From Sin to Glory
Our sermon series has been “There is Freedom”. A few weeks ago, I said there is freedom from sin. But God isn’t just in the business of setting us free from sin. That’s great and if that’s all it was then that would be awesome! But God always does more than we ask or think or imagine: God is setting us free FROM sin TO glory.
You remember that in the book of Romans, of the 45 times the word “sin” is used, it’s only used once as a verb; the rest of the time it’s used as a noun. That’s important because religion focuses on the verb (action), while God focuses on the noun (who you are).
We’ve been placed in Christ: That’s our new position. Our place has been changed. The person I used to be has died and I’m a new person; so, I’m not concerned with what the old person did. When I focus on the new person, the verbs start changing.
God changed you forever. He made you (the noun) new…not modified – not broken and reconstructed with the same parts and you’re still the same kind of person but a little bit better – but new. He created a new person and placed it on the inside of you. It looks just like Jesus. It has the same DNA, the same genes; it has everything that could possibly in the spirit world make up who Jesus is.
He took out the old, dead you and threw it away, and replaced it with a you that looks just like Jesus. If Jesus is your Lord, this is who you are.
“Well, what about all the verbs that I still do wrong?” God set us free from the things and the penalty of those verbs; all the penalty was placed upon Jesus on the Cross. At that moment, He changed our noun.
“Now, the ‘Lord’ I’m referring to is the Holy Spirit, and wherever he is Lord, there is freedom.” – 2 CORINTHIANS 3:17 (TPT)
This has been our series’ core scripture. If we want more freedom in our life, we need to make Him Lord of more areas of our life. If you’re not experiencing freedom in an area, when the challenge comes, do you stop and make Him Lord or do you panic and just go back to what you’ve always done? Isaiah 26:3 tells us, “You will keep him in perfect peace, whose mind is stayed on You, because he trusts in You.” Your mind, your imagination, and all your thoughts should be stayed on God.
Tempted to Steal a Water Blivit
Here’s an amazing truth: If you never think about something, you can never be tempted in it. For instance, you most likely can’t be tempted to steal a water blivit; you can’t meditate and imagine about how to do it.
What the enemy does is, he comes in and tempts you with a concern, with something that will cause you to be anxious or depressed to get your mind going in the wrong direction. He’ll tempt you with a thought, but if you turn to that thought and pursue it, now you’re going in that direction. Then you wind up way down the road and you’re wondering, “How did I get here?” YOU’VE BEEN THINKING ABOUT IT!
Actions follow beliefs. The more you think about it, the more you say, “I could do that…yeah, I could! It’s not good, but yeah, that’s how I could do that.” Then all of a sudden, your actions follow the belief. But if you keep your mind stayed on God, when that thought comes, it just goes away.
If you don’t know what something is, you won’t be tempted in it. That’s why if we spend our time knowing God – rather than spending all our time knowing the world – there’s a lot less temptation and there’s a lot more meditation on Him.
This is why I’ve spent so much time emphasizing the noun (who we are) over the verb (action) and that the verb doesn’t identify the noun. When you participate in the action of sin, it doesn’t change the noun of who you are. You might be acting outside of your character, outside of really who are you, but it doesn’t change who you are and it doesn’t change how God sees you.
From Sin to Glory
One of my cousins from Ohio shared a testimony with me. A few weeks ago, he was at church and saw a gentleman come in who seemed broken and hurt. He greeted him, talked with him a bit and got to know him, and later invited him to lunch. The guy told him, “I’m a homosexual but I want to know God.” My cousin talked with him and essentially said, “Let’s not worry about the verb; let’s talk about the noun. Let’s talk about who you really are.”
My cousin started sharing about God and His goodness, and deconstructed some of the lies the gentleman believed and some of the things the world had said.
This man grew up at the church where my cousin now attends. When he was a teen, he came out and told everybody that he was gay and that he was going to live that lifestyle. The pastor just told him, “Just keep coming.” But the people in the church basically said, “Don’t come.” He left because he was hurt.
But look at this: Thirty years later, the Holy Spirit was still working on his heart. The seed that was sown from childhood – the incorruptible seed – was still there, to the point that he came back to the church that he was rejected from by some, because the pastor had said, “Stay!” He remembered that this was a church he hoped would accept him.
