teachmevp

The good news from God to us today, is that God is not counting anyone’s sins against them, but Satan, Paul tells us, is working through ministers of righteousness to keep this news hidden from people. 
 It is a simple message, but very difficult for the pride nature to get past, because people’s pride nature says that if I broke it, I can play a part in fixing it, and we all attempt to do that and religion is there to give us a hand along the way. 
 We are not to listen to ministers of righteousness telling us sins are still the issue, and they will give people a way to keep that sin issue satisfied on a weekly, daily, monthly, yearly basis. 
 The good news is what will a person do, when it comes to their taking God at his Word, concerning what Jesus Christ accomplished where their sins are concerned? Ministers of righteousness have been taught to teach what they are teaching, and in so doing, they are dis-serving what was accomplished by Christ.
 Just understand, there is no additional sin question in the mind of God when it comes to his forgiveness or his righteous justice, the sin issue has been taken care of. Beware, a clever counterfeit being conducted by good people who have your best interest in mind, they want the best for you, but they will be deceiving, because they themselves have been deceived.

There are those who mistakenly suppose that reconciliation is the same thing as righteousification. These people have jumped to the conclusion that Jesus Christ taking the sin issue off the table of God’s justice through his becoming sin for the human race is that which makes a person as righteous as God; they have mistaken reconciliation for justification. 
 To have your sin slate judicially emptied because Christ died for those sins, does not mean that you now possess the righteousness recorded on the slate of the one who died for those sins. Grace is the foundation on which Paul’s entire ministry was built, and grace covers all the bases for the believer’s life and it certainly includes God’s love. 
 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. We are to praise God for what his grace has accomplished. 
 A lot of groups believe that God’s grace as it relates to salvation is something that has to be tapped into.

Being created in the image of God means that we must view ourselves as intrinsically valuable and richly invested with meaning, potentially and responsibilities. We are to be and to do on a finite scale, what God is and does on an infinite scale. 
 By virtue of being created in the image of God, human beings are capable of reflecting his character in their own life; animals possess none of these qualities. What distinguishes people from animals is the fact that human nature inherently has godlike possibilities. 
 Omniscience, omnipotence, or omnipresence, none of these other divine attributes have been ascribed to the human race as part of the image of God. We have been created to reflect God in our thinking and actions, but the physical sustained by God and dependent upon him for our existence in this world and in the world to come. 
 Developing a godly character in this present life, this will be our personal identity in the world to come. It is the character or personality that we have developed in this life, that God preserves in his memory. We must understand that God has predetermined to glorify us. In fact, God has predestined us to that glorification. 
 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. 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. 
 What God was doing through his son; God knew about what he intended to do before the world was ever formed, yet, God had kept this secret from ages and generations until it was time for the ascended Jesus Christ to reveal it to the apostle Paul, so that Paul could reveal it to the world.

Paul wants us to know at one point in time something was true, but now something else is true. The entire human race is guilty when it comes to human merit, performance, and production and all fall short, continually coming short of the righteousness of God himself. 
 Paul has made it abundantly clear that God does not measure our goodness in relation to the goodness of others; he compares our goodness with his own perfect righteousness. 
 That would be the criteria for dwelling with God and when our human righteousness is held up alongside the perfect righteousness of God, every member of the human race comes out on the short end of the stick. 
 The issue is believing what Jesus 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. 
 The instance you take your stand with God, you are not only saved, but sealed until the day of redemption of these earthly tents in which we dwell. Our faith in the good news of Christ enables God to impute us with the faith of his son. 
 Once we believe and are sealed, it is not about us; our faith, but Christ’s faith. Until you believe Paul’s good news of the grace of God to be true for yourself, you will not be placed into Jesus Christ by the baptizing of God’s power from on high or what is called holy spirit, and not being baptized into Christ means that you are standing in your own righteousness rather than Christ’s righteousness.

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. 


After listening to Alex Jones, around 8-31-15, last week. VP was full of it, those babies were indeed fighting for their life?

