The Good News of the Judgment
| Sinless Christians in the Judgment Hour? William Diehl Justification is God's act of declaring an imperfect repentant person who trusts in Christ as if he were perfect and without any taint or shortcoming before the Law of God. You and I before we were Christians were not sinless, and when we became Christians we were not sinless, and even now years after we have become Christians through continual faith in Christ and repentance from dead works, we still are not sinless in our lives or our hearts. That is, although we as born again believers do not willfully and high-handedly and carelessly disobey the Law of God, the Ten Commandments, we are not yet without our shortcomings as pertaining to revealing in our lives and our hearts the broadest and deepest demands of the righteousness and holiness and goodness and selflessness and loving kindness that God has revealed in the life of our Lord Jesus Christ and the holy Law of God. Our love and good works are only a faint reflection of the sinlessness of Jesus. We do not willfully and carelessly sin in any of the commandments, yet we all continually do in fact need to end each day with the Lord's Prayer for forgiveness and pray for more of the Holy Spirit in our lives to deliver us from the power of the evil one. We long to more fully reveal Christ in our lives to others each day. We long to be less self-centered and more loving and yet we must all admit that "in many things we all offend" and we must "confess our faults to one another". Jesus our Lord NEVER had to repent of having fallen short. He always delighted to do the will of God and He alone could say, "Which of you can convince (accuse) me of sin?" He alone could also say, "The Devil comes to me but he can find nothing in me." These words from the lips of any other person on earth would be blasphemy, but our Lord could say this because He alone was in all points tempted like as we are, but yet He was without sin. We are not without sin in this life. We long to be without sin, but all Christians must confess that we fall short of the glory of God and are only a mere reflection of Jesus. His perfect sinless life is always held out before us by the Holy Spirit as our perfect goal to strive for. The Spirit through the word of God continually convicts us of sin and righteousness and judgment and continually calls us to repentance towards God and faith in the blood of Christ for our acceptance at the hand of a merciful God. By the grace of God every Christian can give thanks to God that we are not the foul-mouthed, cigar smoking, impure thinking, and totally selfish people we once were before we came to Christ. BUT in the same breath we must also admit that we are not yet the people that we ought to be and that the closer we come to our Lord the more we realize the sinfulness of our own hearts and lives and how far short we yet come of the perfection of Jesus. This is the experience of all true Christians. The Christian is a saint and yet at the same time admits that he is a sinner who falls short even in the good deeds that he does. He delights in the Law of God and yet he sees another nature in him continually causing him to fall short of the highest demands of the Law of God. Each day the Christian cries out, "O wretched person that I am who shall deliver me from this body of death (the sinful nature)?" And then the Christian can rejoice and thank God that we are delivered from all condemnation by the mercy and grace of God through faith in our Lord Jesus Christ. By God's grace we ARE delivered from the PENALTY of sin and also by God's grace we are BEING delivered from the POWER of sin in our lives through the power of the indwelling Holy Spirit to both WILL and to DO the will of God. This is true daily Christian repentance and it is the life-long experience of every born-again believer until the coming of our Lord in the clouds of heaven. We are always accepted before God and His holy Law only by unmerited grace through faith in the sinless life and atoning death of our Lord Jesus Christ till He comes. Amen. Come quickly, Lord Jesus.
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