teachmevp

Rather than praying, “Please forgive me for that sin,” when we are supposed to be believing God is not counting it to our account, because he charged it to his son, we can say, “Thank you for the forgiveness we already have in Christ.” 
 Salvation where sins are concerned was fully accomplished by Jesus Christ and when accepted by the believer at that very instant that person is sealed until the day of the redemption of our earthly tent in which we dwell. 
 What will cause God to bring a halt to this present dispensation and return Israel as his channel of blessing to the earth? What will trigger the gathering together of the body of Christ of this age and return with promises to Israel concerning the earth? What will it be like when God says enough is enough on his program for heaven so he might pick up where he left off with his program for those who will inherit the earth? 
 “As evil men wax worse and worse”, this is Paul’s description, things will have progressed to a heightened or elevated state just prior to God pulling the plug in a matter of speaking on this present day program. Paul is not providing signs in this Age of Grace, because Paul tells us we walk by faith not sight.

In our position in Jesus 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. Paul could not escape his sinful nature no matter how fervently he tried. Our fleshly bodies will never be worthy of heaven in that they will never be able to perform to the measure of the righteousness that is true of God. 
 We are alive because of our position, not at all because of our practice. As we understand what God accomplished for us through his son, we build upon that foundation the truths of who he has made us to be when he placed us into his son, we begin to view ourselves as God views us, and there is great security to be found in doing so. 
 God’s love for those who are joined to his son is the same unalterable and unending love God has for his son. God no longer views us in our human flesh, he views us in our position in the second Adam (Jesus Christ), he views us in our glorified identity. 
 That is how closely connected we are to Christ, no sin, no circumstance, no member of creation, no amount of time, no measure of distance will ever be able to diminish God’s loving attitude towards those who are united to him by way of being in his son. Positional sanctification is not a process, it is a past tense accomplishment that can never be revised, reduced, or retracted.

The Book of Revelation, though the language is Greek, the thoughts and idioms are Hebrew, and this links it on, not to the Pauline Epistles, but to the Old Testament, and shows that its great subject is God’s final dealings with the Israelites and the Gentile, and not the Body of Christ. The Book of Revelation is not only Hebrew in character as to its linguistic peculiarities, but especially in its use of the Old Testament, only those who have most intimate acquaintance with the Old Testament can properly understand this book, but all who know anything of Old Testament history cannot fail to detect the almost constant reference to this book. 
 All the imagery, the Temple, the Tabernacle, the Ark of the Covenant, the Altar, all this belongs peculiarly to Israel, the same may be said of the judgments, which follow on the lines of the plagues of Egypt, and therefore are to be just as real, indeed they are to exceed in dread reality those which were executed in the exodus from Egypt. The Book of Revelation is undoubtedly written about the people of the Old Testament, who are the subjects of its history, these will understand this book as Gentiles can never hope to do.
 When the Body of Christ has been removed, and Israel is again dealt with, there will be, as there was then, plenty of religion, the religious condition of the nation will exactly correspond with its condition at Christ’s first coming, the state of things, they were then and will be again in the future. The seven Epistles in Revelation chapters 2 and 3, they are written to a people supposed to be well-versed in the history of the Old Testament, and well-acquainted with all that had happened to their fathers, and had been written for their admonition. 
 Instructed in the past history of their nation, they will readily understand the relation between the testings and judgments in the past with which they are familiar, and those similar circumstances in which they will find themselves in a yet future day. While the historical events connected with the rebukes in these seven Epistles are carried down from Exodus to the period of the Minor Prophets, the promises cover a different period, commencing with the period of Eden, and ending with the period of Solomon. 
 The subjects of the rebukes follow the order of the departure of the People from Yahweh, their decline and apostasy is traced out in the historical references contained in these Epistles, but when we turn to the promises, then all is different, they proceed in the opposite direction, instead of descending, from Israel’s highest ground of privilege (Exodus) to the lowest stage of destitution (Minor Prophets) - ascends, in the counsels of Yahweh, from tending a garden to sharing his throne. To him that overcomes, this is language wholly foreign to the Epistles written to believers by Paul, the members of the Body of Christ have already overcome all, in Christ. 
 The overcomers who are addressed at the close of each of these seven Epistles in the Book of Revelation will be living in the days of the Beast, in the midst of the great Tribulation, they will be special overcomers of a specific form of evil. No one can put this Epistle to Ephesus by the side of that of Paul to the Ephesians, and think for a moment that it can be the same Assembly that is addressed, note the standing of grace in the one, and the standing of works in the other. In Paul’s Epistle to the Body of Christ in Ephesus, God speaks to those who are all of them on the highest ground of privilege and of grace, but in John’s Epistle, there is no blessing at all, except to the overcomers. 
 To him that overcomes, will I give to eat of the tree of life which is in the Paradise of God, this Paradise of the New Earth, which will characterize the Kingdom, was referred to by Jesus in his answer to the dying thief, (today) on this day of shame and death, beyond which you see by the eye of faith, that promise will be fulfilled to him as an overcomer. His faith overcame all his circumstances, and he marvelously believed in spite of all the awful scenes of that day, that Jesus was the Messiah, and that he would yet come in his Kingdom. To him, therefore, as an overcomer, was the promise of that future Paradise given, as here it is given to all who shall overcome by the same faith.

