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The Righteous
Those who, by believing in the gospel
of the water and the Spirit, have received the remission of all
sins and become sinless before God are called as the righteous.
Romans 4:7-8 say, "Blessed are those whose lawless deeds are
forgiven, And whose sins are covered; Blessed is the man to whom
the LORD shall not impute sin." The blessed here refer to none
other than the righteous who have received the remission of sin.
Because God is holy and just, He does not approve those who have
sin in their hearts as the righteous. To be forgiven of our lawless
deeds and to have our sins covered is to become sinless and holy
by actually believing in Jesus Christ-that is, by believing that
we passed our sins to Jesus through His baptism, and that with His
death on the Cross Jesus vicariously paid the wages of our sins
on the Cross for us.
Because God cannot lie, He never approves
those who have sin as the righteous. On the contrary, He condemns
them and casts them into the fire of hell. To become sinless before
God, we must believe in our hearts that all our sins of the past,
present, and future were passed onto Jesus once for all when He
was baptized by John the Baptist, and we must thereby cut off our
sins from our hearts. As such, the righteous before God refer to
those who have become sinless in their hearts by believing in the
baptism of Jesus and the Cross. If some people still have sin in
their hearts even as they believe in Jesus and they still give their
prayers of repentance, then such people are sinners, not the children
of God.
God does not justify the wicked (Exodus
23:7), for He cannot lie. Therefore, those who leave out the baptism
of Jesus and believe only in the blood of the Cross can never become
righteous.
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