Treadmill of Fear

If sin will cause you to lose your salvation, then what were you saved from, and what were you saved to? Were you saved from your sins? Were you saved into freedom? What did you add to your salvation? What element from yourself did you add to the cross and to the blood of Jesus to accomplish your salvation? Or were you saved by grace through faith in the finished work of Christ?

Did you need a savior, or can you save yourself?

Who is the savior?
Luke 2:11 For unto you is born this day in the city of David a Saviour, which is Christ the Lord.

Isa 43:11 I, even I, am the LORD; and beside me there is no saviour.

Phi 3:20 For our conversation is in heaven; from whence also we look for the Saviour, the Lord Jesus Christ:

2 Tim 1:10 But is now made manifest by the appearing of our Saviour Jesus Christ, who hath abolished death, and hath brought life and immortality to light through the gospel:

Isa 45:21 Tell ye, and bring them near; yea, let them take counsel together: who hath declared this from ancient time? who hath told it from that time? Have not I the LORD? And there is no God else beside me; a just God and a saviour; there is none beside me.

Do you sin every day? How long can you go without sinning? Do you ever look upon a woman to lust after her? Do you ever call someone a fool? Do you ever experience doubt, fear, or unbelief? Do you ever fail to seek God's face with your whole heart? Do you ever fail to make every single one of your thoughts good and wholesome and pure and glorifying to God? Do you think you have explicitly confessed every single sin you have ever committed in your life? Do you think you have to do all of these things all the time in order to not lose your salvation? If so, then you are on a treadmill driven by fear, and you are not experiencing the freedom of the sons of God.

You do know that Romans chapter 7 is the narrative of how trying not to sin results in more sinning rather than less sinning. And you are no doubt aware that the enemy has indeed made inroads into mainstream Christian theology and planted weeds in it.

Why might the enemy want to poison your idea about salvation that Jesus purchased once and for all with His own blood? Maybe to destroy your confidence before God and to make you a slave of religion, always disqualifying yourself from God's power?

1 John 3:20-21
For if our heart condemns us, God is greater than our heart, and knows all things. Beloved, if our heart does not condemn us, we have confidence toward God.

And what happens when we have confidence before God?

1 John 3:22-23
And whatever we ask we receive from Him, because we keep His commandments and do those things that are pleasing in His sight. And this is His commandment: that we should believe on the name of His Son Jesus Christ and love one another, as He gave us commandment.

Ahh; so if we are confident before God, then we operate in God's power! You can see why the devil might not want that. What is the devil's power? Deception.

John 8
31 Then Jesus said to those Jews who believed Him, “If you abide in My word, you are My disciples indeed. 32 And you shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free.”

33 They answered Him, “We are Abraham’s descendants, and have never been in bondage to anyone. How can You say, ‘You will be made free’?”

34 Jesus answered them, “Most assuredly, I say to you, whoever commits sin is a slave of sin. 35 And a slave does not abide in the house forever, but a son abides forever. 36 Therefore if the Son makes you free, you shall be free indeed.

37 “I know that you are Abraham’s descendants, but you seek to kill Me, because My word has no place in you. 38 I speak what I have seen with My Father, and you do what you have seen with your father.”

39 They answered and said to Him, “Abraham is our father.”

Jesus said to them, “If you were Abraham’s children, you would do the works of Abraham. 40 But now you seek to kill Me, a Man who has told you the truth which I heard from God. Abraham did not do this. 41 You do the deeds of your father.”

Then they said to Him, “We were not born of fornication; we have one Father—God.”

42 Jesus said to them, “If God were your Father, you would love Me, for I proceeded forth and came from God; nor have I come of Myself, but He sent Me. 43 Why do you not understand My speech? Because you are not able to listen to My word. 44 You are of your father the devil, and the desires of your father you want to do. He was a murderer from the beginning, and does not stand in the truth, because there is no truth in him. When he speaks a lie, he speaks from his own resources, for he is a liar and the father of it. 45 But because I tell the truth, you do not believe Me. 46 Which of you convicts Me of sin? And if I tell the truth, why do you not believe Me? 47 He who is of God hears God’s words; therefore you do not hear, because you are not of God.”

