Completely Perfect Forever

0:06 But the internal person that you are was completely washed, completely made new, was made completely perfect forever the moment that you believed and confessed Jesus is Lord. Now, accept it by faith. Accept it by what the Word of God has said. Welcome back, Mayhem Makers. This is Cassandra Barbato, your host. And I am Amber Jinks, your co-host. Welcome. We are excited to jump into Season 2, Episode 2. Last episode, we focused on how we are not under law, but under God's grace, His unearned favor. It's a fantastic revelation to have that we are no longer being judged by our behavior. We're no longer... standing right with him based on what we do. We are right with God because of the bloodshed of Jesus Christ, because of the work of the cross. Yes, sins are washed and forgotten.

1:09 We need to remind ourselves that. We're going to be looking at something that, in my opinion, is mind-blowing. We're going to talk about the absolute perfection and righteousness of the believer. That can get a little uncomfortable for those that have not fully understood this message in the past. Yes. But it is very, just as the last message, just as freeing. Yeah. Saying, I'm the righteousness of God. If you don't, if you never heard it, never actually confessed that out of your mouth, that can feel really uncomfortable. It was a little counterintuitive because we've just been, we were told we were sinners. How are we the righteousness of God? Right. And also, I know what's inside my head. I know the thoughts that I have.

1:53 Yeah, they're not so righteous. No, I know some of the things I do, not in alignment with God's righteousness as much as I would love to perfectly do everything right all the time. I am wildly aware that I do not. So that brings us to kind of the next endeavor, which is uncovering what scripture says about this righteousness that we have in Christ. And it's part of our identity that we're covering in this season. Yes. So it's definitely something we need to explore. Yes. Who am I? Right. And for me, I kind of have that. This was like my big pivotal, like if somebody said, what's your testimony? This is where my testimony really lives. Because while I wasn't raised in the church until I was a little bit older, I got into the church when I was about maybe 14, 15.

2:41 I'd given a confession of faith at around 10, but we didn't go to church. I didn't have anything that was training me up in the Lord. until later and so my first entrance was really in a church that had a kind of a legalistic mindset and they didn't they didn't say you could lose your salvation but they definitely had a if you don't walk talk look act a certain way you probably didn't really believe enough to be saved right and so this mentality caused me to be I'm just so extreme that I'm like well if I'm supposed to walk this way talk this way act this way look this way behave this way all these things I have come to the conclusion that I cannot do that. And so I would pendulum swing, and I would do this thing where I'd try really hard for a bit, come to the conclusion that, no, in fact, I cannot do it, and then I would run the other direction again. So this pendulum swing, we'd go back and forth. And on one of my upswings, my self-righteous swings, I was telling my mother that she was going to hell.

3:40 I mean, don't we all? Yeah. It wasn't like she was doing anything wrong. You know, I'm just like, you don't pray enough. You know, I don't see you reading your Bible the way that you should be and dedicating. You're not sacrificing your life for the poor the way that you should be and all these things. And I'm going down this list of reasons of why my mother was not going to make it into the kingdom of heaven. And my mom, very patient. She's so funny. She just listened to me and she's like, okay, all right. I don't know that that's right. And she's like, I'm going to set up a conversation with you and your grandfather. And I think she realized that she was not going to convince me. And she was going to see if my grandfather could maybe set me straight. And my grandfather, who was a pastor and a minister for most of his life, pretty much his entire adult life, he was super patient, super chilled. And just kind of listen to me go through the list of verses that said that if you don't act this way, talk this way, you know, do all the things, you're going to hell. This was my understanding of it. It was a three-hour conversation, but I don't remember any of his side of the argument except when he said that you don't know who you are.

4:56 When he said it, I remember thinking, I don't know who I am. How does he know that? I don't know. And I thought he meant something else. Like, who are you? You know, when you're a young person, who am I? Who am I? But he really meant, you don't know who you are in Christ. I didn't know how right I was with God. And I don't remember what else he said, but I do remember something triggered this very bright light bulb moment of my sins are forgiven in that conversation. And it completely changed me. I had been trained that scripture read a different way. But I knew that I knew that I knew in my spirit that what I had come to know, that my sins were forgiven, was the truth. And so I would be coming to scripture, I'd be reading it, and I would be calling my grandfather, well, what does this mean then? Because I had read it a different way. And I'd been taught that it meant something else. I mean, Jesus is telling people to pluck out their eyes. If it causes them to sin, he's telling them to cut off their limbs. If it cut, you know what I mean? And I'm going, I don't get it. What is, what's happening here? And so my grandfather was a source of answered questions for months and months as I went through scripture and reread, especially the New Testament, the gospels, the letters of Paul, the New Testament epistles, all these, and answered all of my, well, what does this mean then?

