In talking to many people over the years, I sense them being indecisive and vacillate between whether they are a sinner or saint after being born again and it has become a most sensitive and troubling area in their life. In a recent conversation; it led to this person telling me that, they were weary and wishing that, Jesus would have come back yesterday. The discussion came up as to us having to examine our conscience and see if we have been sinning so that, we can confess our sins and stay in good standing with God.

This person and I were both brought up in the Catholic faith which teaches that; a person should examine their conscience before they go to the confessional to confess their sins to a priest. At one time I was told that the priest represents God on the earth and stands as a mediator between us and God. It is not my intention to bash and condemn any one's beliefs however; giving anyone the power to forgive your sins other than Christ Jesus is one of the greatest deceptions ever perpetrated on humanity and that is an understatement.

There is not a denomination on the planet, which is not teaching heresy in some form or another. All denominations have their own special rules that go along with staying saved and going to heaven. These special rules are MEANINGLESS and only hinder people from growing up and having a vibrant walk with a living God in Christ Jesus that takes place through the Holy Ghost who lives in them.

Now having your conscience examined is all right, if the Holy Spirit is doing the examining. A person does not go to heaven for his good works nor does he go to hell for his sins. The only thing that qualifies you for heaven and not hell is have you had the miracle of accepting Jesus as your Savior and had an inner witness that you have been born again; which is the ONLY THING that defines you as a follower of Christ.

Salvation is not a head knowledge conversation of following rules and working hard to find God's favor. The devil knows who Jesus is and he is not saved. Salvation is a miracle of God and is only valid if your nature has been regenerated and the Holy Spirit is actually living in your heart. Scripture tells us that, the day we became born again we were sealed with the Holy Spirit. This was the guarantee of our inheritance and our down payment of all that God has for us.

Our conscience without the Holy Spirit cannot be trusted to evaluate the condition of our soul because; man was born with an inherent nature or desire to govern his moral life by his own interpretation between right and wrong. This was the curse handed down to us from Adam and Eve's disobedience for not believing that God made them complete. When we lean towards our own understanding, scripture tells us; this ends up in death meaning, there is no eternal righteous merit connected to it. When we use this type of moral barometer in evaluating ourselves, we never get to identify with God's empathy feelings and really know His heart.

This ends up with us trying to clean up our act in our own strength and it only deals with the surface areas of our behavior, but it has no permanent root in our heart where the issues of life are formed and acted on causing a person to not be able to build their life on Christ's character. And that's if they really want to walk in obedience to God's leadings.

This right and wrong judgment of our self is actually a demonic influence perpetrated by the cunning of the devil to keep us ignorant of the real love relationship that God wants to have with His children. We must stop living with demanding rules of conduct that we have been taught because, it keeps our sensibilities calloused to a vibrant relationship with the living God and make us know and experience the love from a Father figure that meets the emotional and security needs that we all have.

How we view ourselves whether to be a sinner or saint will determine the quality of life we can have with God. Scripture tells us that all mankind was born with a sinner's nature and came short of the majesty and the glowing light of God's presence. A sinner from a non-saved view is a person who still has his sin-based nature controlling their life. This causes them to be a slave to their sins, and they are heading for an eternity in hell.

From a born again view as a child of God; these are His children erring, not functioning in their inheritance given to them from God their Father and not sharing in a prize. These are two totally opposite views. I pray and hope you are really hearing me.

A born again child of God was set free from reasoning in their mind as being a law breaker and living with the concept that; God becomes displeased with him because; he judges himself as being a law breaker. When we govern our lives by this concept or special rules by our own evaluations of ourselves, as far as God is concerned; this does not justify us as being pure in His sight. As long as God's children do not realize that they are saints in progress; they will live by demanding rules which only keeps order but does NOTHING to enhance a loving relationship with Christ Jesus.

God's intention was for man to put his life in Jesus hands and no longer lean towards his own understanding in trying to help God out to save himself. Scripture tells us that, if our heart condemns us, God is greater than our heart and more loving.

Born again children of God are never condemned by God. However; a Christian who knows what to do and is still deliberately breaking God's decrees of life is sinning against him self and not against God. This is stated in James 4:17 by James when he says, "For any Christian who knows what is right to do but does not do it, it is sin unto him self." When a born again child of God lives like this; it causes them to hid them self from the Holy Ghost who wants to protect and inspect their heart and they live separated from the love of God their Father. What they do is separate them self from the fellowship of the believer in their heart felt sensations where God wants to sit in complete authority and by their intentional determination to live un-god like; they live as illegitimate children of God.

A born again believer can not sin against God because Jesus dealt with that at the cross and when we accepted His sacrifice our nature changed and we became a new creation and a saint in God's eyes. However; a child of God still has a free will choice to walk in obedience or decide to live in a pig sty environment being controlled by demonic spirit's rather then living in God's palace as a son or daughter of God.

