Through obedience in the Holy Spirit.
Justification (dikaiosis) is simply a declaration by God of "not quilty" because Christ has removed your unrighteousness (sin debt) on the cross.
It is a forensic righteousness, not the actual righteousness of sanctification through obedience in the Holy Spirit, which leads to righteousness leadng to holiness (Ro 6:16, 19).
Can’t repent and confess our sin?
Matthew 5:48
Be ye therefore perfect, even as your Father which is in heaven is perfect
Revelation 21:27
And there shall in no wise enter into it any thing that defileth, neither whatsoever worketh abomination, or maketh a lie: but they which are written in the Lamb's book of life.
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There must be a living tradition and hierarchical authority to submit to in holy obedience!
Lk 10:16
He who hears you hears me...
John 13:20
Verily, verily, I say unto you, He that receiveth whomsoever I send receiveth me; and he that receiveth me receiveth him that sent me.
What authority does Christ have?
What power does Christ have?
What mission / ministry does Christ have?
Peter, the apostles and their successors have the same authority, power, and mission as Christ! Jn 20:21 as my father sent me, even so send I you!
We must be taught by Peter, the apostles, and their successors! Lk 10:16 Matt 28:19 Jn 21:17 Jn 16:13 acts 2:42
Matt 28:19 Go ye therefore, and teach all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost:
Lk 1:4 That thou mightest know the certainty of those things, wherein thou hast been instructed.
Acts 8:30 And Philip ran thither to him, and heard him read the prophet Esaias, and said, Understandest thou what thou readest?
31 And he said, How can I, except some man should guide me? And he desired Philip that he would come up and sit with him.
Col 2:7 Rooted and built up in him, and stablished in the faith, as ye have been taught, abounding therein with thanksgiving.
Matthew 18:17
And if he shall neglect to hear them, tell it unto the church: but if he neglect to hear the church, let him be unto thee as an heathen man and a publican.
It is a thing unthinkable! To refuse to hear the church is to refuse to hear Christ!
Christ and His church are one. Acts 9:4
Spiritual Fathers have care for our souls!
Acts 20:28 Take heed therefore unto yourselves, and to all the flock, over the which the Holy Ghost hath made you overseers, to feed the church of God, which he hath purchased with his own blood.
Jn 21:17 feed my sheep:
Matt 28:19 teach / sanctify all men unto eternal salvation
Acts 1:8 witnesses / confessors
God always establishes peace and by obedience to hierarchical authority!
There is a hierarchical authority in all that God has ordained!
The angelic kingdom:
The civil gov:
The church:
The family:
All are ordered with obedience to hierarchical and jurisdictional authority!
Hierarchical nature of the new covenant church:
If you agree that Christ is the head of the church then you have consented to the fact there is a hierarchical nature of the new covenant church!
God is the head of Christ:
Christ is the head of the church:
Peter has the role of representing Christ here in earth, visible head, and the apostles / bishops their successors and those they ordain for ministry in union with Peter administer the kingdom, govern the church, teach and sanctify all men, the lay people or nations!
Spiritual anarchy produces spiritual chaos just look at the 25000 sects all full of errors and contradictions that came out of Luther’s little experiment!
The fruits of the reformation:
Atheism and the so-called enlightenment (reason without faith)
Fundamentalism (faith without reason)
Modernism (subjective changing truth)
And a Spirit of confusion / chaos
Old T. Example
Joseph rules Egypt under pharaoh and his own brothers were required to bow in obedience to his authority or starve! Gen 37
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EarlyActs
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Many things are to be done as a result (the effects). But we must not confuse them with the cause. The NT 'rhythm' is always 'God acted in Christ' and then our responses to that.
Is it our righteous?
EarlyActs
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Please check grammar.
Christ is our righteousness for justification. Not for our own personal transformation, but obviously the great news changes how we act.
Not really righteous?
Not really just?
Not really holy?
Not really Christian?
Did Christ do it all for us?
Or provide grace and example and empowering us
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EarlyActs
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Two things are needed in this life (a 3rd part of salvation is glorification, but obviously that is later).
