Sinless - Part 2

After the last post my friend came rushing to my office and we spent the next hour diagramming and writing on my whiteboard. What great fun to fellowship in the Lord as we seek to understand His Word at His throne.

It's important to realize the reality of what I just said here "at His throne". As Christians who are awake and in right-standing with the Lord, we know that we are with God right at that moment in the heavenlies. Ephesians 2:6 - "And hath raised us up together, and made us sit together in heavenly places in Christ Jesus:" Indeed, we are there with Jesus (in Jesus) learning at His feet. What better place to be!

Anyway, we went on to discuss yesterday's post a bit more. My friend's next question (and he is great at thinking real deep and asking the toughies) was, "If your premise is true that we can be sinless for some moment in time, then do those moments accumulate in such a way that the frequency of sin while the frequency of sinlessness increases proportionally?"

Oh dear friend I wish it were so but it is not. God says through Paul in Philippians 3:8-12, "Yea doubtless, and I count all things but loss for the excellency of the knowledge of Christ Jesus my Lord: for whom I have suffered the loss of all things, and do count them but dung, that I may win Christ, And be found in him, not having mine own righteousness, which is of the law, but that which is through the faith of Christ, the righteousness which is of God by faith: That I may know him, and the power of his resurrection, and the fellowship of his sufferings, being made conformable unto his death; If by any means I might attain unto the resurrection of the dead. Not as though I had already attained, either were already perfect: but I follow after, if that I may apprehend that for which also I am apprehended of Christ Jesus." Surely in this life we will never attain perfect perfection.

When God says, "Be ye perfect," or "Be ye holy," what He means, in the original Greek is, "Be being perfect," or "Be being holy." In other words, we are to be about the business of being perfect and holy. That is the simplest way I know how to explain this latest train of posts. The state of sinlessness is but for a moment of being. It is effective only through the death, burial, and resurrection (blood atonement) of Jesus Christ.

God goes on to say in Philippians 3:13-4:1, "Brethren, I count not myself to have apprehended: but this one thing I do, forgetting those things which are behind, and reaching forth unto those things which are before, I press toward the mark for the prize of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus. Let us therefore, as many as be perfect, be thus minded: and if in any thing ye be otherwise minded, God shall reveal even this unto you. Nevertheless, whereto we have already attained, let us walk by the same rule, let us mind the same thing. Brethren, be followers together of me, and mark them which walk so as ye have us for an example. (For many walk, of whom I have told you often, and now tell you even weeping, that they are the enemies of the cross of Christ: Whose end is destruction, whose God is their belly, and whose glory is in their shame, who mind earthly things.) For our conversation is in heaven; from whence also we look for the Saviour, the Lord Jesus Christ: Who shall change our vile body, that it may be fashioned like unto his glorious body, according to the working whereby he is able even to subdue all things unto himself. Therefore, my brethren dearly beloved and longed for, my joy and crown, so stand fast in the Lord, my dearly beloved."

We are to obey to apostolic command to follow the perfection that Paul has already learned, experienced, and taught to us. We are all to be of that same mind to "be being" holy. Those who do not walk so are the enemies of the cross. He reiterates again the reality of our position in heaven right now and in the future. Finally, he urges us to remain steadfast in the Lord in this way. In other words he means that in order to stand with the Lord presently, we must follow his example of perfection.