When Peter foolishly tried to walk on the water and began to sink, he cried out, "Lord, save me" (Matthew 14:30). If s terrible to know you are about to drown, but it's comforting then to know that a lifeguard is very near to save you.
We are all Peter sinking in the seas of addiction and selfishness, and we all need a Saviour who is near at hand and not afar off. We know only too well how strong is the undertow that sucks us into the maelstrom, and how dark are those depths. We just do not have the strength to save ourselves.
Evil passions, hatreds, and lusts, lurk beneath the surface in all our hearts awaiting a provocation sufficient to arouse them. We don't want to say or do things that we later regret, but before we know it we are embroiled again, and deeper guilt poisons our happiness. Habits of appetite, drugs, tobacco, alcohol, illicit loves, infatuations, mock us as unconquerable.
These feelings, resentments, hatreds, and lusts roll over us like ocean waves. Deep emotions that the commandment forbids when it says, "You shall not covet," are the uncontrollable urges that caused the self-righteous Saul of Tarsus at last to recognize the haunting reality of sin in his heart.
Youth (and many adults) with raging hormones face problems with illicit sex. The devil rejoices to boast that Christianity hasn't helped much, and the Islamic world in particular consider this as evidence of moral depravity built-in as an intrinsic part of Christianity. A 1980's survey of 1,006 American girls concludes: "Religion-conscious girls are 86 percent more likely to say if s important to be a virgin at marriage than non-religion-conscious girls. However, religion-conscious girls are only 14 percent more likely to be virgins than the non-religion-conscious girls."
Each year more than a million American teenage girls become pregnant. If present trends continue, 40 percent of today's 14-year-olds will be pregnant at least twice before age 20. Former U. S. Surgeon General C. Everett Koop said that 70 per cent of American adolescents are sexually active—that is, practicing fornication. "If you tell that 70 per cent to just say no, they laugh. And if they try to say no, they find it very difficult."
Such lack of self-control before marriage usually programs these youth to future marital infidelity. Jesus' words have been fulfilled all around us, "Because lawlessness will abound, the love [agape] of many will grow cold" (Matthew 24:12). As surely as night follows day, the loss of agape initiates the infidelity-crime-violence-poverty syndrome.
This is the dark world we live in. Multitudes suffer in despair, as Paul did, for they don't really want to slide down into moral suicide. They don't know how to handle peer pressure and those compulsive hormonal urgings.
Paul touched everyone's raw nerve when he complained of himself, "I do not understand what I do; for I don't do what I would like to do, but instead I do what I hate.... Even though the desire to do good is in me, I am not able to do it. I don't do the good I want to do; instead, I do the evil that I do not want to do.... Evil is the only choice I have.... Sin ... is at work in my body. What an unhappy man I am! Who will rescue me from this body that is taking me to death?" (Romans 7:18-24, TEV)
Whether this is the converted or unconverted Paul is beside the point. Paul uses the corporate ego, referring to humanity in general "in Adam." Here is universal mankind crying out for help. And help is much closer than we have thought.
Paul answers his despairing question himself:
What the law could not do in that it was weak through the flesh, God did by sending His own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh, on account of sin: He condemned sin in the flesh. (Romans 8:3)
This is the Saviour who has come very near. But the problem is that the scandal of nearly two thousand years of apostate Christianity has removed that Saviour far off from us. If it were not for this terrible falsehood that has put Him far away, it would be impossible for Christian youth to say things like, "I have a lot of work to do if I want to be saved," or "I wish I could be completely good, but it's not always easy," or "I want to serve God, but I find it very hard" (see statements in chapter 3).
The Chicago Tribune reported that a Gallup poll found that an upsurge in America's religious interest was cancelled with a similar swing toward immoral behavior. "There is no doubt that religion is growing," Gallup conceded. "But we find that there is very little difference in ethical behavior between church-goers and those who are not active religiously.... Levels of lying, cheating, and stealing are remarkably similar in both groups."
Can't you hear Satan's hosts cheering "Whoopee!" at news like that? When Jesus made His debut into the world, the angelic fanfare announced, "He will save His people from their sins" (Matthew 1:21). Why doesn't the world get to see some clear evidence that His people are indeed saved from, not in their sins? What has happened?
The reason is that "the little horn" power, "Babylon," has "cast truth down to the ground" and developed a "transgression of desolation" (Daniel 8:12,13). It has hidden Christ from clear view while professing to worship Him, and substituted a far-away "Christ" who cannot save from sin but can only condone our living in sin. A massive cloud of confusion has enveloped the true Christ, like clouds that hide a mountain peak, so that Christianity is rendered virtually impotent to make the world a better place to live in. And billions do not know the clever switch that has happened.
