as to whether or not to save them, or to keep them saved. All the saving work that God could possibly do, he has already done through Christ. God now holds forth the reconciliation that Christ has accomplished, in his mind, offering man the choice to either accept or reject that gift of salvation. 
 Appreciation based on the reality of salvation, not apprehension based on religion’s message of probation. If Satan can keep that glorious message of Paul hidden by blinding people’s eyes to the reality of reconciliation through a message that keeps sin on the table of God’s justice where that sin has already been put away. 
 Many people are living in their minds today with probation rather than salvation. With Israel's earthly program being set aside, during this age of grace, no nationality enjoys special favor in the eyes of God; all must come alike to God today. God did not lift up the Gentiles, who had been without God, and put them on an equal or higher plain, than belonged to Israel. 
 He concluded Israel in unbelief, as he had previously concluded the Gentiles in unbelief, both of them down on the same level, so that he might have mercy on all, and that is where it is today, according to Paul. It is man who needs to be reconciled to God, not the other way around. 
 God is already reconciled to us, where our sins are concerned. It is not a sin issue, it is a son issue. What a marvelous plan Gods for us! God has kept the fingerprints of the guilt-worthy off of the righteousness he designed for the guilt-worthy. Understanding the grace of God is an intricate part of the joy that should really be a part of every believer’s life. 
 The grace of God has brought peace with God, is the foundation of every believer’s joy in this age. 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. 
 Justification is a legal term which changes the believing sinner’s standing before God, declaring us acquitted and accepted by God, with the guilt and penalty of our sins put away forever. Christ did not die to give us a reprieve, he did not die to give us temporary relief. 
 The only reason God could say through Paul, “Grace and peace be unto you“ is because his son fully paid the price. So in the midst of Paul’s troubling circumstances, he is thanking God, he is thinking what God accomplished for him through Christ.

It is an amazing thing that for believers and that is the only people to whom Paul is writing, there is a Bema Seat of Christ Judgment that husbands will not be judged by how well their wives responded, it will be how well they led, and wives will not be judged as to whether their husbands were leading correctly, but in their role in serving the husband. 
 Paul’s not saying, walk worthy in order to gain our calling, or walk worthy in order to keep our calling, but walk worthy of the calling that belongs to us, because God has freely given it to us. How can we who have been justified freely, sanctified in Christ, how should we be conducting ourselves, we should conduct ourselves in a manner conducive to the job that God’s given us. 
 We should conduct ourselves in a manner that goes sides by side or that goes in hand with what God’s already called us to do, that job is our ambassadorship. It is our ambassadorship of the message of reconciliation, how our we to conduct ourself given our ambassadorship, we are called to peace, this is how believer’s are to relate to other believers. Sorry buddy, somehow my morning post got mixed up with my answer to you. As believers, we do not possess the life that Jesus got when God raised him from among the dead as an inherent quality any more than we possess God’s righteousness as a property in our own nature. Just as in the midst of our sinfulness, we are righteous, so in the midst of our self-evident mortality, we are going to get the life God gave to Jesus. 
 In John 5:26, Jesus was “to have” that life that God has within himself, Jesus never had that kind of life before, he was to have it. In 1 John 1:1-5, Jesus indeed got that life, his disciples testify he got that life he was telling them he was going to get. 
 As a result of our being sealed in Christ, we are what we are not. In ourselves, we are not righteous and not immortal, but in Christ, we are both righteous and immortal. The fact that the living saints will meet with Christ at the same time as the sleeping saints indicates that the latter have not yet been united with Christ in heaven. 
 Paul was not concerned about a ‘state’ which exists between death and resurrection, but for a relationship that exists between the believer and Christ through death. This relationship of being with Christ is not interrupted by death, because the believer who sleeps in Christ has no awareness of the passing of time. 
 Paul did not think the question of the status of the person between death and resurrection was a question that needed to be considered. The reason is that for Paul, those who die in Christ, their relationship with Christ is one of immediacy, because they have no awareness of the passing of time between their death and resurrection. 
 Paul explains that both the sleeping and living believers will be united with Christ, not at death, but at his coming for his body of believers in this age of Grace. Paul never alluded to the conscious survival of the soul and its reattachment to the body at the resurrection, that is a notion totally foreign to Paul and to Scripture as a whole.