Notice who Jesus was talking to: religious people. Notice how Jesus said they were not able to listen to His word. Why? Because they were already so dedicated to the lie that they could not allow anyone to set them free from it. They were already convinced that they knew the truth, and so when confronted face to face with The Truth, they violently rejected Him.

Jesus had warned about this in Matthew 6:23
"But if your eye is bad, your whole body will be full of darkness. If therefore the light that is in you is darkness, how great is that darkness!"

2 Corinthians 10:4-6 "For the weapons of our warfare are not carnal but mighty in God for pulling down strongholds, casting down arguments and every high thing that exalts itself against the knowledge of God, bringing every thought into captivity to the obedience of Christ, and being ready to punish all disobedience when your obedience is fulfilled."

If you are capable of pulling down strongholds and casting down arguments, then you will also be ready to punish all disobedience. The devil doesn't want you to be able to punish his disobedience! He has real skin in the game! You are his enemy. His dark army depends on deception and delusion, on lies. Exposing lies destroys their power. You think you are not a target if you know the truth? The devil has no authority to attack you physically; but if he can get you to attack yourself by making you believe lies, then he is within his legal rights to do so.

So what is the truth? The truth is that Jesus Himself purchased your salvation through His own blood, through His own death on the cross. That is the truth. So what might the devil try to convince you of? That you cannot enjoy any of the benefits of this salvation because you are not perfect. But wait; I thought that Jesus already paid the price? Yes. He did. But I thought that He did this while we were yet sinners, while we were His enemies? Correct. So my salvation doesn't have anything to do with me being perfect? Yep. But how is it that I have become tripped up with this idea that I am ruining my salvation by not being perfect? You fell for the devil's trap: RELIGION.

Religion is based on fear and on man-made authority.

As long as there is anything you can do to break your salvation, your salvation is broken. If the sacrifice that Jesus made of His own body and blood on the cross is dependent on anything you might be able to screw up, then it is weak, deficient, un-powerful, ineffective, and a joke. It is written that Jesus is the mediator of our covenant with God, that His blood speaks better things than that of Abel (Hebrews 12:24), and that "Therefore He is also able to save to the uttermost those who come to God through Him, since He always lives to make intercession for them." (Hebrews 7:25)

1 Timothy 2:5-6
For there is one God and one Mediator between God and men, the Man Christ Jesus, who gave Himself a ransom for all, to be testified in due time

Hebrews 6:6 "Therefore, leaving the discussion of the elementary principles of Christ, let us go on to perfection, not laying again the foundation of repentance from dead works and of faith toward God, 2 of the doctrine of baptisms, of laying on of hands, of resurrection of the dead, and of eternal judgment. 3 And this we will do if God permits."

If every morning you wake up back at square one again, doubting your salvation, trying to figure out what you can do to be saved and to make sure that you are, you will never progress. And every time you experience fear about displeasing God or questions about whether or not you are accepted by Him, you are cutting yourself off from His grace and His presence and His power and His anointing.

1 John 4:18
There is no fear in love; but perfect love casts out fear, because fear involves torment. But he who fears has not been made perfect in love.

Ephesians 1:6
to the praise of the glory of His grace, by which He made us accepted in the Beloved.

When you allow religion to enter into your thinking, you are replacing faith with doubt and then trying to invent your own method for saving yourself. So you've abandoned the true covenant that God Himself initiated, which is Christ's blood which purchased reconciliation, and substituting a counterfeit in its place, which is trying to make yourself perfect through dead works.

God established the means of salvation once and for all. It is eternally complete in heaven and cannot be altered or diminished in any way. It is unchanging and lacking nothing. Our faith is in the absolute holiness and limitless perfection of our High Priest and His finished work of expunging our sin and cancelling our debt and removing all of its penalties. If it depends on us even in the slightest way, then it fails utterly, since we are not holy nor are we capable of mediating between ourselves and a holy and perfect God.

We must get past this if it is a stumbling block. We must put our salvation in the "finished" category so we can move on in God's grace and God's power. What we really want, what we truly crave, is that closeness with God, that fellowship with Him, just waiting, just hanging out in His presence, listening to Him and being transformed by Him and experiencing that peace that surpasses all understanding.