The New Testament gospel message discloses the nearness of the Saviour, and how powerfully He can deliver from the tentacles of deep, deep sin. It is a message that the world is literally dying to hear. Let us examine it more closely.
The Saviour Who Came All the Way to Where We Are
Youth in particular are overjoyed with the New Testament message that presents Christ as taking upon Himself our fallen nature, facing our temptations, feeling their full strength, knowing how we feel, and yet gaining the complete victory in sinless character and sinless living. It is as though they turn a corner and come unexpectedly face to face with Jesus Himself. The experience expressed in Isaac Watts' hymn comes alive for these youth:
Forbid it Lord, that I should boast
Save in the death of Christ my God;
All the vain things that charm me most,
I sacrifice them to His blood.
For thousands of years paganism has represented God as being far away. When the Roman Empire changed its official religion midstream in its history, a corrupt form of Christianity replaced its paganism. But it incorporated the same dark idea of God being far away, separated from humanity. The fundamental idea of the papacy is that God is so holy that He would never come so near to us as to take our flesh and conquer sin where it has taken root in our sinful, depraved nature.
For this reason, Roman Catholicism has developed the "dogma" of the Immaculate Conception. The Virgin Mary, the mother of Jesus, must be cut off from inheriting the genetic nature of humanity, so that she can give to her Son a different kind of humanity than we have. He must be "exempt" from having to face the problems we must face.
This teaching logically maintains that sin in human nature is invincible—in other words, it is impossible not to sin if one has normal human nature. The idea is that sin and human nature belong together. Millions accept this without realizing that it concedes that Satan has been right all along in his rebellion against God. (See Job 1 and 2.)
The reason is this: Satan claims that his invention of sin proves that God is wrong in requiring obedience to His holy law. Obedience is impossible for fallen mankind, Satan claims; and if Christ had become truly man by taking our fallen, sinful nature, He would have been forced to sin just as we assume that we are forced to sin. He could not have resisted, and neither can we resist.
This idea requires that sin somehow resides in the genes and chromosomes, and therefore Christ must be "exempt" from taking our genes and chromosomes, our genetic inheritance. He must not come "in the likeness of sinful flesh," but must be kept away as far as possible from sinful flesh.
A profound element of deception is implicit in this view. Ostensibly it appears to be Christian in that it seems to glorify Christ's sinlessness, and for sure He was sinless; but in reality this dogma separates Him from humanity, and thus denies His true victory over sin in righteousness. It is a skillful subterfuge in that it cuts Him off from partaking of our true human nature and is thus a fulfillment of the apostle John's warning against "the spirit of the Antichrist:"
Every spirit that confesses that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is of God, and every spirit that does not confess that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is not of God. And this is the spirit of the Antichrist. (1 John 4:2,3)
The Greek word for "flesh" is sarx, which always means the sinful, fallen flesh (or nature) which all human beings share alike. The Bible knows of no other kind of "flesh," and John knows of no "exemption" which separates Christ from taking our flesh. The Roman Catholic TV evangelist Fulton Sheen makes the point very clear:
The word "immaculate" is taken from two Latin words meaning "not stained." "Conception" means that, at the first moment of her conception, the Blessed Mother in the womb of her mother, St. Anne, … was preserved free from the stains of original sin… Mary was desolidarized and separated from that sin-laden humanity ... at the moment of her conception... [This was a] special privilege accorded to Mary... She is unique,... shown a special favor,... the new Eve,... humanly perfect! There ought to be an infinite separation between God and sin… [He] lifted up one woman by preserving her from sin,... someone who would mediate between us and Christ as He mediates between us and the Father.
Mary was chosen by God ... by being preserved free from the primal sin that had infected all humanity.... In Mary, there was hardly any earth at all except herself; all was Heaven... She alone was of earth, and yet she, too, seemed more of Heaven.
No great triumphant leader makes his entrance into the city over dust-covered roads, when he could come on a flower-strewn avenue. Had Infinite Purity chosen any other port of entrance into humanity but that of human purity, it would have created a tremendous difficulty—namely, how could He be sinless, if He was born of sin-laden humanity? If a brush dipped in black becomes black, and if cloth takes on the color of the dye, would not He ... have also partaken of the guilt in which all humanity shared? If He came to this earth through the wheatfield of moral weakness, He certainly would have some chaff hanging on the garment of His human nature.