Paul was teaching grace plus nothing, and that leads people with a sin nature and a pride nature to say, Oh, you have got to do something. People think that their righteous standing with God is directly related to their behavior or conduct; their work for God. 
 We have got to be good for God, is the idea, because if we are bad, well, this grace thing only goes so far. Unfortunately, that is the idea in a lot of people’s minds; today it is presented along these lines, grace is a license to sin. 
 Paul was reasoning, do not think that way, stop thinking in that manner, 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. Some have come to the erroneous notion that God will forbid a person who thinks like that to belief the good news in the first place. 
 Others have committed just as great an error by supposing that God removes salvation from a person who continues to sin after salvation. Both are faulty conclusions based upon a foundation of works for a righteous standing before God belief-system based again, upon a self-sanctification for righteousness concept. 
 We would naturally come to be thinking along those lines if we fail to have an understanding of Justification and Sanctification. 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 ourselves apart behaviorally, naturally we want other people to set themselves apart and we want them to have to tow the mark as we have to tow the mark to keep God happy, and that is a faulty conclusion, and that is not what Justification or Sanctification are all about.

How long ago did Jesus Christ die for our sins? So when he died for our sins, how many of those sins were future? He took those sins off of us before we were ever born; all of them! If God’s justice was not satisfied where one of those sins were concerned, where would Christ be today? In the ground! 
 But as proof-positive that God was totally satisfied with what Christ did on our behalf, God raised Christ from among the dead. Now that means that our sins have been taken care of! Christ’s test score is put on our paper and God can call us a saint. 
 God can look at us, a believing sinner, and he can see us as righteous as he is himself, because what belongs to his son, belongs to us; we are joined to his son. A marriage made in heaven in a literal sense. Ministers of righteousness will ever more keep that issue of sins on the table of God’s justice. 
 They will continually want us to do this and stop doing that, in order to keep God happy with us when the reality is: He couldn’t be any happier with us than he is; Christ having taken our sin debt upon himself, and we having trusted what happened where our sins are concerned. 
 We can now serve God out of appreciation rather than apprehension less we forget something and have that sin held agains us. Sin is gone as far as the judicial aspect of sin from God’s vantage point. It is taken care of once and for all! 
 People will suffer the second death not because of the sins God’s son pain for. They will suffer the second death because they have never been clothed with the righteousness of Christ. They have kept sin on the table of God’s justice their entire lifetimes and sat under ministers of righteousness who have led the way.