The truth is, those with a sin nature have never needed a license to sin, we do it naturally. Yet, the Christian’s army is the only army that shots it’s wounded. Anytime we condemn the coming shortnesses in others, we need to understand the reality of the fact that we are all in the same boat, we all come short in the righteousness department due to the indwelling sin nature. 
 A person who is in the gutter, oftentimes realizes the situation they have gotten themselves into, but a person who believes they are in a position to judge someone else: a person who has rationalized away his own short-comings, is one who is falling to recognize the sins of self. 
 A person who is looking down their nose at someone else, yet they are doing the very same things in another form, no excuse will suffice to pardon them, it is such a shame that so many people today are trusting in their goodness to get them to heaven. Paul wants us to understand that there is no refuge in human goodness. 
 Judgment based on a righteousness a person can produce for themselves, can only lead to one verdict- GUILTY! God is going to see them as having no need of the saving work of his son. When we put our human hearts under the microscope of God’s truthful judgment, we are going to find out that we need much more than human righteousness to have a perfectly just standing before God. 
 Put another way, do people think for one moment that God is going to give them a non-wrath-worthy pass; that Jesus Christ need not have died for their sins; that their sins are of such a non-serous nature that they have no need of a Savior in the first place?


We can rejoice and we can give all the glory and the praise to God and to our savior Jesus Christ for the fact that even though that sinful nature is strapped onto our fleshly backs like a rotting corpse, God does not see us in our flesh from his judicial perspective. 
 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. 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. 
 If we misunderstand justification, we are going to have a difficult time understanding sanctification. Since people link a justified standing before God with performance of their own, they also link a sanctified standing before God with their own performance. 
 If we think our relationship with God is of a fluctuating nature, we never know where we stand. So, people’s minds are up and down and all around, an emotional roller-coaster as to where does on stand with God. We are alive because of our position, not at all because of our practice. 
 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. God’s power put into operation as believers are baptized into the savior, the same power that raised Christ from among the dead, is the power exercised to place us into the body of Christ, we were fused with Christ himself at the instance we believe. 
 When we feel insecure, whatever the reason, Paul tells us to re-focus on our security, this is a security we can not lose. We are not in the process of becoming something new and different. We are at the very instance of our belief a brand new creation, God sees us in a brand new way. Sainthood is not earned at all. 
 Sainthood is not something to be sought after as though it could be attained to or something that only comes for a select few. Freedom from God’s condemnation is a reality for every single believer, not because of any new found performance capabilities, but because we are made the righteousness of God in our union with his perfectly righteous son. 
 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 morality, we are going to get the life God gave to Jesus. 
 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. We must understand that God has predetermined to glorify us. In fact, God has predestined us to that glorification. 


Paul takes us away from chastisement and judgment and he leads us toward the reality of our position in Jesus Christ. Paul told us how we were at the point of our belief identified with Christ through God’s power from on high’s identification transaction called Baptism. 
 Not a ritual performed by human hands, but the operation of God, whereby we become fully identified with our Savior, in union with him, so that we actually become a part of him. Two becoming one flesh from the standpoint of God, being fully identified with Jesus Christ means that we died when Christ died. 
 Grace comes along and tells us that being identified with Christ’s resurrection life, we now have an everlasting life we do not deserve and could never earn. God did not establish a new law for the age of grace and place believers under that law, so that he would have a new way to measure our righteous performance for the purpose of permitting a heavenly entrance. 
 God works in us through his word written to and about us. God’s thinking, as we take his word as true is therefore capable of transforming our thinking, it is a new operating system. It is not about perfecting the flesh, it is about crucifying the flesh in our minds and allowing God to do his work through his word in our lives. 
 God cannot produce his work through us apart from the transforming work his word accomplishes in us. It was the new identity Christ accomplished for Paul that made such a great impact upon Paul. 
 It is not striving to become a better someone, it is recognizing the someone God has already made us to be. It is understanding our new position in Christ. When we come to fully understand and appreciate that new position, the striving can end. 
 When we trusted Jesus Christ as Savior, something happened that took place outside the realm of our sensation, outside the realm of our feelings. God’s power from on high baptized us, immersed us by joining us to Jesus Christ. 
 God’s power from on high places every believer into Jesus Christ, this is what Paul was talking about when he used the expression “baptized into Jesus Christ”. 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. 


