“Shall we sin, that grace might abound?” This resounding question springing from the false idea that Christians have a license to freely sin, because grace is so broad that it condones acts of unrighteousness. And then sin is thought of to be justified because it, by contrast, shows up God’s mercy and forgiveness.  The Apostle Paul, quickly heralds back to this fleshly falseness with an emphatic “God Forbid.” The whole point of Romans 6-8, God’s revelation concerning our union with Christ, is to reveal the provision provided by Christ’s death, and burial from sins bondages and the resurrection of Christ providing His life which victoriously releases us from the bondage of sin. 

 

However, grace never, ever justifies sin. If sin is never recognized as sinful, then there is no need for our deliverance from it.  The Gospel of grace is a promise of deliverance. We generically say that we Christians are all “saved,” but a more powerful way of saying it is that we are “delivered.”  From what? I believe that most Christians don’t even know.  The Bible says that we were delivered from the powers of darkness (Col. 1:13), delivered from the dominion of sin which is Satan’s expression in us (I John 3:8), delivered from of a satanic nature (Rom 6:6), and we are delivered from the consequences of sin which is death (Heb 2:14-15).  The gospel’s deliverances subsequence fills us with the presence of God’s Holy Spirit and causes us to walk by the power of another life; another mind; and another nature. However, without even recognition of sin, there is no need for this powerful life-giving deliverance.

 

Before addressing “The sin explosion,” (‘A rose called by any other name is still a rose’), let us answers some pertinent questions concerning the Gospel of Grace.  How is mankind forgiven for their sins?  That question is answered in Romans 1-5; The Gospel is clear and full of glory to those of us who live by it.  The precious cleansing blood of Jesus provides remission of our sins, for the shedding of that blood in public two thousand years ago was conclusive evidence that Christ paid the full price for the remission of sins.  We are saved from eternal damnation by inheriting eternal life through faith in the precious blood of Jesus.

 

How does the Christian know freedom from sin’s dominion?  This is the very question answered in the Romans 6-8 chapters. The furtherance of the Gospel is presented here in these chapters.  It is through the bodily death of Jesus that saves us in the present.  Salvation from our past sins is assured us through the blood, however, our daily deliverance from sins dominion and power is provided for in the precious body of Christ.  Romans 5:10 says, “We shall be saved delivered daily from Sin’s dominion by His resurrection life”(Amp). How is that?   Christ was made sin as us (“I am crucified”) that we might be made a “New Creature” i.e. a “New Man” and that also means that we are “dead to sin (Rom. 6:2).”  God made Jesus’ precious body receive sin (Satan indwelt humanity) when He was on the Cross (II Corinthians 5-21).  Christ died representing us by being us(“made sin”) bearing as us that sin nature in His death. Therefore, out of our bodies went the false satanic nature forever.  Christ, in His risen body, representing us, raised us up with His own divine nature of Holiness making us Christ indwelt humanity.  We were thus made a new race of being, a new man, a holy nation, and the actual body of Christ.

 

Another pertinent question answered in Romans 6-7 is; What gives sin its power over us Christians? The answer comes alive in the early verses of Romans 7. The body death also renders us “dead to the law.”  What does that mean? As long as we falsely think that we have an independent self that is capable, in itself, to keep God’s law, we are not free from sin for it still has power over us (“The strength of sin is the law”).  Sin gets its power over us because we falsely think that we are independent selves and we can strive and try in our own flesh power to keep ourselves free from sin by producing our own goodness and righteousness. The Apostle Paul personally believed that lie in Romans 7. We are enlightened when we understand that the root of our sinning comes from self-effort, (trying to become,) which is shockingly an expression of Satan.  Satan is deceiving me to believe I have my own life and strength to live it.  When the lie is exposed, then we are conditioned to leap by faith and know that we are dead to sin/Satan as well as the law, and alive to Christ, who is my life. At the Cross, “God sent his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh, and for sin, and condemned sin in the flesh”(Rom. 8:3). Also, Galatians says, “And they that are Christ’s HAVE crucified the flesh with the affections and lust”(Gal. 5:24).

