✨ ENTER INTO CHRIST'S FINISHED WORK ON THE CROSS ✨
Although God went ahead of us and laid the sin of the whole world upon Jesus at the cross He does not violate free-will. Free-will is the freedom to choose our course of action and follow suit.
If God laid every man and woman’s sin upon Jesus at the cross and that is all that had to be done then every man and woman in the world would be saved right then and there - the moment it happened - unbelievers and believers. This is proven to not be the case.
We have the choice to believe in Jesus and His work on the cross and enter into it or not. Although Jesus bore the sins of the world, we must personally repent and surrender our sins to Him in order to walk in that freedom. In other words we have to be willing to repent and turn away from them.
1 Peter 2:24 says that He bares our sin in His own body, that we being dead to sins should live unto righteousness. Being dead to sin means we have to die to sin.
This means we have to also go through the cross with Christ and allow Him to crucify the flesh.
Know ye not, that so many of us as were baptized into Jesus Christ were baptized into his death? Therefore we are buried with him by baptism into death: that like as Christ was raised up from the dead by the glory of the Father, even so we also should walk in newness of life. For if we have been planted together in the likeness of his death, we shall be also in the likeness of his resurrection: Knowing this, that our old man is crucified with him, that the body of sin might be destroyed, that henceforth we should not serve sin. For he that is dead is freed from sin (Romans 6:3-7, KJV).
Until we have died to our old selves and crucified the flesh, sin still resides in us. We need the Holy Spirit to help us put to death the deeds of the flesh otherwise we reap corruption. There is still a reaping and sowing effect in place - whatever we sow we will also reap - good and bad. Crucifying the flesh is all part of the sanctification process.
How do we do this?
By acknowledging we have sin by confession and repentance so the Blood of Jesus can remit the sin. We need to yield up (surrender) our sins to Jesus as this is our part of appropriating what Jesus did for us at the cross.
The soul and physical body are not made new at the time of our conversion - we have to outwork what Jesus attained for us by letting go of the sin that God has already gone before us and dealt with. He went ahead of us and prepared the way. It is now up to us to follow suit and let it go.
Too many of us are holding on to things we shouldn’t be. If the Holy Spirit convicts you of a sin then this means it hasn't been dealt with (because you are still holding on to it and not handed it over to Christ to help you deal with it) which means it still holds power in your life.
Sin needs to be confessed. It is the confession of the sin that enables the sin to be forgiven.
Whoever conceals their sins does not prosper, but the one who confesses and renounces them finds mercy (Proverbs 28:13, NKJV).
Having sin in our lives that is yet to be dealt with doesn’t mean we are not saved because we are - we are still saved, we are still righteous and we are no longer separated from God as salvation is a free gift given by God to those who believe.
This is the difference between ongoing relational restoration (1 John 1:9), as opposed to positional forgiveness which happens at salvation (Colossians 2:13).
By Tania Francis