Are Christians Just Forgiven Sinners?
How would you feel if you turned on Television and heard on the news that the President of the United States had just issued a blanket pardon to all of America's prison inmates? Would you have a problem with all these prisoners being completely forgiven and released without any restrictions? How would you feel if a few of them moved into your neighborhood?
The problem would be that these people would remain unchanged and many would just continue in a life of crime. They would need to be returned to jail or continually forgiven every day since there would were still the same person with the same nature as before. Forgiveness and pardon for their crimes is not the solution because forgiveness could never change who they really were deep down inside. The only possible cure would be a change of their nature. They need a complete change the very essence and core of who they really where.
It is impossible to overstate the seriousness of the unbeliever's condition as a human being apart from God. They bible refers to sinners as, judged, condemned, guilty, dead in trespasses and sins, lovers of darkness, deeds are evil, under the wrath of God, enemies of God, hostile, rebellious, foolish, unrighteous, filthy, without hope, desperately wicked, corrupt, abominable, workers of iniquity, under law, children of disobedience, deceitful and more. Some people only look at the sin of those who are not Christians but their real problem is far worse than that. The Bible clearly teaches that they are totally dead in sin and dead to God. Their continual sinning is the just normal consequence and result of not embracing and experiencing Christ's Life inside them to depend on.
This problem of mankind’s sinful corruption was so bad and thorough that even God, Himself could not repair us. There was nothing God could do with that sinful nature, no touching up, no revising, no improving it and no adding to it could ever make it acceptable in His sight. Our sinful nature was entirely hostile to him and we were His actual enemy. We were so corrupt, so wicked and evil that the only thing God could to do with our sinful nature was to crucify it with Christ. The only possible cure for your old life was death.
The Good News is that God has already provided the solution for us in Christ. When you were born again you experienced the reality od what God in Christ had already accomplished before the world was created. We were crucified with Christ and you were buried with Him. Your old sinful nature died and you received God's Divine Nature to replace it. The only solution was to have us crucified with Christ and then He gives us His LIFE. So we died, and we became a New Creation. God made us righteous, holy, clean, purified, and justified. We have no need to become a better person, because God has already made us into a new person.
If you are a Christian then you are actually enjoying your perfect union with Him. He made you a NEW CREATION. You were made 100% righteous and perfect. You are one with Holy Spirit or the Spirit of Christ. You are no longer experience that old life in Adam. You now hove a new pure heart and God's very Divine Nature. You have received His all-sufficient Life in exchange for you old corrupt self. Now the Christian life isn't yours to live.
God does not depend on you to live His Life for Him. He knows that it impossible for you to live His life, so you experienced His life when you were born again. You do not live for Him - He lives for you. Now you can fully depend on God's Life rather than depending on what you do or do not do. You no longer need to make promises that you can never keep or try to dedicate and rededicate your life to Him. You now have Christ living His Life through you. You no longer have to try to make the Christian life work through your own efforts and resources. It is only made possible by your union with Christ in His death, burial and resurrection.
This is all God's gift to us. We can never deserve it or earn it. We seem to take it very lightly that Paul said, "I have been crucified with Christ" and "I died." But those are powerful statements! So, what died? What was crucified with Christ? Our bodies obviously didn't die. Our souls didn't die, we can still think and feel and we still have make choices. So what died was our spirit that had been born in Adam - our sinful nature. When we were born again, we still had these old bodies and souls, but our sinful nature was killed - dead, gone, crucified - forever - and we were raised to life with the righteous nature of Christ.
You have died and were created anew. This is referring to the very essence and core of who we really are. This is the reality of who we really are in our spirits. God didn't take the "old us" and change us into a "better" or "improved" us. Rather, we died and we were re-created as a brand New Creation. We haven't been revived. We've been regenerated and re-created completely! In other words, God didn't take the old us and pump some life into it. Rather, we died and God made us into something completely new - a New Creation. Our old life wasn't changed. It was exchanged with a real life - the very life of Jesus!
As aa result of what God has already done for you and in you you can say, I have been given a new life! I have been made alive together with Christ. I have died to who I was in Adam and now my "DNA" is Christ's! I no longer belong to Adam. I am now Christ's. I am no longer a descendant from the line of Adam; I am from the line of Christ. I am now fully related to Christ. Who Jesus is has been passed on to me - I have now become a partaker of His very nature, glory and holiness. I have died to the nature of Adam and taken on a new nature. I cannot separate myself from the fact that I am a child of God! I have now died to sin and have been made alive in Christ.
