True Salvation Produces Fruits of Righteousness
True salvation produces fruits of righteousness. Grace is not a license to sin. Grace teaches us to say NO to ungodliness (Titus 2:12). The Holy Spirit is HOLY. When he truly comes inside of you, he will make you holy, and sin will become foreign to you because you are now BORN OF GOD. There will be a clear change in nature and a desire to be more Christ-like because you have been BORN OF HIM.
“Therefore bear fruits worthy of repentance.” Matthew 3:8
Any Christian who is comfortably excusing and living in sin is not truly born again and has not met the living Christ, because when the real Jesus Christ saves you, he makes you a NEW CREATION (2 Corinthians 5:17), a creation who is like him. He is not a minister of sin but of righteousness. You may struggle with some sin, but you will be averse to it, wanting to be free and not excusing it. Jesus saves us FROM sin to become LIKE him, born in his image. His work on the cross kills the old man and buries him dead!
Jesus died to SAVE us FROM our sins and not to keep us in them. We were buried with him in baptism and resurrected to the NEWNESS of life (Romans 6). The life of God in us is one of righteousness and true holiness and not sin. Jesus is not a sinner, and he does not produce sin in his children. Sin is the fruit of the carnal nature whose father and author is Satan.
“For the fruit of the Spirit is in all goodness and righteousness and truth.” Ephesians 5:9
When we truly are converted, we die to sin and live to God. We no longer are slaves to sin but slaves to righteousness. The fruit of our life is henceforth holiness and not worldliness or unrighteousness. “But now having been set free from sin, and having become slaves of God, you have your fruit to holiness, and the end, everlasting life” (Romans 6:22). If we behave, look, and conduct ourselves like the world, something is very wrong. Believers are SET APART; they are CALLED OUT ones (2 Corinthians 6:17, Colossians 3:12). They are called out of the world and its system, which is ruled by the prince of this world, the devil, and translated into the kingdom of God, which is not of this world.
The citizens of heaven are holy just as their father is holy. They do not excuse sin, and neither are they sinners anymore but saints. Heaven is prepared for a holy people, and no unclean thing shall enter therein (Revelation 21:27).
If our salvation is not producing fruits of righteousness and is instead producing works of the flesh, we must question it. Chances are we were never truly born again; we never repented but only found religion. Religion cannot change anyone because it does not have power (2 Timothy 3:5). Only Jesus transforms. When his life is in you, you will be changed and freed from sin, and the Holy Spirit will continue to sanctify you and make you holy in preparation for heaven (1 Peter 1:2).
Many Christians use the idea of being saved by grace to justify sin, but that is a deception. Once saved is not always saved. We must endure to the end to be saved (Matthew 24:13). Salvation is not a one-time event. It is a walk, a journey, which has a culmination in the final salvation when we receive our resurrected bodies (1 Peter 1:5). The moment or day of conversion is not the end. We must continue in our salvation until the end to be saved.
We can lose/forfeit our salvation if we treat it as a cheap thing and go back to our sins. Jesus’ death was not cheap; neither was it ineffectual. It produces righteousness and regeneration in his elect.
Many think they are saved but will be rejected on the last day because they never produced the fruit of repentance and righteousness. They were content to work for Jesus rather than know and be known by Jesus, and he will tell them, “I NEVER KNEW YOU.” He never once knew them because they worked iniquity. They had no fruit of righteousness and holiness in them. Yet “without holiness, no one shall see God” (Hebrews 12:14).
“Not everyone who says to Me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ shall enter the kingdom of heaven, but he who does the will of My Father in heaven. Many will say to Me in that day, ‘Lord, Lord, have we not prophesied in Your name, cast out demons in Your name, and done many wonders in Your name?’ And then I will declare to them, ‘I never knew you; depart from Me, you who practice lawlessness!’” Matthew 7:21-23
Romans 6:1 What shall we say then? Shall we continue in sin that grace may abound? 2 Certainly not! How shall we who died to sin live any longer in it? 3 Or do you not know that as many of us as were baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into His death? 4 Therefore we were buried with Him through baptism into death, that just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, even so we also should walk in newness of life.
5 For if we have been united together in the likeness of His death, certainly we also shall be in the likeness of His resurrection, 6 knowing this, that our old man was crucified with Him, that the body of sin might be done away with, that we should no longer be slaves of sin. 7 For he who has died has been freed from sin. 8 Now if we died with Christ, we believe that we shall also live with Him, 9 knowing that Christ, having been raised from the dead, dies no more. Death no longer has dominion over Him. 10 For the death that He died, He died to sin once for all; but the life that He lives, He lives to God. 11 Likewise you also, reckon yourselves to be dead indeed to sin, but alive to God in Christ Jesus our Lord.
12 Therefore do not let sin reign in your mortal body, that you should obey it in its lusts. 13 And do not present your members as instruments of unrighteousness to sin, but present yourselves to God as being alive from the dead, and your members as instruments of righteousness to God. 14 For sin shall not have dominion over you, for you are not under law but under grace.
From Slaves of Sin to Slaves of God:
15 What then? Shall we sin because we are not under law but under grace? Certainly not! 16 Do you not know that to whom you present yourselves slaves to obey, you are that one’s slaves whom you obey, whether of sin leading to death, or of obedience leading to righteousness? 17 But God be thanked that though you were slaves of sin, yet you obeyed from the heart that form of doctrine to which you were [e]delivered. 18 And having been set free from sin, you became slaves of righteousness. 19 I speak in human terms because of the weakness of your flesh. For just as you presented your members as slaves of uncleanness, and of lawlessness leading to more lawlessness, so now present your members as slaves of righteousness for holiness.
20 For when you were slaves of sin, you were free in regard to righteousness. 21 What fruit did you have then in the things of which you are now ashamed? For the end of those things is death. 22 But now having been set free from sin, and having become slaves of God, you have your fruit to holiness, and the end, everlasting life. 23 For the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.
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Have you given your life to Jesus Christ to be your Lord and Savior? He loves us so much that he, our creator, left heaven and came to earth, died for us on the cross taking our sins upon him so that we may be forgiven and receive his righteousness. He conquered death by rising from the dead and made a way for us who were dead in sin to be reconciled back to the Father (God). What’s more, he has prepared a wonderful home for us in Heaven, where those who love him and obey him will spend eternity with him. Learn more here about how to be born again and have eternal life after this brief life on earth.
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