Genesis 15:6 “And he [Abraham] believed in the Lord, and He accounted it to him for righteousness.”

A common belief in the church today is that Christ came to remove our sins, impute us His righteousness and that we are saved from all our sins now and in the future, because He has done this with His grace. It sounds right and it seems consistent with what churches are teaching, but is this what we find when reading the scriptures?

What did Jesus say about Why He Came?

“Nevertheless, I tell you the truth: it is to your advantage that I go away, for if I do not go away, the Helper will not come to you. But if I go, I will send him to you” (John 16:7).

When it comes to salvation, the Holy Spirit gets thrown to the curb in the Christian faith. Jesus gets the glory, afterall, it’s His name that is above every other name. Yet Jesus knew that His duty on earth was to bring God’s Spirit back into the hearts of mankind, to restore creation to its original state, being in the “presence of God”.

What Really Happened in the Fall

The garden of Eden is translated to mean “in the presence of God.” When Adam broke the only command God gave him, what was lost was not the nature of Adam, it was the presence of God. “Therefore the Lord God sent him [Adam] out of the garden of Eden to till the ground from which he was taken,” He drove out Adam to guard the way to the tree of life (c.f. Genesis 3:22-24).

I bet you never caught one of the most important pieces to the creation narrative found earlier in the chapter. After eating the fruit, Adam and Eve decide to hide from God’s presence:

“And they heard the sound of the Lord God walking in the garden in the cool of the day, and Adam and his wife hid themselves from the presence of the Lord God among the trees of the garden” (Genesis 3: 8). It was mankind who first decided to hide from God’s presence, an act which continues today by so many in our world.

Once God removed Adam and Eve from His presence, they no longer had access to the tree of life, they no longer walked with God, and they no longer had the ability to live eternally in the presence of God. Jesus said it Himself, “Now this is eternal life: that they know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom you have sent” (John 17:3). Adam and Eve did not know God after eating the fruit, and thus, they did not have eternal life.

Christ Came to Give You His Spirit

“Jesus answered and said to her, ‘Whoever drinks of this water will thirst again, but whoever drinks of the water that I shall give him will never thirst. But the water that I shall give him will become in him a fountain of water springing up into everlasting life’” (John 4:13-14).

Does this narrative fit what your church teaches? Jesus plainly states here, to the Samaritan woman at the well, that it is the Spirit that He will give which will provide everlasting life in those who believe.

It is interesting that He does not say, “it is the removal of your sins” or  “it is my righteousness imputed to you” that will give you eternal life.

Uniting Us with the Spirit of God was the Entire Point of Christ’s Return

The entire point of the Gospel is revealed in Paul’s letter to Galatia. Paul is pleading with the church in Galatia to recognize the deepest, core principles of their faith in Christ, that it was not by the law that they received salvation in God but by faith in Jesus they received His Spirit and thus received God’s promise to Abraham, enjoined in God’s eternal glory. Let’s breakdown, specifically, the third chapter in Paul’s epistle to the Galatians.

Paul writes prior to this chapter about being justified by faith in Jesus (Gal 2:16) and that Christ is who lives within those who are crucified with Him (Gal 2:20). The third chapter explains this justification, specifically being outside the law, and what’s important here is Paul’s focus on the Spirit of God and the righteousness of faith in Jesus, nowhere mentioning Christ’s righteousness or our guilty sin nature.

He starts by asking, “who bewitched you that you should not obey the truth” (Gal 3:1). He then quickly moves to the recognition that the Spirit was given by faith and not works (Gal 3:2) and that “just as Abraham ‘believed God, it was accounted to him for righteousness’” (Gal 3:6).

Paul reminds them that “in [Abraham] all the nations shall be blessed” (Gal 3:8) and that “those who are of faith are blessed with believing Abraham” (Gal 3:9) and “only those who are of faith are sons of Abraham” (Gal 3:7).

He shows that “no one is justified by the law” but that “the just shall live by faith” (Gal 3:11) and that we are “redeemed from the curse of the law, [Jesus] having become a curse for us” (Gal 3:13).

Here is the Key Verse

“…that the blessing of Abraham might come upon the Gentiles in Christ Jesus, that we might receive the promise of the Spirit through faith” (Gal 3:14).

Abraham was counted righteous by believing God (learn what believing really means here) and he was given “the promise” from this righteous act. The promise was that we would receive, the Spirit of God through faith!