Paul reminds us that the tribulations we face are actually a means of achieving our supreme goal of maturity. People tend to look for quick-fix solutions to difficult situations, but God’s plan is for us to hang in there and grow up. 
 When we stop believing that God is in control, that he is working everything out for our good and that whatever happens is for the ultimate best of everyone involved, however little it seems to be that way. The more time and energy we invest in contemplating our own plans on how to live our life, the less time and energy we have to seek God’s plan for our ministry of reconciliation. 
 The first thing we need to understand about the battle for our mind, the main targets which must be destroyed, are the strongholds. Strongholds are negative patterns of thought, which are burned into our minds either through repetition over time or through one-time traumatic experiences. 
 Before we were born anew, all our stimulation came from the environment of this hostile world. Every day we lived in this environment we were influenced by it and preconditioned to conform it. We developed a philosophy about how to survive, cope and succeed in this world apart from God. 
 Once a stronghold of thought and response is entrenched in our mind, our ability to choose and act contrary to that pattern is virtually nonexistent. That is why Paul insists that we be transformed by the renewing of our minds. Strongholds in our mind are the result of conditioning; we can be reconditioned by the renewing of our mind, anything that has been learned can be unlearned. 
 The enemy have no power over us except what we give them by falling to take every thought captive and thus being deceived into believing their lies. If they can get us to believe a lie, they can control our life. Our emotions play a major role in the process of renewing our mind, our emotions reveal our perceptions. Our emotions are a product of our thought life, and if we are not thinking right, if our mind is not being renewed, if we are not perceiving God and his word properly, it will show up on our emotional life.

Those who put on the breastplate of righteousness know that we have peace with God, for a person to have to make their own peace with God would be nothing more than an exercise in futility, it could never be done. We could not make peace with God, to say that anyone could make peace with God, would be to limit God to his mercy, because grace is the foundation on which Paul’s entire ministry was built. 
 There is a glory that belongs to God’s grace, and it is to be praised on the bases on what God’s grace has accomplished. The security all believers have in that the indwelling resurrection power of God guarantees that those who have believed Paul’s good news can never be lost, they belong to God. 
 The word translated “sealed” in Ephesians 1:13 means sealed for preservation. The seal is the safeguarding device, the securing device, used to preserve the contents. God’s power is the seal that God uses to secure all who believe in this dispensation of grace. 
 The word translated “earnest” in Ephesians 1:14 means a pledge in the sense that an advance deposit has been made as the security guaranteeing the fulfillment of that which has been promised to those who have been sealed. Like when a person gives earnest money in connection with a purchase, that person is guaranteeing, through that which is given in advance their intention of following through on that which they have promised. According to Paul, the indwelling of God’s power is both God’s seal and his deposited pledge that all believers are forever his and are destined to inherit eternal life. Paul doesn’t tell us that we are filled with God’s power, but instead, Paul is telling us that we should be filled with God’s power. 
 In other words, we should allow God’s power to be in control of our lives. Of course, the degree to which we do that is up to us. God’s power works in us, but only to the degree that we are willing to yield ourselves to God’s use in our ministry of reconciliation.

Thank you for your insight.

Rejoicing is the exhibit of that interstate of mind, because no longer do we have to strive to attain and maintain God’s acceptance on the basis of who we are and what we can do, no longer are our sins held against us, no longer does the death penalty for sin hang over us. Joy is a trust issue; joy in Christ for a believer is that of a state of mind independent of surrounding circumstances. 
 People glorifies themselves by filtering everything they say and everything they do through that screen of self-protection, self-elevation, and self-gratification. Joy comes from an understanding of the grace of God, an understanding and appreciation of the resultant peace with God that we now have because of God’s grace. 
 The insidious reality of the enemies relentless assault of deception on our mind can keep us from experiencing maturity and freedom, because our past has shaped our present belief system and will determine our future unless it is dealt with. We have been tricked into believing that what we do makes us what we are. 
 Our understanding of the identity that Adam had before the fall, that identity has been restored to us, that restored identity is the critical foundation for our belief structure and our behavior patterns.

