Tuesday, December 05, 2006

Jesus Alone Sanctifies Us

“[Therefore I do not treat God’s gracious gift as something of minor importance and defeat its very purpose]; I do not set aside and invalidate and frustrate and nullify the grace (unmerited favor) of God. For if justification (righteousness, acquittal from guilt) comes through [observing the ritual] of the Law, then Christ (the Messiah) died groundlessly and to no purpose and in vain. [His death was then wholly superfluous].” Galatians 2:21 Amplified Bible

Don’t think for one second that we are to believe that the acts of sin are alright: murder, lies, stealing, adultery, whatever; they aren’t. But for those of us who have truly been empowered by the Holy Spirit to accept Jesus as Lord, these acts no longer separate us from our Father. We don’t come in and out of our salvation, our eternity isn’t based on us keeping a set of rules. Our eternity is based on Jesus, who fulfilled every rule!

What our Father has given us is complete and eternal freedom through Christ! We have been chosen by God to walk eternally with Him. We can do this only because of the power of Jesus’ sacrifice and because His Blood allowed us to be empowered and sealed with the very Holy Spirit of God. Our Father is now within us and we are now in Him. He is now given us His strength, His energy, His faith, His love, His hope, and His power to walk in full and complete righteousness. We are no longer trying to walk uprightly alone, we have God within us, and our Father is more than able and willing to keep us right! God may very well need to clean us up in some areas, but we have been born of perfection, and Dad is right here with us, one with us, and He is doing what is needed to fully equip us in righteousness.

We are perfect because the penalty of sin, that separated us from perfection, has been removed. The new Law, the Law that Jesus came and ratified with His Blood, says that if we are empowered by the Holy Spirit to accept Jesus as Lord, then we are made perfect in the sight of God. We are perfect because we are born again of perfection, our Father’s Incorruptible seed bore us, and He is perfect! Jesus was born of God and a woman, and our Father's perfection overrode the woman’s imperfection, His seed hasn’t changed, it’s done the same for us! We are sanctified not because we have done something right; we are sanctified because Jesus provided sanctification and gave it to us. We are glorified because Jesus asked God to glorify us; we are born of it, an apple tree does not produce grapes! Not only are we born of perfection, we are grafted into the Vine, which is Jesus, to insure that perfection and glory, and honor, and righteousness, continually and forever nourishes us and provides life for us. There is now no condemnation for us. Jesus has fulfilled the righteousness of the law within us. We have been delivered from the consequences and penalties of sin by a Savior Who did the job completely! Our freedom from guilt and our justification came solely from the acts of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ!

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