INDEX
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PART ONE
Chapter One: Who Condemns Us?
Chapter Two: Perfect In Christ
Chapter Three: Striving To Do More
Chapter Four: Self Analysis
Chapter Five: Forgiveness
PART TWO
Chapter Six: Accepting Ourselves.
Chapter Seven: 'And He Loves Me'
Chapter Eight: Glorious
Chapter Nine: Other People

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Sometimes we may feel so bad.. so unclean..proud..selfish…etc. We feel as though God can't possibly look upon us and accept us.
But are we really bad in God's eyes? Does God see that we have a sinful nature? What we need to do is dig deeper into the bible and get our theology right;
See what God says about us.

The truth is we used to be bad, proud, selfish, filthy….all of those things, but now that we are saved we are no longer:-
We "… were dead in trespasses and sins" (Ephesians 2v1). Our sinful nature, the flesh, could not please God. Our utmost best was tainted with sin. God loved us and wanted us to be reconciled to Himself, but for that we needed to be forgiven for our sins and we needed to become perfect. Then God could dwell with us. We could never achieve this ourselves we needed a Saviour. And so "The Father sent the son to be the saviour of the world."(1 John 4 v 14). Jesus suffered and died to forgive us and to deliver us from sin.

Our old sinful nature was beyond reforming, it could not be patched up and made better it had to be done away with altogether. Romans 6 says that God destroyed this sinful nature. He did so by crucifying us. Let us look at the scripture:- "Knowing this that our old man is crucified with him that the body of sin might be destroyed that henceforth we should not serve sin" (Romans 6 v 6).

We were crucified when Jesus hung on the cross, at this time we were placed in Him. This is stated in Romans 6 v 3,4 & 5. This is quite incredible to think that we were in Jesus when He died and our old nature which was totally submerged with sin was destroyed. We do not necessarily have to understand this, but just know that's what the bible says. (See also Galatians 2 v 20). So the bad part of us has been taken away, destroyed.

JESUS OUR LIFE

But God didn't just deliver us from sin and leave it at that. If He had done we would have been in the position that Adam was in before he sinned, innocent, but nothing more. No righteousness, no holiness. What God did is He gave us Jesus. Now Jesus lives in us (Colossians 1 v 27). Because we have Jesus we have His life (1 John 5 vs. 11 & 12).

Not only does Jesus live in us, but we also live in Him: -
"But of Him are ye in Christ Jesus…." (1 Corinthians 1 v 30). So now when God sees us He sees Jesus in us and us in Jesus. He sees Jesus as our righteousness. He accepts us and receives us because He sees us in Jesus. Jesus is very happy to present us to the Father, forgiven, cleansed and faultless. (Jude v 24) We are told that we should consider ourselves as God sees us:- "Likewise reckon ye also yourselves to be dead indeed unto sin, but alive unto God through Jesus Christ our Lord". (Romans 6 v 11).

When we realise that Jesus is our righteousness (1Corinthians 1 v 30) the foundation of our thinking changes. We understand that our righteousness is not obtained by doing good things and refraining from bad things, but Jesus is our righteousness. (Philippians 3 v 9)

But one might question "If the old sinful nature has been destroyed how is it that Christians can still sin (as shown in 1 John 1 vs 8 & 9)"? The answer to this is that although we have been delivered from the old nature, sin, which is 'alien' to us, can abide in our souls if we allow it to. Back to Romans ch 6:-
"Let not sin therefore reign in your mortal body that ye should obey it in the lusts thereof,"(Romans 6 v 12).

Let us not yield our members to sin, but yield ourselves to God as those who are alive from the dead. (Romans 6 v 13). For sin shall not have dominion over us (Romans 6 v 14).

FOOTNOTES:-
"God sees us in Christ Jesus and therefore we are perfect in His sight":- We can know this truth in a form, but sometimes it takes revelation from God to see it clearly. And when we have seen it may take another while before we understand it so that it becomes part of our experience. It is no good striving to acquire this knowledge in our own strength.

Finally, wonderful and important as this truth is let us not place too much emphasis on it at the expense of all other truths and doctrines in the bible; a mistake which I have made in the past.

Incidentally the Holy Spirit does not tend to make sweeping generalised statements like "You are proud". When He convicts us He reminds us of some specific incident when we acted or thought proudly, so that we repent of that wrong thing we have done.

Who Condemns Us? / Perfect In Christ / Striving To Do More / Self Analysis
Forgiveness / Accepting Ourselves. / 'And He Loves Me'
Glorious / Other People

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