Prayer is indeed a powerful tool that God has given us, but was prayer given for the purpose of prodding God, pleading with God to alter the circumstances of our everyday lives, or was prayer given for the purpose of providing peace to the mind of the troubled saint. 
 There is a tremendous difference in one who believes they can influence God and therefore, alter their circumstances because they are a believer with prayer in hand, and a believer who acknowledges that God is in absolute control and is already doing what is best on behalf of every believer, no matter how unfortunate the circumstance that is at hand. 
 Reigning in life does not mean the absence of problems! Yet, many think that being a believer affords them the opportunity to get their unpleasant circumstances altered. Religious circles of our society believe that they reign in life over the circumstances in their life, in that God has empowered them with a tool called prayer, in order that they might have God alter the negative circumstances that come their way. 
 We trust God to know what is good for us even in the face of all of our adverse circumstances, God is not waiting for us to pray, so that he can decide what to do and then make the decision whether that would be good for us or not good for us. 
 The reality is, that we continue to suffer, it is not health, wealth, and prosperity in this life as the popular money-mongering ministers of righteousness would have us believe today. God’s purpose was to allow us to suffer, and there is a reason for that, so that we can put our hope on display to those who know nothing about our hope. 
 Our hope is not glorification here, not health, wealth, and prosperity on this planet, but a future glorification, because we are going to have a new body with that life God gave to Jesus - John 5:26. 


The belt of truth challenges us to be mentally active, not passive, because unlike our day-to-day emotions, which are the product of our day-to-day thought life, the emotional baggage from the past is always there. 
 Years of exposure and experience in life have etched emotional grooves inside us, which produce a decided reaction when a certain topic is introduced. When a present event activates one those emotional grooves, we believe what we feel instead of believing what is true. 
 Perceiving those events from the perspective of our new identity, which God sealed in Christ, is what starts the process of healing those damaged emotions, because we have the privilege of evaluating our past experience in the light of who we are now, as opposed to who we were then. 
 We must learn how to resolve previous conflicts or the emotional baggage will accumulate as we continue to withdraw from life, the past will control our life as our options for handling it continue to decrease. Those who have had major traumas and have learned to resolve them by wearing the belt of truth, know how devastating the past can be to present reality. 
 When we do not understand the doctrinal truths Paul taught pertaining to our sealed position in Christ, we have no ground for success in the practical arena. 


Paul’s great desire was to know Christ in his resurrection power, because that same power that raised Christ from among the dead was operating or energizing in Paul and it’s energizing in us. 
 Religion is filled with lots of people who would rather beg God to fix their suffering circumstances, rather than to thank God for his enabling grace that is sufficient for every suffering saint, that energizing power. 
 Most of Paul’s pain and suffering came from making the right decisions. Paul desired to be found in Christ, not with a righteous record that could be gauged as having come from Paul as the source, but with righteousness that had God at it’s source, a gift declaration of rightness before God. 
 Our justified standing with God is something that cannot be handed back to God as some teach today, because it depends not on the believer’s promise or performance, but solely upon Christ’s faithfulness and his faithfulness along. 
 We cannot give it back, because it is dependent upon Christ faithfulness and we are sealed at the point we take God at his word concerning what his son accomplished. God’s integrity is at stake in doing what he promised he would do, we can have security of mind that we have Christ’s test score written on our paper in Heaven. 
 What is given in exchange for another as the price of their redemption. If the ransom was for all, then the payment was made for all. The price was paid for all and through that payment Christ redeemed the entire human race from the sin barrier that separated the world from God. 
 It is up to those of the world to either accept or reject their redeemer, but that does no less make him their redeemer. Those who reject the gift are thumbing their noses at the one who paid that price for their redemption. Those who reject their redeemer will face the ultimate consequences of that rejection. 


