Month: May 2018

. . . and are justified by his grace as a gift, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus (Rm 3:24)

In him we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of our sins, according to the riches of his grace. (Eph 1:7)

. . . it is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me. (Gal 2:20)

Father, I thank you for the Cross, for through it I have riches that this world cannot touch. 

 Sometimes the Bible uses fancy words to describe what God has done. Justification, redemption, reconciliation, and regeneration are some of those words. I want to explain these ideas in common terms and show how all of them are tied together.

Redemption is the work Jesus did on the Cross in which his death paid what you and I justly owe. It is a spiritual transaction. In a sense, God paid a great price to purchase the human race out of her sin. He then issued a contract that reads something like this:

From: God Almighty, Creator of the universe

To: the human race

 Let it be known that your ways are not my ways. You are enslaved to sin and dwell in the slums of sin with no way out. I will have no sin in my presence.

 Let it also be known, however, that I have loved you with an everlasting love and do not desire you to remain where you are. Therefore, I offer you the following proposal:

I have paid the price to purchase you out of your sin. That price consists of the blood of my Son. On the Cross, I have freed you.  I will freely apply this transaction to all who accept it — to all who put their faith in my Son. They shall then belong to me and I to them. Before the law, they shall be clean, and they shall freely enter into my presence as my children. They shall be free from the chains of their sin and enjoy a new life as the Bride of Christ.

Redemption has purchased us out of the slums. This redemptive transaction is the ground for justification (Rm 3:24) and forgiveness. (Eph 1:7). Justification deals with the Law and makes us right before the Law. It is a justice issue. Legally, all who rely on the redemptive transaction of the Cross are clean because their Guilt has been atoned for. Forgiveness deals with reconciliation and restores our relationship with God. It is a relational issue. All who rely on the redemptive transaction of the Cross now belong to God. They are restored legally because Christ has paid their penalty. They are restored relationally because they are now united relationally to Christ.

Regeneration simply means “new life.” Those who enter into the contract with God — those who rely on the gracious transaction of the Cross — receive a new life. The old life in the slums of sin is gone; the new life in Christ has begun. New life is made possible by redemption, for redemption unites us to Christ.

All of these gifts — legal justification, personal forgiveness and reconciliation, a new life, and the redemption through the Cross — are inseparable. Each is a different aspect of our union with Christ, for when we say “yes” to God’s proposal of redemption, we are simultaneously saying “yes” to a union with Christ. We belong to him. “You are not your own, for you were bought with a price.” (I Cor 6:19-20)

“… and are justified by his grace as a gift, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, whom God put forward as a propitiation by his blood, to be received by faith.” (Rm 3:24-5)

Praise, You, O Lord! My guilt is gone through the blood of the Cross!

This week’s blog continues the last one. If you haven’t read the last one, scroll down.

In the last blog, I mentioned that real Guilt involves relational brokenness and justice. When we sin, we justly deserve punishment and we harm our relationship with God. Therefore, any attempt to deal with Guilt properly, must deal with both those issues. God will not simply wave His hand and forgive our Guilt to restore the relationship, for such hand waving ignores justice, and God is just. But neither will God execute a just punishment in a cold manner devoid of any relational meaning, for such a punishment ignores love, and God is love. When God deals with our Guilt, He does so in a just way and a loving way.

God has released justice through the blood of the Cross (Rm 3:24-6), and He has brought reconciliation through the blood of the Cross (Col 1:20). In Jesus, God has removed your Guilt. He has done so with complete justice, and any payments or debts you may owe because of your Guilt are gone. The Cross took care of those. Justice has been served. Therefore, the barrier that your Guilt brought between you and God is destroyed. In doing this, God offers you reconciliation. He says, “Come. I will forgive your sin.  Abide in my presence.”

This action of God is precisely the thing that we could never do ourselves, and it deals directly with the real issue — our sin. The follower of Jesus experiences this reconciliation, this forgiveness, by faith. Therefore, the Christian way of dealing with Guilt is to acknowledge it and bring it by faith to the Cross, which destroys it. The Christian may sin at times, but before God, all the sin is gone.

We are free from Guilt through Christ, and it is this freedom that allows us to rejoice in a real way. Our joy is not the deceptive comfort of hiding our Guilt. It is the full realization that we are more Guilty than we know but that we have been released from it because Christ has died. Praise Him!

This freedom from Guilt then affects our feelings of guilt. The Cross is the antidote to Aunt Georgina (see previous blog). Christians have no business bashing themselves on the head for a Guilt that is gone. I do not mean Christians should never feel remorse. I mean simply that they should never wallow in it. Their sin is gone. It is not just hidden from their eyes through some rhetorical trick. It is completely obliterated by the love of God. When Aunt Georgina grasps that fact, she is a different woman. She may still wrestle and struggle with her orientation to guilt. We do live, after all, in a fallen world. But she is not the same Georgina. When her heart and mind fully grasp the fact that all her real Guilt is gone, the inappropriate feelings of guilt begin to disappear. “If God has forgiven me for the time I cheated in chemistry and for the sexual relationship I had with Aaron, then why am I worrying about towels?” Aunt Georgina is clean in Jesus Christ, and she ought to think accordingly.

The Christian way of handling feelings of guilt is not to deny real Guilt but to deal with it through the Cross. Because the Christian way actually deals with the real problem, it produces real peace from the inside out and not just a contrived peace built on blindness.

Christians are righteous in God’s eyes because God has made them righteous through the Cross. The theological term for this act is “justification,” and we have been justified not by our good works or by our religious rituals but only by faith in Jesus and the work He did on the Cross. Justification comes in Christ. We “are justified by his grace as a gift, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus.” (Rm 3:24) We are made right for the simple fact that we are in Christ. Justification is part of our union with Christ, and when we enter into that union, our relationship with God changes. Sin and Guilt are destroyed. We are clean and right in his sight because we are in Christ, and Christ is clean and right. We are made right by faith because we are united with Christ by faith. Justification and the removal of our Guilt are part of the package of being in Christ. Praise Him! By faith, your Guilt is gone.