Do you believe it was an all-sufficient reconciliation where the entirety of the world’s sin debt was concerned, or do you believe that you must obtain a new measure of reconciliation every time you sin? Yes, Christ died for everyone’s sins, but only those who believe and trust Paul’s message of the grace of God will have their sins actually paid for. 
 There are many who refuse to believe in what Christ actually accomplished, they fail to understand what the ‘for my sins’ part of Paul’s message of the grace of God is all about. They refuse to acknowledge that Christ’s death actually resolved God’s justice where the sins Christ died for are concerned and they continue to hang on the notion that God is hanging on to their sins. 
 This renders Christ’s payment for sin a partial payment, or a down payment, or a future payment at best, rather than a completed and satisfactory payment. God never collects a debt twice, Christ paid for your sins, this should motivate us all the more to love him and to serve him by serving others. 
 Our labor of love is all about transformation, it is not about reformation, and Paul’s message of the grace of God is able to transform our thinking, such that transformed thinking begins to manifest itself through transformed relation. It becomes more about who we have become, rather than about who we are trying to be. 
 The more we know about who we were apart from Christ, and who God made us to be in Christ, the more we see our own human sin-nature bent. Thus, the more we can see why people who have not believed Paul’s message of the grace of God are functioning in the manner they are. 
 Dying to self, is never portrayed as something optional, it is the reality of being born anew, God wants us to stop putting our faith in ourselves, he wants us to actually come to the place where we literally have no confidence in the flesh, but have full reliance in Christ alone. 
 We must come to the place of utter weakness, be stripped of all confidence in ourselves, unless we are willing to see our old lives crucified with Christ, and begin to live anew in obedience to him and then we will find our true self in Jesus. Not some depressing ‘down-on-self’ condition, but a return to God’s original pattern for man: free of obsession with self, and focused upon God. 
 It is not normal to have high self-esteem or low self-esteem; both are a focus on self, but to leave self alone and to be absorbed with Jesus Christ, weak in ourselves, but fully reliant upon Christ in every way. This is why God allows all kinds of things into our lives, which he uses to strip us of our personal sense of worth. 
 God is making us conformable to the death of Christ, so that in living experience, we might become conformed in his resurrection. This does not mean that when we die to self we become inactive or insensible, nor do we feel ourselves to be dead. Rather, dying to self means that the things of the old life are put to death, most especially the sinful ways and lifestyles we once engaged in. 
 The entire concept seems a bit strange to our natural eyes. Dying to self is something you can take very literal; you will die in every way possible in order to be someone you are not. Dying to self is not fun or easy, but what is particularly difficult about fighting this tendency is that it is not exactly a behavior or action. 
 It can certainly manifest itself in those forms, but underneath them is an attitude, a real change of mind and attitude towards sin itself and the cause of it, a change in our principle action from what is by nature the exact opposite. The answer to that sin has nothing to do with our desire to do it. 
 The fact is that it is grievous to God, and we do not answer that by saying that we are going to stop doing it, or we are no longer going to desire to do it, it is not our ability to stop it. The answer to the fact that we all have this sin nature lies solely in the fact that Christ paid for it, but Christ did not clean-up the sin nature. 
 His effort was not to take the old man and fix him up, dress him up, and make a Christian out of the old man. Christ crucified the old man, and we are called upon simply to believe what Paul tells us Christ did where that shortcoming in us is concerned. Being saved is not something that God has to do, something that God has to make a decision about doing. 
 Being saved is about man accepting the gift that has already been purchased, and there is no saving work to be done by Jesus, because it has all been done, it has been accomplished.

God justifies those who take him at his word concerning what his son accomplished; something for nothing! Being declared righteous is God’s gift to the believing sinner and it has nothing whatsoever to do with the sinner himself doing anything to deserve or merit that righteous standing. 
 The righteousness God credits to the account of the believer is a righteousness that comes without a cause in the one being declared so. We have to admit, that is difficult for people imbued with the pride of life to imagine. It is difficult to accept because it does not seem fair to the human mind, especially to the religiously minded. 
 It does not seem quite right that God could consider someone righteous, especially if that person is not expending the same amount of effort or attention that they are to become righteous by way of his or her practice. One can see why some have called this justification of God; cheap justification, one can see where the pride of life comes up with that notion. 
 If it is that easy, (is the idea) if you can obtain righteousness without doing something, or even trying to do something (or at the very least, promising to do something) in order to gain it-why, that would be too easy and that would make it cheap. It is absolutely free, but it was certainly not cheap, it came at tremendous cost. 