It is not Hell, Fire and Damnation preaching that changes people’s minds, that may scare people into making a temporary, at best, decision to do something with their lives. We are told that people need more law preaching in order to become better people, because if we preach God’s goodness, they are going to go out and sin all the more. 
 Paul is telling us the precise opposite, it is the goodness of God that leads a person to a change of thinking; that draws that person to adopt what God has said is true in his word. The truth is our deeds do not determine our destiny, our faith determines our destiny. 
 Our deeds have nothing whatsoever to do with the security of our eternal position in Jesus Christ. That was accomplished for us apart from our deeds, good or bad. To preach grace is not to sanction sin, it’s to settle one’s trust in the Savior. 
 So those who preach grace are absolutely not preaching a license to sin, they are acknowledging sin for what it is and they are saying that the only solution for sin is to trust in the Savior and what he’s accomplished for us with his sacrifice. 
 It is obvious that God worked through visual evidences in connection with the Israelites, who required a sign during the time that God’s program with Israel was in progress. Yet Israel, for the most part, remained an unbelieving people. 
 Today, for the most part, we are also an unbelieving people. Instead of trusting in God’s word and resting in the glories of his grace that we’re shown through the word, we are even now continually looking for signs, continually looking for visual evidences of God’s presence and his approval in the day-to-day circumstance of our lives. 
 We are not the sign nation, and we have not become the assumers and fulfillers of God’s program with that sign-nation. Many think we have, that program has been placed on hold while God completes his plan and purpose for the saints of this dispensation. 
 We are the saints of a brand new program. While Israel walked by sight, we walk not by sight, but by faith. The focus today is no longer on the outward, but on the inward. God is not giving us those visual manifestations, we have a new apostle through whom we have been given God’s completed instruction.
 We have not been promised that earthly kingdom, an earthly inheritance. God has prepared a heavenly habitation for the saints of this dispensation, our citizenship is in heaven. God in his infinite wisdom pre-decreed that every believer would be joined to his son, fully identified with his son. 
 God also pre-decided that we the believer would be blessed with all the blessings and privileges of an adopted adult son. God decided in advance that we the believer are to be the praise of the glory of his grace. God has pre-determined all these outcomes for us according to Ephesians 1:4-6.


What are Satan’s ministers of righteousness trying to hide? The truth that we are righteousness is not tied to our works. They tie the word works to the word righteousness for our standing before God, which goes directly contrary to everything Paul has told us concerning his good news. 
 Righteousness cannot be found in the individual through performance and righteousness cannot be found in the law and Paul proved that righteousness cannot be found in religion. We were saved by believing what Paul had preached, we are sealed! 
 There is a vast difference in believing in God and believing on God for something. To believe in God is simply a matter of fact. To believe on God is to believe we must come to God in the precise manner which God prescribes, believing on God means taking God at his word. 
 There will be a requirement to escape the judgment of God, and it will not be by anything that we do. We must be justified on the basis of believing in what Christ has already done on our behalf, but unless we qualify what believing in God means, our belief in God will do us absolutely no good! 
 For anyone to think they are just before God through their performance, to think that they have perfected themselves with God through their behavior proves that they are a liar, and the truth is not in them. 
 All people are wrath-worthy, there is none good, no not even one, we have all gone out of the way, we all are continually coming short of the righteousness of God himself, and therefore we are in need of a justification that will come totally apart from anything that we do. God has kept the fingerprints of the guilt-worthy off the the righteousness he designed for the guilt-worthy! 
 Religion continues to make sin the issue, and then gives people a way to take care of that problem. How many have grown up with the idea that God has to make a decision whether or not to forgive us for our sins? God has not held back his wrath because he is happy with who we think we are, or because he is satisfied with who we are trying to become. 
 God has been long-suffering in holding back his wrath because he hopes that we will consider his goodness through what his son accomplished for us and flee to his grace. God wants us to change our mind about who we are from a fleshly perspective apart from Christ. 