This is a dogma that has no support in Scripture. It twists the Good News of a victorious Saviour who saves from sin into the defeatist bad news that says sin is too strong for even Christ to defeat in the flesh. What a clever vindication of Satan's point of contention! Since we are all "sin-laden humanity" living our lives in "the wheatfield of moral weakness," we can never get rid of that "chaff until we go to a place called purgatory. If Jesus had been truly tempted as we are, He would have sinned; and the corollary is that it is equally impossible for us not to sin.
The Bible gives us better news than that. After he described his despair in Romans 7, Paul found joyful hope in the Good News of a Saviour who came all the way to where we are, that He might save us from our sins. "There is therefore now no condemnation to those who are in Christ Jesus.... For the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus has made me free from the law of sin and death" (Romans 8:1,2). What does this mean? How deep and thorough is Christ's deliverance from our compulsive habits of sin?
"No condemnation" means release from our inner sense of divine judgment which has hung over us all our lives. Although these feelings of psychic wrong and maladjustment are deep and penetrating, "the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus" is even deeper and more far-reaching. A new principle delivers us from tentacles of fear, guilt, and moral disorder that have enslaved our souls, even from our infancy.
No psychiatrist can accomplish such a profound catharsis of the human soul as can this "law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus." Wrongs and anxieties that even our parents could not relieve find inner healing. "When my father and my mother forsake me [where they leave off], then the Lord will take me up," says David (Psalm 27:10). He who believes the true gospel enjoys the new birth, which is a power working in him for righteousness as much stronger than the power of inherited tendencies to evil as our heavenly Father is greater than our earthly parents.
A glorious reality is disclosed in Paul's presentation of our nigh-at-hand Christ. The reason why Christ has come so close to us is revealed here:
What the law could not do in that it was weak through the flesh, God did by sending His own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh, on account of sin: He condemned sin in the flesh, that the righteous requirement of the law might be fulfilled in us who do not walk according to the flesh but according to the Spirit. (Romans 8:3,4)
The word "likeness" in the Greek means identical, the same as. It cannot mean unlike or different from. Christ who is fully God now became fully man, not "desolidarized" from the human race. He built a divine-human bridge that spanned the gulf of alienation that sin has made, with foundations that reach all the way to the deepest root within the nature of the most helplessly lost sinner on earth.
In no way did He side-step reality by the deceit of an "exemption" from what we must battle with. Such a contrived exemption would negate the basic principle of righteousness by faith and contradict all of Scripture. Further, it would cast Christ in the role of a deceiver pretending to conquer sin when He never even came close enough to fight the battle where sin is. Paul's intent is to present Christ as perfectly equipped to solve the problem of sin where it is—deep within our fallen nature. Here is the bastion where the dragon has made his last stand, and here is where Christ confronts him. Yet Christ remained perfectly sinless.
A fierce battle is being fought between Christ and Satan over this issue. There is no problem with sin being conquered in sinless nature, different from our sinful flesh. That battle was won long ago in heaven when two-thirds of the angels overcame Satan's temptations in sinless nature (Revelation 12:7-17). For Christ to come to earth to fight that same battle over again would be redundant. You don't win World War II by re-fighting the War of 1812. The battle now is with sin having taken root in sinful human nature, in sinful flesh.
Satan arrogantly claims that his invention of sin has matured in human nature to the place where it now proves God is wrong. It cannot be overcome! And most Christians implicitly agree with Satan. They excuse their continued sinning by saying, “I’m only human! The devil makes me do it." Here is the slimy trail of the great serpent. This is the main reason why the Gallup poll is forced to record so little difference in moral and ethical behavior between Christians and non-Christians.
This false doctrine is enslaving the world with wretched misery. But the true Christ slew the dragon in his last lair, proved that human sin is willful. He created in mankind who believe, a new abhorrence of sin that will lead to its final eradication. Thus He set the captive will of sinful man free to say no to sin, and to "fulfill all righteousness." (Cf. Matthew 3:15)
The Reason Why Christ Can Save Every Sinner on Earth
The gospel message is focused like a spotlight in the Book of Hebrews. Here we see how Christ's closeness qualifies Him to penetrate to these inner recesses of our psychic, sinful alienation:
We see Jesus, who was made a little lower than the angels ... that He, by the grace of God, might taste death for everyone. For it was fitting for Him ... to make the author of their salvation perfect through sufferings.
