Tag Archives: sinner

A World of Its Own

Vincent Cheung’s essay “Contract” drops a few ideas that actually land with force instead of the usual theological cotton candy. One is calling the new covenant a Contract. Another is that it does not run case by case like some bureaucratic favor system. The third—and the one that keeps paying dividends—is that this Contract produces a world of its own. Not a nicer neighbourhood inside the old world. A different world. Sealed. Exclusive. Rules rewritten.

Some still try the classic humble-sounding routine: “I am the worst of sinners… and also the righteousness of God.” It plays beautifully to the gullible. It is the theological equivalent of a three-card monte where the dealer keeps both cards in play so nobody notices the game is already over. Pure unbelief in a piety costume. As a Christian I am never without God, never without ongoing fellowship, never outside the Contract, never outside my insider status, never without a re-created mind empowered by the Spirit. I am never not perfectly blameless and sinless. I am always the righteousness of God and, yes, awesome. I am never darkness. I am always the light in Christ. The dual-status routine is not humility. It is spiritual LARPing. You do not get to cosplay both beggar and king while the blood has already paid the tab and the throne is already under you.

Inside my Contract with God, He does not see or recognize any sin with me. He sees me as God’s righteousness. God is immutable; He does not do divine amnesia. Omniscience still knows the facts outside the relationship, but God and I are never outside the relationship. The blood locked the terms. 2 Corinthians 5:21 is not poetry for the sentimental. It is the Contract definition: He made Him who knew no sin to be sin for us so that we might become the righteousness of God in Him. Hebrews says one offering has perfected forever those who are being sanctified, and God remembers their sins no more. James says He gives without finding fault. That is not soft language. That is finished legal status. The Court has already ruled. The gavel is down. The dual identity people are still filing appeals that the Judge has already thrown out.

Because I do not go in and out of that insider-Contract status, I define myself only by the reality the Contract creates. The Contract produces a new world all its own. I never leave it. Even if God’s eternality could, in pure technical knowledge, glance at me before justification, I cannot live there. I am not timeless. I experience only linear time and present thoughts. The only way I can think of God and me together is in my present status where I have no sin. I have no ability to step outside the Contract without becoming delusional and irrational. The moment a so-called Christian says “I am a sinner,” he is already speaking as if the Contract no longer holds. That is impossible except by delusion. You can speak of past sin only in the past tense. Anything else pretends you can time-travel back into the old world or cancel the blood-bought status God Himself established. It is like showing up at the airport with two passports—one burned at the border, the other stamped with the King’s seal—and insisting the TSA agent honor both. The agent laughs. The system does not. One of those documents is already ash.

All my sins—past, present, and future—were already forgiven by Jesus. Even if I stumble today, it is already covered and God does not factor it into our present fellowship. This insider relationship is the only world I inhabit. It is the only status I know and acknowledge. It is God’s reality toward me, and it is the only reality I know or experience. The same exclusive world is the only place where Jesus ministers the healing, prosperity, and life His atonement already locked into the Contract. By His stripes I was healed. Though He was rich, yet for my sake He became poor so that by His poverty I might become rich. Inside this bubble those realities are not optional extras or spiritual upgrades you unlock after enough humility points. They are the definition of how God and I relate right now. The Contract does not create two overlapping realities. It creates one airtight world where Jesus only gives what the blood already purchased and Satan gets nothing—not a foothold, not a lease, not even a visitor’s pass.

Symptoms and shortages are trespassers with zero standing in this world. They are illegal aliens who somehow slipped through a crack of unbelief and are now waving fake documents, demanding rights they never possessed. The Contract does not negotiate with them. It does not offer temporary visas or “maybe this is God’s mysterious will” forms. It treats them as foreign invaders whose eviction notice was written in blood and already served. Command the healing. Decree the supply. Speak to the mountain the way a man speaks who already owns the land the mountain sits on and has the title deed in hand. The physics of the old world do not get a vote here. Harvest still comes in famine. Bodies still rise when the word of the Contract is spoken over them. Bank accounts still multiply when the poverty that was already carried by Jesus is treated as settled history rather than an open question. The airtight bubble does not leak.

I used to be a sinner. I am not anymore. I live exclusively inside the new world the blood created, where God looks at me and sees only His own righteousness, where power flows, where healing is normal, where mountains move when I speak. Define yourself the way the Contract defines you, or keep calling yourself a sinner and watch the power stay theoretical—like a king who insists on living in the pigsty next to the palace because it feels more “humble.” The palace is already yours. The pigsty is a self-inflicted cosplay. The choice is not complicated. Step fully into the only world that is actually yours. Stop the false humility that keeps one foot in the old world. You cannot be both the worst of sinners and the righteousness of God at the same time without tearing the Contract. The same exclusive logic that makes dual identity impossible also makes dual reality for the body and the bank account impossible. Either the blood worked or it did not. Either the world of its own is airtight or it is a leaky tent that lets the old weather in. It is airtight.

