Christianity Oasis Forum

[Netchaplain]

The believer’s “calling of God” (Rom 11:29) is union and fellowship with Him and consists in either strength or weakness of faith, depending upon the present level of “conforming” growth in His Son (Rom 8:29). Strength of faith is in maintaining what God considers more than what we ourselves consider, this is having “the mind of Christ” (1Co 2:16), for He always prioritized the Father’s considerations over all things (Luk 22:42).

When the Father “drew” us (Jhn 6:44) to salvation in His Son, He already saw all our thoughts and actions, thus our eternal acceptance with Him was in no scintilla of a degree related to that of our person but of the person of the Lord Jesus. God’s love to us is not in any form indifferent to that of His love He has always had for His Son which was manifested in sending Him. Thus God’s desire for our acceptance equaled that of the person and work of His Son (Eph 1:6).

Therefore, our faith is strengthened as we consider what God regards concerning our place with Him, which is where we are “hid with Christ” (Col 3:3). We often deal with ourselves harshly in our mistakes and self-evaluations, but God deals with us only in loving chastisement and never with punishment, as if the believer could ever possibly be in trouble with God. We are ever in the same place of God’s heart and mind where the Lord Jesus is—which changes not—in spite of all He knows what we will encounter and decide.

Though our source (old man) of sin indwells and affects us to some degree, the Father never sees the believer as a sinner, as there are no Scriptural references describing the sinner as a believer, including Paul’s hyperbole (1Tim 1:15). This does not intend that the believer no longer sins, for a sinner is one who sins intentionally and willfully. But the work of the Spirit, which is the primary factor concerning our assurance of adoption in God (Rom 8:16) ever keeps us in the sensitivity of hatred of sin and sinning.

There is great comfort in knowing that God knows our desire is never to displease Him, and this is what He regards more than the sin from which we learn, just as His love for Christ’s work was regarded more than the “iniquity of us all” (Isa 53:6); and “where sin abounded, grace abounded much more” (Rom 5:20). To know to be undeserving of ourselves leads us to know we are deserving in Christ (1Co 11:29). May God keep us mindful of ourselves in the like manner which He Himself is mindful of us in His Son, our Lord Jesus!