For both He who sanctifies, and those who are being sanctified are all of one, for which reason He is not ashamed to call them brethren…
Inasmuch then as the children have partaken of flesh and blood.
He Himself likewise shared in the same, that through death He might destroy Him who had the power of death, that is, the devil, and release those who through fear of death were all their lifetime subject to bondage. (Hebrews 2:9-15)
For verily he took not on him the nature of angels; but he took on him the seed [sperm] of Abraham. (Verse 16, KJV)
Therefore, in all things He had to be made like His brethren, that He might be a merciful and faithful High Priest in things pertaining to God, to make propitiation for the sins of the people. For in that He Himself has suffered, being tempted, He is able to aid those who are tempted. (Hebrews 2:17,18)
Let us examine the spiritual riches in this treasure-chest of truth:
- Christ has tasted our second death, the ultimate horror of deepest despair beyond even the threshold of our emotional undoing.
- He was made perfect through His sufferings.
- He is "one" with us.
- He calls us "brethren," that is, He is closer to us than family members to one another. He is not cut off or "exempt" from "blood" relationship to us.
- Although He was always God in human flesh, He laid aside the advantages of His divinity so that He had to learn to trust in God as we must learn to trust.
- He "took part" of the "flesh and blood" of the descendants of fallen Adam, not that of the sinless Adam. That "flesh and blood" had to include the hormonal temptations which we experience. Yet He did not sin. (Temptation itself is not sin; the sin lies in yielding to it). There was no sin in Him.
- Specifically, He did not take the nature of sinless beings, but that of the "seed," the genetic descendants of Abraham. Thus, in the strongest language possible we are assured that Christ took upon His sinless nature our sinful nature, that He might know how "to aid those who are tempted." (Verse 18)
- With no exemption, He was "made like" unto us.
- Thus He has become a "merciful and faithful High Priest," our divine-human Physician and Psychiatrist of our souls. His perfect sinlessness qualifies Him.
- In every way that we are tempted, because of His utter sinlessness, His victory over sin, He is able to help us.
How Was Christ Tempted?
Did Mary give Him our true human nature, or was the inheritance of our true humanity denied to Him? Was He "desolidarized" from us?
Hebrews reiterates the answer: "We do not have a High Priest who cannot sympathize with our weaknesses, but was in all points tempted as we are, yet without sin" (Chapter 4:14-16). Paul says He "was born of the seed [genetic inheritance] of David according to the flesh" (Romans 1:3). He took our nature, yet He did not sin, so that He might save us from the sin which is in our nature.
Jesus Himself tells us how He had to deny His "own will" in order to follow His "Father's will." Thus His life on earth was a constant struggle against the identical temptations to indulge self that we feel (John 5:30; 6:38; Matthew 26:39; Romans 15:3). We have yielded to self and therefore we are sinners. He constantly denied self. Thus He was sinless. He was never selfish, even for a moment. And His unselfishness cost Him the death of the cross.
This is tremendous Good News! No matter how deep or how strong your temptation may be to give in to self, Christ was tempted that same way, "yet without sin." And that’s not all! A powerful "therefore" follows Hebrews 4:15: "Let us therefore come boldly ... and find grace to help in time of need." His "likeness of sinful flesh" gave Him perfect entrance to condemn that very sin that enslaves you and me—judge it, pronounce sentence on it, kill it.
We are invited to be "bold" in Him and not to hang back timidly as though we are doomed to defeat.
The Strange Opposition to the Nearness of the Saviour
Some tell us that Christ could not have been tempted as we are, for there were no TV's in His day, no ice cream parlors, no vodka, no sport cars, etc. But that superficial judgment fails to appreciate that every temptation to sin that we can experience is directed at our primal love of self; and He knows every avenue of that sin's appeal. Knowing how strong the temptation is, He sympathizes with us, but even that is not all. Mere sympathy and pity would not help us. His full-time job is saving us from yielding to those temptations. We "come boldly," not timidly, in a prayer of faith to obtain that help.
Note the clear insistence that although Christ came close to us, taking our sinful nature, He was "yet without sin." Not even by a thought or word would He yield to the tempter. "The prince of this world cometh, and hath nothing in me," He said (John 14:30, KJV). He always remained "that holy One" (Luke 1:35). The struggle against sinful temptation was so fierce and so dangerous that He sweat drops of blood in His agony, (Hebrews 5:7; 12:3,4) a more terrible ordeal than any of us have known.