I stay inside. I define my body and my resources the same way I define my identity: exclusively by the insider status. This world of its own is the only one that is real for me. Live in it. Command from it. Receive from it. The King already wrote the terms, already paid the price, already sealed the deal, and already handed you the Staff of God. Stop crying out as if the power is still somewhere else, still waiting for a fresh download, still requiring another round of self-deprecation before it will activate. It is in your hand. Use it. The old world does not get to define you, your body, or your resources anymore. The Contract already did.

Bring Out the True You

Bring Out the True You

What would happen when God brings out the true you? Let me take a look; oh boy, does it look really good and awesome in here.

You ARE light.

Ephesians 5:8 does not stutter or soft-pedal the timeline. “For you were once darkness, but now you are light in the Lord. Live as children of light.” Past tense: darkness. Present tense: light. The verse is like a divine GPS that refuses to lie about your location and a permanent time-stamp upgrade that deleted the old files for good. That is why people are simply wrong—not merely off by a degree, but flat-out incorrect—when they keep confessing in the present, “I am a sinner… I am the worst of sinners.” According to the Word you are light right now. You were darkness once. The same clean break holds for sinner versus saint, darkness versus righteousness. You were once locked in the kingdom of Satan like a prisoner in a blacked-out dungeon. God has already conveyed you into the kingdom of the Son of His love, the doors behind you have slammed shut forever, and the transfer paperwork is already filed, stamped, and celebrated in heaven.

The faithless keep making this mistake because it keeps them sin-focused. Their consciousness stays glued to darkness, sin, and the enemy, no matter how many “God-centered” or “gospel-centered” banners they wave on the outside like cheap parade floats. It is like insisting on wearing the old muddy prison jumpsuit long after the King has already fitted you with royal robes and burned the jumpsuit, or playing the broken vinyl of guilt while the new album of righteousness is already streaming in high definition. As a man thinks in his heart, so is he. Hebrews 10 exposes the old law’s real failure: it was a constant reminder that cultivated a consciousness of sin—an endless guilt commercial that never stopped running, a dripping faucet that kept the whole house awake all night. Day and night their thoughts, even the subconscious ones, circled how sinful they were like a broken record stuck on the worst track. That is what the law produced. In Christ the whole point is the opposite. You do not carry a consciousness of sin anymore—not even in the quiet corners of your mind. That old identity is past, gone, nailed to the cross and buried under three days of empty-tomb victory.

Now you deliberately cultivate a consciousness of how righteous you are, how full of light you are, how packed with God’s goodness, power, love, and every promise you are. Think of it as rewiring the mental hard drive so the Spirit’s truth becomes the default operating system, flipping the switch from a dusty basement of guilt to a sunlit throne room of favor. When that runs through your mind—even while you sleep, when the nighttime theater used to play the old horror flick—the Holy Spirit is right there saying yes like a proud coach on the sidelines. Because those thoughts line up with the Word, He engraves them deeper, renews your mind, and transforms you. You become what you think by the power of the Spirit.

Thinking “I am a sinner, I am darkness” is not spiritual humility. It is an open invitation, a foothold handed straight to the demonic realm—like leaving the back door unlocked, putting out a welcome mat, and hanging a neon “Demons Welcome” sign. The Bible warns us not to give the devil a place, and that is precisely what a sin-consciousness does. It lets the enemy reinforce the lie until your actions start matching the confession, turning you into an unwilling actor in a script he wrote. Let’s not be faithless. Stop starring in the endless rerun of your pre-cross horror flick. The credits have rolled. The lights are on. You are the light. Walk in the light. You are righteousness. You are full of goodness, full of God’s love, full of the promises of God. Saints, you are the righteousness of God now and forever—so quit the old movie and start living the bright sequel God already filmed.

Bringing out the TRUE YOU.

