Your best life now is about being transformed from the inside and experiencing the work of the Triune God in your life. To gain an appreciation of this it is necessary to grasp the fallen nature of man.
Mankind fell with Adam when he broke his covenant with God by taking the forbidden fruit and passed his sinful nature and the guilt from his transgression that came with it to all his posterity. With that, the roots of every human being are rotten to the core. Genesis 6:5 tells us, “The LORD saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every intention of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually.” Psalm 14:2-3 further demonstrates man’s wickedness, “The LORD has looked down from heaven upon the sons of men to see if there are any who understand, who seek after God. They have all turned aside, together they have become corrupt; there is no one who does good, not even one.”
These words tell us that we are in total need of re-formation from our fallen state. However, even once a person experiences this re-formation or the new birth they will still struggle with the flesh or the inclination to rebel and oppose God. As believers struggle with indwelling sin, they are to put the sin that plagues them to death through sanctification. In the process of sanctification, believers are not without divine empowerment. Philippians 1:6 declares, “And I am sure of this, that He who began a good work in you will bring it to completion at the day of Jesus Christ.”
As God sanctifies believers, there is the anticipation of Christ’s return. Hebrews 9:28 points to His second coming, “So Christ, having been offered once to bear the sins of many, will appear a second time, not to deal with sin but to save those who are eagerly waiting for him.” Revelation 1:7 also points to the second coming, “Behold, he is coming with the clouds, and every eye will see him, even those who pierced him, and all tribes of the earth will wail on account of him. Even so. Amen.” Also, in Revelation we’re given great hope as 21:1-2 and 22:1-5 paint a picture of what is to come.
While the believer’s greatest hope is the Lord’s second coming and the new paradise, there is significant hope in living this life as an adopted child of God. There are enormous ramifications to the fact that God brings about our conversion. He foreknew each believer from eternity past as Romans 8:29 makes clear, “For those whom he foreknew He also predestined to be conformed to the image of His Son, in order that he might be the firstborn among many brothers.“ God tells us in Jeremiah 1:5, “Before I formed you in the womb, I knew you…” In Ephesians 1:4-5 God through Paul stresses that believers were chosen to stand before God cleansed of sin, and He further emphasizes our predestination to share Sonship with Jesus-all by His will.
What does all this mean? To start with, let me say that God is completely sovereign including what goes beyond His revelation (Deuteronomy 29:29). Such truth should overwhelm us. Our God set apart us believers from eternity past before we could bat an eye. This is the epitome of Grace, of being favored despite what we are and contrary to what we deserve.
In the fullness of time, this Sovereign God whom no one can fully comprehend, sent His only begotten Son to take on human flesh and blood to live the perfect life of the prophesized Messiah and to die on the cross as the propitiation for our sins. Two days later this incarnate Son Jesus rose from the dead and His resurrection carries numerous implications. First God saw it necessary to resurrect Jesus because He fully endured the penalty on the cross for our sins in keeping with His Father’s mission for Him. Also, for believers is the realization that while Jesus conquered death, so will we. When He comes again to judge the world, believers will be given new resurrected bodies thus surviving the eternal judgement of those who did not embrace Him as Lord and Savior but instead will dwell with Jesus and all the saints for eternity in Paradise. Just as the resurrection gives believers power with eternal consequences, there is also power for the here and now. That same power through the Holy Spirit that gave Christ the strength to leave the tomb empty gives believers the ability to conquer the flesh throughout their sanctification. By faith believers are united with Jesus in His resurrection. In fact, Philippians 4:13 declares, “I can do all things through him who strengthens me.”
At the time, the resurrection was a wake-up call to Jesus’s followers as it brought to light who He was and what He came to do. He was way not just a man who taught them for three years whose lessons they did not fully comprehend. He was God incarnate who needed to die to accomplish the mission His Father had given Him. Seeing Jesus resurrected, they grew in their understanding that following Jesus meant that they were submitting to God in the flesh. They saw that as believers and followers of Jesus, being united with Him through His resurrection meant being united with Him in suffering, too. In fact, Jesus told Peter in John 21:18, “Truly, truly, I say to you, when you were young, you used to dress yourself and walk wherever you wanted, but when you are old, you will stretch out your hands, and another will dress you and carry you where you do not want to go.” Paul speaks also to suffering with Christ in Romans 8:17 saying, “We are children of God, and if children, then heirs—heirs of God and fellow heirs with Christ, provided we suffer with him in order that we may also be glorified with him.”
Scripture indicates, our union with Christ means not just being glorified with Him when He returns but also suffering with Him now.
Another aspect of the union of Christ is that it provides us confidence that our Lord and Savior who holds all things together (Colossians 1:17) will protect and guide us. As God instructed Joshua about his mission, “Do not to be frightened, and do not be dismayed, for the Lord your God is with you wherever you go.” (Joshua 1:9). Jesus assured His disciples about His own mission in John 6:39, “And this is the will of him who sent me, that I should lose nothing of all that He has given me but raise it up on the last day.” He also provides us assurance about our works by declaring in John 15:4, “Abide in me, and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit by itself, unless it abides in the vine, neither can you, unless you abide in me.” Believers are even given a sense of predestined purpose in Ephesians 2:10, “for we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them.”
Even more assurance comes to believers through justification which God through Paul addressed in several of His epistles (especially Romans and Galatians). This is a declaration by God upon people who trust in Christ that they receive His pardon for all their sins and grants acceptance by virtue of Christ’s imputed righteousness. Adam’s guilt along with any of their sin is removed from their account and they are free from any burden they are carrying from their own sin. Furthermore, what this means for the believer is God has forgiven them despite their hostility towards Him and His pardon extends to any sin they will commit later in life for He is sovereign over space and time. To further emphasize the blessing of this doctrine, the believer has the confidence that there is no condemnation for any sin they commit since Christ paid the penalty for it all. (Romans 8.1). Since Christ paid the[KB1] penalty for all sins, a believer should not be burdened with guilt but have a clean conscience before God. However, if a person experiences victory of any sort, all glory should go to God which is humbling knowing that our salvation is His accomplishment (Colossian 1:13-14) and our role in the body was determined according to His will as we’re once again told in Ephesians 2:10 that our works were prepared beforehand. So, the beauty of justification is that it’s reminds us that by Christ’s blood we as believers stand before God blameless despite our performance simply because of God’s act of pardon and unmerited grace. Now, sinners (righteous ones) I leave you with this, go and sin no more.
In His Image 