There will be a people for God on the earth during those eventful years, there will be the remnant of believing Israelites, the 144,000 sealed ones, the great multitude, another bodies of faithful ones who are referred to all through the Book of Revelation. Will these not need special instruction, God has provided for their instruction, and warning, and encouragement, in the second and third chapters of this book, right at the beginning they are the first subjects of God’s remembrance, provision, and care. 
 The Pauline Epistles will of course be of use as an historical record of what will then be past, just as we have the record of Israel’s history in the Old Testament now. Even now, the nucleus of the Remnant is being prepared, hundreds of Israelites are believing in Christ as the Messiah, who know nothing of him as the Savior. At the very outset we are thus warned that we are no longer on, but quite off, the ground of the Pauline Epistles, which are addressed to sons, and not to servants, without denying that the members of the Body of Christ are in a certain sense servants of Christ, yet it is also perfectly clear that servant is not our title as to our new position in Christ before God. 
 As the members of the Body of Christ have need of patience, and endurance, but we are looking, not for the kingdom, but for the King himself, not as King, for he is not so proclaimed till his enemies are subdued, and though we, too, exercise this patient endurance in tribulation, it is not in the tribulation, but we are waiting to be taken away before that tribulation comes upon the earth. 
 The subject of this whole Book of Revelation is the visible appearing of Jesus Christ in power, and glory, and for judgment in the earth, it is not a series of revelations about Jesus Christ, but the book which gives us the particulars about the events which are connected with his appearing. The end for which the Body of Christ is waiting is not judgment or tribulation, but to be received up in glory, to be changed and have glorious bodies like our Savior’s own body of glory, that coming is into the air, and not unto the earth. What are your thoughts about these thoughts everyone?

I like to reason out of the word, the way and their chapter and verse attitude was a stubbling block for me, how does one chapter and verses a figure of speech. These posts are just thoughts.

There is now no violation of the law, no sin, that can alter God’s attitude toward an acceptance of those who accept the finished work of his son, sins are no longer merely covered, they are now completely paid for, completely forgiven, completely taken out of the way, that attitude can not fluctuate. Jesus Christ removed the alienation sin wall, it could never be raised again, it is this message Satan and his clan hates the most, because that wall means alienation and separation, and removal of that wall means reconciliation. 
 Do we ponder this on a daily bases in our lives, so it becomes a state of mind, rejoicing in our savior until it becomes a state of mind, awaking every morning of our life with the security we have in Christ. Everybody believes or supposed to believe in the death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus Christ, that is not the message that saves, it is understanding the meaning of that message that saves today. 
 We have to believe that message of what happened to our sins, and there is where ministers of righteousness are having a hay-day, because they are keeping the issue of sins on the table of God’s justice, when they are no longer on the table of God’s justice. 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. 
 There are people out there who believe they can lose their salvation, because they are totally confused with their position in Christ and with their state. Standing is what God’s made us to be and what we can never cease to be in his eyes, state has to do with how we are taking advantage or not taking advantage of that God given position that is everlastingly ours by God’s decree. 
 Give up serving self, and that will be the best service to self we could ever give ourself, because we will find true freedom and joy to be the ultimate result, give up serving self and serve others. We can learn one thing for sure, overcoming addiction does not come through the commitment to stop serving the addiction, the more effort we expend in that area, the more over-whelming will become the desire for that to which we are addicted, overcoming addition comes only through the commitment to be addicted to something different. 
 God has given us a perfect standing in our union with his perfectly righteous son, he’s also made provision for us now to have an ever improving state or experience, it is called maturing, it is what our growth is all about. I am just a PFAL grad, you guys have gone through all the classes and schooling, what chance do I have with a discussion with you'ins?

Righteous fruit was a requirement under the law contract, and Israel, the fig tree had not produced any, Israel was incapable of producing any, because the law was weak through the flesh, there was no crop to harvest when it came to righteousness. The law was given to Israel, not to deter sin, but to show them their sin, how very opposite from the thinking of the religious pride nature of human reasoning, people who have no clue as to why the law was given in the first place, or really to whom it was given, actually think that the ten commandments will make us all better. The truth is those with a sin nature have never needed a license to sin, we do it naturally, have we today, learned any thing at all from God’s program with the nation Israel, even though we are not part of that program. People who want to think they are obeying the law contract today, they think they are fulfilling that law contract at least to a degree that God will say that they are doing the very best they can, the law required much more than that. It certainly can get much worse than it is today for believers, it is just an age of grace tribulation, and the time of Jacob’s tribulation are entirely two different things. Persecution and suffering troubling circumstances in a wide variety of ways will very likely increase as this age of grace winds onward towards it’s culmination toward the time of our being caught up to meet Jesus, our Savior in the air. We will be delivered from the time of Israel’s tribulation by way of the Body of Christ being caught up in the air to meet Jesus, we need not come with the idea that since we have deliverance from that tribulation, we believers of the age of grace have an automatic pass when it comes to tribulation, we certainly will not. Every person who has believed Paul’s good news, from the point of Paul’s conversion onward has been made a member of the Body of Christ by being joined to Christ through the baptizing work of God’s power from on high, which takes place at the point of a person’s belief, no one prior to the apostle Paul ever became a member of the Body of Christ. The Body of Christ is a reality only for the saints who came to Christ through Paul’s good news, and have nothing whosoever to do with the saints of the earthly kingdom calling.