That bright sequel is exactly what it means to bring out the true you. The true you is not some hidden, struggling, half-saved version still waiting for a future upgrade. The true you is the light you already are. To bring out the true you is to bring out light, righteousness, the mind of Christ, goodness, and the material blessings that flow from the finished work of Jesus. Joel Osteen once said, “God’s not trying to take something from you; He’s trying to get something to you. He wants to bring out the true you. The true you is more blessed, more fulfilled, more successful, more peaceful than you can imagine.” I do not endorse everything Osteen teaches, and the phrasing may not be the most technical or precise way to state the doctrine. Yet the statement itself is perfectly fine. There is nothing truly wrong with it. In fact, saying the doctrine this way is good precisely because it exposes the faithless. They take issue with it the same way they take issue with any clear declaration that the finished atonement delivers present blessings. It is similar to the idea of moralizing. The Bible itself moralizes for the Christian, as Vincent Cheung points out in passages like James 5 and the prophets. The more technical term might be that Scripture teaches us to apply examples to ourselves, but “moralize” works just fine. The same is true here. It is fine to say that when God brings out the true you, He brings out righteousness and blessing.

The faithless push back hard against this. One of them, let’s call him Johnny Billy for convenience, objects that God’s sovereign will ultimately determines life or death, so “giving and taking away” can still mean God removes things you consider blessings that come through Christ’s work. He points to James 4, Peter, and Job, claiming it may not always be God’s will that we live tomorrow. This is obviously stupid. The same book of James says that if a doctor tells you that you have stage-five cancer and will die within days, the prayer of faith will raise the sick. James teaches that we can know what will happen tomorrow when faith is applied to the promises and finished work of Jesus. The same is true for the wisdom James mentions. Even death can be voided by faith. Hezekiah prayed and God gave him fifteen more years. Some passed death outright and went straight to heaven. Johnny Billy insists James is telling us we are still dependent on God’s sovereign will for these things, and that He can give or take them away. No. James says our wisdom for tomorrow and healing that escapes sickness or the death sickness would cause is dependent on our faith, not on some vague, unrevealed sovereign will that contradicts the promises.

As to the give-and-take language, God already did the giving and taking away in the finished atonement of Jesus. God took away our sins, sickness, curses, poverty, and lack and gave them to Jesus, who already suffered for them. And God has already given us righteousness, the blessing of Abraham, riches, healing, the position to use Jesus’ name and get whatever we want, and all spiritual blessings. God will not take away the righteousness He already gave through Jesus. God will not take away the healing He already gave by Jesus’ stripes. God will not take away the gospel of Abraham He already gave me through Jesus becoming my curse. Not only is God truth and logic, but He did these things and through the blood and death of Jesus made it a publicly revealed contract that He will do all the good things He accomplished through His Son to us. Thus it is impossible for God to take away my health when He is in a blood contract that says He will only give me the benefits of Jesus’ atonement, which is health and healing. The Bible tells us who makes us sick, and it is Satan. Sickness is the devil’s middle finger to the atonement of Jesus, and the faithless join in with Satan by flipping off the cross (Acts 10:38).

Johnny Billy also claims that many of the blessings that come with salvation in Christ are promised in the next life, not this one. A glorified body freed from sickness and death is paid for in the atonement, he says, but we are not promised that now and cannot claim a right to it now. This is the classic already-not-yet fallacy that Vincent Cheung has exposed. The Bible’s emphasis is what we have now, not later. The faithless emphasize the opposite. Jesus healing and healing and healing is to show what we have now, not later. Matthew 8:17 tying this into the atonement makes it doubly so. Johnny makes a category error with his term “glorified body.” It is correct that a glorified body will not experience sickness, but that has no logical or categorical relevance to being healed in this life. Since a glorified body cannot be healed—it is already perfect—healing can only categorically be applied to this life. Since healing is in the atonement (Isaiah 53:4-5, Matthew 8:17) and direct promises guarantee healing on the demand of faith (James 5:15), then our unglorified bodies now are promised health and healing on faith.

Johnny Billy notes that Osteen almost certainly means material gain, emotional happiness, and physical health. This is good. Why is that a problem when the atonement not only included forgiveness but Jesus taking my poverty to give me His wealth, and taking my sickness to give me healing? Why do the faithless like Christians to suffer so much? Because they are the ones helping them to suffer. They are the ones who persecute the ones teaching the gospel and then say the gospel causes persecution.

Beyond the negative critique is the point Osteen makes that is right on the money. We are the light now, not later. We are righteous now, not later. We are the mind of Christ now, not later. We are goodness now, not later. We are lovely now, not later. We have all spiritual blessings now, not later. Our inner man was created in the knowledge of Christ when God caused us to be born from above. We have an incorruptible seed in our inner man right now. Thus, to bring out my inner self is to bring out righteousness, goodness, the mind of Christ, an incorruptible inner man already made in the knowledge of Christ. This is me right now. If this is not you right now, you are not saved and are going to burn in hell forever.

