2. Are you really saved?
Last Updated 10 May '98
You may think you're saved but does God agree? Is your name written in Heaven? Take a fresh look at some facts that are not being taught in organised Christianity today.
First of all what really is SIN?
To properly understand the meaning of salvation, we need to know first of all what sin really is and what makes one a sinner. In essence, sin is any act, deed or thought that fails to measure up to God's expectation. In other words, sin is failing to be what God expects us to be! What God expects is His standard - so sin is falling short of God's standard! His standard was set down for us in His law. Thus sin is disobedience to God's Holy Commandments! (1 John 3:4) Further, God's standard is that which He Himself would do. So sin is the failure of not being found in the likeness of God, that for which we were created! (Genesis 1:26) Sin is everything that falls short of the Glory of God.
Note also that sin can only be produced by Sinners! Further, because God is pure and perfect, sin is that which separates us from God!
Lets be really honest and truthful here: We all SIN and we are all Sinners in God's eyes!
What is a sinner?
Most of us would probably define a sinner as one who sins by breaking God's Holy commandments - but that does not tell us what a sinner is. It only tells us what a sinner does. We do not become sinners by what we do but because of what we are. The reason we are sinners has to do with "manufacture", not "product". "Sin" is what we produce - the product - but "sinner" is what we are - we "manufacture" sin.
Being a sinner has to do with our origin, not our behaviour. It is the source we need to come to grips with, not the outcome! We sin because we are born sinners. We come into this world with the nature of a sinner, therefore it should not be so surprising to us when we sin. To sin is a dictate of our nature, something we do quite naturally without effort or strain. Therefore, we may accurately conclude that a sinner is not made a sinner by the sins he commits. Rather, a sinner is a sinner by the fact that he is born a sinner. We sin because we are a sinner; we don't become a sinner because we sin!
The Origin of Sin.
Man is born onto this earth a sinner due to an inheritance problem. God constitutes man a sinner by his parentage, not by his acts of behaviour. "For all have sinned, and fallen short of the Glory of God;" (Romans 3:23). Our parentage relates back to Adam, and the word of God confirms that because of Adam all of us are born sinners (Romans 5:12); that is, all who are born of Adam make their entrance into this world with the nature of sin. The ability to sin is built in. The newest baby is born with a sin problem due to its sinful nature. Sooner or later he will produce sinful acts. Most of us say that Adam committed the first sin when he disobeyed God and ate of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, but this is not the origin or source of sin but the effect of it, causing man's disobedience to God. Sin was around long before Adam was created. The oldest reference to sin in the Bible, is that of a previous creation of God - Lucifer - who had fallen from his exalted position as anointed cherub, to that of God's enemy - Satan - due to his pride, ambitions and evil transactions.(Ezekiel.28:2-19 and Isaiah 14: 12-14).
Lucifer becomes Satan the Destroyer
This self exalted archangel Lucifer, who purposed to be like God by making himself equal to God, had thus produced the first recorded sin and made himself the first sinner. He was cast out as profane from the presence of God because of his pride. He was destined in that moment to become Satan; destroyer, liar, deceiver, accuser and the enemy of God. He then set about to do a work of destruction upon God's creation by death through craft and deception. We can conclude then that the source of all sin is from the nature of Satan, who is the nature of Sin itself. All who sin are, in effect, of Satan, the enemy of God (1 John 3:8).
In the garden of Eden, Adam and Eve were vulnerable, because neither of them were complete. They were naked and had no clothing or Life for their spirit. Neither of them had received God's own Eternal Life as depicted by the tree of life in the centre of the garden. Eve appears to be more aware of her incompleteness than Adam, hence her curiosity in the tree of knowledge at the instigation of Satan. She believed Satan's lie in preference to God's Truth. She felt that by eating of this tree they would be complete and be like God. She was sincere in her desire, but totally deceived through her mind. God had clearly stated that to partake of this tree of knowledge would cause Death to the human spirit.
