So…scaring us straight but not REALLY meaning it?
Here’s what I think. It scares us so we try to explain it away, because even a cursory examination of myself shows me how I can say I forgive but the resentment and anger just pops up again like a freakin whack-a-mole. And each time I’m murdering them again??
So, it scares me. I see I’m not doing what He says. And He SEES IT. What now? Please tell me, what now?? I tried for years, I can’t do what He says I have to do to not be thrown in prison. He is asking the impossible of me. Why would He do that?? And don’t say it’s possible for me, it’s not.
Trust that Jesus has completely reconciled you to God. That all your sin is truly gone. That the sin you still see in your life is in your flesh, and you are not your flesh. You are the new creature, born from God, if in fact you are. I'm not saying you are not, I merely don't want to mislead. Should you come to realize that you have not been reborn, then we just have a different starting point is all.
But I'm assuming you are, I think you have been, but over-identify with your flesh.
When we sin - works outside of faith - works of flesh - if we identify ourselves as the source of the sin, we identify ourselves with our flesh, and not our spirit that was born from God. We identify ourselves with the Adamic man, the fleshy man, and so we wear his guilt, and his shame, and his condemnation, and his powerlessness. And this means we are not trusting that God has freed us from our sin through death.
If we reserve the meaning of "death" as when we close our eyes to everything, and not the Biblical use of 'separation', we can see our death in Christ as something figurative, a metaphor, but not an actual death.
Isaiah and Jeremiah both spoke of "our sins testify against us", and if we are walking by sight and not by faith that's what we see, we see our sins declaring we are still fleshy sinners. But we are not. We are born of God, not born of Adam. We've died, passing from death into life. We've been separated from our flesh, passing from separation from God to union with God.
And that union is fully based on the efficacy of Jesus death in sending away our sins, and His presence in us, making His righteousness ours. Having been separated from the fleshy sinner, we in fact ARE free from sin, from the power of sin.
When we trust in Jesus - alone, not in combo with something we do - to have truly freed us from both the power and condemnation of sin, this is the trust that God intends for us.
We are justified by faith in Jesus Christ, and by this same faith we have access into the grace in which we stand (Romans 5:1).
When we trust in the compete and total and forever reconciliation purchased for us by Jesus in His dying, we are free to live and walk in that unity with God. Opening ourselves fully to Him, because we know now that He will never be against us, allows us to stand in grace. Grace is our foundation. Not self-approval. We stand in grace. And having done all, to stand.
Not long ago I went through a dark time, a couple of weeks, and coming out of it I asked God, why have I not heard from you the same as other times?
Because you were afraid of Me. Not long after I asked Him, How do I stay here? (that is, how do I not fall out of my conscious and ongoing communion with God?)
Don't shut Me out.
We drift into the flesh, for all the reasons we do. If we begin to identify with our flesh, we accept the condemnation, and what goes with it . . . separation from God, though we are not separated from Him, only living a lie of the flesh.
Much love!