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The Greek word normally translated ‘remission’ is aphesis which is derived from aphiemi which means ‘to send forth’, in various applications: forgive, lay aside, omit, put (send) away, etc. A close study of the old and new testament description of Christ’s atonement for us shows that this was precisely what occurred at Calvary. The eternal Word of God incarnated as a man, Jesus Christ, for the express purpose of carrying away, cancelling, setting aside and removing away our sins from counting against us in the presence of God Almighty, the Creator of heaven and earth. This is the scriptural definition of remission.

Matthew 26:28

For this is My blood of the new testament which is shed for many for the remission of sins.

John 1:29

The next day John seeth Jesus coming unto him, and saith, Behold the Lamb of God, which taketh away the sin of the world.

Acts 2:38

Then Peter said unto them, Repent and be baptized every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ for the remission of sins, and ye shall receive the gift of the Holy Spirit,

Acts 10:43

To Him give all the prophets witness, that through His name whosoever believeth in Him shall receive remission of sins.

It is clear from the scriptures that;

1. Jesus Himself, by His offering of Himself on the cross, has taken away the sins and sin of all mankind.

2. This ‘removing away’ of our sins (and therefore the forgiveness of our sin and sins) is to effectively become ours as individual persons, whenever (and as ‘longsoever’ as) we put our trust and confidence in this great work He accomplished on that cross at Calvary for us. Praise the Lord!

Notice that I said that Jesus HAS TAKEN away all of mankind’s sin and sins. All your sins were and all your sin was borne by and carried away by the Lamb of God BEFORE you or your great grandfathers were born! What an interesting fact!

By the offering of His Son nearly 2,000 years ago, once and for all time, God the Father has removed all your sin and sins from being counted against you in His heavenly presence! Glory! Alleluia! The record of anyone who believes this good news and takes the offered salvation, Saviour, and forgiveness into his heart will immediately be cleared and at the same time, he will be reborn spiritually of God’s very own Spirit. What great news! He is from then counted as being righteous (as righteous as Christ or God) as long as he continues in this confidence and reliance on Christ’s atonement by which he is saved. This is the good news and the grace of God. Praise the Lord!

Hebrews 1: 3b

...when He had by Himself purged our sins, sat down on the right of the Majesty on high;

Observe that Paul is using past tense. Jesus HAD PURGED all sins before sitting down at the Father’s right hand post-resurrection. So we have the exact time of the actual purging or washing off of your own sins as being nearly 2,000 years ago. Remarkable! That He did it all by Himself without any solicitation or help from ourselves is just so true to His beautiful character, and blesses our heart....but that it was your own personal sins that WERE PURGED! That is just great! Your sins WERE PURGED BEFORE you were even conceived. This really sounds great. Just wonderful!

Note here the inexpressible tragedy for those who refuse to accept God’s Saviour and go to eternal hellfire - payment was made for their sins to make their salvation possible, but alas, they refused to accept God’s free love-gift.

Hebrews 10:12-43

But this man, after He had offered one sacrifice for sins for ever, sat down on the right hand of God;

From henceforth expecting till His enemies be made His footstool.

In Psalm 110, the Father promised His Son, the resurrected Man Jesus (the second Person in the Trinity is both God and now also a man like you and me), that precedent to the Rapture, He would raise up a church that would exercise the absolute victory of Calvary in their earthly lives, individually and corporately. So the Lord Jesus is exercising faith, expecting to see spiritual truth materialize as God the Father has promised (and note that every promise of victory, success, healing, health, and prosperity in all its diverse aspects as contained in the Bible belongs to Jesus and to all of us His children). If God be for us, who can be against us? THEN Jesus will come Himself to take us, His victorious seed, home.

Hebrews 10:12-14

But this man, after He had offered one sacrifice for sins for ever, sat down on the right hand of God;

From henceforth expecting till His enemies be made His footstool

For by one offering He HATH PERFECTED FOR EVER them that are sanctified.

