HAVE YOU FORGOTTEN THAT YOU’RE FORGIVEN?

Peter thinks you might have when he addresses the fruit of God’s spirit in your life. He basically lists the same attributes that Paul lists in Galatians 5 but he also explains what’s wrong if you’re not displaying fruit.

2 Peter 1:5 For this very reason, make every effort to supplement your faith with virtue, and virtue with knowledge, 6 and knowledge with self-control, and self-control with steadfastness, and steadfastness with godliness,7 and godliness with brotherly affection, and brotherly affection with love. 8 For if these qualities are yours and are increasing, they keep you from being ineffective or unfruitful in the knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ. 9 For whoever lacks these qualities is so nearsighted that he is blind, having forgotten that he was cleansed from his former sins.

Did you catch it? He said that if your life doesn’t reflect all the things that it should it’s because you have forgotten that you were forgiven. WOW! That’s is just the opposite of what man-centered, performance-based righteousness teaching will tell you. Typically you’re told that you add these attributes to your life as you become more holy…but Peter says BECAUSE you’re holy (cleansed) you can see the fruit of God’s spirit in your life.

In this series, I also address the powerful truth that Christ cleansed your conscience, that place where you determine right from wrong. Jesus stepped into your mind and cleansed it with his own spirit/life/blood when you said yes to him.

I want to help you connect to the truth of your forgiveness in him and live from the power of a clear conscience as you choose grace and live above the power of sin!

The power over sin is one decision away. The power to make that decision rests in one truth, YOU ARE FORGIVEN! It is your right as a child of God to choose grace rather than sin. It is your heritage to LIVE FREE!

One of the deepest mysteries of the finished work of Christ is that he became your sin so you could become righteous. The way he makes you righteous is by cleansing you with his own spirit/life/blood when you choose to believe that what he did was for you. He cleanses you, gives you a new heart, makes himself one with you, and places his spirit within you…But he also does one more very powerful thing.

Hebrews 9:14 how much more shall the blood of Christ, who through the eternal Spirit offered Himself without spot to God, CLEANSE YOUR CONSCIENCE from dead works to serve the living God?

He cleanses your conscience. Your conscience is where your morals live, it’s the place where you choose right from wrong or life from death. It’s the place that determines to what degree you will allow God’s moral code of righteousness to determine your actions. Jesus steps into your very consciousness and sprinkles it with his own blood to purify it and make it clean.

Why is this important? BECAUSE YOU ARE TRULY FREE WHEN THERE IS NO GUILT. This series doesn’t give you a license to sin, it helps you connect to the power to rise above it.

Hebrews 10:19 Therefore, brothers and sisters, since we have confidence to enter the Most Holy Place by the blood of Jesus, 20 by a new and living way opened for us through the curtain, that is, his body, 21 and since we have a great priest over the house of God, 22 let us draw near to God with a sincere heart and with the full assurance that faith brings, having our hearts sprinkled to cleanse us from a guilty conscience and having our bodies washed with pure water. 23 Let us hold unswervingly to the hope we profess, for he who promised is faithful.