 

Then how do we walk in the Spirit and live the victorious Christian life free from sin? The answers to the walk of faith as Spirit sons is presented in Romans 8--As we walk in the Spirit of who we really are, Christ lives our life.  It is only as Christ lives our life that we are freed from sins dominion and its power.  However, as long as we are in this fallen body, we will be in calling distance to sins/ Satan’s presence and temptations and can slip into believing in ourselves again.  We will not be free from that until we get our new bodies.

 

John writes in his first epistle, “I write unto you that you sin not.” So the union message and experience of sanctification is all about deliverance from sin/satan’s nature, and sins power. However, we are not yet delivered Satan’s presence in this world nor his temptations.  Temptations are good for us Spirit people. When we are enlighten to our authority in Christ, then temptations are a good practice for us to put our faith in the keeping power of the Holy Spirit (Jude 1:24). 

 

Now that we see the truth of the full Gospel of grace, why then, this article?  It is because we are living in a generation where sin is denied or justified and that is true even in Christian circles. Yes, the Gospel is full of glory, freedom and is God’s gift and provision for the sin problem. Yet it is only available to those of us who know our need for it and live by the life of Christ, as we, by faith, eat His flesh and drink His blood.  The Gospel is of no value to those who live their own sinful lives.  For they refuse the truth of the Gospel by justifying themselves and loving their sins.

 

Nowhere at any time in the Bible is sin justified, nor is it white-washed, nor is it conveniently interpreted as anything but sin. Sin is sin, and before it can be fully done away with, it must be personally realized by the convicting voice of the Lord as “exceedingly sinful.” Romans 7 is about sin’s exposure and sin’s deliverance. It is not about its justification; its reinterpretation; and its acceptance.  The Sin of self-effort is exposed in Romans 7 in order for it to be overcome and defeated through the Cross. It is only through Christ’s sinless life, resurrected in us (Phil. 3:10a) as well as us, that we by faith in the power of His resurrection overcome sins dominion.  Trying to mix sinful acts together with union with Christ is like trying to mix oil and water, it cannot be done, and is blasphemous.   I agree with Paul when he says, “may it never be.”

 

The Bible talks much about walking in the light.  Jesus said that, “Ye are the light of the world,” and John says now since that is true, “walk as children of light.”  When light shines in a dark room, its job is to make plan what is in that room, and its one demand is for us to respond honestly to it.  When we are in darkness, we can call anything, anything.  But when the light is turned on we can by no means call a chair a table.  We must call it what it is.  All God has ever required of us even in our lost condition is to be honest. It is dishonesty, not sin, that damns the soul. It is our unwillingness to part with sins, and a refusal to admit what God shows us, by His word, or by his convicting Spirit.  We refuse to admit to it simply because we love our sins too much.  I always say, “we love our demons too much to want the deliverance available in Christ.”  One thing is for sure, the precious blood of Jesus does not cleanse dishonesty and excuses.  It cleanses, but it only cleanses sin admitted to be sin, for it was shed for that purpose alone. 

 

Sinful acts were so very obviously sinful to the early Christians that most people in that day would want to borrow our modern sarcastic expression:  “Duh!”  Yet, look at us in our modern sophisticated and learned society, we now believe that somehow God has changed and become so loose in his mercy that he doesn’t even interrupted sin to be sinful anymore. And even in our church circles, it is not politically correct to even say something is sinful.

 

All this “loose mercy and grace” leads Christians to believe that since God is nothing but mercy and love and to most that means he doesn’t even see sin, then, He will make sure that all will be saved at the end. What we have forgotten is that we serve a holy God who cannot lie and must be as true to His justice as well as He is to His mercy.  Yes, sin is swallowed up in the death of God’s son on the Cross, and God’s justice was satisfied there, yet if we flagrantly sin and call it all God, we treat that precious sacrifice as invaluable and worthless and shake an arrogant finger at God’s justice.  