There are even Christian hymns that acknowledge this, for ex., "Rock of Ages.":
Be of sin a double cure / save me from its guilt and power.
In this sense, the Christian has to deal with two human realities: our past and our present. The guilt of sin is its power to darken our past, often referred to as debt (Gr.: ophelia, compare with harmartia in general). The power of sin is current effect on us.
Justification is about the past, but next year, our 'past' will be different from the past right now, won't it? Yet we still need justification from our sins.
Transformation is about the present struggle or possibly that which is just upcoming that we know of.
Justification is God's work in Christ for us, for the debt of our sins.
Transformation is God's work through the Spirit in us, for this moment's need to be pure or be loving.
Justification is not actually an experience; it is a knowledge. "By His experience, My Righteous One will justify many." --Is 53. It is that which He did for the debt of our sins.
Ritajanice
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Online source.
Properly understood, justification has to do with God’s declaration about the sinner, not any change within the sinner. That is, justification, per se, does not make anyone holy; it simply declares him to be not guilty before God and therefore treated as holy. The actual change toward holiness in the sinner occurs with sanctification, which is related to justification but, for definition’s sake, distinct from it.
My words.
Becoming not guilty before God... is the rebirth...that is/ was an experience....I experienced my sin being forgiven by God, ..when he birthed me in the Spirit..and please don’t=ask me to explain the rebirth...as it’s like the wind.
“The wind bloweth where it listeth, and thou hearest the sound thereof, but canst not tell whence it cometh, and whither it goeth: so is every one that is born of the Spirit.”
Properly understood, justification has to do with God’s declaration about the sinner, not any change within the sinner. That is, justification, per se, does not make anyone holy; it simply declares him to be not guilty before God and therefore treated as holy. The actual change toward holiness in the sinner occurs with sanctification, which is related to justification but, for definition’s sake, distinct from it.
My words.
Becoming not guilty before God... is the rebirth...that is/ was an experience....I experienced my sin being forgiven by God, ..when he birthed me in the Spirit..and please don’t=ask me to explain the rebirth...as it’s like the wind.
John 3:8
“The wind bloweth where it listeth, and thou hearest the sound thereof, but canst not tell whence it cometh, and whither it goeth: so is every one that is born of the Spirit.”
Jesus christ
Spiritual Fathers have care for our souls!
Lk 10:16
He who hears you hears me...
John 13:20
Verily, verily, I say unto you, He that receiveth whomsoever I send receiveth me; and he that receiveth me receiveth him that sent me.
Acts 20:28 Take heed therefore unto yourselves, and to all the flock, over the which the Holy Ghost hath made you overseers, to feed the church of God, which he hath purchased with his own blood.
Jn 21:17 feed my sheep:
Lk 10:16
He who hears you hears me...
John 13:20
Verily, verily, I say unto you, He that receiveth whomsoever I send receiveth me; and he that receiveth me receiveth him that sent me.
Heb 13:7 Remember them which have the rule over you, (apostles) who have spoken unto you the word of God: whose faith follow, considering the end of their conversation.
Heb 13:17 Obey them that have the rule over you, (apostles) and submit yourselves: for they care for your souls, as they that must give account, that they may do it with joy, and not with grief: for that is unprofitable for you.
1 Tim 1:2 Unto Timothy, my own son in the faith: Grace, mercy, and peace, from God our Father and Jesus Christ our Lord.
Gal 4:19 My little children, of whom I travail in birth again until Christ be formed in you
1 John 2
My little children, these things write I unto you, that ye sin not.
That makes Paul and John spiritual fathers, pastors of our souls!
Obedience of the faithful Christians.
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| 60. | Q. | How are you righteous before God? |
| A. | Only by true faith in Jesus Christ. 1 Although my conscience accuses me that I have grievously sinned against all God's commandments, have never kept any of them, 2 and am still inclined to all evil, 3 yet God, without any merit of my own, 4 out of mere grace, 5 imputes to me the perfect satisfaction, righteousness, and holiness of Christ. 6 He grants these to me as if I had never had nor committed any sin, and as if I myself had accomplished all the obedience which Christ has rendered for me, 7 if only I accept this gift with a believing heart. 8 | |
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To become righteous mean to become someone who practices righteousness, so that is when we are becoming when we are imputed with God's righteousness.