God gave to Paul an entirely new revelation, it was the message of reconciliation. The heart beat of Paul’s new message can be summed up this way, Christ took care of the sin wall. Sins are no longer merely covered, they are now completely paid for, completely forgiven, completely taken out of the way. 
 God can now totally accept people even though people are sinful, because all sin has been paid for once and for all. God is not looking at us in the practical since of our sinfulness, but in the position of being in his son, that’s how we can be holy and without blame before him in love. 
 Satan wants to blind people’s eyes to the truth of Paul’s good news. Satan is offering people a way to become righteous; to achieve a righteous standing before God, and he always attaches people’s performance; people’s fingerprints are found on Satan’s method of becoming righteous. 
 Satan’s way is directly opposite of God’s way, how can a Holy God declare a person to be righteous when in practical experience they are obviously not righteous. 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 desire or merit that righteous standing. 
 God justifies those who take him at his word concerning what his son accomplished for them, something for nothing. 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 their practice. 
 Some have called God’s justification, cheap justification; it it is that easy, if a person can obtain righteousness without doing something, or even trying to do something in order to gain it, that would be too easy, and that would make it cheap. 
 God’s justification is absolutely free, but it was certainly not cheap, it came at tremendous cost. Apart from God’s grace, the justification Paul’s been telling us about would be totally impossible, but then, apart from the price the son of God paid to make it possible, God’s grace could not offer it. 
 The fact is Christ became the redeemer of the entire world when he satisfied the justice of God for the sins of the entire world. The sin issue was resolved for everyone, but understand, that having a redeemer and accepting the redeemer that we have, and what that redeemer accomplished, are two different things. Some are not willing to believe Paul’s good news, and therefore, not all will be joined to the redeemer, and they will be standing in their own righteousness. 


There are pastors who understand God’s grace who are reluctant to preach grace, because grace will lead to a license to sin. Many of these same pastors in an effort to reduce sinning, they revert to preaching law, thinking that’s going to solve the problem. 
 They want to scare the sin out of people, put their salvation on the line, dangle that up in front of them and scare them with a conditional salvation and that will straighten them up. So they stop preaching grace, as if not preaching grace is going stop people from sinning. 
 The problem with law as the answer to people’s dilemma is that law is totally incapable of changing the human heart and that’s where the problem lies. What we do, or what we do not do, is not a test of anyone’s salvation today. What we believe is the only test for salvation today! 
 Most people think salvation is the end result, salvation is the starting point. The issue of salvation is understanding the reconciliation where our sin is concerned, do we understand that God is reconciled where all sin is concerned for all time. 
 The price was paid for all and through that payment, Jesus Christ redeemed the entire human race from the sin barrier that separated the world from God. The sin issue needs to be resolved in our minds, not in Gods. 


It was God’s plan before the creation of the world that humankind’s fingerprints would not be found on humankind’s salvation. God’s plan called for that salvation to be a gift offered to humankind, he has always used faith or what a person believes as the criteria necessary to effect salvation for humankind in every dispensation. 
 When a person takes God at his word, no matter what age, whatever the word was when it was revealed, God considered that person to have faith and salvation has always come through faith. It’s God’s sovereign right to chose the criteria, and he chose to use the criteria of belief. 
 Paul was not an earthly kingdom program apostle, God had no need for an additional apostle to fulfill the program of Israel’s promised earthly kingdom. Everything related to Israel’s program comes with the number twelve, God did not add a thirteenth to that program. 
 The 12 apostles had been promised that they would each reign on one of twelve thrones that would be set up over the 12 tribes of Israel, when that earthly kingdom was established on planet earth. Israel as a nation rejected their king, they rejected their promised messiah and thus, rejected their kingdom. 
 Israel’s promised kingdom was right at their doorstep, right within their grasp, but that promised program was put on hold. The very blood that was to initiate Israel’s New Covenant, we have a fellowship in that, we have a communion with that blood, it’s the blood that redeemed us as well. 
 God wants believers to all think the same way when it comes to what’s happening in this Age of Grace, what God is doing today and how’s he doing it. Every sin we have or ever will commit was put on Jesus Christ, but how many people in the world miss it, because they think God is still looking at them and judging them and evaluating them on the bases of their performance. 
 If a person is asking God to forgive them for their sins, what are they saying they believe about what Christ accomplished where those sins are concerned. 


