The following consists of powerful Scriptures, each followed by a few words
unlocking a fraction of its inexhaustible treasures. The webpage will
gradually build to what for many readers will be a surprise conclusion as
to a key factor in receiving Christ's sinlessness.
Ephesians 1:4 For he chose us in him
before the creation of the world to be holy and blameless in his sight.
Regardless of how lowly you think yourself, you
have been chosen.
Most of us are scared to consider how God sees us. We wrongly suspect
that in the blazing purity of his eyes we must look pathetic. The truth is
staggeringly different. The Almighty actually sees us as people destined
to be flawlessly perfect.
To be blameless in human eyes would be astounding, but to be ‘holy and
blameless in his sight’ – in the exacting eyes of the High and Lofty One,
the God of Truth, the All-seeing Lord – is mind-boggling. The only thing
that could ruin this would be if you were to prevent Jesus from doing what
he longs to do for you.
2 Corinthians 5:21 God made him who had no
sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of
God.
The eternal Son of God came to fulfill the divine
yearning to make you perfect. Like no other human, Jesus was utterly
sinless, and yet for you he volunteered to become sin personified. As
such, he hung in shame on the cross, suffering the full, horrific
consequences for your sin. This astounding transaction took
place so that by your spiritual union with Jesus you would become as
righteous – as pure and holy – as God himself.
Jesus became completely identified with your sin and shame, so that you
could bask in the eternal honor of being completely identified with his
sinlessness. Let this sink in: through this staggering exchange, you are
credited with righteousness infinitely beyond the most saintly human
attempts at goodness. If you partake of this union with the holy Son of
God, you gain the very ‘righteousness of God.’ Moreover, you are not just
showered with a sprinkle of this righteousness; you are so identified with
divine moral perfection that, as this Scripture declares, you actually
‘become’ God’s righteousness!
Our sins are debts to justice. To heighten our understanding, let’s put
this in financial terms. You were once frighteningly and hopelessly in
debt. Jesus is incomprehensibly rich. He would make a multi-trillionaire
look like a pauper. You supposed no one would ever want you, and yet Jesus
fell in love with you and longed to marry you. You couldn’t believe it.
For a long while you resisted him, thinking it must be some sort of trick.
And you had heard all sorts of groundless gossip about this mysterious
person. What if some of those malicious rumors were true? Finally, you
mustered the courage to marry him. Gradually you discovered that, for him,
marriage means such beautiful things as life-long devotion to you and a
total merging of assets. All your horrific financial obligations that you
wished would disappear, he saw as his responsibility. Your debts become
his debts, which he paid in full. And in exchange for you giving him your
debts, he handed you joint ownership of his riches. All his wealth is now
completely yours to spend and enjoy as your own. You are still coming to
terms with the enormity of this gift and he is still trying to urge you to
break free of your hesitance to make full use of the rights he has given
you. Your status has now rocketed from the shame of gross financial
mismanagement to the honor of being, with him, the richest person in the
universe. And it is all because of his longing to be one with you. This is
what Jesus has done for you morally.
1 Corinthians 1:30 It is because of him
that you are in Christ Jesus, who has become for us wisdom from God – that
is, our righteousness, holiness and redemption. (31)
Therefore, as it is written: “Let him who boasts boast in the
Lord.”
Here we see yet again the astounding truth that
through spiritual union, Jesus’ righteousness is your righteousness. The
eternal, holy Son of God becomes your righteousness, your holiness and
your salvation. Your claim to moral purity and goodness is no longer
limited to the best you have done. Through the mind-boggling generosity of
God, he has given you the right to claim as your own the perfection of the
sinless Lord himself. That is so far beyond anything any of our efforts
could achieve that it is utterly pointless bothering to draw attention to
our own moral achievements. To do so would be as pitiful as the richest
man proudly displaying rusty fake gold.
Note the beginning of 1 Corinthians 1:30: ‘It is because of him that
you are in Christ Jesus.’ Similarly, both of
the earlier Scriptures we examined feature the expression, ‘in him.’
Here are just a few more examples:
Romans 6:11 In the same way, count
yourselves dead to sin but alive to God in Christ
Jesus.
Romans 8:1 Therefore, there is now no
condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus
2 Corinthians 5:17 Therefore, if anyone
is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old
has gone, the new has come!
Ephesians 2:6 And God raised us up with
Christ and seated us with him in the heavenly realms
in Christ Jesus
Colossians 1:28 We proclaim him,
admonishing and teaching everyone with all wisdom, so that we may
present everyone perfect in Christ.