Hebrews 4:1-3
Therefore, since a promise remains of entering His rest, let us fear lest any of you seem to have come short of it. For indeed the gospel was preached to us as well as to them; but the word which they heard did not profit them, not being mixed with faith in those who heard it. For we who have believed do enter that rest, as He has said:
“So I swore in My wrath,
‘They shall not enter My rest,’ ”
although the works were finished from the foundation of the world.

If we are obsessed with confirming over and over again His mere acceptance of us, we will never enter into that rest. That rest is entered into by means of faith. His works are finished. Our rest is on those finished works, the complete and final covenant of salvation which was once delivered nearly 2,000 years ago by Jesus in a unilateral act which did not depend upon us in any way whatsoever. The God of the universe shed His own blood to cleanse us and take away our sin and bring us into the holy of holies, into His presence, into His very throneroom, as sons. Not as beggars, not a second-class citizens, but as sons. His act of atonement was complete and all-encompassing and thorough and final. Nothing can be added to it. Nothing we can do can ever improve upon it. Either we stand on the solid rock of Christ or we don't stand at all. But once we have settled the matter for ourselves, there is no need to revisit it and certainly no reason to ever doubt it.

So let's move on to the blessings of knowing God, of walking with Him, of participating in His unfolding plan for us and exercising His power and authority on earth, and fellowshipping with Him in the heavenlies.

Notice that there are several places in scripture that tell us that if we sin we are not of God and that nobody born of God makes a practice of sinning. Does that mean we need to craft a special definition for the word "sin" to make us feel better? No; of course not! That would be heresy and false teaching. So we need to bravely and accurately examine these statements along with every other "hard saying" in the Bible, because they are truth, and they are important.

The Word says that we will keep His commandments! Let's walk through this with the Apostle John...

1 John 1:5-10
5 This is the message which we have heard from Him and declare to you, that God is light and in Him is no darkness at all. 6 If we say that we have fellowship with Him, and walk in darkness, we lie and do not practice the truth. 7 But if we walk in the light as He is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus Christ His Son cleanses us from all sin.
8 If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us. 9 If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. 10 If we say that we have not sinned, we make Him a liar, and His word is not in us.

1 John 2:1-6
2 My little children, these things I write to you, so that you may not sin. And if anyone sins, we have an Advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous. 2 And He Himself is the propitiation for our sins, and not for ours only but also for the whole world.
3 Now by this we know that we know Him, if we keep His commandments. 4 He who says, “I know Him,” and does not keep His commandments, is a liar, and the truth is not in him. 5 But whoever keeps His word, truly the love of God is perfected in him. By this we know that we are in Him. 6 He who says he abides in Him ought himself also to walk just as He walked.

So here we see that John is BOTH saying that we sin, that we have sin, AND that we walk in the light and that we keep His commandments! This would seem to be an impossible contradiction! But we know that every time we find scripture seemingly contradicting itself, God is teaching us a VERY important distinction along with training our minds to be able to hold paradoxical truths. God is bigger than us, first of all. We know this. We are incapable of understanding Him. And that's okay. But another thing we need to learn is that the language of the Spirit is symbolic and mysterious much of the time. The concepts that God wants us to understand do not always have a one-to-one relationship with human words. And so the words that Jesus uses often times paint pictures that elicit a spiritual response and understanding rather than being intended as literal. They are rational concepts, but only when one adopts the rules of heaven to interpret them rather than the wisdom of man. This is a huge reason why He commonly spoke in parables. The truths He is teaching us are spiritual truths, and our human understanding tends to be bound to a physical understanding which is incapable of grasping them. So He often challenges us to not just think outside the box, but to acheive a quantum leap into a new reality, a complete paradigm shift, a revolutionary migration from our old nature into a new domain where the rules are so radically different that they are basically inversions of what we learned from the worldly system.

Does this sound like I'm trying to create confusion or justify sin? On the contrary! I'm pointing out that salvation is a PARADOX. You cannot understand a paradox with your natural mind. Read this:

Hebrews 10:14
For by one offering He has perfected forever those who are being sanctified.