The struggle to yield your will to be "crucified with Him" may be painful, but it is easier than your being crucified alone. And living the life of resultant resurrection "with Him" is easier than wearing yourself out in continuing to fight against the Holy Spirit.
A Magnificent Promise Especially for These Last Days
The Lord has something special for His people living in the very end of time: "To him who overcomes I will grant to sit with Me on My throne, as I also overcame and sat down with My Father on His throne" (Revelation 3:21). He ministers this special privilege now when sin and temptation seem stronger and more alluring than ever before and when we humans are still weaker and more susceptible to falling.
In these last days, the fact of the Saviour taking our fallen, sinful flesh, becomes a more precious truth than ever before. His overcoming is not only an example to us. (An example is useless if you don't know how to follow it!) Our Example becomes our training-Exemplar. He identifies with you and you identify with Him. Your temptation becomes His temptation; and your failure becomes His concern. Your success is His victory, for you are joined in a yoke with Him, and He does the pulling of the heavy weight. Our job is to stay with Him and to cooperate with Him, yielding our will to Him. Don't ever leave the happy yoke that binds you to Him (Matthew 11:28-30). That's the best place to be, forever.
Christ knew that in these last days Satan would lead multitudes of human beings into drug addiction, alcoholism, crime, lust, child abuse, homosexuality, pornography, fornication, adultery, bulemia—all temptations that seem irresistible because we have a sinful nature. The lost sheep has strayed further from the fold than ever before, but the Good Shepherd goes further than ever before "until He find it." This means that as a divine Psychiatrist He probes ever more deeply into the why of our last-day weaknesses, and provides full healing. Sin abounding means that there is grace much more abounding.
Paul frequently speaks of "the righteousness" of Christ (Cf. Romans 3:2126; 5:18). This significant phrase implicitly requires the understanding that in His incarnation Christ took the fallen, sinful nature of man. The reason is obvious.
"Righteousness" is a word that is never used of beings with a sinless nature. We read of "holy" angels or unfallen angels, but never of righteous angels. Adam and Eve before the fall were innocent and holy, but never do we read that they were righteous. They could have developed a righteous character if they had resisted temptation, but righteousness has become a term that means holiness that has confronted temptation in sinful human nature and has perfectly overcome. And that is what Christ as the true God-man has done.
The word means justification, and something that is sinless can not need justification. The innate meaning of the word is straightening something that is crooked, correcting something that is unjust.
One who has only a sinless nature would be holy, but could not be said to be righteous. Christ was sinless, but He "took" our sinful, crooked nature and in it lived a perfect life of holiness. This gives Him title to that glorious name, "THE LORD OUR RIGHTEOUSNESS." (Jeremiah 23:6)
Therefore Jude says He "is able to keep you from stumbling, and to present you faultless before the presence of His glory with exceeding joy." Revelation corroborates this promise by displaying a people who stand "without fault before the throne of God." Thus He can say of His people, "The marriage of the Lamb has come, and His wife has made herself ready." (Jude 24; Revelation 12:17; 14:5,12; 19:7,8)
The secret of their overcoming is not a special works program of trying harder than ever before. It is the recovery of a purer faith than any former generation have attained, a previously unrealized intimacy of sympathy with Christ, a heart-appreciation of Him, a "surveying" of His cross with all the melting of frozen hearts that follows. Nothing else but that contrite concern for the honor of Christ can "keep you from falling." Selfish concern, fear of hell, working for reward in heaven, will fail.
The Third Angel's Message and the Cleansing of the Sanctuary
Our addiction to sin stems from a sense of alienation from God and from one another. A profound loneliness follows. How has Christ abolished this darkness? The Bible reveals how those who were "aliens,... having no hope and without God in the world ... have been made near by the blood of Christ." He has "abolished in His flesh the enmity, .... that He might reconcile them ... to God ... through the cross, thereby putting to death the enmity." (Ephesians 2:12-17)
Many go on year after year "having no hope, and without God in the world." But this alienation was endured by the tempted Jesus as He hung on the cross in His last hours. No one has ever felt so bereft of hope and joy as He when He cried out, "My God, My God, why have You forsaken Me?" (Matthew 27:46)
It was in that final hour of total darkness of soul that Jesus drank our bitter cup to its dregs. That was when He tasted real "death for every man" (Hebrews 2:9). Do you feel as though the heavens were brass above you, the earth as iron beneath, that no one cares, that Heaven seems to have slammed the door against you, that nothing lies before you but darkness? That is precisely how Jesus felt, for that is the essence of "the second death." He "tasted" it so that you might not have to feel that way. You can thank Him for enduring that cross for you.