The only way we can know how justified we are within ourselves is by abandoning ourselves to God's mercy and grace. When we do this, we allow the Holy Spirit the right to create in us a hunger and a want to walk in obedience, because of the pure pleasure of us knowing that we are already complete in Him.

When we who are born again people look at our self as a sinner, there is an underline fear of punishment and dealing with God's anger and judgment. When we asked Jesus to come into our life, we were impregnated with God's DNA and became a part of his family and we received eternal life with Him period! Jesus does not need our help with special rules or us having to look for ways to stay pure to be accepted by Him. He has no rules of acceptance. We are a work in progress and not yet completely mature in Godly wisdom. However; our maturity depends on us abandoning our total self on the Holy Ghost and let Christ live again in us which allows him to save us from our self.

We participating with the humble Spirit of the Holy Ghost will take care of this problem. This whole issue of feeling accepted by God at all times is the real issue that causes our daily struggle in our minds. When we have thoughts of hell damnation, punishment and judgment, this is a person who has a sin conscience mentality.

This type thinking makes us judge our self for things we should be doing and things we haven't done and is time wasted on un-righteous thinking and wears a person out. All this does is get us focused on self and we become self imaged rather then Christ imaged.

This sin consciousness is a living entity of demonic influence where we allow the devil to put a drunken stupor over our spiritual mind and we cannot rest in Jesus finished sacrifice.

To still be thinking and burdening our self down with this obligated life style after being saved for a number of years is a false representation of the love and truth of God's holding power. This type bondage of ideas of our fallen nature God delivered us from this the day we had our born again experience and became a new creature in Christ. We need to now go on and mature in the new nature of our sainthood and get into the meat of the word and find out what being a child of God represents in our life.

There are many references in the bible on the fruits of sin, fruits meaning, attitudes and deeds coming out in our behavior, which is caused by us having a false concept of what our righteousness in Christ represents in our life as born again people and still living with a sin consciousness.

We will refer to what Paul the Apostle says about fruits operating in our life in Galatians 5:19-21 when he says, "now the works or fruits of the flesh that become obvious are, immorality, impurity, indecency, idolatry, sorcery, enmity, strife, jealousy, anger ill temper, selfishness, divisions, party spirits, sects with peculiar opinions, (meaning heresies) envy, drunkenness, carousing and the like. Ass I warned you before, just as I did previously, those who do such things shall not inherit God's kingdom.

People, who are not born again, are slaves to these habits and they have no power to resist the temptations to commit these sins because; they still have their unsaved sin-based nature. A child is born with a nature to say, "No to authority." That is why we have to be born again from above so our basic nature can be changed. When we become spiritually born again; we become the righteousness of God and He looks at us His children without blemish, free from evil and set apart belonging to Him. This represents what Jesus did at the cross not by any righteous acts that we try to do in our attempt to clean up our act... God doesn't need our help in this area.

This definition that Paul states of these sin behaviors can be defined much further because, we are constantly being tempted and this spirit wants to rear it's ugly head in all circumstances in our thought life and actions and if we do not walk in our Godly freedom as saints of God with His way of judging us; this demonic bondage will intertwine it self into our make up and make us a slave to their influences.

The Holy Ghost wants to protect us and weed out any attitude operating in our heart that is contrary to the way God our Father sees us. There are those that are deliberately in this sinful behavior and know that they are purposely breaking God's commandments. That is why we must have a heart of passionately seeking more of God's wisdom so that we do not get trapped into any of this kind of sinful behavior.

Our first priority should not us focusing on our behavior but; we must stay focused on His loving Fatherly passion to protect us from our self. This is us carrying a good report of our kingship in Christ rather then focusing on our faults and failures. Faults are not sins; but areas that the Holy Spirit is trying to reinforce and mature us.

It's when we function in the thinking of us being a sinner after we become saved, that allows us to bear these fruits and we can stay a slave to them in all forms all of our lives just as the unsaved. We all became a permanent part of God's Kingdom the day we made Jesus our Savior and we need to now become heavenly minded and live as God's kids while we are in this earthly body.

It has been preached and taught that if you have these sinful behaviors operating in your life, you cannot go to heaven and live with God for eternity. This interpretation of scripture is so contrary to the truth and is nothing more than a false interpretation and absolutely ridiculous to grieves tears. It's necessary that the Holy Spirit takes us back through our false teachings and we need to allow Him to erase the blackboards of our heart, so He can put truth back into our thinking process.

After our born again birth by the Spirit of God; God the Father raises us as our earthly parents raised us when we come out of our mother's womb. A baby has to be trained to not mess its pants, learn how to eat and walk and so on. Does a loving parent throw the kid in the garbage when it doesn't operate as an adult? A child born of certain parents could later in life change the surname it received from birth, but its D.N.A. from its parents can never be changed.

