He's better than we think

The Reformation was a time when men went blind, staggering drunk because they had discovered, in the dusty basement of late medievalism, a whole cellar full of fifteen-hundred-year-old, two-hundred proof Grace–bottle after bottle of pure distilate of Scripture, one sip of which would convince anyone that God saves us single-handedly. The word of the Gospel–after all those centuries of trying to lift yourself into heaven by worrying about the perfection of your bootstraps–suddenly turned out to be a flat announcement that the saved were home before they started…Grace has to be drunk straight: no water, no ice, and certainly no ginger ale; neither goodness, nor badness, not the flowers that bloom in the spring of super spirituality could be allowed to enter into the case. -Robert Capon 

The church is whispering in the hallways, "I think He might be better than we thought He was"

"For you bring me a continual revelation of resurrection life, the path to bliss  that leads me face to face with you" (Psalm 16.11 TPT)

I used to think mankind's biggest problem was sin.  And the truth is, it WAS.  But the truth is sin in its entirety has been dealt with by Jesus on the cross.  When He said "It is finished" He meant it.  We were rescued from sin, death and hell once for all in that amazing self-giving act of ultimate love.  He Himself bore our sins in His body on the tree, so that we might die to sin and live to righteousness. (1 Peter 2.24)

Our biggest problem now for the followers of Christ is ignorance and unbelief.  We need the ongoing revelation of resurrection life. We are apt to believe the lies of the enemy who wants us stuck in self/sin conciousness. We don't know or we don't fully believe in our hearts  this amazing good news gospel, perhaps we can quote it, but it hasn't quite made that 8 inch journey to our hearts from our heads.

The Lord wants us to live in freedom from sin-conciousness, and we will never be able to fly high in the Spirit until we let go of our past regrets and sins, trusting that one drop of His blood was more than enough to remove all our debt and to take all our shame away.  When we fully understand this, Oh the BLISS! The face to face encounters!  This is what freedom looks like! We are free from ruminating on the shackles of sin and self obsession to lift our eyes and our hearts in wonder and worship, and just enjoy being loved so completely.  And the remarkable truth is, when we stand in this place of wonder and adoration, we are gifted the ability to go far higher into true freedom (the fruit of righteousness/holiness) than we ever could with a sin- conciousness.

As John Bunion, author of the Pilgrim's progress wrote while meditating on these truthts "Run, John, run, the law commands, But gives us neither feet nor hands. Far better news the gospel brings: It bids us fly and gives us wings."