 

If God doesn’t see sin, then why did he send his son to save the world from sin, and why does the third person of the Trinity grieve in agony interceding until the sons receive their full inheritance as sons of God?  The answer is simple, God sees sin, sent His son to die for it, and is grieves until Christ’s body is fully delivered from it, as well as intercedes for that body until it receives its final perfection.

 Universalism is a growing doctrine based on the false belief that universally all are already saved or will be saved in the end.  Some say “everyone is already saved they just don’t know it.”  “Universalism is the teaching that God, through the atonement of Jesus, will ultimately bring reconciliation between God and all people throughout history.”  Ultimate reconciliation will occur regardless of whether they have trusted in or rejected Jesus as savior during their lifetime.  This universal redemption will be realized in the future where God will bring all people to repentance.  This repentance can happen while a person lives or after he has died and lived again in the millennium or some future state.” Additionally, a few universalists even maintain that Satan and all demons will likewise be reconciled to God.”

 

See:  www.carm.org/uni/universalism.

 

It is true that “God was in Christ Jesus reconciling the world unto Himself, not imputing their trespasses unto them.”  However an objective universal truth is meaningless and useless to us unless we subjectively apprehend it by faith. When we reach out by faith and personally accept the fact that God has reconciled us to himself by the death, burial and resurrection of His son Jesus, then we are personally saved.  But it is totally illegitimate to say “we are all already saved, we just don’t know it.” That sounds like a new age phrase, “sin is only ignorance.” If that lie is true, then all anyone needs to do is change their thinking, justify themselves and never have a heart and mind transplant, nor become a “New Creature” in Christ.

 

Even if I know the truth that Jesus did it all, salvation is not mine until I receive Him as my personal Savior and make Him my all.  However, being enlightened doesn’t save me. I might have light, but if I don’t have Christ’s Life, I don’t have anything more than what the devils have (James 2:19). What saves me is my choice to personally believe the gospel, and receive Him who cleanses me of my sins, delivers me from the fallen satanic nature and fills me with His Spirit.  It is only then that I am saved.  Sad to say, many will refuse to obey the Gospel and will be lost. II Thessalonians 1:8-10 testifies to that fact.

 

Universalism is the beginning of the great deception which will eventually lead God's people into the apostasy prophesized in II Thessalonians 2:3. “Let no man deceive you by any means:  for that day shall not come, except there come a falling away first, and that man of sin be revealed, the son of perdition.  Who opposes and exalts himself above all that is called God, or that is worshipped; so that he as God sits in the temple of God showing himself that he is God.”  You can’t fall away from something that you didn’t already have.  This verse is also speaks to Christians i.e. we Christians as the temple of God, but we do not say we the human temple, are God. That is what the New Age teaches.

 

Universalism and the false New Age oneness go hand in hand.  False oneness says that we the human vessel become God. It is true that we are indwelt by and are an expression of God through Christ, but we never become deity. That is what Satan thought he was choosing to be in his fall.   This false union is what Paul warns against in these previously mentioned versed in II Thessalonians. Satan sitting in the temple of God (our bodies) saying that he is God.  Then whatever I do or say is God without ever questioning the possibility of sin. Scary isn’t it?

 

The big lie is that sin is irradiated, then there must not be any hell.  Eventually, Jesus loses his preeminence as “The way, The truth, and The life.”  There ends up being many ways; many truths; and many roads to eternal life, which sadly forgets what Jesus said to his disciples, “no man comes to the Father, but by me.”

 

 I heard a woman say once that, “everyone already has Jesus, that is, “the Jehovah Witnesses have Him; they just call him Jehovah.  The Jews have him they just call him Yahweh, but it is really Jesus.  The Muslim’s have Jesus, they just call him Ali.” This woman went on to say, “I am going to the Mosque and tell the Muslim’s that they already have Jesus. They just don’t know that Ali is Jesus too.”  I was outraged when I heard this blasphemy.  Also, another good friend of mine  heard a prominent TV minister recently say: “Anybody who calls on the name of Jehovah, Ali or Jesus shall be saved." This lie that is what Peter exposed in  (Act 4:12).  Mohammad Ali was in the audience, he stood up and clapped. 