6:25 Questions. Because I had been taught it meant something else. And on top of that, during those studies, as I was reading and soaking in it, I was discovering more and more how much the New Testament talks about how right we are with God. And it was eye-opening because these are not verses that were highlighted to me from the pulpit. Behavior was highlighted to me from the pulpit. And so I'm hoping that Amber and I are going to share some scripture today to highlight how right you are with God. Because this is going to change your life. If you don't know this, if you've never heard it before, this is going to radically change your life. So I kind of wanted to start in Hebrews.

7:14 That's a good start. Hebrews, there's a one verse that I think is like a what kind of verse? Like, what does that say? There's actually two of them in the same chapter, but one of them I want to focus on is Hebrews chapter 10, verse 14. It says, For by one offering he has perfected for all time those who are sanctified. I'm going to say that again. For by one offering he has perfected for all time those who are sanctified so if you're kind of going to soak through this verse there's some questions that you might come up with first of all i want you to notice that it says the word perfected that's that's a pretty strong word so it says for by one offering well what's the offering we know that's christ This is the context of Hebrews, and we don't have time to read the entire book just to give you the context, so definitely go read, study this passage, study this book. It's a fantastic book.

8:28 But the offering that is being talked about here, the one offering, is the offering of Jesus Christ. So by one offering, he, that's talking about God, has perfected for all time. So perfected for all time. That's a never-changing perfection. Yeah, it doesn't say until you make another mistake. Right. Forever. So one offering causes... perfection for all time. Now, who's going to be the one that has the forever perfection? Those who are sanctified. So my brain immediately goes, well, who's sanctified? Because I need to know who that is to know who is perfected for all time, right? And sanctified means to be set apart. So somebody who's been set apart, those who've been set apart have been perfected for all time. So I need to know how to be the one set apart. Cause I'd like to be perfected for all time. Thank you. So I got to go figure out, well, where does that happen? All right.

9:33 So Acts chapter 26, we're going to, I want to just show you what the apostle Paul says about those who are sanctified. All right. So a little context here. This is Paul. He is preaching and he is giving his testimony of how he came into the Christian faith and And he's talking about how he fell to the ground. They all fell to the ground. And there's a great light. He's given this whole story about when he. had his conversion moment. And then he says, and who are you, Lord? And he's talking, he's telling this story about how he's talking, who are you, Lord? And the Lord is speaking back to Paul, and he says, I am Jesus whom you are persecuting. And he goes and gives him some instructions.

10:15 In verse 18, he says, to open their eyes so that they may turn from darkness to light and from the dominion of Satan to God, that they may receive forgiveness of sins and an inheritance among those who have been sanctified by faith in me. This is Jesus speaking to Paul, but Paul's quoting it. He says, those who have been sanctified by faith in me. So those who are sanctified... are those who have faith in Jesus. So if we take that back to Hebrews, Jesus, who is the sacrifice, through that one offering, of the offering of his own body on the tree, he has perfected for all time those who are sanctified. And those who are sanctified are the ones who believed in him. Mm-hmm. So the believer is the one who through the sacrifice of Jesus Christ has been perfected for all time. This is one of those like mind-blowing verses because I don't know about you, but I am wildly aware of my failures. Yes.

11:42 And so to consider myself as one who's been perfected is actually an act of faith. I have to trust the Lord for that. I'm not seeing that. I'm by faith receiving that. I'm believing that. And so our spirit is completely perfect. It's been birthed out of the spirit of God. That's why God, when he says that you've been made completely perfect forever, it's not something that he's like just saying and isn't actually true. He's calling on something that is there that we don't see because it's in the spirit. And if I want to say, who am I? I'm the one that God has made perfect.

