If it’s true that God keeps no record of our sin, then we can take license and run out and sin, and we’re going to live lives that are contrary to the Word of God, and we’re going to be bound up in the flesh.”  No, no no!  When you begin to believe in His love, you’re moving with everything in you to please Him, to love Him.  To hate sin more than you’ve ever hated it.  That is no license to sin; it’s a license to be forgiven, praise God!  I mean really forgiven.  Are you comfortable letting it go that far?  A lot of Christians aren’t, a lot of theologians aren’t.  But if we’re to aphiēmi one another—same word—if we are to aphiēmi one another—I love how the Scripture uses this, “Even more;” amen?

God has a capacity to forgive, and put away, to have no record of.  Because with true repentance, with true godly sorrow, 2 Corinthians tell us what happens.  There is a turning from.  You see, when you’re regenerated and you sin for the tenth time today, and you turn back to God and you say, “Father, I hate this in my being, and I just ask You for grace to illuminate me more on my position of righteousness and who I am.  And Father, I’ve not been spending the time I should in communion with You.”  We don’t do that to be accepted of God; we do that to be empowered by God so we can live victoriously; amen?  Because faith can only come from one place, faith to put this body under, to recognize the death of this body can only come from one place, and that’s the Word of God.  We have to spend time with Him; we have to know Him.  Abiding in Christ is the decision to deny the self.  We know what abiding in Christ provides—I won’t take time right now—but abiding in Christ is what provides everything that is victorious from now through eternity.  “In Christ” is mentioned 150 times in the epistles.  “In Christ…”  “In God…”  All the different variances.

And so, as we’re walking, we’re recognizing the need to daily crucify this flesh, to deny this self.  He goes on here, in Titus, and makes a comment.  In Titus (Chapter 2), we find this in the eleventh verse, “For the grace of God that bringeth salvation hath appeared to all men, teaching us that, denying ungodliness and worldly lusts, we should live soberly, righteously, and godly, in this present world.” And then he goes on and makes that statement that is so absent from the churches today.  Lord, help us to believe this and help us to convey this.  I don’t know of anybody—how many teaching tapes approximately do we have?  Four thousand?  Something like that?  I’ll bet you out of those 4,000 tapes/teachings, 80 percent of them would have a statement or an inference to the coming of the Lord.  And you don’t hear it anywhere.  Since I got saved, that’s all I’ve known.

I got saved during the Jesus Movement, and everything was about, “Jesus is coming, man.”  And I think people that really found the Lord back in those days—and it started so strong out in the West Coast, but—those of us that got saved in those days, were just like the apostles.  I mean, we just knew that Jesus was coming back any moment, any moment.  That was all the conversation, that’s what everybody was talking about.  That blessed hope produces godly living.  When we embrace the fact that, at any moment, He’s coming and it will all be over—we’ll see Him and we’ll be like Him.  No more battle with this flesh, no more battle with this self-will, with this self-righteousness, with this self-indulgence.  We’re going to be like Him.  We’re going to see Him as He is, and we’re going to be like Him, hallelujah!