God knows whether there is a hidden motivation even to ourselves, hidden by our pride nature to look good before others, to appear knowledgeable before others, to somehow elevate self in relation to others to gain the praise of others, God knows the motivations of the human heart. Any kind of works at all, even if they appear to be good works in our mind, that are done for the purpose attaining salvation or for the purpose of maintaining salvation, even for the purpose of proving one’s salvation is a slap in the face of God who had to provide the gift of salvation, because people’s righteousness would be totally incapable of meriting it, our good works must be done solely out of appreciation for what God has already accomplished. Were establishing the law, we establish it by acknowledging the fact that the law was a picture of God’s perfect righteousness where human performance is concerned, and that when it comes to attaining to that righteous standard, the law can not make a right relationship with God. Was God only partially satisfied with the payment Christ made, or was God fully satisfied where the payment made by his son for the sins of the world are concerned, Christ purchased mankind out of the market place of sins. It is not probation, it is salvation, forgiving us is not something God must decide to do, what his son did for us was sufficient to absolve us of our sin debt, past, present, future, it is gone. If God believes that, let us all take our stand where God takes his, faith is simply taking our stand where God takes his stand.

We cannot do destruction to one truth from Paul in an effort to validate our belief about another truth from Paul, because if we base our theology on one truth given by Paul, while at the same time destroying another truth given us by Paul, we had better rethink our theological position. Rethinking a theological position is much better than committing doctoral destruction to a passage that is put there so very clearly by our apostle Paul. Dead to sin, we now have a brand new identity, those who would die in their sins, were those who would continue to have their identity in Adam, Adam in rebellion, to die with that identification intact. We no longer have that identification once we believe the good news, now we have a brand new identity. The pride nature in people has a difficult time understanding how righteousness from God’s viewpoint can be granted apart from their conduct, and it was true through the ages, God judicially declared to be righteous all who would take him at his word down through time. Paul introduces us in Romans, how it is that God can delate sinners to be heaven-worthy, God decided to give a judicial decree of rightness apart from our behavior, apart from our practice based solely on our belief, that belief would be concerning all who would take him at his word relative to what his son accomplished for us. So, performing that which is good and ceasing from that which is bad is directly related in most people’s minds, especially the religious mindset today to the way that God views a person. We realize that we are saved for the purpose of good works, but we are not saved by our good works, or kept saved by our good works.

Best news the world could ever hear, 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 his son, Jesus Christ. Walk worthy of the vocation that belongs to us, because God has freely given it to us, we have been justified freely, sanctified in Jesus Christ, how should we be conducting ourselves. 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. The carnal Corinthians are guilty of the things Paul listed for them, but that did not reduce, reverse or remove from them their sanctified position that already belonged to them in their union with the risen, glorified son of God. We are to be subject to the higher powers, only when those higher powers are not asking us to go against the highest power there is, and that is God himself, the supreme authority in all matters of life. Grace that results in peace with God, understanding the grace of God which has brought peace with God, is the foundation of every believer’s joy in this age. In the midst of Paul’s troubling circumstances, he was thanking God, he was thinking what God accomplished for him through Jesus Christ. Who we are and what we have in our savior is incredible, joy began with grace unto us from God, the Father and from our savior Jesus Christ. God is anxiously awaiting his own inheritance, which happens to be us, God considers believers to be his own inheritance, he purchased us with the blood of his son, we are God’s valuable inheritance.