I probably split too much hair.
Obedience unto righteousness is instantly the same. Obeying God and doing His righteousness are interchangeable.
I only object to the Christian teaching that having mean means being righteous, before doing it. And the worst one is having saving faith apart from doing God's will.
You believe doing the righteousness of God includes sinning? We have a sort of 'generally' righteous life with sinning mixed in from time to time? That is called man's righteousness and filthy rags to God.
God's repentance is of all sins and trespasses at once, not just in part gradually.
Therefore I will judge you, O house of Israel, every one according to his ways, saith the Lord GOD. Repent, and turn yourselves from all your transgressions; so iniquity shall not be your ruin.
Cast away from you all your transgressions, whereby ye have transgressed; and make you a new heart and a new spirit: for why will ye die, O house of Israel?
God's righteousness is doing His will at all times, not just in part some of the time.
Blessed are they that keep judgment, and he that doeth righteousness at all times.
Are you saying all your sins were forgiven, when Jesus died on a cross? Do you believe that all your sins, past, present, and future are already forgiven?
It's on our cross we take up for Jesus' sake, that our whole past life is forgiven and washed away. That is only when we repent of transgressing and believe the gospel to obey Jesus from a new heart.
No man's sins were forgiven when Jesus died on the cross, but rather all men were judged as sinners and concluded in unbelief.
When unrighteous men slew the Lamb of God on the cross, all men that have sinned and shall sin, were condemned as unrighteous by our works. Every sinner was made guilty when the Son was crucified. Not just those doing the evil deed.
If you are doubling down on a sort of gradual sanctification, where Christians sin less than before, then I still reject it as nothing but another form of man's religion on earth. It's not the pure religion of Jesus Christ with a whole newly cleansed and pure beginning, and continuing to keep ourselves in the purity to the end.
Growing in grace and Christ Jesus is learning to do His will during temptations and tribulations. It's the growth of a pure hearted babe to a pure and strong hearted elder.
Any continued lusting and sinning is not growing in Christ, nor leading to any of His righteousness, but only to death.
2 John says if any man sins, then that man must come to the Advocate for the whole world of sinners. That includes any religious person on earth,
No sinner on earth is a born son of God while being an enemy transgressor against Him.
If you preach a Christian religion for sinners gradually becoming less sinful, then I am disagreeing with your gospel.
I'm not so puffed up in my mind as to declare someone must be disagreeing with God and His gospel, just because they disagree with me and my teaching.
Removed when we repent and take up our own cross for His sake.
When Jesus was lifted up on a cross, no man was believing, especially not forgiven.
It's a fair point. I don't read any Bible where we 'have' His righteousness. However, since if we sin we have sin, and suppose we could say if we do right, we have righteousness.
The same as having His faith and love in our hearts by doing it.
I think we're splitting hairs again. My only objection is with the Christian religion of separating faith and righteousness from doing it, in order to be saved by faith and imputed righteousness alone, while not doing it.
Some say that at least some righteous works must follow, others say no works ever have anything to do with being saved and imputed righteousness by faith alone. They reject James 2 that with new works of Jesus' faith we are saved and justified with Christ.
When we are born again, circumcised and sanctified in Christ Jesus, it is instant spiritually and bodily. The new pure heart is given and the life is wiped clean of past unrighteousness.
And so, we need sanctification once, and we keep ourselves sanctified by doing His righteousness.
Pure religion and undefiled before God and the Father is this, To visit the fatherless and widows in their affliction, and to keep himself unspotted from the world.
True. He is the one we repent and now believe and obey. And so He is the cause for all that we now do from a pure heart.
As ye have therefore received Christ Jesus the Lord, so walk ye in him:
Having therefore these promises, dearly beloved, let us cleanse ourselves from all filthiness of the flesh and spirit, perfecting holiness in the fear of God.
And the very God of peace sanctify you wholly; and I pray God your whole spirit and soul and body be preserved blameless unto the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ.