12:26 The one that was set apart. The one that's been set apart. And I still have a body that is deteriorating. It definitely doesn't look like eternal life at the moment. And I have a mind, which is my will and my emotions and kind of my personality. Right. These are other parts of who I am that I am aware that my mind agrees with the spirit and my mind also sometimes agrees with the flesh. But the reality of it, like who is Cassie? I'm the one that's been made completely perfect forever. Mm hmm. Because as we talked about last week, one of the reasons why I love that verse in Romans chapter eight, where it talks about those whom he foreknew, he predestined to become conformed to the image of God. The who we are in the spirit, it's going to envelop the rest of all of us.

13:24 Does that make sense? Like we are going to be conformed completely. We're not going to miss it. You can't. The seed of God has been planted in who we are. And it's going to grow to fullness. And our inside will match our outside in the way of perfection. Very freeing in your faith, right? You don't need some standard to measure up to. You don't need a list of rules to be right. You are right. It's done. So what happens if I go to God and I'm like, look, I suck. I keep doing all these things I shouldn't be doing. I'm a dirty, rotten sinner. He's like, what sin?

14:04 What are you talking about? Don't you... Didn't you read that I said, I remember your sins no more? We're really actually coming to the Lord in the opposite of faith mindset, right? Because we're not trusting that what Christ did was really enough to wash us. Yes, it's not a humble presence. It's a self-serving presence when you're constantly bringing up your bad, your sin, your shortcomings, because that's not how he sees us with our new birth in Christ. And he sees us just like we see our kids. Yeah, you're mine. I do talk to the Lord about my sin in respect to thank you that you bore that at the cross. That's really where I practice that.

14:47 And I think that that is the thing that really glorifies God because I'm accurately saying that I don't measure up on my own, but I'm not going to sit here and say I haven't been washed. Because then I'm saying that the sacrifice of your son was not enough. Yeah, those stumbles and falls aren't there for you to punish yourself over. It's to remind you why the cross existed to begin with. It's why you need it. It's not something that you need to pay penance for. It's been bought. I'm coming to the Lord and saying I'm a dirty, rotten sinner. Please forgive me. We're missing what he's already accomplished on our behalf. Mm-hmm. Instead, we're coming to the Lord going, you've made me so right with you, and I am so undeserving. Right? You also lose your fear of God. And I don't mean reverence, like the fear of, wow, he's actually super big and does some really super big things and capable of everything. There's a level of fear in that, but not fear of punishment.

15:51 Or loss. Yeah. Yeah. He's not going to leave you. Right. It's very difficult to rebel against somebody that completely accepts you. There's something about knowing that you are completely accepted that makes you lose the desire to rebel. Mm-hmm. Like, you could just... rebel requires a demand of obedience and i. Mean if you think about your own teenage years with your parents the reason you did things that you weren't supposed to do was because it wasn't what you were supposed to do it was you were listening to your own will and desire and you know they said be home by 10 i'm going to come home at 10 30 why because there's a rule that says i have to be home by 10 yes for no other good reason i wasn't doing anything extra just being a Yep.

16:37 And that's a biblical concept. Paul talks about it in the book of Romans. He talks about that the law actually causes sin to rise up. This righteousness that we have in Christ is completely unchangeable. I used to think that we could be spot cleaned, right? Like, like I do, I do like 60 to 80% good stuff, like depending on the day, right? You know, And then maybe 20 to 40 percent not good stuff. Because, I mean, we can get into like having anxiety and having, you know, calling somebody a fool inside our head, you know, can even cause us sin. I used to think that it was basically like I did a decent amount of good stuff.

17:17 I was decently amount good. And so Jesus would come along with his blood and he'd wash away just the part that was bad. And I would keep some of that of my own righteousness was there, but that's actually not even the case. It is a complete replacement of our right standing of our righteous works. And it moves out of the way and is replaced with the righteousness of God. Our self-righteousness is like filthy rags. Yes. That's Bible. That is. It's in Isaiah. That came out real Southern, didn't it? Yeah. I like it. We're in the Bible Belt. Yeah, we are. But yes, the passage in Isaiah, our own righteous works are like filthy rags. They will be blown away.

18:00 Yeah, so we're not spot cleaning. You're not like mostly good and God's just cleaning up the rest of it. No, your entirety of what is right with him has been replaced and substituted with the righteousness, the perfection of Christ, which is why God can say you're completely perfect forever. Because it's not your perfection. It's his son's perfection. And we need it. Yeah. That's the part a lot of people miss. Yeah. Is because our own righteous acts are like filthy rags. The only way to get there is to accept that righteousness from God. And then we can't impact that. How could we make God's righteousness any less righteous? There's no way. There's no consequence because we didn't do a thing to earn it. Right. So there can conversely be no consequence to take it away.