In the context of this chapter, and of the whole book of Hebrews, Paul can be said to be talking about perfection in the sense of the conscience of sin being taken away from a man’s spirit once and for all, to enable him approach and commune with God in faith without fear. This, the law could not do, but grace has done.

By clearing away all of human trespass and disobedience once and for all time, Jesus has made it possible for us to be made clean vessels by His blood, pure and holy. This makes it possible for His Holy Spirit to come and indwell us in the new birth, when we hear the good news and take what is offered. We thus lose the old sin nature, and acquire the nature of God. Our newborn spirits or hearts, are united with Christ’s in spiritual baptism, bone of His bones and flesh of His flesh.

By the remission of sins that we obtain through His name, we are entitled to receive - take, the fullness of Christ’s Holy Spirit. We are also entitled to divine healing and health, all supply as well as all-sufficient grace to enable us be all that we believe God wants us to be as revealed in the Bible. All of heaven’s stores and all that God has, belong to us now, already. We are complete and thoroughly furnished IN HIM.

The shedding of the blood of Jesus and its continuing efficacy for all eternity enables us to own a perfect conscience towards God. The fact that God has made the blood of Jesus the only acceptable offering for sin ensures the successful continuing right standing of every believer who does not wittingly hide a known sin in His heart.

As we walk in the light of His word and love-nature, the blood of His Son Jesus cleanses us from ALL sin at ALL times. If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive our sins and to cleanse us from ALL unrighteousness. By the cleansing that comes through faith in His blood, your heart is clear before Him. This frees us from an evil consciousness of sin, which means that we are able to have perfect faith. This in turn makes it possible for us to receive or take all grace, thereby making the actual Christ-life (perfection) possible. Praise the Lord!

Hebrews 10:15-18

Whereof the Holy Ghost ALSO is a witness to us; for after that He had said before, This is the covenant that I will make with them after those days, saith the Lord, I will put My laws into their hearts, and in their minds will I write them;

And their sins and iniquities will I remember no more.

Now where remission of these is, there is no more offering for sin.

Here it is again. Since their sins were remitted at Calvary, there is no more need ever for any man to bring any offering for his own sins. In the new covenant, for anyone signing onto Jesus, their sins and iniquities will Heaven remember no more. Having the continuing benefit of THAT shedding of Jesus’ blood, they can boldly approach and reside in the Holiest of all at anytime, with the Father, on Christ’s merit (as long as they continue to receive, retain, hold onto and lean upon Him as their own personal Lord and Salvation).

Also the Holy Spirit here informs us of the work God does in believers to put His perfect laws into our hearts or spirits, as well as write them in our minds. This new species, after Christ, have the nature and actual spiritual substance of the Word of God in their hearts! By nature! They are consequently transformed in His image by the Holy Spirit as their minds are renewed by the truth which He reveals to them from the Holy Scriptures. Thus perfection is stamped into our hearts at the new birth and will be actualized according to the Father’s revealed will in the Bible. It will be, to him that takes it from that mercy and grace which became available to us by the remission of sins. Jesus is Lord.

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CHAPTER TWO - ON UNTO PERFECTION

Hebrews 6:1-3

Therefore leaving the principles of the doctrine of Christ, let us go on unto perfection; not laying again the foundation of repentance from dead works, and of faith toward God,

Of the doctrine of baptisms, and of laying on of hands, and of resurrection of the dead, and of eternal judgement.

And this will we do, if God permit.

Christians ought to be pressing forward to perfection. When the apostle uses the expression ‘therefore’ in urging us on unto perfection, he must be drawing an inference consequent upon preceeding statements. What had he just said?

Hebrews 5:13-14

For everyone that useth milk is unskilful in the word of righteousness: for he is a babe.

But strong meat belongeth to them that are of full age, even those who BY REASON OF USE have their senses EXERCISED to discern both good and evil.