Freedom from God’s condemnation is a reality for every single believer, not because of any new found performance capabilities, but because we are made the righteousness of God in our union with his perfectly righteous son. 
 On top of that, everything necessary to prove to us beyond any shadow of doubt, and to prove to Satan and his rebellious forces that we are totally secure in our union with God’s son, we need nothing more, God supplied every need already. 
 There were a lot of people in Paul’s day and in our day trying to earn their righteousness before God by way of their performance. They thought God would measure their do’s and don’ts and thought they were actually measuring up. God would considered them righteous worthy of his attendance, worthy of being in heaven. 
 In fact, they were bragging, boasting about their achievements as though God could do nothing other than to declare them righteous because they deserved just such a declaration. Paul warned to guard against those who would promote a righteousness through performance idea. 
 It is up to those of the world to either accept or reject their redeemer, but that does no less make him their redeemer. When we accept our redeemer and the price he paid, the ransom he paid, then we are joined to Christ and we have his righteousness attributed to our account. 
 Those who reject the gift are thumbing their noses at the one who died to paid that price for their redemption. The price was paid for all, and through that payment Christ redeemed the entire human race from the sin barrier that separated the world from God. It is now a son issue, not a sin issue. 
 Will those of the world accept or reject the payment Christ made for their redemption? Those who reject their redeemer will face the ultimate consequences of that rejection. God did for us what we could never do for ourselves, he took all of our performance off of us and put it onto Jesus Christ and judged him for our faulty performance. 
 The only thing God is asking us to believe to be placed into his son, is to take him at his word concerning what his son did where our sins are concerned. The instance we take our stand with God, we are not only saved, but sealed until the day of redemption of these earthly tents in which we dwell. 
 Flesh wants to say if I broke it, I can fix it. God is not asking us to turn from anything to be saved, he is asking us to believe Christ accomplished salvation for us and we are simply to believe it. Christ did it all, there is nothing left for us to do, God did all the giving, we do only all the receiving, faith is taking God at his word concerning what his son did on our behalf. 


We are not called to be saints, we are called saints, sainthood is not earned at all. It is not something to be sought after as though it could be attained to or something that only comes for a select few. According to the apostle Paul, we have how much forgiveness, total forgiveness. 
 God knows what his son accomplished on our behalf where all of our sin debt is concerned and he is satisfied that all of that sin has already been judge on his son, leaving no judgment for us where our sin is concerned. 
 Justification is a legal act, wherein God deems the sinner righteous on the basis of Christ’s righteousness. Justification is not a process, but is a one-time act, complete and definitive. 
 In Romans, we learn God could not declare us to be right on the bases of who and what we are from the practical standpoint of our lives; we are everything but perfectly right. God could only declare us to be right on the bases of who and what he is, not on the bases of who and what we would be apart from him. 
 The only way God could declare us right in his sight is to join us, to actually immerse us into the only one who ever was perfectly just through performance, and that was Jesus Christ himself. 
 God had to devise a way to see us that way, and the way he devised to do that was by joining us to, hiding us in our perfectly righteous savior, thus freely crediting to our account Christ righteousness. 