The incredible part here, is that Adam was not deceived in his mind, but his reasoning was overcome by his emotion and affection for Eve. Satan coerced Eve's will through her mind and Adam's will through his emotion. Adam loved Eve more than he loved God. Amongst other issues, the predominant one is that by eating of this tree it would cause them to die spiritually. Now we know that the wages of sin is death (Romans 6:23) and that without having sin; death could not have been applied to Adam. We may conclude that the very nature of sin was incarcerated in the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. When Adam ate they understood for the first time why they were incomplete. They instantly knew they were naked. Their nakedness was figurative of their spiritual condition. They discovered from an illegal source that they did not obtain God's Life from the tree of knowledge, but instead they had received the nature of sin from Satan and they were now dead to God spiritually. This immediately caused Adam to be fear God and hide himself from God's presence. All Mankind is now exactly the same as what Adam had become. We don't know God! We Fear God! We are Dead to God! We are Sinners with a nature of Sin!!
The implications for us because of what Adam did
Satan's nature is totally derived from fear and anger because of his rebellious and proud character. Notice that Pride and Rebellion is what Satan is inwardly (character) whilst anger and fear is what he is outwardly (nature) towards others! Here we see the first fruit of that nature emerging in Adam. Adam did not receive a spirit of fear and guilt as punishment for disobeying God. God later inquired of Adam why he feared and why he felt ashamed. What I believe God was really saying to Adam was, "Why have you become like this? this is not the nature I created you with. You have now received a different nature by partaking of the tree I commanded you not to eat from." God could easily have forgiven Adam for his blunder of disobedience, but God could do nothing about Adam's choice of incurring the nature of sin by complicity with Satan. Once Adam had chosen, God's hand was frozen by His own spiritual Law of giving man a free will to choose. God could not now interfere with Adam's will; otherwise Adam's will would be proven to be other than free.
What ever Adam choose, Adam would have to bear and suffer until God Himself became a man and secured his redemption. This God would do in the fullness of time in the person of His Son Jesus Christ; but for now Adam was contaminated with the nature of sin. He had chosen and he had eaten, now he had become a part of the nature of sin, and the nature of sin had now become a part of him. Adam's spirit, which before was dependent on God, was now independent of God. Adam had made a decision for himself and for all of mankind that would follow. When we are born into this world, we are born with an independent spirit that is dead and separated from God; and we have a Sinful Nature.
This may appear to be controversial to some
What is said here may at first glance be controversial to some, so let's look at this from another perspective. Let us not be too hard on Adam (because to judge Adam condemns ourselves). Instead, look at us now - and recognise the distance between the state of man today and the standard set by God when He made man in the first place. For God created man in His own image, not that of Satan. Whether we like it or not, therefore, we have the evidence of sin in all mankind. None are perfect. Even those we consider to be the very best of mankind are bound to get it wrong far more than we would like to conceive. We know how sinful we are. If we're honest, we're far more sinful than even we can tolerate, let alone God who is perfect. In short, we all sin. We are all sinners.
Even so, the substance of what we are today, as flesh and blood, came out of Adam. Because we are the descendants of Adam, we are the sons and daughters of Adam. In essence we were in Adam when he sinned, because we were the seed in Adam! So to condemn Adam is to judge ourselves. We were Adam's seed when Adam disobeyed God and received Satan's nature. Those born of Adam receive the nature of Adam. Adam was a sinner - so we are sinners.
But this was not what God intended!
God's plan for mans dilemma is to provide a remedy that will not only redeem us but also give to us the completeness of Spiritual Life that Adam never had. To redeem man is to restore man to the place Adam had with God before he became a sinner, but to complete it is to give man God's own eternal Life and God's very own nature. This is something more! This is something Adam never ever had. He was barred from the tree of Life the moment he gained the sinful nature. This was to prevent him living forever in a sinful state. God has provided all the remedies for the ails of Mankind in the death, resurrection, glorification and Life of the Lord Jesus Christ!
What God requires to forgive Sin
God has His own Spiritual Laws by which He has to abide. These laws are not our laws and are therefore perhaps difficult for us to understand. God requires blood sacrifice before He can forgive anybody anything. "Without the shedding of blood there is no remission" (forgiveness for Sin)...(Hebrews 9:22) This indeed may not be palatable to us but let us just remember that this is God's business and God's way. We need to have respect both for God and God's way. God also requires an acceptable sacrifice. The only sacrifice acceptable to God for the sins of Mankind is a man that has never sinned. This off course is impossible from the sinful genealogy of Adam and Eve. God had to do a new thing that would transcend all. God Himself came to the earth in the person of His Son Jesus Christ to prove Himself worthy to be that sacrifice for Sin on our behalf.
