The new life we possess in Jesus is without condemnation from any source. We are free from all guilt. Every "Egyptian died in the Red Sea," so to speak, as demonstrated in water baptism. By the death of our old nature we are legally free to be married to the Lord Jesus Christ.

Salvation is a first reaping of our life. It is a reaping to Christ. It is an instant death by faith, potentially destroying the ability of our old nature to dominate us.

We say potentially, because the actual destruction of sin and the transformation of our personality into the image of Jesus depends on whether we are willing to work out in the Holy Spirit, by faith, hope and obedience, what God and we declared to be true in our baptism in water.

We declare by our baptism in water that our old personality is crucified and our new born-again inner man is raised with Christ. Each day of our Christian life we are to look back to our water baptism, remember what we declared to be true at that time, and then, with the help of the Holy Spirit, live in the faith that we are crucified and resurrected.

This is how we overcome the world through faith—faith that our old life died with Christ and our new life is in Christ at the right hand of the Father on high.

One of the great errors of contemporary Christian thinking is that the entire redemption has been accomplished the moment we receive the atonement. In the vision and promise of God it indeed has been accomplished. All the righteousness and Glory of Christ are now in our possession by faith.

The moment we accept Christ we receive forgiveness. In addition, we receive the righteousness of Christ applied to our account before God. God judges us as being righteous even though we have not begun as yet in the processes of redemption that actually transform our deeds, speech, and thinking until we are righteous in behavior.

There are two kinds of righteousness, both of which come to us through Christ. The first kind of righteousness is termed imputed (ascribed) righteousness. Imputed righteousness is a legal state in which God judges us as being righteous on the basis that we have received the Righteous One, Christ.

The second kind of righteousness is a developed righteousness, a transformation into the image of Christ. This also comes from Christ, never from the striving of the flesh of humans. Developed righteousness comes to us as we receive the Word of God, the body and blood of Christ, and the Holy Spirit. These three Divine agencies remove from us the bondages of sin and self-will so that we grow in grace, grow in the ability to distinguish between good and evil and to embrace the good and resist and reject the evil (Hebrews 5:14).

When we first are saved the moral image of Christ, the ability to behave righteously, the glory of the royal priesthood, are not as yet in our possession. They shall be in our possession if we continue to abide in the Lord Jesus, living in cross-carrying obedience to Him. But if we do not continue in Him, living instead in the ordinary fleshly pursuits of people, the glory of the Kingdom may never be ours.

To be continued.