If one considers the mind as the engine of understanding, then the engine of understanding must be fueled with the word of God, if it is fueled with emotions, what happens when the fuel runs out? 
 The Last Days of this Age of Grace, the ever increasing tendency of people to focus their thoughts on self, to be self centered. Satisfy me, satisfy my interest, if people do not satisfy my interest, I will go else where, selfish is as good as term as any. 
 A major satanic goal is to hide the justification aspect of the good news of the grace of God, the lost include many of the most moral and religious people in history. The natural inclination of religious people is to conceive of salvation as resulting from merit, based on something they can do for God, have done or commit to do for the future. 
 There are people that live in a state that is opposite of happiness, they always seems to be down, always be angry, always be ready for disappointment. Happiness is a state of mind that can be created, happiness is a state of mind that can be mustered up, happiness is a choice. 
 There are many who lack joy from not understanding that justification is complete, so we can not look at people and say that person gave their life for what they believed, religious, but lost. 
 The pride nature in people have a difficult time understanding how righteousness from God’s viewpoint can be granted apart from their conduct or commitment. 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. 
 Many people believe they are God, and therefore, they do not need salvation, they need enlightenment. They need to be able to find some way to get in touch with that God that is in them, that God-Spark! And of course, the God-Spark is not stationary. 
 The God-Spark is moving all the time called “Ying-Yang” in some belief systems. That God-Spark can sometimes just get jammed up, and they need to free it so it can operate, which is what yoga was based on. Currently the fastest growing trend within brief systems that humankind has ever seen, reincarnation is all wrapped up in the Pantheist mind-set, coming back again and again until they get it right, then when a person gets it right, “Nirvana!” 
 Satan and his clan loves to propagate in the minds of people, they love it when people question God! When people begin to question God, that frees them up to develop their own concept of God and establish their own basis for a relationship with the god that they have invented in their minds.
 Our brains are an engine of understanding, our transformation process that is taking place in our lives as we take in the Word of God and apply it to the details of our lives, it is only when we come to properly understand God from his perspective concerning ourselves. 
 Both before we came to understand Paul’s good news, and then what we are and who we are after we have believed Paul’s good news and have been joined to God’s son, then we can be capable of viewing others and relating to others accordingly who are also members of Christ’s body of his flesh and of his bones. 


When Paul says putting off the body of the sins of the flesh, he is talking about the whole body, the whole sin debt, all of our sins, are sins cut off from us! 
 All our sins from the front of our life, to the back of our life, they have been completely cut away from us through the cutting off, the circumcision, actually the death of Jesus Christ, never to be joined to us again, another wards, God can no longer see them. 
 God no longer sees us in our identification with sin, since the initial point of our belief, he sees us in our identification with his son, all the sins Christ died for are sins which are forever dead in their ability to stand between the sinner and the Savior. 
 No matter how the world comes down on us or how the world views us, how our friends view us or cease viewing us, God views us in a way which is incomprehensible to the world. 
 We are not in the process of becoming something new and different, we are not even in an instantaneously cleaned up version of the former creation, we are not a sinless version of who we once were, we are at the very instance of our belief, a brand new creation, God sees us in a brand new way. 
 In the fact, that it is called a new creation, it tells us this new creation, as God sees it, is not an extension of some former creation. In other wards, we are not an extension of believing Israel time past carried on over in some spiritual form to the age of grace, can not be. 
 We are not now, nor will we ever be spiritual Israel, God has designed believers to be a brand new unique organism operating as a living breathing manifestation of Christ’s Body right here on planet earth. 