We can thank God that we do not have to pray, deliver us from that anti-Christ, this is the manner in which the Israelites are to be praying during the period of the tribulation. We are going to be delivered from this evil one before the tribulation even begins, because we are going to be caught up off of this planet to be with Jesus in the air, we are not appointed to the wrath associated with Israel’s tribulation. These saints of the earthly kingdom program will be praying in that day, give us this day our daily bread, they will be worrying about that day, not the next day. For God has not appointed us to wrath, but to obtain salvation by our Savior Jesus Christ, according to what Paul tells us. Israel was God’s people at the time this prayer was being taught to the disciples of Israel and God was Israel’s God, the Gentiles were apart from God. People oftentimes base their salvation and their relationship to God on their emotions, from Paul’s perspective these people are walking after the flesh, they are walking in relation to the flesh, thinking that their relationship with God is based upon either the feelings of their flesh (emotions) or the capacity of their flesh to produce righteousness through their performance. As faith gives way to feeling, people begin to base their faith on feeling, they want a God they can move to, they want a God that gets them moving, and they want teachers who can make them feel good in the process. Doctrine giving way to emotion will be the order of the day, as time goes on. For the time will come when people will not endure sound doctrine, but after their own lusts shall they heap to themselves teachers, having itching ears. Itching has to do with feeling with physical sensation, to make somebody pleased, or appeal to somebody’s sense of humor.

Those of us who are bent on satisfying the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes and the pride of life fall into a snare, in that we become addicted to the manner in which we satisfy those lusts. Paul does not talk about God pushing a bad button and having something bad happen to us or God taking our life. Paul does talk about when we pursue the satisfaction of the sinful lusts of the flesh, it is not ruination God is bringing on sinful believers, but ruination sinning believers are bringing upon themselves. Unbelievers and believers alike can make choices, Paul is calling on the saved saints, saved and sealed saints to make a decision, to make righteousness the choice of their service. Since God’s power from on high indwells every believer, his power can indeed be grieved when the conduct of believers is contrary to their new position in the Savior. We did not gain our new position in Christ by being good, but rather by believing on what God accomplished, he justifies the ungodly. God counts the faith of the one who agrees with him as to the reality of their own unworthiness, and the fact that they must be justified by God’s gift decree, God counts that person’s faith as being that person’s righteousness. God had to do for us, what we could never do for ourselves, our former identity with Adam, that identity is no longer true of believers, but the sin nature is ever present. While God’s power from on high cannot depart, it can certainly be grieved, God placed it within every believer for the express purpose of guaranteeing those believers an inheritance in heaven, it is God’s guarantee that God will keep his promise.

One purpose of worship as some people define it, is to get a touch from God, to get the emotions at a peak, they feel close to God when they are in a situation that stimulates their emotions. The connection is solid, because the emotional high has been established as they find themselves on an endless quest for emotional satisfaction, because they relate their closeness to God upon feeling, they are either on fire or the fire’s gone out. Paul told us that as time progresses forward in this age of grace, people will become more and more about satisfying their emotional desires, they will be seeking after and devoting themselves to a God they can feel. Justification and Sanctification are not based upon feelings at all, they have nothing to do with feelings or emotions, they are not based on sensation in any sense. When we trusted Christ as our Savior, something happened that took place outside the realm of our sensation, outside the realm of our feeling. This is commonly taught in the hallways of religion, that a person must make a decision to serve, in order to get God to make the decision to save. Some would say to repent, means to have Godly sorrow, others would say that to repent, means to turn around and go the other direction, sin no more. Repent simply means, a change of mind, a change of thinking, Israel was continually being called upon to repent, to change their thinking, they were trusting in themselves. God did not give Israel a law they could keep, he gave them a law impossible for those with a sin-nature to obey perfectly, in order to teach them their need of a Savior. We certainly can make some choices in our lives, due to who God’s made us to be, by joining us to his son.