It was a different pastor, but he went to the same building. He asked my cousin if he could come to the men’s group. “I’m single right now, so I’m good to come to the men’s group, right?” My cousin told him, “Yes, that won’t be a problem; if someone has a problem, they can leave.” He told him, “If it comes down to believing somebody who’s hungry for God or somebody who’s bitter at someone else’s mistakes, I’m going to choose you.”
The man came to the men’s group, spent some more time with my cousin, and had lunch with him again. (Remember, I’m talking about freedom from sin to glory, from this sin person we used to be to now, the glory of God.) The crying man told my cousin, “I’m still messing up once in a while, but I just want Jesus.” My cousin said, “You just keep coming. Come to this meeting, come to church, come to know God more. Get to know Him as Who He’s saying you are.”
See, the lifestyle he’s living is a deception; until it’s revealed, the deception is still intact. But once the deception is realized, the deception goes away. But if you never come to find the truth, the deception stays intact.
You may be saying, “Homosexuality is an abomination!” But be careful: James 2:10 says, “For whoever shall keep the whole Law, but shall stumble in one point, he has become guilty of all.” So, if you’ve lied, you’re guilty of homosexuality or murder. Religion is so focused on the verb. “Look at what THEY did…that’s worse than me. I only told a white lie; THEY deceived somebody!”
If you miss it in one, you miss it in all. That’s why we cannot focus on the verb; we need a savior to save the noun so we can walk in freedom, so that when the wrong verb happens, we can step back and step right up to God – Who calls us into His throne room – and stay, “I love You! I want more of You, God. I know I just missed it, but I want more of You!”
When we do that, it opens up the walkway to true freedom. When we know God – when we have the Holy Spirit lead us and guide us into all these things – it reveals who we are so we’ll KNOW who we are. We can live out our lives based on who we are.
Religion would want us to go to that man and say, “You’ve got to go get yourself right first and then you can come.” But Jesus came to make men right in the sight of God. Sin is not a problem between God and man any longer because every price – every penalty, every wage that sin required – has been paid for FULLY by Jesus on the Cross. That’s past, present and future.
God is after our heart; He’s after our noun. He wants us to change and be made into a new person. As 2 Corinthians 5:16 says in the Mirror Bible, “Therefore, from now on, I no longer know anyone according to the flesh! I no longer see people from a human point of view!”
Seeing Others Free from Sin to Glory
The Apostle Paul is saying, “I’ve come to such a revelation of who Christ is in me that now I’m seeing everyone else the way Christ sees them.” Wouldn’t that be an awesome place to be? You see others as paid for, redeemed, righteous, justified, brought back into relationship with God if they’d just hear the Good News that God’s not mad at them anymore! He’s created a way through Jesus to come back into relationship and that’s it’s available for them right now!
See others free from sin to glory. They may tell you, “I’ve done all these sins.” But you tell them, “Jesus knows you did all those things, but He still died for you! So now, you have the way to come back into relationship with God, your Creator.”
God has always seen us as the noun who He created. Our nature – who we are – has been changed, not modified. Religion teaches there’s two natures in you…you have your old nature that does things and still has all these desires; then, you have your new nature who’s trying to pursue God. “The one you feed the most is the one that you go with.”
That’s not true.
Remember, if you are born again, your old nature is DEAD. You are alive in your new nature, one created in righteousness.
“20 God’s law was given so that all people could see how sinful they were. But as people sinned more and more, God’s wonderful grace became more abundant. 21 So just as sin ruled over all people and brought them to death, now God’s wonderful grace rules instead, giving us right standing with God and resulting in eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord.” – ROMANS 5:20-21 (NLT)
When did you have eternal life? It’s when you believed. It’s not when you get to Heaven and have been there long enough that you realize you have eternal life. No…you have when you believe. You have eternal life, healing, peace, joy and prosperity.
So, when do you believe for things? When you hear the truth and can attach your faith to it.
Jesus didn’t die to only make us free from sin; He died to restore us back to the Glory of God!
The word “glory” means God’s presence, His weightiness. But if you trace it back to its root, it also means “an opinion, judgement or view.” One concordance says that in the New Testament, glory always means a good opinion of one, resulting in praise, honor, and glory!
Can you imagine God having praise, honor and glory to YOU? Yet the way He sees you is the way He created you. He sees you in your spirit that looks just like Jesus. Did God show Jesus praise and honor and glory? Yes! He had to because He raised Jesus from the dead BY THE GLORY OF GOD.