Therefore, with us being born again and God putting His D.N.A. in us the day we received Jesus into our hearts, our child relationship with our Father God is permanent and, we are forever tied to the Lord. Just as it is required for a child to grow physically with loving parents, so God as a loving Father with His patience, forgiveness and with total acceptance raises His children.

However; God gave His children a free will choice to live in His kingdom as His child or go into the world and live separate from his Godly heritage given to them at their new birth.

A born again child of God who knows and deliberately lives in sinful behavior; sins against himself and until they repent and deal with their rogue naughty rebellious ways; they live alienated and push away the grace of God in their life. When they gather with their born again family they are not able to embrace the presence of God in their fellowship. They live as aliens from family and friends. Even though God and we love them; this behavior can no longer be tolerated and we must speak the truth in love in these situations and have no fellowship with those who want to live out side God's protected hedge.

When we function in a lack of understanding or deliberately with the new nature we have received, we make our born again experience of non-effect in our everyday living. This robs us of the power to overcome our evil desires and we give in to the temptations of the flesh.

That is why there are many in the body of Christ that are weak and have spiritual palsy in their ability to overcome the evil desires that are constantly swirling around us daily. We end up with weak faith and never fully believe God's word. We must grow up and stop having a yoyo relationship with God by continuing to stay as newborn babies. We must stop having the mentality that God "Loves me and He loves me not." This causes us to be insecure. You will either invest your life in something or throw it away on nothing. When we do not know how to invest God's gifts so we can mature; it grieves the Holy Spirit.

In 11 Peter 3: He talks about what we need to have to walk in a freedom in Christ by us not focusing on our behavior and our negative environment. He says, "The day of Jesus returning to the earth will come like a thief, who comes in the night." (He will only come as a thief to those who are not anticipating His return.) (This can be born again believers and people who are not born again and in God's family.)

Peter continues, "We need to be focusing on God's total acceptance of us because, this is God's first priority for our lives. Even though things are coming to the end and we see the ungodly signs and uncommitted people who are only consecrating on their own needs on the earth, we should be living in his righteousness, which keeps us free from sin because, we know that we are complete and in a right standing with God.

Therefore, since we are anticipating His return; we will be aware of the fact that we are without spot and wrinkle. By not living in spot and wrinkle, we will be at peace with a complete confidence, free from fear, agitating passions and moral conflicts."

When we focus on self, it is then we have fear, which brings with it agitating passions and moral conflicts. This happens because we constantly stay in a double-minded mentality and never become deep rooted in our permanent relationship in Christ. Jesus can come back at anytime because He already sees us as without spot or wrinkle. People who do not really understand that God is their Father; end up looking at them self with spots meaning, they look at them self as a sinner. When a child of God is deliberately or ignorantly not knowing who they are in Christ and have wrinkled interpretations of scripture; they live in self shame.

In 1 John, he tells us that, "whoever is born of God does not commit sin: for God's seed remains in him and he cannot sin." Do we as God's children really believe this statement? When God the Father looks at His children; He sees Christ in them and they are blameless, free from evil and separated unto Him as His children. This vision represents us being righteous in God's sight.

Jesus died on the cross to take away our sinful nature. When we traded our sinful nature for His righteous nature, we became righteous, as He is righteous. If you do not understand your righteousness in Jesus, you as a child of God can't keep your assurance and know that you can now walk in heavenly places with Christ Jesus and are no longer guilty of any past, present or future sin any more.

As a child of God; you can never lose your righteous position in Christ after becoming born again and you cannot add to your righteous standing by any works that you can do. We were sinners but we have been saved by God's grace and become new creatures. Our sinner nature was buried with Christ and when He rose again, we went through the same metamorphoses with Him and took on His righteous nature and we should have had an inner witness of that. This vision of our new nature must be encouraged as we are taught about what happened to us the day we became God's child. This happens by us allowing the Holy Spirit daily to wash us with the illumination of God's word and clear our minds of any spot and wrinkled mentality.

In 1 John 2, he makes this statement, "if any Christian sins, we have an advocate with the Father, who is Jesus Christ, the righteous." After what I have just said; this verse may seem like a contradiction. This statement by John is a fact that has already been accomplished at the cross and once we have been changed; Jesus became our advocate before the Father representing us when we accepted Him into our heart. Our mind must be constantly renewed by the Holy Ghost so we don't fall back under the devil's influence of thinking with a sin conscience judgment of our self. How many other ways can I say this?

A way of sensing that you are thinking with a sinner mentality rather then your righteous position in Christ; causes a condemnation spirit to stay alive and active in your thinking and it causes you to live with a basement mentality rather with God your Father in the palace with Him.

There are those in the body of Christ that want to walk in their saint hood however; they are sitting in churches where they are starving to death believing false doctrines because the word of God is not being rightly divided.