If Satan cannot touch the body of Christ, then why did Paul instruct us to put on the armor of God, to resist the devil, to stand firm, and to be alert? If we are not susceptible to being wounded or trapped by Satan, why does Paul describe our relationship to the powers of darkness as a wrestling match? 
 Those who deny the enemy’s potential for destruction are the most vulnerable to it. Even though our eternal destiny is secure and the armor of God is readily available, we are still vulnerable to Satan’s accusations and temptations. If we give into these, we can be influenced by Satan, and if we remain under his influence long enough, we can lose control, if we fail to stand against him. 
 Ownership is never at stake, Satan cannot touch our new identity, but as long as we are living in this fleshly body, we can allow ourselves to be vulnerable targets to all Satan’s fiery darts. How do you think Satan carries on his worldwide ministry of evil and deception? 
 He is a created being; he is not omnipresent, omniscient, or omnipotent. He cannot be everywhere in the world tempting and deceiving millions of people at the same moment. He does so through an army of emissaries “fallen angels called evil spirits” who propagate his plan of rebellion around the world. 
 The Bible does not attempt to prove the existence of evil spirits any more than it attempts to prove the existence of God, it simply reports on their activities. If these evil spirits can get us to listen to the thoughts, they plant in our mind, they can influence us, and if we allow them to influence us long enough through temptation and accusation, they can control our ability to carry out our ministry of reconciliation. 
 Bad habits and sinful thought patterns were established when we learned to live our life independently of God before we were born anew. Our environment taught us to think about and respond to life, and those patterns and responses were ingrained in our mind as strongholds. 
 These evil spirits perpetual aim is to infiltrate our thoughts with their thoughts; they know if they can control our thoughts, they can control our behavior. They can introduce their thoughts, tempting us to act independently of our ministry of reconciliation, as if they were our own thoughts or even God’s thoughts. 
 These evil spirits can put thoughts in our mind even as Satan did with David (1 Chronicles 21:1). If we do not conquer their tempting thoughts right at the threshold of our mind, we will begin to mull their thought over, consider them an option, and eventually choose to act them out. 
 Repeated acts form a habit, and if we exercise a sinful habit long enough, a stronghold will be established in our mind. Once a stronghold is established, we can lose the ability to control our behavior in that area. Next to temptation, perhaps the most frequent and insistent attack from these evil spirits to which we are vulnerable is accusation. 
 Accusation is a deep-seated sense of self-deprecation; I am not important, I am not qualified, I am no good. We become paralyzed in our witness and productivity in our ministry of reconciliation by thoughts and feelings of inferiority and worthlessness. 
 These evil spirits often use temptation and accusation as a brutal one-two punch. They come along and say, “Why don’t you try it? Everybody does it.” Then as soon as we fall for their temping line, they change their tune to accusation: “What kind of believer are you to do such a thing? You are a pitiful excuse for a child of God.” 
 Many believers are perpetually discouraged and defeated because they believe their persistent lies about them. When we leave a door open for these evil spirits by not resisting temptation and accusation, they will enter it. If we continue to allow them access to that area, they will eventually control it. 
 Many believers today who cannot control their lives in some area wallow in self-blame instead of acting responsibly to solve the problem. They berate themselves and punish themselves for not having the willpower to break a bad habit.

What a wonderful blessings is this blessing of sainthood, and it is ours this very instance, because saint has been our moniker in heaven, it is this very moment and has been so since we first trusted Jesus Christ. 
 Being made the righteousness of God himself in our union with a perfectly righteous savior, then being hid with Christ in God gives us a tremendously safe and special place, because what child does God see, when he deals with us, God sees his son, Jesus Christ. 
 We have been given new motivation to serve, but thank God that our destiny, our blessings are not dependent on our serving, Christ did the serving for us, he did it faithfully as well as it could be done, he is our righteousness. 
 When we get our eyes off our new identity, and try to produce in our daily experience the acceptance God has already extended to us, we will struggle, because the enemy will try to convince us that we are an unworthy, unacceptable, sin-sick person who will never amount to anything in God’s eyes. 
 We are saints whom God has declared righteous, believing the enemies lie will lock us into a defeated, fruitless life, but believing God’s truth about who we are, will set us free. It is imperative to our growth and maturity that we believe God’s truth about who we are in Christ.

Reconciliation and sanctification, two different judicial transactions, God is no longer imputing the sins of the world, unto the world, because he imputed those sins to his son. God has reconciled the entire world; believers and non-believers alike to himself through what his son accomplished. 
 Now, we need to be placed into God’s son, so that we can have his son’s righteousness attributed freely to our account. Total abandonment of any notion that our performance is connected by any means or in any manner to our righteous standing IN Christ. 
 Our performance would never cut it, not before we were born anew, and not after, we need to allow God’s power to take up residence with us, but we do not control this power, as if it were some universal force; rather, we have access to this power that is dwelling within us. 
 We need to cease attributing our righteous standing before God to our performance and keep our mind focused solely on how God views us IN Christ, that is what grace-life is all about, and we will be victorious in that God’s power can now produce it’s fruit in our life. When God raised Jesus from among the dead, it was God’s stamp of “pain in full” on the invoice of our sin debt. 
 We could not get right with God in a million life times of trial and error, we could never make ourselves right with God; God had to do what we could not do. Now believing sinners can be certain that in Christ, they are justified. The simple message of Paul’s gospel is total payment for sin, accomplished by Christ’s total sacrifice. 
 According to Paul, we have how much forgiveness, total forgiveness! If we want God to view us today, we got to be in his son. How can we get into his son, and have all of his righteousness freely imputed to our account? By simply taking God at his word concerning what his son accomplished for us, it is as simply as that. 
 When God says he is satisfied with what Christ did for our sins, when Christ died for them, all our sins were all future. It is a son issue on our part, not a sin issue, in order to receive the gift of salivation. The resurrection of Christ is not only a historical event that we look back to with satisfaction and joy; it is the greatest event in history. 
 One of the most disturbing things is someone unable to express confidence about whether they can know if they will have eternal life or not. The very power that raised Jesus from among the dead is available to us; we were baptized into Jesus Christ with this power. Faith is taking God at his word concerning what his son accomplished on our behalf. 
 God did all the giving; we do only all the receiving. 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 judged 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. Justification is a legal term which changes the believing sinner’s standing before God, declaring us acquitted and accepted by God, with the guilt and penalty of our sins put away forever. In our position in Christ, now we can bear fruit unto God, but it is only in our position in Christ, not through this fleshly body in which we dwell. 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 that aspect of our lives. 
 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.