(Emphasis mine.)
Even the most beautiful people on this planet
would look ugly without their skin, but that is of no concern because they
are never without their skin. Just as physically we are in our skin and
our skin is a part of us, so spiritually we are in Christ Jesus and he is
part of us. Whenever anyone looks at us with their physical eyes, they see
our skin, never our intestines or other internal parts. Likewise, whenever
anyone sees us spiritually, they see Jesus. That does not, of course, mean
we cease to exist. Jesus is as much a part of us as a skin is a part of
us. We have never been so thrillingly alive. We are snug and secure inside
of him, just like physically we belong inside our skin. We were made to
live in Jesus, as much as we were made to live in our skin. Whenever
anyone sees us through spiritual eyes, they see indescribable beauty and
perfection because, like our skin, Jesus is our covering, but unlike our
skin, Jesus is exquisitely perfect. Union with him completes us and
beautifies us. As a result, we need never again feel shame.
Ephesians 2:8 For it is by grace you have
been saved, through faith – and this not from yourselves, it is the gift
of God – (9) not by works, so that no one can
boast.
We have been delivered from every eternal trace
and consequence of sin, not because of our efforts (that would be like
trying to lift ourselves to heaven by our shoelaces) but because of the
exorbitantly generous, undeserved gift of forgiveness that God offers us.
All we need do is accept the gift made possible by Jesus swapping places
with us on the cross.
To receive a gift, one must believe that it is a genuine offer and not
a trick. Suppose, for example, someone says, ‘I have placed in your bank
account a gift of $10,000.’ This would do you no good unless you were to
begin spending that money. To do this you would have to push through
various doubts. What if the money is not there and you overdraw your
account? Or what if there are strings attached, or the person demands his
gift back? Receiving a gift takes faith. God has offered you the gift of
forgiveness but it will do you no good until you do your best to believe
his offer is genuine. You will then take the step of faith – perhaps quite
shakily at first – by acting as if you are truly forgiven. This involves
enjoying the fact that you are accepted by God and are now completely
innocent of your past sins. It does not mean that you will feel
forgiven, it simply means accepting the fact that you are forgiven.
The analogy about marrying someone richer than a trillionaire
highlights one of our biggest hindrances to faith. How many trillionaires
have you shaken hands with? Who of us have met even a moderately wealthy
person eager to be so generous to us? Why would someone who could have
anyone, pick us? The Almighty is so far beyond anything we have ever
experienced in any other person as to seem unbelievable – except that God,
by his very nature, can be expected to be far superior to anything we have
ever seen in a human. Just as the Maker of galaxies has infinitely more
power than anyone else, so he has infinitely more selfless love, purer
motives, and superior generosity. We must keep rising above the fear that
God has any failings. Alongside him, the most loving human we have ever
met is selfish, small minded, and prejudiced against us. People have
exploited us, let us down, lied to us, dismissed us as unlovable, and done
other hurtful things, but God, being God, is altogether different. You can
trust him.
1 Timothy 1:15 Here is a trustworthy
saying that deserves full acceptance: Christ Jesus came into the world to
save sinners – of whom I am the worst.
The apostle Paul was powerfully used of God not
because his previous sins were minor but because he regarded himself as
being the greatest of all sinners. God forgives people not because their
sins are excusable; he forgives when they admit that their sins are
inexcusable.
Our Lord stressed that the most important command is to love God, and
yet he said it is the person who is forgiven most – who is most aware of
the gravity of the sins that have been forgiven him – who loves most (Luke
7:47). He warned that blatant sinners who were under no delusion about the
extent of their sin had a much better chance of entering heaven that
clean-living Pharisees who thought themselves good (Matthew 21:31-32).
Luke 18:10 Two men went up to the temple
to pray, one a Pharisee and the other a tax collector.
(11) The Pharisee stood up and prayed about
himself: ‘God, I thank you that I am not like other men – robbers,
evildoers, adulterers – or even like this tax collector.
(12) I fast twice a week and give a tenth of
all I get.’ (13) But the tax collector stood
at a distance. He would not even look up to heaven, but beat his breast
and said, ‘God, have mercy on me, a sinner.’ (14)
I tell you that this man, rather than the other, went home justified
before God. For everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, and he who
humbles himself will be exalted.
In Jesus’ day, tax collectors were turncoats who
collaborated with the Romans, the enemy occupation force that had invaded
the country. They extorted money from Jews to prop up the Roman Empire.