There are also those in the body of Christ who are deliberately sinning against them self because they are in bondage in some area and have given up on their relationship with God. They are still God children but living out of fellowship with the Holy Ghost. John was reminding these young Christians that; Jesus has already taken away our sin as He died and rose from the dead causing Him to pay the price for us. How many times do we have to continually go back and be forgiven? It's obvious that we don't believe His first act of dying for us was enough.

When we became righteous the day we became saved, we became without blemish, free from evil and set apart unto God to accomplish His purposes. A person who deliberately lives in sinning against himself until they repent and change their mind; we as their brothers and sisters in Christ are helpless to help those who oppose them self like this because they live estranged from the body of Christ.

Scripture tells us to fight the good fight of faith. When we do not understand what we are fighting against; we stay sin conscience and rather than allowing the Holy Spirit access in showing us how pure we are in God's sight; we fight a continual battle of checking out our behavior and asking for forgiveness repeatedly. I am talking about those who have a desire to walk in obedience and not those who are deliberately living in sinful behavior and know what they are doing. They are fighting them self and it has nothing to do with faith.

The Holy Ghost is the Spirit of forgiveness and as born again people this spirit will automatically function in our life if; we will get to know Him by humbling our self to His commands. This is going to take an intense hunger and thirsty after God because; it is the only way of staying free to explore our relationship with Him. When we become cross wise with God's word, our doubts and misgivings come out in our behavior and we alienate our self from God's unmerited favor.

Let's now discuss this idea of us being saints in Christ. The word for saint in the Greek is hagios: This again is how God the Father sees his children, pure, blameless, perfect and innocent. In scripture, Jesus is called the King of Saints. Throughout the New Testament Paul and Peter in their letter writing addressed the people they were writing to as saints in Christ. When Paul wrote to the Philippian people to pick just one epistle he states, "Salute every saint in Christ Jesus. The brethren that are with me greet you. All the saints salute you, chiefly those of Caesar's household."

As saints and having God's righteous nature, I have found that there is a spirit of discernment given to us by God to judge circumstances we encounter in life with Christ's righteous Spirit; that most Christians never function in all of their lives. When we have no idea of the high esteem God holds us in, we never have the vision and a higher expectation of our calling and recognize the authority God gave us in Christ Jesus.

God has called us to be Kings and Priests in His service now and for eternity. Scripture also tells us that, we sit in heavenly places with Christ Jesus now. Jesus when He prayed to His Father in heaven said, "Thy kingdom come thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven." Since we have the mind of Christ, we are to judge all things. However, we can only judge correctly if we know our position in Christ and use Holy Spirit discernment.

Having a condemnation sin mentality means; we are still a baby in Christ and we cannot function as a mature Christian with the mind of Christ. This is what happens when you do not sit under mature teachers and expounders of the word of God where our righteous position in Christ is being taught. No other doctrine but the doctrine of righteousness must be laid if we are to grow to our potential in Christ. This is the doctrine that scripture talks about that, the true Apostles of old taught.

When we have a back sliding and going to hell gospel being preached and it is being absorbed into the heart of God's children; it never anchors their permanent roots in Christ. This only compounds the problem because it does not teach the true vision of God's way of maturing His Saints. When our true position in Christ is not recognized, we end up being God's Saints living as cripples because, we never come to truly absorb the love of God the Father into our lives. Again; this is the out come for those who deliberately sin against them self and the Christian who is not growing in the grace and knowledge of the Lord Christ Jesus as the Holy Ghost teaches them.

Jesus was the first born again Christian because Christ lived in Him. He was righteous in His Fathers eyes from the beginning and so are we. When He was being baptized at the Jordon River His Father from heaven said, "This is my beloved son in whom I am well pleased." Jesus was only able to fulfill His calling on the earth because of the relationship He had with His Father. Our functioning in His Righteous Spirit is dependent on Christ's life with in us. It is what gives us the power to have this kind of love between God and one another. It is the same walk of righteousness that Jesus had with His Father because; "Greater love as no man then this, that he lay down his life for His friends."

It is my awareness of God's faithfulness, love and constant acceptance in spite of my misgivings at times that keeps me seeking after Him. It is me recognizing how much I don't know about Him, which keeps me focused in my daily pursuit to know Him better. It's my hope that you have an insatiable hunger for a higher wisdom then your own; which is the key to growing up in Jesus Christ. I know that God is faithful in doing His part in trying to reveal Himself to His children in ways that many can't truly understand. God is trying to teach us how to,

Separate who we are as His child from our behavior and trying to save us from destructive acts that is causing us to harm our self.

The only way this will be accomplished is by having a quiet spirit within us and an ear to hear what the Holy Ghost is saying to us in the inner man.

"You are my beloved children in whom I am well pleased."