Will Christ be magnified in my choice? Here is one basic principle we can apply to every situation in our life, God has given us the freedom of personal preference. Not feelings directed, nor is it sight oriented, it comes only through the instruction given in God’s word, as we apply the principles of that word to circumstances of our lives. The Apostle Paul tells us that God’s word to us is complete, God can work through any choice we make, but the choice is ours, because God is not micro-managing believer’s lives today. When it comes to directing our lives, God need not say anything further, in that word that God has completed for us, is all that we need to know to make the choices we have to make in this age of grace, and God has dispensed that information liberally! Every believer is set apart by God as being holy at that person’s belief, God is the one who is performing the setting apart. God accomplishes this sanctification by joining all who believe to his son, a judicial union takes place. Justification is our gift declaration of righteousness, sanctification is how that judicial degree of righteousness is achieved. We are washed, because now we are something else. We are justified, set apart in a judicial sense as being perfectly holy in our union with Jesus Christ, recipients of God’s gift decree of righteousness. Paul brings our attention to the fact that God is now no longer viewing us apart from the righteousness that belongs to his son.

We got our good times, our happy times, our joyous times, but we have our sad times, and our bad times. We got times when we are very low emotionally, when we seem like we are on the bottom and we do not know where to turn or what’s happening next. The whole creation is suffering while we are under the curse. The reality is that we will continue to suffer, health, wealth, and prosperity in this life as the popular money-mongering ministers of righteousness would have us believe today, it is just the opposite. So, why do people have such a difficult time believing the apostle Paul when our apostle tells us that Satan’s ministers of righteousness, during this age of grace will in fact, be working within a religious framework. Paul says in 2 Timothy 3 that there’s a form of godliness, a structure of godliness, and who will be working in that structure of righteousness in the last days of the age of grace, Satan’s ministers of righteousness offering people the song: Health, Wealth, and Prosperity. Throwing out a fleece worked for Gideon, because God led people differently in time-past than the way he is leading today. God has not ceased leading those who are his, Paul tells us that, he is just leading in a different manner today. God worked through signs and wonders in time-past to validate the authority of his message and his messengers. Today we walk by faith, not by sight, God’s word is complete today, but how may of us want to throw out that fleece in some form or fashion. Gideon wanted to see the clear direction, are we any different today, we still want to see conditional direction, when it comes to areas of our lives, where we want God to show us that direction. Far too often the fleece we want to throw is the fleece called feeling.

Study Christine Hayes view on how the bible was written.

You are sealed into Jesus Christ, therefore you are sanctified now, like Romans chapter 8 says, Therefore there is now no condemnation? Watch out for ministers of righteousness, you are righteousness now.

It is a SON issue today, not a SIN issue. The issue is not forgiveness of sin. The issue is believing what Christ accomplished in your behalf, in order to be identified with and joined to Christ himself. Christ believed that God’s justice has been satisfied where the sins he came to sacrifice himself for are concerned, Christ’s faith was and remains in God, and indeed we can believe God’s justice has been satisfied. Christ does not have a wishy-washy faith, it is Christ’s faith who has never, nor will ever waver in faith. It is Christ’s faith that is freely credited to the account of the one who believes the good news given to the apostle Paul to proclaim to us in this age of grace. 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 Christ's faithful sacrifice that is the means whereby God acknowledges that we have accepted the gift his son purchased. Therefore, God is 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.

The most common view in the religious world today is that God actively chooses who he wants to save and who he does not want to save and they say it is absolutely impossible to have faith, to believe, unless God steps in and gives it to you. God did not predestinate us to believe, he predestinated us to be conformed to the image of his son, because he knew who would believe. God has given everyone the opportunity to be saved, but only he knows for sure who will accept that opportunity. God has foreknowledge of faith. Almost 2000 years after God took care of the issue of sin, religious people in their minds think God is waiting for man to make a decision, so he can forgive them of their sins. Is Christ going to be crucified again for every lost person who makes that decision? Of course not, but that is what they really believe. There are people in the church; the overall visible church today, that are lost, those who falsely believe they are saved. Do they really believe with all their heart that Jesus Christ did in fact pay for all their sins? Reconciliation, it simply means a change in status or restoration to favor, that is what forgiveness is all about. Today, it is not something we work for or wait for, it is not a future event, nor does it happen at the point of belief, it is something the world already has.