In His closing ministry on this great Day of Atonement He is working hard night and day to complete that reconciliation in the hearts of all who by faith sympathize with Him in that special work.
We can find the most intimate portrayals of Christ's humiliation and excruciating personal pain and victory in what seems an unlikely place—in the Psalms. There it is revealed that Christ took our place, and had the nature of the whole human race. And in Him meet all the weaknesses of mankind, so that every man on the earth who can be tempted finds in Him power against that temptation. For every soul there is in Jesus Christ victory against it all. Psalms 22 and 69 are His cries of woe as He hung on His cross.
In that dark hour when He suffered alone, He built that glorious bridge over the chasm of alienation that sin has caused. His magnificent achievement is called "the atonement," the making at-one of those who were separated— you and God.
That alienation, unrelieved by a knowledge of the gospel, is the fundamental reason why so many youth seek illicit physical intimacies, now more than ever before. Their souls are hungry and empty for the reality which atonement with Christ alone can fill. Frightening them with warnings of pregnancy, VD, AIDS, abortion, or hell, does nothing solid to help them resist temptation, for its roots are too deep. With AIDS becoming rampant, the world is at last realizing that sin is suicide. But fear of hell is powerless to save from it.
Hope of reward is equally ineffective, hence the large percentage of "religion-conscious" girls and boys who yield to temptation. Abounding sin needs much more abounding grace—a revelation of the closeness of the Saviour, an awareness that passes through the mind and penetrates to the inner heart. Only those who have received the atonement can be successful in ministering that grace to youth. But the glorious message of Christ's righteousness comes into its own to meet the need.
It was God Himself who created us male and female and endowed us with sexual attraction. And He then pronounced this "very good." Sex preceded sin; therefore sin cannot be inherent in sex within marriage. There is sin only in its selfish, godless perversion.
But through many centuries of wandering from the truth of the gospel, the great enemy has invested sex with an aura of shame and inherent sin. Thus as we saw in the words of Fulton Sheen comes the idea of an "Immaculate Conception" for the Virgin Mary. It makes her so "unique," he says, that "in Mary, there was hardly any earth at all." This is a polite way of saying that she was not a normal sexual human being. In her nature "all was Heaven," he adds. As her Son, Sheen's "Christ" must also be "desolidarized and separated," "exempt," from our sexual humanity. He must know nothing of our God-given sexuality. This perversion of truth derives from the pagan, Hellenistic, and evolutionary concept of sex as purely an animal instinct.
In contrast the Bible presents a divine Saviour who took on Himself our full corporate humanity, "yet without sin." To believe in Him includes thanking Him for creating us male and female, praising Him for the gift of sex within marriage, rejoicing in our sexuality. Through faith we yield it to Him that He may sanctify it and make it a lifelong source of joy, free from the poison of guilt or shame, permitting the pure love of agape to motivate it.
Such faith refocuses the Ten Commandments. "Thou shalt not commit adultery" becomes no longer a kill-joy prohibition but a promise of victory over illicit, selfish sex. It is transformed into an assurance that Christ's unselfish love (which "does no harm to a neighbor," Romans 13:10) can always control us. Result? Genuine happiness.
The Practical Value of Christ's Nearness to Us
Many are asking, How can I get close to Jesus? The first step is to believe how close He has come to you. Then the next step follows naturally: the honest heart that appreciates that closeness identifies with Him on His cross. Paul said (according to the original language) that his ego is "crucified with Christ" (Galatians 2:20)
Of course, this does not mean that the one who believes in Christ grovels ever after in the dust of self-depredation. His sense of self-respect is never shattered. To be "crucified with Christ" means also to be resurrected with Him; "it is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me." Now one finds his truest self-respect. David says, "He pulled me out of a dangerous pit, out of the deadly quicksand. He set me safely on a rock and made me secure." (Psalm 40:2, TEV)
And with pouring contempt on all our pride comes the utter repudiation of all "holier-than-thou" feelings. The closer one comes to Christ, the more sinful and unworthy he feels himself to be. We are never to judge ourselves, or give ourselves grade-points. We are never to claim to be sinless, for "if we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us." It is only when we continually "confess our sins, [that] He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins, and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness." (John 1:8,9)
The proud and arrogant heresy of perfectionism can never rear its ugly head where the truth of Christ's righteousness is appreciated, for the song of every heart will be to glory alone in "CHRIST OUR RIGHTEOUSNESS."