I say that imputed righteousness is only by repenting and believing unto His righteousness from the heart.
Those who only have a changed mind about sinning against God, but not a new heart changed from sinning against Him, have no faith of Jesus in the heart nor are imputed any righteousness from God.
Their faith is of the mind by hearing only. They now know the law of Christ, and that sinning is not an opportunity for pleasure, but is enmity with God, but they have yet to repent from sinning from the heart.
Until we repent from all our sins and transgressions, we are not given the promised new heart of faith toward God in His New Covenant of Jesus Christ.
Therefore leaving the principles of the doctrine of Christ, let us go on unto perfection; not laying again the foundation of repentance from dead works, and of faith toward God,
Christians still finding themselves as transgressors from time to time, are stuck in the double heartedness of Romans 7. They need to be circumcised and sanctified in Christ Jesus once for all, by just repenting of all their sinning, and not just the 'worst' ones. I know the wretchedness of it, having been there myself.
O wretched man that I am! who shall deliver me from the body of this death? I thank God through Jesus Christ our Lord.
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That is a strawman argument as it is not what Christians believe. Admittedly that is what you think it is saying because you do not understand it. And your own approach does not solve the issue of those who are in Christ through trust in who He is and the work that He did, still sin.
The Bible does teach that Christ's righteousness is imputed to all who are in Him----that is, it is counted as theirs in the same way that Jesus died as sinners die because of sin, taking the penalty for our sins upon Himself---our sins counted as though they were His in the way of His dying and His dying. He paid our debt, so to speak, to the justice of God against sin. In doing so, He reconciled us to the Father. They are justified by Christ. He had no sin of His own which is why death could not hold Him. In doing this He defeated our enemy, sin, and its punishment, death.
So even though we sometimes sin while we still live in our fallen flesh and in a fallen world, it no longer has any power to condemn us before God. Otherwise, Jesus died in vain. But there is more than just that in our lives that follow. Jesus did not leave us as orphans but sent the Holy Spirit to indwell the believer.
The Holy Spirit seals us in Christ forever.. We are marked with the King's seal. And the Holy Spirit keeps us by the power of Christ. He teaches, comforts, leads, always glorifying Christ, and He sanctifies us with truth. His word is truth. No one joined to Christ in this intimate way will continue a life of unrepentant sin. And they do not want to. The sin they once love, they now hate. And it is God working in them to do and to be, but it is progressive, over all our life as we learn and submit. Remember what He said when He was about to send Israel into the land of pagans? Ex 23:27-30 I will send my terror before you and will throw into confusion all the people against whom you shall come, and I will make all your enemies turn their backs to you. And I will send hornets before you which shall drive out the Hivites, the Canaanites, and the Hittites from before you. I will not drive them out from before you in one year, lest the land become desolate and the wild beasts multiply against you. Little by little I will drive them out from before you, until you have increased and possess the land.
This is how God worked when the forerunner to the deliverance by Christ, delivered the Israelites from bondage in Egypt. A shadow of what was to come. And it is still how He deals with His people now on their journey to the Promised Land. The difference is: 2 Cor 10:3-6 For though we war in the flesh, we are not waging war according to the flesh. For the weapons of our warfare are not of the flesh but have divine power to destroy strongholds. We destroy arguments and every lofty opinion raised against the knowledge of God, and take every though captive to obey Christ, being ready to punish every disobedience when your obedience is complete.
It's what some Christians teach. Just without all the pseudo-biblical varnish they cover it with.
I understand it perfectly. It's the Christian sinners gospel of being saved and justified by faith alone without works.
They doctrinally separate their 'saving' faith from how they live, in order to justify themselves while still sinning. Maybe less than before, but certainly never ceasing to sin.
So, you teach it too, with the same usual pseudo-biblical varnish. What's the end of your pretty speech? Still sinning.
Your Christianity has sinning members still sinning, but not the non-sinning body of the sinless Head Jesus Christ.
Yes, you do. Not us living holy in the pure body of Christ Jesus. You have your churches, and we have ours. You don't want to live holy in ours, and we don't want to continue sinning in yours.