According to God's word, you have been perfected forever. And you are being sanctified. Hopeless contradiction? No; it's just a paradox. Both things are true at the same time.

Colossians 1:13
He has delivered us from the power of darkness and conveyed us into the kingdom of the Son of His love

1 Peter 1:23
having been born again, not of corruptible seed but incorruptible, through the word of God which lives and abides forever

1 John 2:28
And now, little children, abide in Him, that when He appears, we may have confidence and not be ashamed before Him at His coming.

1 John 4:4
You are of God, little children, and have overcome them, because He who is in you is greater than he who is in the world.

1 John 5:2
By this we know that we love the children of God, when we love God and keep His commandments.

So let's review: we have been perfected forever, we have been delivered into His kingdom, we have been born again, not of corruptible seed but incorruptible. Our new essential nature is now like His. And we keep His commandments.

Except when we don't.

We see in Romans chapter 7 that there are two different laws operating in us at the same time: the law of flesh, which is under the domain of sin and death, and the law of the Spirit, which has crucified the flesh and overcome sin and death.

Romans 7:20
Now if I do what I will not to do, it is no longer I who do it, but sin that dwells in me.

Here is the escape clause! When we sin, God says it is not "I" who does it but sin that dwells in me. God says that our essential nature is regenerated and that we have been born into His eternal kingdom.

Romans 7:21 I find then a law, that evil is present with me, the one who wills to do good. 22 For I delight in the law of God according to the inward man. 23 But I see another law in my members, warring against the law of my mind, and bringing me into captivity to the law of sin which is in my members. 24 O wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from this body of death? 25 I thank God—through Jesus Christ our Lord!
So then, with the mind I myself serve the law of God, but with the flesh the law of sin.

Romans 8
There is therefore now no condemnation to those who are in Christ Jesus, who do not walk according to the flesh, but according to the Spirit. 2 For the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus has made me free from the law of sin and death. 3 For what the law could not do in that it was weak through the flesh, God did by sending His own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh, on account of sin: He condemned sin in the flesh, 4 that the righteous requirement of the law might be fulfilled in us who do not walk according to the flesh but according to the Spirit. 5 For those who live according to the flesh set their minds on the things of the flesh, but those who live according to the Spirit, the things of the Spirit. 6 For to be carnally minded is death, but to be spiritually minded is life and peace. 7 Because the carnal mind is enmity against God; for it is not subject to the law of God, nor indeed can be. 8 So then, those who are in the flesh cannot please God.

9 But you are not in the flesh but in the Spirit, if indeed the Spirit of God dwells in you. Now if anyone does not have the Spirit of Christ, he is not His. 10 And if Christ is in you, the body is dead because of sin, but the Spirit is life because of righteousness. 11 But if the Spirit of Him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, He who raised Christ from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies through His Spirit who dwells in you.

12 Therefore, brethren, we are debtors—not to the flesh, to live according to the flesh. 13 For if you live according to the flesh you will die; but if by the Spirit you put to death the deeds of the body, you will live. 14 For as many as are led by the Spirit of God, these are sons of God. 15 For you did not receive the spirit of bondage again to fear, but you received the Spirit of adoption by whom we cry out, “Abba, Father.” 16 The Spirit Himself bears witness with our spirit that we are children of God, 17 and if children, then heirs—heirs of God and joint heirs with Christ, if indeed we suffer with Him, that we may also be glorified together.

Let's condense that down into one sentence:

Colossians 3:3
For you died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God.

Is Paul describing in Romans 7 and 8 the process by which we are born again, the way in which we are saved? No! We are saved the moment we place our complete faith and hope in Jesus Christ. What Paul is describing is the process by which we realize that we are no longer under bondage to our flesh but have been set free to know and to worship and to serve God in the Spirit. How did that process work out? By struggling and striving against our fleshly nature? By being sorry about our sins? Or by realizing that Jesus has already given us the victory over sin? By condemning ourselves because of our sin? Or by realizing that we are forgiven and that we overcome by the blood of the Lamb and have a new spirit which is alive unto God and dead to sin?