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. 
 As sound doctrine is taken in and fully appreciated, the believer who takes that doctrine in and appreciates it and applies it, begins to grow and mature in what they believe, and as the believer begins to grow and to mature in what they believe, that believer’s mind is being transformed in the process.
 Truth designed to give us stability, is truth designed to give us security. God did not intend that believers be insecure, so the security doctrines come first in God’s building process for his grace-age saints. 
 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. 
 The church of our day is best described as the Corinthians epistle equally the Galatians epistle, they are marked by divisions and have reverted to preaching the law. If one has believed Paul’s good news, 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. 
 Put simply, before the founding of the world, God predetermined our destiny, and that destiny is glorification through union with the glorified Christ. God has the resolve and ability, the capacity to accomplish his purpose, by joining us to his son, the glory of God will be praised, because God will glorify the saints of this age. 
 Realizing the entrapment of the flesh, and therefore the wretchedness of the flesh this side of the redemption of our bodies, helps us realize the direction which truth righteousness comes. We need to change our mind and agree with God and with Paul, that it is totally impossible for us to do enough good. 
 Paul wanted to be found before God not bearing his own righteousness for his purpose in being there, but having Christ righteousness attributed freely to Paul’s account; the battle within him, proved to him the absolute impossibility of performance based righteousness. 
 God’s word has the power to change our thinking if we take it in, if we dwell on it, it will change our thinking. Paul knew the word of God has the power of God to do the work of God. 
 God had to devise a way to predetermine our destiny, and the way he devised to do that was by joining us to, hiding us in our perfectly righteous savior, thus freely crediting to our account Christ righteousness. 
 Freedom from God’s condemnation is a reality for every single believer not because of any now found performance capabilities, but because we are made the righteousness of God in our union with his perfectly righteous son. 


The thing that is brand new, those who accept Paul’s good news in this Age of Grace are called a New Creation, but still in this body, and still subject to the same temptations. The Pastors roll is to prepare their people for the Bema, that is what teaching and pastoring is all about. 
 Paul’s ministry was distinct, because Paul was the chief, the head architect for the Age of Grace for the building called the Body of Christ. The Bema of Christ, issues with which we need to be concerned, understand God does not want us to be unaware of the evaluation we will face. 
 The Bema has to do with the building project, remember whenever we see those words “labour or work” in Paul’s epistle, they are always in direct connection to the Bema of Christ. What is this blueprint? Paul’s epistles are laid out in the manner of Doctrine, Reproof, Correction, issues. 
 Paul tells us what those issues are in those epistles, and when it comes to our reward worthiness or not being worthy of reward, Faith, Hope, Love, are the maturity of the believer is all about, and the maturity of the believer is what the evaluation at the Bema of Christ is all about. 
 The Bema has to do with the building project. The building is the Body of Christ. We as members of the Body of Christ, are co-labors with God in the building project. The Chief Architect for the building project, the master builder is the apostle Paul. The blueprint for the proper construction of this building has been given to apostle Paul for the work crew of which we are apart. 


The issue for life everlasting is not what church we attend or to which denomination we belong or how religious we are or even whether or not we are a good person in the worldly sense of the word good. The issue in eternity will not be how many sins we have committed or how many sins we have promised God we will abstain from committing. 
 It will not be whether we have walked an aisle, recited a particular prayer, or asked Jesus into our heart. The issue in eternity will be to which man one is related, does one have their identity in the first Adam, or does one have their identity in the second Adam, Jesus Christ. 
 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 God does for the human race through his son, which the human race can not earn, does not deserve and will never merit. 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. 
 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. 
 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 the aspect of our lives. 


Sin entering into the human race through Adam’s transgression brought about more than one type of death, or one type of separation. We can suffer functional death; an inability, separated from the capacity to serve or to please God, this is a functional death. 
 Then, there’s a relational death, sin brings relational death. Sin, or coming short of the measure of who God is, is that which stood in the way or stood between God and the human race. Sin, coming short of who God is, is something that is true of our lives every second of every day we live. 
 So, it is not a question of getting new forgiveness for new sin, we had to have someone take care of that sin issue for us, and thank God that he had his son take care of that issue for us. God’s attitude towards a believer, does not fluctuate in response to action, it is not condition on our behavior. 
 Paul tells us that being justified, judicially in the mind of God through our union with his son, we are made right with God at the point of that union through the avenue of our faith in Christ’s faithful performance on our behalf, rather than peace based upon our performance toward God, results in an unchanging attitude of peace with God for every believer. 
 God’s attitude of favor toward the believer is based on the conduct of his son on the believer’s behalf. We now have available for the enjoyment of our everyday experience an everlasting peaceful relationship with God. When God looks at the believing sinner, God sees his very own son; Christ’s death was sufficient to satisfy God’s righteous demand for justice.