You minister continuing to sin, and we preach sinning no more.The sin they once love, they now hate. And it is God working in them to do and to be
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EarlyActs
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Unfortunately you have not found the decisive meaning and you have mixed it with the result or effect.
Imputation is when something is regarded as something against its actual value or nature. The term is from bookkeeping (crediting, accounting, etc), but also somewhat judicial (think of estate settlements). This is because our sins are often referred to as a past debt and this is a very different issue from the daily challenge of the current temptation.
Salvation has two aspects, past debt and current performance and they should only be connected as far as cause and effect (or inspiration to do the right thing). (There is also glorification but that is future). To be justified by Christ's imputed righteousness is def not to be made righteous. Being made righteous is an effect and it is great, but it is not imputation.
Several examples have been preserved about imputation through English lit: Shakespeare, Austen, Melville even Capt. W. Cody. In Melville's BILLY BUDD, a menacing superior crewmember imputes an accusation to Billy. It is against facts, but it carries a lot of weight because of the imputer's status on the ship.
Most valuable is 2 Cor 5's 'he was made to be sin so that we might be the righteousness of God in Him.' We are no more righteous than Christ was sinful; however, the Father credited or transfered our debt to Christ and punished him, so that we might receive the blessing of the Gospel. Is 53 writes: 'the punishment that brought us peace was upon him.'
A person has a bit of a role in appreciating the credited righteousness. A sinful woman was repenting and anointed Jesus's feet with her hair (an act of unusual hospitality and cost and cleanup) because, by analogy, she considered her debts to be huge (Lk 7). But the Pharisee considered their debts to be small, and put little into their gratitude. Notice the term 'considered' there; it is actually a type of crediting or regarding in another nuance.
And all them that are in Him, in whom is no sinning, are sinning not.
People can impute themselves anywhere they want by their own faith and doctrine alone, but no man while sinning in enmity with God, is put into His righteous Son's body.
Jesus had no sin nor knew any sin on the cross, because He did not sin in life nor on the cross.
There is no such thing as any man's sins 'counted as though' they were Jesus' sins, because He never sinned.
The only sins Jesus bore in His own body, were the marks and prints and stiped of unjust sinners, that He allowed them to do by the Father's commandment, and for the sake of them that repent of their own sinning and take up their own cross for His sake.
He had no sin of His own nor any man's sin for His own. A person's sinning is all their own, and the soul dies by it alone.
No man's sinning is 'put' by God on another, nor 'imputed' as that of another. Every man answers for his own sins. God is a just judge: He does not judge any man's work as that of another, unless the same work is done by the other.
Sinners no more condemned while sinning, is the hypocrisy of sinful Christianity. It's not the good news of repenting of sinning, and walking in the Spirit, and not after the flesh.
This 'no more condemned' by faith and imputed righteousness alone, is the same as the hypocrite Jews in Romans 2, that believed they were justified by having the law alone, while transgressing the law as other nations.
And thinkest thou this, O man, that judgest them which do such things, and doest the same, that thou shalt escape the judgment of God?
Or despisest thou the riches of his goodness and forbearance and longsuffering; not knowing that the goodness of God leadeth thee to repentance?
This sinners saved by grace and not condemned while doing the same as others, is the same reason the world rightly despises Christian grace as they did the Jews law.
Thou that sayest a man should not commit adultery, dost thou commit adultery? thou that abhorrest idols, dost thou commit sacrilege?Thou that makest thy boast of the law, through breaking the law dishonourest thou God?
For the name of God is blasphemed among the Gentiles through you, as it is written.
Your christ with the sinful body is vain. And Jesus did not die according to your Christian sinners gospel.
Jesus did not die in vain, but for not all men have refused to repent of all sins and trespasses, and instead minister a Christianity of continued sinning in the name of Christ.
The only Promised Land for the pilgrims and saints of God to travel to, is the resurrection bodily unto life.
Any man still trying to travel to the gospel promise on earth of sinning not, just needs to repent of sins and trespasses already, and quit playing the religious game of tip-toing around it.