Why so Many Are Confused About the Law

In verse 13 (Gal 3:13), Paul states that Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law. In this, Christ removed the prerequisite and burden of this earth that impeded the Spirit of God from again permanently entering into His people, due to the penalty of sin. The wages of sin is death (Romans 6:23) but this is because sin separates people from God, just as Adam and Eve’s sin separated them from being in the “presence of God’ in the garden of Eden.

Christ’s sacrifice on the cross was not about making us righteous but about giving us the Spirit of God which makes us justified, His act allowing us to be united with Him by the righteousness of our faith in Him, and allowing us to then know Him. This is the grace of God, being able to know Him (Titus 2:11-14). From this act of faith, we receive the promise and inheritance, God Himself in us…the ultimate reward!

Imagine how terrible it would be to have someone spend their life developing a gift to give you, then when you receive it, you focus not on the gift and its implications in your life but you focus on what you did that made the gift harder to obtain. That’s what’s happening in churches today. God gave us His Spirit through His grace and knowledge of Jesus. God gave us Jesus to give us His Spirit, yet we as a Christian community believe God did all this to remove sin.

Why do we believe God is sin conscious? Wouldn’t it make more sense that God is life conscious, that He works not to focus on evil but to bring about life and restoration, freedom and love? How have we missed this for so long?

Christ Came to Give You His Spirit that Brings Life

“But when the fullness of the time had come, God sent forth His Son, born of a woman, born under the law, to redeem those who were under the law, that we might receive the adoption as sons. And because you are sons, God has sent forth the Spirit of His Son into your hearts, crying out, ‘Abba Father!’ Therefore you are no longer a slave but a son, and if a son, then an heir of God through Christ” (Gal 4:4-7).

Everything God has done since Adam and Eve’s fall from His presence was to restore our relationship with Him. There is so much misinformation out in the Church today about the law, about the law’s purpose, and about God’s plans and intentions in our lives.

Paul writes, “What purpose then does the law serve? It was added because of transgressions, till the Seed should come to whom the promise was made; and it was appointed through angels by the hand of a mediator [the Holy Spirit]” (Gal 3:19).

“But the Scripture imprisoned everything under sin, so that the promise by faith in Jesus Christ might be given to those who believe. Now before faith came, we were held captive under the law, imprisoned until the coming faith would be revealed. So then, the law was our guardian until Christ came, in order that we might be justified by faith” (Gal 3:22-24).

The law was there to allow us to be justified by faith, it was a necessary burden to bring about the necessary freedom we needed. This beauty in burden first and freedom second is a common theme in the bible. First was Hagar and her illegitimate son, the symbol of flesh and bondage, and then there was Sarai, the symbol of freedom and the promise in Isaac (Gal 4:21-32). First, there was Adam and the death he brought through bondage, then was Christ who brought life and freedom (Romans 5:1-21).

The promise was first made to Abraham but it was the law which was given to Moses that brought about the coming of this promise to the world. God works in ways we sometimes may not expect but the beauty is that His wisdom reveals His nature, and His nature is to bring about life, Christlikeness, and eternal glory. His ways are so much greater than we can imagine!

What About Penal Substitution?

You may ask yourself, but what about Jesus “being made to be sin” as so many believe? Below are a few scriptures used to support this idea.

• “He himself bore our sins in his body …that we might die to sin and live to righteousness” (1 Peter 2:24).
• “For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God” (2 Cor 5:21).
• “But as it is, he has appeared once for all at the end of the ages to put away sin by the sacrifice of himself” (Hebrews 9:21).
• “For Christ also suffered once for sins, the righteous for the unrighteous, that he might bring us to God, being put to death in the flesh but made alive in the spirit” (1 Pet 3:18).

Let’s review each of these texts and their association not only with penal substitution but also with Christ coming to not give us His righteousness but to re-enjoin us with the Holy Spirit, God’s presence.

1 Peter 2:24

It is interesting that this passage mentions how Christ’s death allows us to live to righteousness. In Mark 12:27, Jesus says our God is not the “God of the dead but of the living.” This word living, zaō, means to enjoy real life, to have true life and worthy of the name, active, blessed, endless in the kingdom of God.

Have you considered that Christ’s death allowed those who purify themselves in repentance and reverence to God to be alive by their ability to now again live in righteousness, reunite in God’s presence? What if Christ’s death took the penalty of sin so that you could live righteously through His grace and revelation of Godliness in your life – see grace defined in Titus 2:11-12?

2 Cor 5:21

“For our sake he made him to be sin…so that we might become the righteousness of God.”

It is interesting how, many times, the word “might become” is missed in the review of this passage. If Christ was made to be all of our sin, and by His act we no longer are seen in our sinful ways but God sees us because He sees Christ and not our sinful nature, then why is the term “might become” used? You can argue that one must first accept and follow Christ before He covers your sins, but this would make the substitution of sin not occurring at the cross but at your obedience to His calling.

