New-covenant grace holds out to us total forgiveness as we enter the death of Christ on the cross. The perfect atonement has been made. God sees us as righteous in Christ. The veil is lifted and we enter before the Mercy Seat, there to obtain grace to help us as we begin to overcome sin by the Spirit of God. Sin no longer is able to govern us, to keep us from the Presence of God.

Now the process of re-creation begins. As we walk in the Spirit of God, being in a state of righteousness because of the righteousness of Christ imputed (ascribed) to us, the wisdom and power of the Spirit combined with the Virtue of Jesus given to our new born-again nature enable us to put to death the actions of our body. We no longer are forced to obey the dictates of the powers of sin that dwell in our adamic personality.

The total forgiveness added to the work of the Holy Spirit as He guides and empowers us releases us from the rule of sin.

The ultimate deliverance, which is to come at the appearing of the Lord, will accomplish our total deliverance from the rule of sin. The ultimate deliverance has two phases:

The making alive of our mortal body (Romans 8:11).

The clothing of our redeemed mortal body with our "house from heaven" (II Corinthians 5:2).

If we have been faithful to sow to the Spirit of God, that is, to follow the Spirit as He leads us in the walk of holiness, there is an increase of resurrection life in our new reborn personality. Our thinking, speaking, and acting increasingly are guided by the Spirit into the righteous ways of the Lord. The body and blood of Jesus are continually fed to our inner man as we learn to live by Christ as He lives by the Father.

When the Lord appears He will look for His own Substance and Nature in us. If He finds them He will adopt us as sons of God by gathering our mortal remains wherever they have been interred, ridding them of all vestiges of sin and rebellion and filling them with the Holy Spirit of God. This is the redemption of the mortal body.

And not only they [the material creation], but ourselves also, which have the firstfruits of the Spirit, even we ourselves groan within ourselves, waiting for the adoption, to wit, the redemption of our body. (Romans 8:23)

We have been completely forgiven, we have overcome the sinful tendencies of the body, and finally the body itself has been filled with the Spirit of God in place of flesh-and-blood mortal life. Sin no longer is able to govern us because of the grace of God given in the new covenant.

If we have been totally faithful in our discipleship, during our preliminary steps toward righteousness, then when the Lord appears we will be furnished with an even more aggressive righteousness, a crown of righteousness. As we have been brought down to death by painful and weakening circumstances and have been raised again by the Lord, a "house from heaven," an eternal weight of glory, has been formed before the Throne of God in Heaven.

To be continued.