God in the flesh is Jesus Christ of Nazareth
God did not come to this earth in the person of His Son Jesus Christ to prove He was God but rather to be proven a Man! The Father of the baby in Mary's womb was God! The blood type that Jesus had in his veins was the blood of God, not the blood of sinful man! The Soul life that was in that precious blood of Jesus was of God! His Life was clean and without the contamination of Sin!
God proved Himself an acceptable Sacrifice in the man Jesus Christ
Jesus Christ lived for approximately 33 years on the earth and in that time He never ever sinned, not even once! This had to be the most incredible achievement by a man on the earth so far. This feat qualified Jesus to be God's acceptable sacrifice for the remission of sins for all humanity. If Jesus would die and shed His precious blood; then God would forgive the sins of all who would accept Christs death as being their death.
Jesus did it right for all of us!
Jesus died on the cross as a total sacrifice for all sin. He paid for the sins of all humanity for all time by this one act of shedding of His precious blood at the cross. This also becomes very personal because it includes you and me. In this one way has God dealt with all our sins and in no other way. Praise God! It's a great relief to know that you and I have been forgiven for our whole debt of sin by almighty God, for Eternity!!
All Sins are forgiven ..and all means All
Some would not agree that our present sins and future sins are forgiven, until we confess and repent - but these confuse the forgiveness of God with the fellowship with God. Ask yourself this: at the time Jesus died, nearly 2000 years ago, how many of your sins were future to Him then at that time? You would have to say all of them were because we were not born until 20 Century's later! Can you see that, when He died for you, all your life was yet before Him and in the future to Him then? If all your life was future to His one act then; so also were all of your sins! He died once to pay for all! That means all the past sins, present sins and future sins you are yet to commit. However, although this glorious emancipation completely solves the problem for us regarding our forgiveness from God, it does not offer us a remedy to cease from sinning.
There is much more than just the Forgiveness of Sins!
To have the forgiveness of sins is one thing but without anything else it does not resolve the problem of the sinner sinning. Its great to have forgiveness for what I have done but I need something more, otherwise I will forever be on a merry-go-round of committing sins, to loosing fellowship, to confessing that sin and being cleansed by His blood, to once again sin and repeat the process. I need more than cleansing and forgiveness. I agree I need forgiveness for what I have done, but I also need a deliverance from what I am. As we showed earlier we were born with a Sinful nature. I need to be set free from my inherited nature of sin that I was born with.
I also need a Deliverance from what I am
And that is also what God has provided for in the death of His Son on the cross. Jesus died not only to pay the wages of our sin , He died also to secure our deliverance from the old nature of sin we inherited from Adam. A better translation of the word Saviour here would be Deliverer, because He has already saved us from the penalty of sins, and what He does now is in His role as Deliverer.
When we accepted the death of the Lord Jesus as payment for our life of sin, we then accepted His death as being our death! We were the ones that should have hung on that cross because we were the ones guilty of sin! So we can see then that somehow the Lord Jesus included us in His Life on the cross just before He died. The Lord Jesus not only died for what we did then but also for what we are. He also died for us the sinner by including us in Himself on the cross. Jesus gathered up into Himself at the cross all that there was of Adam in us and terminated it in His death. That included all of you and all of me for all time! The old nature of sin was therefore done away with and crucified in Christ on the cross.
NB: Please see a continuation of the theme of this article in "Are you Born Again?"
Conclusion
So we come to understand now what it is to have our name written in Heaven and entered in 'the Lamb's Book of Life' (Revelation 13:8 and 21:17) The word Salvation is better rendered 'Deliverance' than 'Saved' because it includes the whole attainment of Christ and not just the redeemed part. The redeemed then are those who have obtained from God the forgiveness of their Sins. Always remember that God forgives us on the basis of what Jesus is and on what He has achieved for us - never ever on the basis of what we are or on whether we have improved ourselves or not! Regarding the forgiveness of our Sins, God is not the slightest bit interested in how good or how bad we are!
All that God has done for us is to be found in the goodness and achievement of another; and no where else is God's forgiveness to be found! Jesus Christ is the one who has died for us! Jesus Christ is the one who has paid for our Sins with His Life. Jesus Christ is the Saviour for all Humanity! This is God's way and there is no other way!! All we can do is accept it and then praise Him by thanking Him for evermore!!! Amen!
