BS6I- JESUS COVERS OUR PAST AND PRESENT SINS
You’ll remember that Adam and Eve were originally made in God’s image and had God’s own Spirit -- or his nature living within them. When Adam and Eve sinned, they lost God’s Spirit. They lost him because God’s Spirit is holy and can’t dwell in men and women that have sinful hearts.
But ----with our past sins forgiven, our guilty conscience cleansed by Christ’s blood and the old nature that keeps us sinning destroyed on the Cross--- it was again possible for God’s Spirit to indwell man. Therefore -- Jesus’ death is a reprieve for us. He took the wrath of God in our place in order to give us time. This reprieve gives us time to ask and receive Christ’s Spirit again so that we can start over.
Every one of us who repents, or changes our thinking about sin, can ask God for his Spirit to dwell within us. In fact, He is anxious to give this good gift to us!
Luke 11:13
And when we do that, Jesus comes in to fill the vacuum in us with his very nature.
With God’s Spirit in us, we have put on Christ as our new nature. The Apostle Paul says it like this:
2 Cor 5:17
God’s Spirit within us doesn’t mean that we’ll never sin again, BUT it does mean that we no longer have to sin! We can now choose to stop doing the things that we know are wrong--- and we can do this because God’s Spirit filling our human spirit is a power much greater than the sin and self that have ruled over us much of our lives. Paul calls God’s Spirit “the law of the Spirit of Life”.
Romans 8:1-2
The Apostle John wrote --- “greater is HE (God’s Spirit) that is in you than he that is in the world” – meaning Satan and all his evil forces.
1 John 4:4
God gives us His Holy Spirit --- the same Spirit that Jesus had --- to all who will obey him.
Acts 5:32
And this is how Jesus deals with our FUTURE. If we choose, we can have the power of God’s nature within us that can overcome all that we will ever face.
For all this to become a reality however Jesus had one more thing to do. He had to rise up from death. We’ll study more about this soon.
Next Study: BS6J - Jesus Covers Our Future Sins