The whole point of water baptism is to demonstrate in ritual that the old man is dead and gone. The sinner Oshea is past tense. The righteous Oshea is present tense. At the end of the day the only mind that matters is God’s mind. The only reason I needed to be saved from sins is because in the mind of God He held a record of sins I committed. It does not matter if I acknowledged this record in God’s mind or not. If God thinks it is true, then it is. But the knife cuts both ways. In God’s mind right now, present tense, He only sees a record of perfection and a God-level rightness on my list. God’s thoughts about me are the only thoughts about me that matter and are true. I am righteous because God thinks I am His righteousness. Faith is agreeing with God.

“God, I agree with You. You think I am God’s righteousness, and so I am. You are correct. You think I am light, goodness, and perfect. I agree with You. You are correct. Thank You for giving me Your one and only Son to save me and make this my new reality. You are so good and so loving to me. Thank You.”

In the passage where Paul says we have the mind of Christ, it says the Spirit is in us to show us all the freely given good things God has given us. The finished atonement of Christ is a total salvation for all of life, both spiritual and material. Thus, for God to bring out the true us would mean to bring out how righteous I truly am, as much as how healthy I am, and how rich I am in Christ. I have rivers of living water in me; thus, to bring out the true me would be to bring out rivers of living water out of me. I have the Spirit; thus, to bring out the true me is to bring out the Spirit of God who anoints us to heal the sick, resurrect the dead, and preach the gospel to the poor. To bring out the true me is to bring out the Spirit who alone knows God. I have the blessing of Abraham; I have God as my exceedingly great reward, which in context is mostly about material blessings. Thus, to bring out the true me is to bring out exceedingly great material blessings.

You are the light. The true you is light. Walk in it. Let the Spirit bring out rivers. Let the finished work produce the health, the wealth, the power, the righteousness that already belongs to you. Agree with God’s mind. The old files are deleted. The new operating system is running. Live as the children of light you already are.

The Same Guy Who Loves Coffee

I am constantly amazed — though by now I really shouldn’t be — when Christians fight tooth and nail to convince everyone how sinful they still are. They spend precious breath and hours declaring themselves “the worst of sinners,” self-centered in defining themselves as sinners and still conscious of their sins and the flesh. Their self-centeredness would make the Pharisees blush. And the devil is having the time of his life watching it.

The only consistent thing to do is treat them the way they describe themselves. If they insist they are sinners and I am righteous, then I cannot have fellowship with that, because I am better than them — as much as righteousness is better than sin, as light is to darkness, as Christ is to the devil. Light and darkness don’t mix, and so I cannot associate with them. As Paul wrote, “We have stopped evaluating others from a human point of view… Anyone who belongs to Christ has become a new person. The old life is gone; a new life has begun… [We have] become the righteousness of God” (2 Corinthians 5:16-17, 21 NLT, LSB). “What harmony can there be between Christ and the devil?” (2 Corinthians 6:15 NLT).

“Blessed is the man who does not walk in the advice of the wicked; nor does he stand in the way of sinners; nor does he sit in the assembly of mockers” (Psalm 1 LEB).

When Paul called himself the “worst of sinners,” he was being a mascot — a living poster boy for the reach of grace. He was describing what he had been, not what he was. Paul called himself the worst of sinners, describing himself as a mascot, a poster-boy label (present tense), for what he once was (past tense); he was not saying his present reality is that of a sinner. The old man is dead. We believers are a new creation, and we have become the righteousness of God. Paul said we are blameless in God’s thoughts. Who am I to disagree with God? My sins are as far from me as the east is from the west, so I cannot see them, and they have nothing to do with my definition or identity. Nothing. Paul also said, “My old self has been crucified with Christ. It is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me” (Galatians 2:20).

The old Oshea — the human Oshea — died. Paul says he doesn’t even view us from a human viewpoint anymore because we are a new creation. The old human definition included being a sinner, but that man is dead. God reckons him dead, and I agree with God. The old man was crucified with Jesus. Then Paul drives it home: “I no longer live.” The old sinner doesn’t exist anymore. Now it is not a sinner who lives in Paul; it is not sin or a sinful Paul who animates his mind and flesh. No. It is Jesus who lives in Paul — both in mind (you have the mind of Christ) and even in body. The Spirit gives life to my mortal body, not sin or the curse.