The child of God has God-like spiritual senses that by reason of use, can be developed or exercised to function precisely as they functioned for Jesus during His first earthly sojourn. When he reaches this stage of growth, he is said to be of full age, and can do, and indeed will do all that God’s Spirit requires him to do even as the man Jesus did them. This is perfection, and is the only possible godly destination God has in mind for His sons now on earth. He that says he abides in Him ought himself also so to walk EVEN AS He walked. This is perfection, sinless perfection, and has always been the image the Father purposed to make us conform to.

There is growth to full age in Christ. A full-grown adult will not come to the parlour to Urinate, but if a baby passes urine in the parlour, he will rather be taught, and as he grows is able to distinguish right from wrong. A full-grown adult will not come to the middle of the parlour to urinate!

Normally, every species is born with all the information of exactly what God created it or him to be, stored in the creature’s genes. Everyone born of God (Who is spirit) has, from the second he accepts Jesus Christ as his PERSONAL Lord and Saviour, God’s genetic makeup reintroduced into his heart (spirit). He is recreated actually like God, his Father, and is created to function like Jesus functioned, and functions. You were born with the leg muscles and ability to walk, but I am sure if you were restrained or hindered from walking from birth, you will have serious difficulties with walking. Thank God for Heaven’s Physiotherapy Unit! Try to imagine the possible consequences of a mother continuing to feed her child with only breast milk as the child gets older.

What the Bible is saying to us is that every born- again child of God is reborn in God’s image with spiritual abilities that are developed by use, just like our physical abilities are. And remember God’s nature is perfect. We can most certainly live and walk as Jesus would do if He were to come to earth now, the same kind of perfect life He lived when He was on earth. And this is God’s plan for us. If this is then the purpose of God for us, it behoves us to awaken to perfection reality, and take it by faith. As long as we keep laying AGAIN that basic foundation that has been already laid, we cannot turn to and step on to perfection.

Exodus 33:1

And the LORD said unto Moses, Depart, and GO UP HENCE, thou and the people which thou hast brought up out of the land of Egypt, unto the land which I sware unto Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob, saying, Unto thy seed will I give it:

Deuteronomy 2:2-3

And the LORD spake unto me, saying,

Ye have compassed this mountain long enough; TURN you northward.

Deuteronomy 10:11

And the LORD said unto me, Arise, take thy journey before the people, that they may GO IN and possess the land, which I sware unto their fathers to give unto them.

There is a need for the church to go up from where it is now, turn, and go in, into that spiritual promised land of a perfect man, the actual measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ. The scriptures clearly point to this as God’s goal for all of His earthly church, as His Holy Spirit builds us together in love. We must press on to that target now by faith, and we will certainly get there, before Christ’s imminent coming-back. By strength shall no man prevail. The time has come for us believers to totally dominate the devil and his cohorts to the point where Christ in us would have so dazed them that they will be crying out to God to come and rapture us so that they may have respite (like was done to the Israelites in Egypt).

There is a promise of conformity to the image of God and Christ by the working and power of the Holy Spirit to every believer. This is perfection, first of our hearts and minds (and therefore of who we are and of what we think, say, and do), then, at His appearing, of our mortal bodies. ALLELUIA! There is a spiritual promised land of perfection or maturity in Christ to those who experience the new birth by their faith in Christ, and of course God has always been able, and is ever able to DO it. His counsels and purpose stand for ever, the thoughts of His heart to all generations.

Israel could not reach the final destination except they did leave the stopping-points on the divine road to Canaan, and surely Israel would not enter the promised land as long as they did not believe in the ability of their God, against the contradictory evidence. As far as God was concerned, there was a need for those to whom the promises were made to move forward. The losers i.e. the sons of Anak, of course had no intention at all of giving up and yielding so much as an inch of the territory to the people of God. And so is it also today between defeated Satan and his kingdom, and the sons of God, the seed of Jesus Christ. Therefore, categorically, ‘Christful’ perfection is attained by faith, our victory that overcomes the world. We have overcome them, and if you do not believe it, you will not see it. You must REFUSE to doubt what God has written in the holy Bible. If doubt comes, you can always go back to re-examine and meditate on what is written. The Lord will help you.

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