5 Evidences of Salvation | Clip from Salvation in Full Color: Conversion

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6 Ways God Disciplines Christians | Clip from Final Warning

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Another question. If we are new creatures in Christ, how can it be that I still see myself sinning?

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What would you say to a church member that came up to you and said, you know, I thought I was a Christian, but now I don't, because just this week

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I committed one of those sins that I used to commit before as a Christian. So, one answer is that we don't confuse justification and sanctification.

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Justification is immediate, and it's a legal declaration, so it is done, it's positional.

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But sanctification is ongoing, and we do not reach perfection until glorification.

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So, there is still an ongoing struggle with sin in this life. That leads to another question.

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What kind of changes are we to expect in God's work of regeneration if we're not looking for sinless perfection?

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So, what are we to see? And Blair gives, really, a very good list, so I'm going to run through them quickly.

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He says, the Spirit will work in us in a way that these changes will be viewed.

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And again, I think we have to be really careful. Being aware of the changes is not equal to having the changes.

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So, there are people that God is, you know, you might see God working in a person, but when they look in the mirror spiritually, they think,

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I don't see it. But we think, oh no, we see it. I mean, it's really very wonderfully clear. So, God working in us and bringing us to life, uniting us to Christ, you know, and the wonderful changes that result from the work of the

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Spirit in us, those things may not always be equally visible to us.

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The question is not how visible are they or how clear are we on them. The question is, are they there at all?

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So, here are the five things he mentions. He says, the old security of sin. In other words, we were described as being asleep in sin or blinded by sin or dead in sin.

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Obviously, these are all pictures of a very unresponsive, unconcerned person.

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So, that old security, it's upset. It's stripped away. And he mentions that the

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Spirit does this by using the law, removing the blinders off our eyes, so to speak.

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He then drops the law in front of us like a mirror, and we see ourselves as we really are, not what we thought we were.

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And then he said he shows us the spirituality of the law, the strictness of the law.

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So, it's not just that, okay, I'm not perfect, but he shows us that the spirituality of the law means it deals with our motives.

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And the strictness of the law, we could think of it this way. God is the one that shows us how deeply the law goes to your motives, but also how high, how obedient does a man have to be to be able to say,

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I have obeyed perfectly. And the law makes it very clear, whereas without the law, we would kind of be left to our own estimations.

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And that the law is good. It's not a harsh or bad law that you're having to obey, but it is an expression of the character of God.

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It's a good law. Yeah, that would probably be one of the sweetest, clearest evidences that God is at work in you, is that you go from complaining that the law is asking a bit too much to saying, yes,

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I'm a lawbreaker, but that is a beautiful, perfect law. And it deserves to be obeyed.

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And it grieves me that I'm not the kind of person that loves to obey it. He gives another evidence.

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He says, the mind is then instructed or the eyes are opened to the greatness and excellency of God.

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So sin is being seen there as for what it really is, heinous, utterly vile.

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But at the same time, regeneration is opening our eyes to see that we are estranged from a perfect God.

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And the estrangement, the blindness is not intellectual. Primarily it's moral. So there's a change in the heart that allows me to see

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God for being as beautiful as He really is. Another thing he says, the desires and the affections then are directed in a new direction from sin to God and to the things of God, to spiritual things, which once, of course, we had no interest in.

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Fourth, the choices of our life are actually altered. And that's a good point because you could say, well, you know,

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I really appreciate the sermon. It stirred me, you know. You can go pretty far in the emotions, and it still doesn't make any difference in the life.

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And so regeneration touches everything. Then finally, he says, the old patterns of sin are then abandoned, not just outwardly embarrassing ones, but now we've come to the place where we actually hate sin itself, not just the sins that are crippling us.

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