The bible tells me to "reckon" my self as dead to sin. That simply means that I understand my being dead to sin as a done deal. I daily count it as fact and live in that fact. LIFE has begun its reign! It wasn't when I first performed a righteous act, and it's not because of any continuance of me performing righteous acts that I have died to sin and been made alive to God. It's my relationship to Jesus that made me dead to sin and alive to God, and keeps me alive to God. I never have to worry about my old sinful nature getting resurrected again because after you've died to something, you can never "live to it" again!
I cannot add anything to maintain this relationship and I can't do a thing to get out of it! I am forever His and He is mine. I dwell in Him and He in me. It's an inseparable union! I have His very DNA! I am identified with Him and no longer with Adam. Even when I sin, it's not that I still have an identity in Adam. Sin dwells in my corruptible, mortal body, but my body is not who I am! One day this corruptible and mortal body will be replace with incorruption and immortality. "Who I am" is not my body. I am a spiritual being who has become one spirit with God. I am in Him and He is in me, and that I'm no longer related to "the first man Adam," who "became a living being," but I'm now related to "the last Adam," who "became a life-giving spirit!"
So it is impossible to for a Christian to be a forgiven sinner. Forgiveness could not change the fact of our sin nature. Forgiveness and pardon alone can never be the solution because forgiveness could never change who we are in essence and who we really are deep down inside. Forgiveness could not change the fact of our sinful nature. We were totally rotten to the core. We were totally dead to God and our very nature was hostile and an enemy of God. No amount of reformation, or improvements could make it better. God demands holiness, perfection and righteousness. The only way for Him to solve this problem was to kill us and then GIVE us His Divine Nature in place of our own nature. This is the FREE Gift of God - Christ's Life.
Please read these scriptures prayerfully and slowly and let the truth set you free.
1 Cor. 6:17, "But he that is joined unto the Lord is one spirit."
Col. 3:3-4, "For ye are dead, and your life is hid with Christ in God. When Christ, who is our life, shall appear, then shall ye also appear with him in glory.
Acts 17:28, "For in him we live, and move, and have our being; as certain also of your own poets have said, For we are also his offspring."
Gal. 2:20, "I am crucified with Christ: neverthless I live; yet not I, but Christ liveth in me: and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by the faith of the Son of God, who loved me, and gave himself for me."
2 Cor. 5:14, "For the love of Christ constraineth us; because we thus judge, that if one died for all, then were all dead."
John 1:12, "But as many as received him, to them gave he power to become the sons of God, even to them that believe on his name."
Rom. 6:3-6, "Know ye not, that so many of us as were baptized into Jesus Christ were baptized into his death? Therefore we are buried with him by baptism into death: that like as Christ was raised up from the dead by the glory of the Father, even so we also should walk in newness of life. For if we have been planted together in the likeness of his death, we shall be also in the likeness of his resurrection: Knowing this, that our old man is crucified with him, that the body of sin might be destroyed, that henceforth we should not serve sin."
2 Cor. 5:17, "Therefore if any man be in Christ, he is a new creature: old things are passed away; behold, all things are become new."
1 Cor. 3:17, "If any man defile the temple of God, him shall God destroy; for the temple of God is holy, which temple ye are."
1 Cor. 6:15: "Know ye not that your bodies are the members of Christ?"
1 Cor. 6:19, "What? know ye not that your body is the temple of the Holy Ghost which is in you, which ye have of God, and ye are not your own?"
2 Peter 1:3-4, "According as his divine power hath given unto us all things that pertain unto life and godliness, through the knowledge of him that hath called us to glory and virtue: Whereby are given unto us exceeding great and precious promises: that by these ye might be partakers of the divine nature, having escaped the corruption that is in the world through lust."
1 John 5:11-12, "And this is the record, that God hath given to us eternal life, and this life is in his Son. He that hath the Son hath life; and he that hath not the Son of God hath not life."
Rom 8:8-10, "So then they that are in the flesh cannot please God. But ye are not in the flesh, but in the Spirit, if so be that the Spirit of God dwell in you. Now if any man have not the Spirit of Christ, he is none of his. And if Christ be in you, the body is dead because of sin; but the Spirit is life because of righteousness."
2 Cor. 5:21, "For he hath made him to be sin for us, who knew no sin; that we might be made the righteousness of God in him."
Col. 1:12 -14, "Giving thanks unto the Father, which hath made us meet (qualified) to be partakers of the inheritance of the saints in light: Who hath delivered us from the power of darkness, and hath translated us into the kingdom of his dear Son: In whom we have redemption through his blood, even the forgiveness of sins."
Eph. 1:3-4, " Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who hath blessed us with all spiritual blessings in heavenly places in Christ: According as he hath chosen us in him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and without blame before him in love."
Romans 5:19, "For as by one man's disobedience many were made sinners, so by the obedience of one shall many be made righteous."
YOU ARE NO SINNER - YOU ARE A SAINT!!!
