La calificación del suelo ante la iniciativa de construir

no longer any shadows, no dark corners, nothing swept dark corners, nothing swept under the rug, nothing covered under the rug, nothing covered

up. up.

God actually says this in Jeremiah 31:34: “I will forgive their iniquity, and their sin I will remember no more.” God does not have a bad memory, but He does have a supernatural “eraser”

that blots out the memory of sin once it has been forgiven.

On the other hand, if you do not bring your sin into the light, your sin remains. Consider once again this tremendous principle: The blood of Jesus cleanses only in the light.

Suppose that we have met the conditions: We are walking in the light, and we are in fellowship with our fellow believers. Then we have the right to make this testimony:

The blood of Jesus Christ, God’s Son, is cleansing me, now and continually, from all sin.

It is very important to see that this is a continuing present tense. The blood cleanses continually as we walk continually in the light. They are two ongoing operations. Continuing to walk in the light, we continue to receive the cleansing of the blood. This is the total cleansing work of the blood.

Justification

The fourth statement about the blood is made in Romans 5:8-9:

But God demonstrates His own love toward us, in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us. Much more then, having now been justified by His blood, we shall be saved from wrath through Him.

Our proclamation is taken from the middle phrase of Romans 5:9: “We are justified by the blood of Jesus.” Justified is one of those religious words that people often use but do not understand;

other people are scared by it. Think about it this way: Wherever you read in the King James Version the word just, you can substitute the word righteous.

That is true both in the Hebrew of the Old Testament and in the Greek of the New Testament. In each language, there is one word that the King James translators alternately translate righteous or just.

When it is a matter of legal processes, they tend to use the word just. But when it is a matter of practical living, they tend to use the word righteous.

Whichever translation is used, in the original language it is one and the same word.

The problem with the use of the word justified is that people tend to reserve it for a kind of formal transaction in a legal atmosphere. Somewhere up in the remote courts of heaven, they reason, something happened and now everything is all right. But this is expressing only half the meaning of the word. To be justified means “to be made just or righteous.” I prefer the word righteous because it brings it right down to where I live—my home, my business, my personal relationships. Just sounds as if it is describing a legal formality that has to be transacted

in some remote court somewhere and does not have much application to my life. But righteous immediately brings it down to daily life.

The Scripture says we have been made righteous by the blood of Jesus. You are not justified if you have not been made righteous in your daily living. It is more than a legal ceremony; it is more than a change of labels. It is a radical change of character and lifestyle that is produced by the blood of Jesus.

Here is another way to understand the meaning of justified. You can interpret it in this way: just-as-if-I’d never sinned. Why? I am justified because I have been made righteous with a righteousness that is not my own, but the righteousness of Jesus Christ. This righteousness has no record of sin, no past for which it needs to be forgiven. This is now my condition before God.

Look at Romans 3:23-25:

For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, being justified [made righteous] freely [without deserving it] by His grace through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, whom God set forth as a propitiation by His blood, through faith, to demonstrate His righteousness, because in His forbearance God had passed over the sins that were previously committed.

I am grateful for the word freely in that verse.

Freely means “without being earned.” The problem with religious people often is that they are trying to earn righteousness and they never achieve it. The righteousness of which Scripture speaks cannot be earned. It must be received by faith as a free gift or it cannot be received at all.

In Romans 4:4-5, Paul makes a statement that is the exact opposite of what religious people would

anticipate:

Now to him who works, the wages are not counted as grace but as debt. But to him who does not work but believes on Him who justifies the ungodly, his faith is accounted for righteousness.

emphasis added To receive the righteousness that God offers us through faith, the first thing we have to do is to stop working, stop trying to earn it. God offers to us a righteousness that we can never earn—a free gift.