The part to remember is that Paul doesn’t live anymore; rather, Jesus lives in Paul. To say Paul was still a present-tense sinner is to say Jesus is a minister of sin — and worse, that Jesus Himself is a sinner — because it is Jesus who lives in Paul, not Paul. To claim you are still a sinner is to say Jesus is a sinner. And that, my friend, is what we in the theology business call a “you just played yourself” moment. This is how foundational, common, and basic our new identity in Jesus truly is.

We are so identified with Jesus, as part of Him, that the old Oshea no longer lives — Jesus now lives in Oshea instead. What you say of me is true of Jesus, and vice versa (excluding the deity part). If Jesus is seated in the heavenly places, then so am I. As Jesus is in heaven, so am I on earth. God always gives Jesus what He asks, and so I always get what I ask. To say I am a sinner is to say Jesus is a sinner.

Stop the sin-conscience games. Confess who God says you are: the righteousness of God in Christ. Focus day and night on this identity, and watch faith explode.

Sometimes at night I’ll grab a bright flashlight and sweep the yard. Spot a deer munching my plants? I don’t just clap or yell — I full-on bark like a German Shepherd who just chugged three espressos. Works every time. The deer bolts. But here’s the question that should stop you in your tracks: Because I sometimes bark, does that make me a dog? Obviously not. I’m still the same guy who loves coffee and sourdough cinnamon rolls. Just as my barking doesn’t turn me into a canine, your sinning doesn’t turn you into a sinner.

Think about this very carefully. As Paul describes in Romans 5, it was because you were born a sinner that you sinned. After conversion, because you are righteous you now do righteous things. A sinner, at least outwardly, can do righteous acts, but it does not make him righteous — any more than my barking makes me a dog. A righteous man, even if he sins, is not a sinner, any more than I am a dog because I sometimes bark.

The deer might be confused by my brief career change, but that doesn’t change what I actually am. I never turned into a dog. I am not a dog. I am not a sinner.

And what about you? You are not a sinner. You are still the righteousness of God.

You are defined by God’s actions, not yours. Your definition and identity are what God has created you to be; your actions do not identify you. God didn’t consult your performance report before He declared you righteous; rather, He looked at Jesus’ report and identified it as yours. He didn’t wait for you to stop barking at deer — or at your own failures — before He seated you in heavenly places with Christ; rather, He chose you, He loved you; He did this without asking you about it. He just did it. He acted, He saved, He removed your sins and recreated your new reality in Christ. Faith is when God lets you know what He did, causing you to agree with Him. That’s the deal. You are righteous, and not something else. You are in Christ and Christ is in you, not something else.

You Said Something

There is nothing wrong in the statement, “I was once a sinner who was saved by grace.” However, if you stop there it is unbelief. The same gospel that saves is the same gospel that gives me a new identity in Jesus and baptizes me in the Spirit. Therefore, I am the righteousness of God. I am not affirming God is God’s righteousness, but that “I,” am God’s righteousness. God gave it to me and it is now mine. I am righteous like God is righteous. This is who I am.  This is important because the gospel is not mainly a negative belief. It is not mainly about past forgiveness. It is mainly a positive belief. I am righteous. I am empowered by the Spirit for miracles. I have authority to cast out demons and heal the sick. I am a child of God. I boldly march in God’s throne room and ask and then receive.

This is important for prayer. James says that the prayer of a righteous man is effective. If your focus is that “I am a sinner saved by grace,” then according to James, your prayers will not be effective. I am not a sinner. I am righteous. The focus is that I am present tense, righteous. The focus is not a negative belief of my past forgiveness, but a positive declaration of my present righteousness. It is to this type of Christian who will have effective prayers.

Jesus teaches on prayer in Mark 11:22-24, saying, “ Say to this mountain; and, whatever you ask, believe you have received it, and it will be yours.” The focus is not God’s goodness. The focus is not begging and crawling to God, waiting to see what God does. The focus is not God, but you. Jesus puts the focus on “believe you have received it,” when you said it.  As with James only a person who knows they are righteous in God’s sight, God’s child and has contractual rights, is able to put the focus on them and get answers to prayers. The focus is not problems. The focus is not telling God your problems, trying to prick His heart and see what He does. No.

Jesus did not instruct you to tell God about your mountain. Jesus commanded you to open your mouth and tell the mountain to move. The focus is on your mouth to say it, and your mind to believe it. Your mouth is Moses’ Staff of God. Stretch out your mouth and say something. Say it. What you want, say it. Jesus’ says the focus is not waiting to see what God does, but believe (past tense) you have received. The focus is not your problem or God. The focus is that someone so righteous as you, just spoke something in faith. The focus is that you opened your mouth. It is that simple.

This is Jesus’ teaching on prayer. Jesus is the extreme faith preacher.