Since no self-respecting person would do this to their fellow countrymen,
tax collectors were usually people whose morals had already been so low
that they felt they had little respectability to lose by taking this
despised, money-grubbing job. Pharisees were on the other extreme, being
renowned for their impeccably high moral standards.
In this Scripture, Jesus is stressing that, no matter how good a person
has been, anyone who thinks he has lived a morally acceptable life will
rot in his sin. No one can stand in God’s holy presence except people
willing to see themselves as having been hopelessly depraved morally and
in desperate need of God’s mercy. Everyone coming to Jesus with this
attitude is miraculously cleansed, because his faith is not in his own
supposed goodness but solely in the goodness of God, who longs to purify
us through Jesus. Having abandoned faith in his own morality, such a
person is credited with Jesus’ moral perfection.
We all have the deadly cancer of sin. The many of us who, like the
Pharisee, live in denial, will die in their sin. This is a tragic waste.
Treatment is freely available to those who admit their need of it. Just as
doctors respect the right of patients to refuse treatment, so the Lord of
all allows us the dignity to refuse his treatment for our deadly sin
condition. The only ones who have hope are those who humble themselves
enough to admit that without Jesus they have no hope.
Proverbs 28:13 He who conceals his sins
does not prosper, but whoever confesses and renounces them finds mercy.
As we saw with the Pharisee and the tax
collector, anyone taking the coward’s approach of trying to cover up or
minimize or excuse his sins is in grave spiritual danger, but anyone
humbly admitting his depravity will find God’s mercy.
The apostle Paul was once headed for hell like that Pharisee, but as
his eyes opened to his sinfulness he became like that tax collector
lamenting his sins and he found mercy. In fact he found so much mercy that
his eyes opened to the point where he could truly understand his
sinfulness. It was then that he pronounced himself the worst of sinners.
It is he who humbles himself the most who is raised the highest.
Philippians 4:4 . . . If anyone else
thinks he has reasons to put confidence in the flesh, I have more:
(5) circumcised on the eighth day, of the
people of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin, a Hebrew of Hebrews; in regard
to the law, a Pharisee; (6) as for zeal,
persecuting the church; as for legalistic righteousness, faultless.
(7) But whatever was to my profit I now
consider loss for the sake of Christ. (8)
What is more, I consider everything a loss compared to the surpassing
greatness of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord, for whose sake I have lost all
things. I consider them rubbish, that I may gain Christ
(9) and be found in him, not having a
righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but that which is through
faith in Christ – the righteousness that comes from God and is by faith.
If anyone had reason to put confidence in his
devotion to God and his own efforts to do good, it was Paul. Nevertheless,
what made the apostle great is that he despised all his moral achievements
as garbage. The King James Version calls his efforts, ‘dung’ and this
seems closer to the feeling of revulsion that the apostle wished to
convey. In his highly acclaimed commentary, Gerald F. Hawthorne, Professor
of Greek at Wheaton College, renders the word, ‘unspeakable filth.’ He
says the word, ‘seems to have meant by usage either (1) “dung,” “muck”
both as excrement and as food gone bad, (2) “scraps” i.e. “what is left
after a meal,” and (3) “refuse.” It is also used to describe a pitiful and
horrible thing like a half-eaten corpse, or “filth” such as lumps of
manure. . . . It is quite improper to weaken its meaning in any way by
translation or by interpretation . . .’
(Source)
As he looked to the time when he would face his Judge and be asked why
he should not be thrown into hell, the mighty apostle wanted to be found
without the slightest defense – other than the fact that Jesus had died
for him. He jettisoned every other possible claim – any and every thing
that some might think could help him be judged as being passable. This
man, who really knew God, staked his whole eternity solely on the
righteousness that comes through faith in Christ. He was putting all his
eggs in one basket. This refusal to try to hedge one’s bets is what faith
is all about.
What empowers most of us to reach this point is the realization that we
simply have no alternative. We are moral failures. Without Jesus, the best
of us are doomed. With Jesus, the worst of us are safe.
Isaiah 64:6 All of us have become like one
who is unclean, and all our righteous acts are like filthy rags
When reading this as a child I used to think of a
mechanic’s dirty, smelly rags. Then I discovered that God was painting a
picture far more repulsive than that and far more in keeping with the
apostle’s spiritual insights. In the original language it is a reference
to rags smeared with bodily filth. It is saying we might as well proudly
display our bodily filth as hold up to God our noblest attempt at
morality. Our best efforts are infested with the disgusting maggots of
pride, selfishness and impurity. To try to pass that off as righteousness
is to insult God.