He showed Jesus His glory. Jesus was in Hell, paying our price for our sins, and the Holy Spirit went into Hell and revealed His glory of Jesus (which is God’s opinion of Him). “You are My Son, in whom I am well pleased. YOU are my Son!” As that revelation, that truth, that glory was revealed, Jesus received the opinion of God over everything that He could see, taste, touch, and smell, and said, “I receive Your glory as Who you say I am. I am Your Son!” and He burst out of Hell for us.
See, there are things in this world that are trying to hold you down in your own hell, telling you, “You’ll never be more than ‘this.’ You’re never better than ‘this’. This is who you are…you’ve sinned, you’ve created these situations…you’re a bad person!”
This world will try to hold you down, and if you hold on to those opinions, you’ll never pursue who God has called you to be. All the while, the Holy Spirit is trying to reveal His love to you and say, “That’s not who you are! You’re not defined by the verb. You’re My child…now receive My love for you! Receive My glory of you, My redemption, My resurrection power in your life, and burst out of that hell and follow Me!”
God’s pursuing us so that we can be free and we can discard all these chains, all these things that try to hold us back. And we see ourselves as His child; we see ourselves as righteous.
In the Parable of the Prodigal Son, the son had his speech all prepared: “I’m not worthy, father; let me just be a servant. I’m not worthy to be your son. I’ve messed up.” But what did the father do? He ran out and hugged him. But the son kept talking, like, “While I receive your love – I get it – but I’m not worthy.” So, the father told someone, “Go and get my best robe” and they brought out his best robe (the robe of righteousness!). Once he put it on his son, the son stopped talking.
The son stopped declaring the deception. The truth was that he was righteous in the father’s sight, so when the father declared him righteous, he was righteous. The son received the position of sonship.
Let’s stop telling God we’re not worthy because of what we’ve done, and just accept the truth that He made us righteous and worthy, and that He sees us that way. So, we’ll live that way, amen?
The Veil Removed
2 Corinthians 3:7-17 talks about Moses when he went up on the mountain and God revealed Himself so much that Moses’ face was radiating light. Paul was telling the Corinthians, “This is what was happening: he was radiating light so much that they covered Moses’ face.” All of this was under a covenant that brought about condemnation. It was a covenant that said, “You’re a sinner…all your verbing is all wrong.” Yet there was still so much glory from being in the presence of God that Moses’ face was radiating.
Verses 11 and 12 point out, “So if the old way, which has been replaced, was glorious, how much more glorious is the new, which remains forever! Since this way gives us such confidence, we can be very bold.” Continuing…
“13 We are not like Moses, who put a veil over his face so the people of Israel would not see the glory, even though it was destined to fade away. 14 But the people’s minds were hardened, and to this day whenever the old covenant is being read, the same veil covers their minds so they cannot understand the truth. And this veil can be removed only by believing in Christ.” – 2 CORINTHIANS 3:13-14
That veil is a separation. A veil, when you remove it, everything underneath is revealed (like a bride’s face at a wedding).
15 Yes, even today when they read Moses’ writings, their hearts are covered with that veil, and they do not understand. 16 But whenever someone turns to the Lord, the veil is taken away. 17 For the Lord is the Spirit, and wherever the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom.” – 2 CORINTHIANS 3:15-17
So many times we get caught up in the verb, we have the veil covering. We don’t see ourselves the way God sees us. But because of this new covenant, we need to remove that veil. When you turn to the Lord, that veil is removed; the deception is no longer in place. The thing that obscures you from truth is no longer there!
“So all of us who have had that veil removed can see and reflect the glory of the Lord. And the Lord — Who is the Spirit — makes us more and more like Him as we are changed into His glorious image. – 2 CORINTHIANS 3:18 (NLT)
We can see God’s opinion of us in the Word. We can see who we really are and then we can live it out and reflect it. We can start verbing the right way.
When we see ourselves the way God sees us, our lives will change! At Hope City, no matter what verbs you’ve done, you can come here. You will experience and see God’s love for you so that you can say you’ve come to the understanding that God loves you.
Hope City’s Mission Statement is: “To share the goodness of God to bring hope and transformation in Christ!” See that hope and transformation in Christ in yourself, then share that wonderful Truth with others.
To watch the full August 21, 2022 service on which this post is based, CLICK HERE.
