Paying For Yourself There?

If I have incensed you with the blurb for this page on the introduction of this section, I apologise. The blood of Christ is not to be taken lightly. We are persuaded we are sinners, and we should all accept there is nothing excusable in our sinful natures. Also, the sacrifice of Jesus Christ is not such that we have a free ticket to sin as much as we wish - we have to make every effort to try to reduce our sinfulness.

Christ's blood though, is not the active agent that helps us to redeem ourselves - that is impossible. Rather, the action of the Holy Spirit in our lives and our faithfulness to Christ and each other is what encourages us to put off sin and amend our ways. We show our love for God by obeying his commandments, if we sin it doesn't mean we are not without love. That may seem a strange statement, but I will write more on it.

There are some habits that no matter how you try you can't seem to beat them. If you simply can't resist that bacon sandwich - it may be a sin to eat bacon, since it does break (a) commandment. But if you spent 10 minutes eating that bacon sandwich and then ten hours berating yourself for it -knowing you were just going to have another tomorrow, Are you certain you are getting the most out of your life?

Jesus died so we could be reconciled to God. Fact. By covering our sins with his blood the rest of our lives becomes instantaneously pleasing to God. Our faith in Christ justifies us before God in this. So, If we are to ask God for a fuller life - why are we so intent as Christians to agonise over our sin in our prayer? If the whole point of faith is to have a good relationship with our creator, why do we waste so much time of that paraying God about our inability to fix the problem he already has? (Though in a different way showing more wisdom than we show!)

If you want a better relationship, spend more time in his company. By maximising bible study and prayer the action of the Holy Spirit will shorten those ten hours of bacon sandwich to the ten minutes. Other sandwiches may not apply at all if you are not continuously stuck in the cycle of reinforcing the importance of something you may not even notice you actually miss.

There is nothing in the Christian faith that encourages an individual to sin. But "be not overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good". I never thought for one moment that Christ died to cover my sins from the gaze of God, therefore I'll sin as much as possible! It never entered my mind to do this at all. As Paul put it,

Rom 6:1 What shall we say then? Shall we continue in sin, that grace may abound?

This may not seem like deliberately going out on a spree of sin - but it is the limit of how we wish to be - so we may please God. There is so much help from the Holy Spirit available with improving our lives and relationship with Him. Do that, and the sin will begin to become less important, and less frequent.

Then worrying God in our prayers with our sins is actually counter productive. It is not the problem God wished to fix. Sure, sin is an evil, and a dreadful one. The disobedience of man was the problem that brought death into the world, but the Law brought sin. What was important to God before the law came in, was a good friendship, like God had with Abraham. A good friend will avoid sinning against his friend - And will put their trust in him also. The law was given to those whom God wished as friends, not to those He wished to alienate.

Become a friend to God foremost, and the rest will take care of itself if you wish to please Him. Accusing yourself of your own sin in God's ears is actually the worst thing you can do. Accusing the saints was the foremost effort of satan - the role of the accuser is not ours, why do we worry so much over our failings instead of getting the most out of God's victory? By consistently rubbing our noses into our failings we as dogs return to our own vomit again and again - and we have no way out on our own. We must improve the time we spend without sinning inside our relationship with God, in order to improve upon ourselves. The sinning is a fixed problem. - Most sins we are usually not aware of, like which day is the sabbath actually,.Or, my bank lends out my balance with usury and I get a share... We don't really worry about these things but they are continually occurring. guilt, and self abasement are the worst things to base our faith on, we never learn how great and good God is, if we are only concerned with how poor we are. By accepting that the sins in our life should not, and in fact do not enter into God's view of us if we are justified by faith - we should immediately try to improve within what he does see - the "quality time" we spend in His company.

Approaching God with guilt and self deprecation, knowing we are captives to human nature, and glorifying God though the love of his company is a progression we must confidently wade through in a Christian life. No step makes any reference to our actions in our favour - so, why should it those against it? Jesus exclaimed he had seen satan fall as lightning from heaven on the return of His disciples once they realised they had been accepted despite their doubts - and empowered despite their lack of understanding, and no doubt most importantly, Jesus' teaching justified before others despite the sins of the messengers also.

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