To Be Least

      Jesus told his disciples that at the end of the age God will send angels to separate the righteous from the wicked. The wicked will go to hell while the righteous to eternal life. (Matthew 13:49-50) How exactly does one become righteous in God's eyes?
      When we come to God in repentance and in faith, God will forgive our sins and we pass from death to life and the Holy Spirit dwells in us. After this initial step, I believe that there are two things that need to be present in a Christian's life in order to be considered righteous before God. The first, as you will read, is about being controlled by the Spirit. If we are indeed controlled by the Spirit, we will put to death the sins of our bodies. However, even with the help of the Holy Spirit, we can never achieve perfection. When we sin and come to him in repentance and confess our sins, Jesus will forgive us our sins.

      Lets get started.

      We obviously are saved by God's grace through faith. (See Eph. 2:8-9) When we become saved the Holy Spirit comes and lives within our bodies. 1 Corinthians 6:19 says that our "body is a temple of the Holy Spirit."

You, however, are controlled not by the sinful nature but by the Spirit, if the Spirit of God lives in you. And if anyone does not have the Spirit of Christ, he does not belong to Christ. (Romans 8:9)

      To live according to the sinful nature and to live according to the Spirit are contradicting. You can not say that you are controlled by the Spirit if you were living sinfully. The truth would be that you are actually being controlled by the sinful nature.

For if you live according to the sinful nature, you will die; but if by the Spirit you put to death the misdeeds of the body, you will live, because those who are led by the Spirit of God are sons of God. (Rom. 8:13-14)

      If we choose to live a sinful life, we will experience the second death. (For more information see this post) If we stop living in sin with the help of the Holy Spirit, we will enter eternal life. If we live according to the Spirit we will put to death our sins, which would also mean we will be living in obedience. By being obedient to God we are not being controlled by the sinful nature, but by the Spirit.

And so he condemned sin in sinful man, in order that the righteous requirements of the law might be fully met in us, who do not live according to the sinful nature but according to the Spirit. (Rom. 8:3-4)

      Now to the bottom line. The righteous requirements of the law are met in those who do not live by the sinful nature, but according to the Spirit. If you live according to the Spirit, you will be obedient by putting to death your sins.

      As I stated in the intro, we as humans, even with the help of the Holy Spirit, can never achieve a perfect life without any sin. John addresses this clearly.

⁶If we claim to have fellowship with him yet walk in the darkness, we lie and do not live by the truth. ⁷But if we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus, his Son, purifies us from all sin.
⁸If we claim to be without sin, we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us. ⁹If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness. ¹⁰If we claim we have not sinned, we make him out to be a liar and his word has no place in our lives. (1 John 1)

      If we live a life of sin, Jesus is not in us. However, we are not without sin. If we confess our sins he will forgive us. Notice, it does not say that we automatically have all our sins forgiven. We must what? We must confess our sins in order for Him to forgive us. This verse in particular does not talk of repentance, however the scriptures are filled with the concept that repentance is followed by forgiveness. (See Luke 13:3, Luke 17:3 Acts 2:38 for starters).
      To sum it up, when we do commit willful sin, we can come to Jesus in repentance and confess our sin and he will forgive us. When he forgives us, we will be purified "from all unrighteousness." We will be seen as righteous in God's eyes.
      If we, as Christians, are to be declared righteous and enter eternal life, we must a) be living according to the Spirit and not to the sinful nature. If we are doing this, we are being obedient to God (putting to death our sins) with the help of the Holy Spirit. b) When we do sin, we must come to Christ in repentance and confess our sins and we will be forgiven and considered righteous.
      When we are living our life in such a way, we will be declared righteous on judgment day and will enter heaven to spend eternity with God. If we are not living as I have shown, we will not be declared righteous, but wicked and will be thrown into hell.