18:46 I want to give some more receipts. I know we've got a bunch written here. You want to do 2 Corinthians 5? Sure. 2 Corinthians 5, starting in verse 17. Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away. Behold, the new has come. All this is from God, who reconciled us to himself through Christ and gave us the ministry of reconciliation, that God was reconciling the world to himself in Christ, not counting men's trespasses against them, and he has committed to us the message of reconciliation. Therefore, we are ambassadors for Christ as though God were making his appeal through us. We implore you on behalf of Christ, be reconciled to God. God made him who knew no sin to be sin on our behalf so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.

19:39 Did you catch it? I mean, it says it very plainly. God made him, Jesus, who knew no sin... to be sin on our behalf and some translations say the sin offering on our behalf so that in him in our faith in him we become the righteousness of. God we're the righteousness of god that's wild Yeah, that's hard to read any other way. I remember saying that in Bible study. And I'm pretty sure half the people in that Bible study thought that God was going to strike me with lightning. That's true. I'm like, I'm the righteousness of God. And people are like, don't sit next to her. But when Jesus got on the cross, he became sin for us. Yeah, our sin.

20:31 Yes, because he had none. It was just us. And you know, those disciples had to be annoying sometimes. And he didn't sin the whole time. Good job, Jesus. There's so many good things. You start in that verse 17 says, therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creature. So the person who is in Christ, right, is a new creature. New creation. The old passed away. It's gone. No longer being evaluated by anyone or by the worldly standards. Yeah. All that is gone from you. And then we're kind of like, well, then why don't I walk, talk, act, look completely different? Well, we're going to talk about that process. And please have some grace for yourself as you are learning to be led by the Spirit, because you're not going to overnight just be completely delivered from everything that you're in bondage to. That has not been my experience. And I'm sure that there are people who have had wildlife changes when they came to Christ. There was some of that when I really got the gospel. But as far as development of maturity in the Lord and all that, it is... It's been a journey. It's not been an overnight sensation. But the internal person that you are was completely washed, completely made new, was made completely perfect forever the moment that you believed and confessed Jesus is Lord. Now, accept it by faith.

22:06 Accept it by what the Word of God has said. And then he tells them that he's got... All these things are from God, right? Who reconciled us to himself through Christ, who gave us the ministry of reconciliation. I'm not sure that all preachers think that they have a ministry of reconciliation. I think some of them think they have a ministry of condemnation and death. Running around telling people they're going to hell. Like I was trying to tell my mom. Yep. Turn a burn, sinner. Ministry of condemnation and ministry of death. But we have a ministry of reconciliation. Our ministry to this planet is to say, God has dealt with your sin. Be reconciled to him. You are forgiven. He goes on and he says, namely that God was in Christ, reconciling the world to himself, not counting their trespasses against them. And he has committed to us the word of reconciliation. That's the word that we have committed to us. That's the word we're supposed to preach. It's a word of you've been reconciled. Receive it. Therefore, we are ambassadors for Christ as though God were making appeal through us. We beg you on behalf of Christ, be reconciled to God. And then he goes on with just the perfect verse for explaining the righteousness that we are.

23:38 He who knew no sin became sin on our behalf so that we might become the righteousness of God in him. We're perfect. Not in behavior, not in thought, but in the reality of who we are in Christ. Completely washed. It's good news. It's good news. This is something that you have to have in your foundation in order to really be transformed by the gospel. It doesn't work another way. The gospel is the power of God unto salvation for those who believe. If you don't believe this, then you're missing out on the power of God. And I'm not talking about eternal.

24:23 I'm talking about in this walk, in your walk, in your Christian faith. If you refuse to accept that you've been made the righteousness of God and you're really trying to be pleasing to God just by your behavior, be accepted by him by your behavior, you are not going to experience that gospel power, that saving power, which is not just meant for the future, but it's meant for today. If you refuse to accept how right you are with him, when you believe it, it releases his power for transformation in your life. Otherwise, you're going to waste your time running around trying to measure up For someone who doesn't even keep a ruler, there is nothing to measure up to. There's no increment. It doesn't exist.

