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NASB | Hebrews 10:14 For by one offering He has perfected for all time those who are sanctified. |
AMPLIFIED 2015 | Hebrews 10:14 For by the one offering He has perfected forever and completely cleansed those who are being sanctified [bringing each believer to spiritual completion and maturity]. |
Bible Question:
Nolan, so, if God sees Christ in me, or maybe better, me in Christ, am I still a sinner? In Him, Bill Mc |
Bible Answer: "Nolan, so, if God sees Christ in me, or maybe better, me in Christ, am I still a sinner?" Hello Bill! God will only see Christ in you. There is nothing that you can ever have within yourself that will ever make you useful to God unless you have Christ inside of you. So there is no such thing as "or maybe better, me in Christ".. You must have Christ in you, not the other way around. When we genuinely confess Jesus as Lord and accept Him as the Savior of our lives, then we are "positionally" sanctified. Since we have accepted God's offer of salvation, then our spiritual position has changed forever! We are no longer doomed to die in our sins and suffer the eternal consequences, but since we have confessed Jesus as Lord and accepted Him as Savior, then we are forever secure- eternally considered as "righteous" before God through the blood of Jesus Christ, who is the sacrifice for our sins. This does not mean that we no longer have the capacity to sin after salvation! I wish that this was true so that we would be rid of this sinful nature! But we still remain with this sinful nature after we have become saved. Even though this is true, we can rest assured that our standing before God remains eternally secure because of our salvation in Jesus Christ. If I sin, does that mean that I am no longer saved? Absolutely not! This only means that I have given into my flesh where I was not walking in the Spirit of Christ which lives within me. I may sin, but I am still saved and covered by the blood of Jesus. Since I am covered by the blood of Christ, does this therefore give me license to sin all the more? Absolutely not! When we accepted Jesus as Lord, we died to that sin! We "disowned" it, never to return to it again. However, your sinful nature (that is, the flesh) still remains with you, and we find ourselves repenting of our sins, just as we did at the moment of salvation. Paul describes it in this way, "For in my inner being I delight in God's law; but I see another law at work in the members of my body, waging war against the law of my mind and making me a prisoner of the law of sin at work within my members. What a wretched man I am! Who will rescue me from this body of death? Thanks be to God- through Jesus Christ our Lord! So then, I myself in my mind am a slave to God's law, but in the sinful nature a slave to the law of sin." Romans 7:22-25 (NIV). Bill, are you completely without sin? I sure am not! :) What a wretched people we all are! For we completely despise sin, but we find ourselves doing it! We cannot be perfectly sinless, and anyone who claims to be perfectly sinless is a liar. But we have actual "evidence" and "proof" that we are born of a new nature through salvation when we see that we are able to resist sin and not indulge in it and that there is a part of us that utterly reviles sin! I recognize that part of me that leads me away from sin and shows me just how vile sin really is is in fact the Holy Spirit dwelling in me and slowly molding me into the creature that He wants me to be! But I do sin, and I cannot be completely free from that which I absolutely hate unless I die. I have to die and be free from this physical body of mine before I can be totally free from sin. I honestly believe this! But we can rest assured that when God sees us, He sees this new nature (that reviles sin) within us, which is an exact "duplicate" of Christ! We need to grow in this way and continue to be 'molded' to become more like Christ instead of dwelling in the depths of our sin. And this is what will make us "perfected for all time". That is, the new nature within us that God has given birth to (being 'born again'), that He sees- which is Christ Himself indwelling within us. Only God can bring about this change in you and perfect you through this process called 'sanctification.' That also is proof that you have this new nature inside of you and that God has forever secured your soul from hell, since you have taken upon the nature of Christ! --Nolan |