All have sinned...

Romans 3:23 - For all have sinned, and come short of the glory of God


1 John 2:5-6 - 5 But whoso keepeth his word, in him verily is the love of God perfected: hereby know we that we are in him.

6 He that saith he abideth in him ought himself also so to walk, even as he walked.


When taking into consideration the scripture "For all have sinned, and come short of the glory of God," we can miss the overall implications of what it is saying. We must understand what the glory of God is in order to comprehend what it is we have all fallen short of.

The glory of God is nothing less than the person and nature of God Himself. We are expected by God to be like Him. That is, after all, why we were created, in order to bear His image and spread who He was across the face of the earth. That is the real meaning of the presence of God.

It's not some general presence that makes people feel good while they listen to some worship song. It's the taking on of the characteristics of Jesus Christ Himself, resulting in the world seeing who God is by our obedience to not only His words, but who He is, which His words represent.

This is why John said those who say they abide in the Lord will walk as Jesus walked. To do otherwise is a contradiction that can't be reconciled. We either obey and walk as Christ walked, or we aren't Christ's. It's impossible to be born again by the Spirit and continue to live as we have in the past.

As for sin, the word itself means to 'miss the mark.' What's the mark? Jesus Christ and who He is. What's the glory of God? Who God is as revealed in Jesus Christ.

All of us has come short of His glory in that regard. But salvation has not only brought us back in right standing with God, but brings the requirement that we open our hearts to Him and allow Him to change us into His image. We are expected to be like Christ, and anything less isn't acceptable to God.

Now this is the immediate expectation of God for His people, but it is worked out one step at a time.

We are given the goal and expectation of being perfect by God, which means becoming like Jesus. While we may never reach perfection in his lifetime, this is what we are to shoot for. God does.

Keep in mind, the entire purpose for creating man was that man would be like God in his characteristics and purpose (not Godhood). For example, we are to be patient as God is, while understanding we're totally separate from God in His Deity.

Take any revelation of Jesus Christ in the Bible and we're expected to be conformed to that very image. This is our privilege and responsibility. The Holy Spirit within us empowers us to be able to accomplish this.

False teachers have lowered the bar of Jesus Christ, making excuses and using cheap grace teachings to undermine the power and ability of the Holy Spirit to perfect His work in us.

This isn't something to be considered negative and weighty, but rather an invitation and command from God to be perfect as He is perfect. He wouldn't tell us to do something we aren't able to do with His help.

We have all sinned or missed the mark, but we don't have to accept continuing to live in sin. Jesus Christ is our pattern to live by, and when we surrender to Him, the Holy Spirit will take and work within us to conform us to what He is like. This is what was intended before man was ever created, and it is what God is after for eternity.

Seeing Christ

photo credit: faconline.org

If you're a true believer in Jesus Christ, and thus saved, you are born from above. It says "born again"
in many versions of the Bible, but the most accurate way of saying it is really born from above. You could say "born again from above," as a way of understanding and describing what has happened.

Once we are born of the Spirit of God, an immediate change begins to happen; not only of being forgiven of sins and a huge weight being lifted off of us, but of the Holy Spirit beginning to reveal the Lord Jesus Christ within us, as Paul mentions happening to him. "It pleased God ... to reveal his Son in me" (Gal 1:16).

The ultimate end of God for the Saints is that we are conformed to His image. But to be conformed, we must first have an inner revelation of Him; one that goes beyond mere intellectual understanding.

Jesus Christ is the great object of the focus of the Holy Spirit, as He takes the things of Christ and reveals them to us. This doesn't mean that there will be revelation of Christ outside of what the scriptures reveal, but it means there will be an understanding of what they actually mean in regard to Christ.

While it is good to receive insight and instruction from our brothers and sisters, there must be a place for each individual Christian to have this inner fellowship and revelation of Jesus Christ, otherwise all we deal with are external things, which have undermined Christianity since almost the beginning.

What is the first thing we will begin to understand once we start this walk with the Lord? It is that Jesus in His person is completely and totally different than we are. We won't and don't see this right away, but there is this almost immediate battle that begins as we start to see Christ, which is the Holy Spirit starting to show us how much we fall short of who He is.

Seeing Christ isn't primarily about getting a bunch of head knowledge about Him, it's seeing who He is in light of who we are, and understanding the Holy Spirit is revealing that in order to transform us to be more like He is.

This isn't making the old man better, it's working from the fact that we have died in Christ, and only the life of Christ living within us is to be manifested. This is done a little at a time and not as once, otherwise it would overwhelm us. That's the reason we must be quiet and patient, not getting in a hurry to be conformed to His image, otherwise we get a lot of artificial and outward results, which could deceive us, while losing out on the far more important inner changes, which will then be followed by the outward change.

We need to ask Christ to reveal Himself in us so we can little by little be made to be more like Him. This is what the Christian walk in its entirety is, only it grows to new levels as we see Him clearer and clearer within by the Holy Spirit.

Don't be discouraged when you see yourself in the light of Christ, as the purpose isn't to beat you down, but to call out to the Lord to continue to help and change you to be like Him.

Jesus' Creative Destruction

There is what some would call the downside to the working of the cross of Christ in a person, but if you can understand the revelation and outworking of the cross in your life, it would be embraced enthusiastically, albeit at times painfully, by all true believers in Christ.

So you understand what I mean when talking of the cross, I refer to the principle of the cross being destructive to the natural man, the old man, or what some may refer to as the "flesh" in the Holy Scriptures.

The point of that being wrought in a believer is that the old man is weakened and broken, so the life of Jesus Christ, through the Holy Spirit, can be worked into a believer. What eventually should emerge over time is the conforming to the image of Christ in a believer.

Since there is so much lingering of the old man in our flesh, Jesus must employ the tool of creative destruction - the cross - so He can manifest Himself in and through us.

Look at the first scriptures in the Bible to see how this works. Jesus working with basically a blank slate, starts to create the heavens and the earth. Because He has that clean canvas, He is able to do all sorts of interesting things to outwardly reflect eternal and invisible values.

This is what the purpose of the in working of the Cross is, to provide a canvas for Christ to paint His person on. For those willing to endure the working of the Cross, ultimately it will result in Jesus Christ Himself revealing who He is in you.

We don't have to comprehend or understand the process as we're going through it, but like Job, should have the attitude of "though He slay me, yet will I trust Him." Believe me, many times you'll choke on those words if you really mean business with God; as He's more than willing to accept your invitation to creatively and practically work out the destruction associated with the purpose of the cross.

Understand that you won't know till much later, if at all, what it means, but in an unseen way, God will get what He wants in us. And in the end, that is the bottom line of the purpose for our existence.

This is what the new creation is all about: the death and destruction of the old in order to make room for the new. It happens in Christ, but is worked out practically in our lives. We must embrace the creative destruction of Christ in order to let Him perfect His work in us.