25:03 In fact, you make a mockery of the cross because you're saying that wasn't sufficient. I got to do something about this. Thanks. Nice try, God. That whole sending your son to die for me. Nice try. But I'm going to help the situation here and I'm going to work real hard. This is a good one. Romans 5, 17. First, he's kind of contrasting Adam, right? Saying like through the one man, there's like death and it rained. It was pretty strong. It was in charge. Death kind of hit everybody. But I like how he points out the much more, much more. I mean, if you think about how you couldn't help being, you were born a sinner.

25:56 I was born a sinner. You didn't do anything to be a sinner. You were born that way. And yet sometimes we're not really convinced we were born righteous, right? And we think there's something that we can do to affect that. You couldn't do anything to make yourself not a sinner. And you cannot do anything to make yourself not righteous if you're in Christ. So there's some things to meditate on that in there. But then as you go through, it says those who receive an abundance of grace. I like to take scripture really slow and like chew on it, right? Like a cow. Think about like having a cow chew on its cud, right? Abundance of grace.

26:46 Abundance means too much, more than enough, right? Abundance isn't like just enough. Abundance is you had more than you need. So it says those who receive an abundance of grace and grace, as we talked about last week, is unearned favor of God. So if you're one who's received more grace than you need, more favor, you're receiving this. You're mentally picturing, you're fixing your faith in the fact that you have an abundance, too much, more than you need, unearned favor from God, unearned, okay? And the, so important here, here's a word to meditate you on this, gift of righteousness.

27:38 So those who've received two things, there's two things in this list. They've received an abundance too much more than they need of grace, which is the honor and favor of God. And they've received a gift of righteousness, which is right standing with God. They will reign in life through the one Jesus Christ. We're trying to figure out how to reign in this life. We really are. How do I do the good things? How do I avoid the bad things? How do I have good life? How do I have blessing? How do I have favor? I want to experience life. Two things.

28:18 Receive. You got to receive both of them. Receive the abundance of grace and the gift of righteousness. And these are things that are done in the faith realm. You're going to believe it. And in that faith, you release the power of God for salvation in your life. And that's Romans chapter 1, verse 16, if you want to look that up. But there is a receiving of these two things in order to reign. Now, reigning is what? Reigning is acting as king. You're in charge. I mean, there's some things that we should be reigning over, right? There's some wickedness on this earth, and yet we are called to reign as kings through the one Jesus Christ. And the way that we do that is with the abundance of favor, the abundance of grace, and the gift of of righteousness, that right standing we have with God. It's hard for me not to go on and on about this.

29:27 I mean, the only thing that I would say that kind of sums up the majority of this would be Philippians 3, 9. And it says, It's perfect. Like it says it just so perfect. Not the righteousness of my own that comes from the law, which is dead and gone, the new covenant, but that which comes through faith in Christ. That new covenant, the righteousness from God that depends on that faith. Yes, amen. All right. The next thing that happens typically when you start talking about how right you are with God is like, why don't I just go run amok then?

30:12 If you've really run amok, you know why you don't want to do that. Yeah, it's not a good time. Did you think it is? If you tried it out for a while, you're probably like, no, I know why we don't want to do that. But for those of you who are kind of on the fence about things, you're trying to figure this whole thing out, and you're like, well, then what's all the conversation about behavior in Scripture? Why is that something that's talked about a lot? If it's like the law has been fully met in me and I am the righteousness of God, why do I need to consider my behavior? And so we're going to talk about that next week. We're going to get into the fruit of the believer. We're going to talk about that. We're going to talk about being led by the Spirit. We'll talk about why this is important. But it is very important to be grounded and fixed in the fact that regardless of how much fruit you see, you are still the righteousness of God. And we're going to live there.

31:07 That is going to be an ongoing theme as we move through the rest of this series. We're going to constantly be coming back to ground ourselves in the fact that we are the righteousness of God and everything else that we're talking about and building on that for maturity or being led by the Spirit and all these things is an outflowing response to the power of the gospel operating in the believer's life. So come back next week as we get into kind of that believer's walk. We're going to talk about that walk piece. Yes. Looking forward to it. Yeah. It's going to be good. All right. Well, thank you guys for joining us and we'll see you soon. See you next time.