Hebrews 9:21

Below is a quick introduction to Penal Substition by NT Wright. This man of God has pioneered philosophical thought on the bible through critical exigesis and is well respected by believers worldwide. Listen to what he says is the critical missing piece in the substitution narrative.

1 Pet 3:18

Peter actually makes a great case for the Spirit being the point of Christ’s death. Jesus Himself said that, “I have not come to call the righteous but sinners to repentance” (Luke 5:32), “it is not the sick who need a doctor but the healthy” (Matthew 9:12), and that “unless your righteousness surpasses that of the Pharisees and the teachers of the law, you will certainly not enter the kingdom of heaven” (Matthew 5:20).

Could it be that there are some who are righteous and some who are not, that Christ came to remove the condemnation associated with sin for those who are unrighteous?

• “This is the account of Noah and his family. Noah was a righteous man, blameless among the people of his time, and he walked faithfully with God” (Genesis 6:9),
• “And the Lord said unto Noah, Come thou and all thy house into the ark; for thee have I seen righteous before me in this generation” (Gen 7:1),
• “Abram believed the LORD, and he credited it to him as righteousness” (Gen 15:6),
• “and if he rescued Lot, a righteous man, who was distressed by the depraved conduct of the lawless for that righteous man… if this is so, then the Lord knows how to rescue the godly from trials…” (2 Pet 2:7-9),
• “Then the Lord said to Satan, ‘Have you considered my servant Job? There is no one on earth like him; he is blameless and upright, a man who fears God and shuns evil'” (Job 1:8),
• “a certain priest named Zacharias…and his wife…her name was Elisabeth. And they were both righteous before God, walking in all the commandments and ordinances of the Lord blameless (Luke 1:5),
• “By faith Enoch was taken from this life, so that he did not experience death: “He could not be found, because God had taken him away.” For before he was taken, he was commended as one who pleased God” (Heb 11:5).

You Have Been Told A Lie

You’ve been told that you are filthy rags and that no one is righteous, that all fall short of the glory of God, and that you are sinful in nature and will continue to sin even after Christ’s Spirit dwells within you. How demonic a doctrine.

Paul’s “there is none who are righteous” remark (in Romans 3) is him speaking of himself prior to Christ, look at Romans 6-8 and the transformation which occurs in his narrative about himself going from sinful man to righteous son of God – learn more on the Satisfaction Theory, how the Vicarious Substitution Doctrine is leading people to hell, and about the Myth of Original Sin.

As well, Paul is referring to people not being righteous under the law given to Moses, yet Abraham was credited as righteous prior to the law, and therefore, righteousness is not credited due to the law of Moses but by faith in God.

Falling short of God’s glory does not mean you are not righteous before Him. It’s like saying I am not 8 feet tall, therefore I am not worth anything to someone who is 8 feet tall. God can be supreme in nature and still have standards that correlate with our ability to meet His needs of us. We are not required to be perfect, we are only required to be perfect in love (c.f. 1 John 4:17, Hebrews 10:14, 1 John 4:18, James 1:4, Matthew 19:21).

And the next time someone tells you it is okay to sin, to believe you can sin, that you are made to sin, that you cannot help it, look to these verses below. God bless you in your journey!

Fight Sin With Truth Through Love

1 John 3:6
“No one who abides in him keeps on sinning; no one who keeps on sinning has either seen him or known him.”

1 John 3:9
“No one born of God makes a practice of sinning, for God’s seed abides in him, and he cannot keep on sinning because he has been born of God.”

James 1:25
“But the one who looks into the perfect law, the law of liberty, and perseveres, being no hearer who forgets but a doer who acts, he will be blessed in his doing.”

2 Timothy 2:19
“But God’s firm foundation stands, bearing this seal: ‘The Lord knows those who are his,’ and, ‘Let everyone who names the name of the Lord depart from iniquity.’”

Romans 6:1-2
“What shall we say then? Are we to continue in sin that grace may abound? By no means! How can we who died to sin still live in it?”

Titus 2:11-12
“For the grace of God has appeared, bringing salvation for all people, training us to renounce ungodliness and worldly passions, and to live self-controlled, upright, and godly lives in the present age.”

2 Corinthians 13:11
“Finally, brothers, rejoice. Aim for restoration, comfort one another, agree with one another, live in peace; and the God of love and peace will be with you.”

Christ Came to Give You His Spirit – Not to Give You His Righteousness