Blood Covenant - Justification

Many people reject God’s offer of redemption. They don't want to face the truth and refuse the solution to the human predicament. JOHN 3:19. Just like Adam and Eve people are given to fig leaves and hiding behind bushes because their deeds are evil.
A. There are two ways people seek salvation. All religions fall under one or the other.
1. #1, In some way I can make myself right with God by my own works.
1. There is something I can do that will make me righteous. This is self righteousness.
b. I'm not severed from God. In my heart I am a good person. I’m not evil or a sinner.
c. I can appease God by keeping some kind of law, rules, rituals, observances.
(A) I can keep these religious laws, rules, rituals by calling on my own power, discipline,
ability and ingenuity.
(B) If I try hard enough I can eventually do it.
(1) Become very proud, self righteous by comparing selves to others and outsiders.
(2) LK 18:11. Pharisee.
(a) Opposite of what God always wanted. Void of any real love or humility.
(b) I must keep God's Law to perfection and I will be lost if I don't.
(c) Perpetual sense of guilt, frustration, shame. Always making perpetual promises of "I'll try to do better next time, I promise, I promise."
(3) This worldly religion has crept like a poisonous snake into our belief system..
(a) Instead of looking to God and the finished work of Jesus on the cross. Many
keep depending on themselves to work and keep some rules and regulations.
(b) Hoping to somehow manipulate God into loving and forgiving them.
2. #2, Is the New Covenant. The Gospel, that says, “Man can do nothing to save self.”
a. God established a means of salvation and justification for man just because of the
fact that man cannot do it himself. God did it for man on the cross.
(A) God made a New Covenant in Jesus. All we can do is respond by faith to Him by
saying, “Thank you God,” And we do that by our obedience to Him.
(B) Not by MY works, But by His works. Not by what I do, but, by what He did.
(1) Not by my trying, but by my trusting so much I respond by obedient faith.
(2) That's when I'm given salvation. Put into covenant relationship with Him.
b. EPH.2:8-10.
B. We Justified by Faith. ROM.3:28; 4:5; 5:1; GAL.2;16; 3:24. Some do not believe that.
1. What's their Problem? They don't understand what JUSTIFICATION is.
a. Most have misunderstood the word justify. JUSTIFY is a word that defines what the New Covenant is all about.
(A) Justify does NOT MEAN to make you into something you are not.
(1) It means to treat you "As." To ACCOUNT, or RECKON you "As."
(2) If an innocent man is acquitted in a court of law, he is NOT MADE Innocent.
(3) He is just ACCOUNTED innocent. He is justified. You don't make him anything. In his case he was already justified. He is Innocent before the trial . You don't make anybody anything by justification. Justification is a legal term that says, "This is what you are accounted as."
(B) Man appears before God as guilty of sin. But God accounts him as NOT Guilty.
(1) God accepts him as if he had NEVER Sinned. That does NOT make him NOT a sinners. It doesn't make him something he is NOT. He is still a sinner.

(2) Man stands before God as guilty. But God accounts him as Not guilty and He receives him as if he had never sinned. He is a pardoned sinner, a forgiven sinner.
(a) Grace pardons me for every sin I have ever committed. As I continue to live by faith I am continually PARDONED from my SINFULNESS. 1 JNO. 1:7. Every time I sin I am a CLEANSED sinner. I’m accounted as not being a sinner.
(2) Did I sin? Yes! Do I pay sin’s penalty? NO, and why not? Because God accounted me Not Guilty.
(b) On the basis of Jesus’ shed blood God declares me, accounts me, NOT
Guilty.
b. You are Accounted and declared, "Not Guilty", based on the fact that someone else paid the penalty for your sins.
(A) Your justification takes place in the mind of God. That's how God accepts you.
(1) Justification does not make you into something you are not. That comes later.
(2) Justification does not suddenly turn you Into a perfectly sinless person.
(a) God Says, "You are Righteous." You feel guilty because you still commit sin.
(b) You loose your self esteem thinking you’re a hypocrite. And you go crazy trying to make yourself into something you’re not.
(c) You are not righteous in, of or by yourself or by any of your efforts to to be righteous.
(b) Justification does not mean you are turned into a perfectly sinless person.
(3) Justification simply means God writes down or commits to memory, or
however He does it, “That your sins are, from beginning to end, forgiven.”
(a) Why? Let me Answer that with another Question. How am I walking? Am I
walking by faith, in the light, In the Holy Spirit, In God’s Word and will?
(b) What does that say about me? God’s law is written in my heart and mind.
(4) JER.31:31-34.
(1) That promise is fulfilled in me. How is that possible? Because God’s Law is written in my heart and on my mind. That means that I do not habitually live in sin. I sin but not on purpose. In fact I hate it when I sin. Sin is not in my heart and in my mind. My heart and mind is the place where God lives, not si
(b) Therefore, God receives me into His presence as pardoned. As if I had
never sinned because I’m covered, pardoned with Jesus Himself.
(B) No wonder Paul joyfully shouts those beautiful words in ROM.8:1-3.
(1) There's only one way you can walk through life free from sin. Free from the power of sin and the from the condemnation of sin and the penalty of sin.
(2) Only one way you can have that. Become a child of God this hour. Believe,
confess, repent, baptized. Be raised from waters of baptism to walk in Newness of
life with the joy, peace and the power of eternal salvation.
(3) Acts 20:32.

Spur - 1/21/2001 pm