 

If there is no hell, Jesus is a liar, the Gospel is a farce, we need not have personal faith for salvation, and Billy Graham's ministry is in vain. Universalism is dangerous.  In my opinion, it is a doctrine of demons.  It tears down the foundations of our faith, it makes taking up our daily Cross irrelevant, and it leaves us in a dangerous passive state leaving us totally indifferent to the true response and activity of faith. If I believed this garbage, then why believe God for my personal salvation, my family member’s salvation, or for my unsaved friends?  It makes faith invalid all together.  

 

There is a comforting verse in I Corinthians 11:19, “For there must be also heresies among you, that they which are approved may be made manifest among you.  Opposites show up each other, and make clear the truth.

 

I heard a new age woman, who believed in reincarnation talk about her hateful unsaved mother.  She said, “Oh well if my mother doesn’t get it right in this life, she will get it right the next time around.” I saw in this woman, a faithless passiveness relying on the Devil’s lies.  I knew of a woman who claims that she is the third person of the Trinity, what blasphemy. How sad.  

I often see this same kind of faithless passiveness in the universalist who trust in ultimate reconciliation instead of putting their trust in the person of Christ who keeps them to the end and saves us from a deserved hell.

 

False oneness closes up all possibilities of any distinguishable opposites. Satan is not considered as a viable enemy; Sin is non-existent; there is no difference between the Creator and the creation; there is only one, eliminating true unity (the two become one). There is no personal choice or faith response on man’s part because that appears to be separation. Some even go so far as to say that there is no Trinity (there is no three in one, to them that is separation). Others say it is wrong to distinguish between the sin commented and Satan the real sinner (1 John 3:8). There is no dividing soul from Spirit. There is no learning who you are not, and replacing that lie with who you really are. And eventually there are no opposites, just a lukewarm faithless gray oneness without distinctions (Rev.3:16). 

 

True oneness is our union with our precious Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ.  Jesus prayed for us to know oneness like He knew with His father.  John 17 is His prayer, “That they all may be one; as thou, Father, art in me, and I in thee, that they also may be one in us:  that the world may believe that thou has sent me.  And the glory which thou gave me I have given them; that they may be one, even as we are one;  I in them, and thou in me, that they may be made perfect in oneness.” The Apostle Paul says it is like a marriage relationship, “the two will become one flesh,” That means that Christ joined to my spirit manifests Himself as one flesh being.  I Corinthians says that “He that is joined to the Lord is one spirit with him (6:17)” We humans are the vessels, and Christ in us is the divine nature in us and the two are made one. He lives as if it is me, but is not me, its HE.

 

Jesus says that we are the light of the world.  We all know that it is He who is the light of the world manifesting Himself in us, as us.  However, the good news is that we humans end up being and expressing the one who indwells us, because Jesus said, “You are the light….” That is true oneness, yet the vessel never becomes the deity it contains.  False oneness counterfeits true oneness by making the creation the Creator, and declares that man is God

 

Ironically, when union with Christ is rightly understood, and the human being takes it’s proper God-given submissive place, we as Paul Billheimer the author of DESTINED FOR THE THRONE says,  “are, by virtue of the new birth,  the next of kin to the Trinity, a kind of extension of the God-Head.” (By the way this book was forwarded by Billy Graham.) We are one with the Trinity without actually becoming the Trinity.  Man is so important to God, that God would become man in order to redeem mankind, as well as through His resurrection and ascension position redeemed man in himself “far above principalities in heavenly places.” Redeemed mankind’s royal inheritance places him in Christ, who is the Second person of the Trinity.  Pretty great isn’t it?  Yet false union and true union have just an onionskins difference between them, but fearfully that difference is the difference between heaven and hell.