True Identity

            I joyfully embrace all the verses that point to my own unrighteousness and depravity apart from God. Why? Because it keeps me cheerfully free from trusting in myself and trying to bear the responsibility of mastering the helm of my own salvation.

            We acknowledge original sin, but we also acknowledge that on the cross, every speck of that sinfulness was swallowed up and completely destroyed. We don’t say that sin never existed. We say it was completely erased. Big difference.

            When I say I am not a sinner anymore, I am not crediting that to self-righteousness, but to the righteousness of God in Christ. If we claim to have never sinned we deceive ourselves (1 John 1:8-10). But if we think we are still sinners, we disown our True identity and we are just as deceived.

            We should never be sin-focused. God did not leave us with indwelling sin so that His grace would keep abounding. But He used our sinfulness and the law to point us to our need for Him. To say that God left indwelling sinfulness inside you to keep you humble or keep you dependent on Him is to miss the point and call the work of the cross “unfinished.” How could He leave the substance of pride in you to bring humility? That is ridiculous. Do not blame God for sin. He used it. He did not cause it; He dealt with it.

            In the existence of the old man Adam, you were crippled by sin. In the existence of the new man Christ, you are completely evil free. You are not schizo. The new has come, the old has gone. We are not saying the old never existed, or that some aren’t still living according to it today – but the old was a lie existence, a false existence.