It is far, far better to be guilty of horrific sin and beg forgiveness,
than to be so deluded as to imagine we could impress God with our
‘righteousness.’ No wonder Jesus said there was far more hope for
prostitutes than for those who thought themselves respectable. No wonder
the tax collector, overwhelmed by his sin, warmed the heart of God, and
the Pharisee touting off to God his ‘good deeds,’ left God cold. Only one
of them saw a desperate need to beg for mercy. Only one received it.
1 John 1:7 . . . the blood of Jesus, his
Son, purifies us from all sin. (8) If we
claim to be without sin, we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us.
(9) If we confess our sins, he is faithful
and just and will forgive us our sins and purify us from all
unrighteousness.
No matter how ‘good’ one has been, anyone
imagining his life is morally passable, is lying to himself and to God. To
be purified of every trace of sin, all we need do is stop trying to excuse
ourselves as if our sins did less to send Jesus to the cross than the sins
of the vilest criminal. It is essential that we put our trust, not in our
ability to justify our actions, but in Jesus’ power to win our pardon by
taking our place on death row.
Romans 3:20 Therefore no one will be
declared righteous in his sight by observing the law; rather, through the
law we become conscious of sin. (21) But now
a righteousness from God, apart from law, has been made known, to which
the Law and the Prophets testify. (22) This
righteousness from God comes through faith in Jesus Christ to all who
believe. There is no difference, (23) for all
have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, (24)
and are justified freely by his grace through the redemption that came by
Christ Jesus. (25) God presented him as a
sacrifice of atonement, through faith in his blood. He did this to
demonstrate his justice, because in his forbearance he had left the sins
committed beforehand unpunished – (26) he did
it to demonstrate his justice at the present time
By ‘the law,’ the Bible means God’s standards as
outlined in the very Word of God, preserved in Old Testament. This is far
superior to our self-made morality, and yet it still fails to put us right
with God.
It says, ‘There is no difference’ – whether God-fearing Jew or
idolatrous pagan, tithe-paying Pharisee or money-grubbing tax collector –
‘for all have sinned . . .’ We keep thinking there must be a difference.
God keeps insisting there isn’t. You are breaking the same Ten
Commandments – the same divine set of laws – when you covet as when you
murder. There is no moral difference between someone who in a flash of
anger wishes someone were dead, and someone who has a loaded gun in his
hand at that critical moment. Someone who through fear of getting caught
does not commit a crime is no more moral than someone who is braver and
commits the crime. The wages of sin is death, whether is a ‘respectable’
sin such as abusing our God-given body through overwork, or a sin society
thinks is despicable. And once you are dead, you cannot get any deader.
Romans 2:1 You, therefore, have no excuse,
you who pass judgment on someone else, for at whatever point you judge the
other, you are condemning yourself, because you who pass judgment do the
same things.
Instead of ‘you who pass judgment,’ the King
James Version says, ‘whosoever thou art that judgest.’ This more
accurately reflects the Greek by better bringing out the fact that this
truth applies to every person.
This Scripture sends us reeling in shock. How can it be that
whatever sin we accuse someone of committing, we ourselves are
guilty of? We suppose there are many sins we have not committed, and yet
our presumption of innocence merely highlights what deluded hypocrites we
are. To wish someone dead is to murder. To dress in the hope of sexually
arousing someone who might not want those feelings is to rape. To keep
back part of your tithe is to steal from God (Malachi 3:8). King Saul let
his soldiers hold on to some of the livestock God told them to destroy.
Though they claimed this was for the noble reason of sacrificing the
animals to God, the Lord declared it rebellion against God and therefore
the equivalent of witchcraft (1 Samuel 15:23). To be greedy is to worship
an idol (Ephesians 5:5, Colossians 3:5).
My desire – and God’s desire – is to not condemn you, but to bring you
to the point of surrender so that you can cease the endless struggle to
justify yourself, or feel inferior or superior to others, and simply
accept divine forgiveness in all its wonder and endless scope. This is one
of life’s most liberating and exhilarating experiences.
We are in a tiny boat, furiously baling out water in a desperate,
ultimately futile, attempt to stay afloat. Towering above us is a God’s
luxury liner, offering security, dignity, rest and refreshment. The sooner
we admit to ourselves that our attempt to save ourselves is both hopeless
and foolish, the quicker we can enjoy God’s luxury liner.
Romans 5:1Therefore, since we have been
justified through faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus
Christ
Galatians 5:4 You who are trying to be
justified by law have been alienated from Christ; you have fallen away
from grace.
When the Bible speaks of human attempts to
justify ourselves, it usually means our vain attempts to offset our past
moral lapses by doing good. This is utterly doomed to fail for many
reasons. An obvious one is that any good we do now, we should have been
doing throughout the past, as well as now. So nothing we do subsequently
can counteract our past failures. Only Jesus could pay our debt to justice
because only he had no debt of his own.
However, in our secular society, we commonly use the term justify in
the slightly different sense of trying to excuse our past. It is this
common meaning that I particularly want to focus on.
Once we gain even a shallow insight into the extent of our guilt, it
quickly becomes nearly impossible to bear. We find ourselves with an
almost overwhelming need to try to shift the blame. That leaves us with
essentially two options. We can try to make other sinners take blame for
our own sin, which will ultimately get us nowhere, or we can accept the
staggering offer of the sinless Son of God taking our blame upon himself,
suffering as if he were guilty so that we could get off scot-free as if we
were innocent.
We have a choice. We can say, ‘My bad behavior was justified because of
my atrocious upbringing, or the person I sinned against deserved it, or I
couldn’t help myself.’ Or we can choose to jettison that approach and say,
‘I am not justified by my actions or circumstances; I am justified (make
innocent in God’s eyes) solely because Jesus bore the penalty that my sins
deserve.’
Self-praise, they say, is no recommendation. To justify ourselves is as
valuable as stale air. For Jesus to justify us, however, is profoundly
significant. It means the eternal, holy Son of God declares us innocent.
We can try to justify ourselves, which will never allow us to be
accepted by God, or we can let Jesus justify us, which will make us fully
accepted by God. But we can’t have both, any more than we could be on a
train to hell and at the same time on a train to heaven. If there were a
literal train to glory and a train to damnation, they would be speeding in
opposite directions. To be on one involves leaving the other. Likewise,
justifying ourselves is the exact opposite of Jesus justifying us. We
usually try to justify ourselves by excusing our sin; we are justified by
Jesus, however, by fully admitting our sin.
To try to justify our past is to torture ourselves by trying to dream
up lame excuses that would be laughed out of court when we meet our Maker.
Right now, we decide how God will judge us when we stand naked before
his Throne. We can through faith enter into a relationship with Jesus that
makes us one with the holy Son of God, allowing us to ask God to judge us
as if we were Jesus himself. Or we can abandon that option and put our
faith solely in our ability to talk our way out of the guilt of every sin
we have ever committed; trying to convince the all-knowing Lord that we
have always been sinlessly perfect. What little faith we must have in
Jesus’ ability to forgive if we still see the need to ease our consciences
by trying to excuse our past! Feeling the need to justify ourselves
indicates that we have not yet grasped the magnitude of divine
forgiveness. When at last we see it, the result will be profound,
liberating, and life-transforming.
1 John 4:17 . . .we will have confidence
on the day of judgment, because in this world we are like him.
You will be able to confidently face your Judge
on Judgment Day because even while you lived on earth, God saw you as
being not like an average person, nor even a saint, but like the perfect
Son of God.
A school bus driver was certain that he had killed a little boy by
running over him. The man was devastated. He went to court and the judge
pronounced him innocent. The judge said the bump he felt must have been
the bus running over the boy’s bag. The boy’s death had nothing to do with
his driving. What a huge difference there is between feeling guilty and
being guilty!
What matters is not whether you feel holy and blameless but whether you
cling to the fact that this is how the God of Truth sees you, because of
Jesus. The Judge declares you innocent – not because of what you have or
haven’t done, but because of what Jesus has done in taking your sin upon
himself and suffering the full penalty for your sins that divine justice
requires. All you need do is admit your need of Jesus, unlike the Pharisee
who supposed he could make it on his own.
Just as the bus driver’s mind played tricks on him, so will yours. Like
suddenly being told by a millionaire that all his assets are yours to do
whatever you like with, it will take quite a while for the truth of what
Jesus has done for you to sink in. So for a long while you will still have
times when you feel guilty, but that feeling is simply an illusion. To
help you come to grips with this, please see this webseries:
© Copyright 2002, Grantley Morris. May
be freely copied in whole or in part provided: it is not altered;
this entire paragraph is included; readers are not charged; if used in a
webpage, the new page is significantly different to this one. Many more
compassionate, inspiring, sometimes hilarious writings available free
online at www.net-burst.net Freely you have received, freely give.
For use outside these limits, consult the author.
