A well-meaning woman offered me this paragraph and it is a good springboard to teach something crucial.
K.D.:
"My righteousness is Jesus Christ himself, not whether I've sinned in a particular way 11 years ago or 5 minutes ago. When God looks at the believer, yes a fallen man or sinner, if you will, He sees Christ. When we look at another man we will ALWAYS see another fallen man, like ourselves. Think this through carefully and take heart!"
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Can't let this Calvinism stand without challenge. You have just described exactly 1/3th of the healing/salvation story told in the Bible, held in the New Testament and consistently taught by the Church for 21 hundred years. What you have described is Christ's finished work of salvation on our behalf. What you have NOT described, in fact, skewed is our present working out of our salvation "in Him" and finally that finished and complete work IN US, where we will fulfill the prophecy, "I will dwell in them, and walk in them; and I will be their God, and they shall be my people."
Salvation is spoken of in the New Testament in both Chronos and Kairos times (earthly and heavenly) and in three tenses in the Greek that closely relate to but are not identical to, past tense, present tense and future tense in English. In Greek, it is a little more complicated because there are those tenses that indicate a "past action that is still happening" not just a past action that is completed. Also, "a present action that is happening and will continue to happen." And that action that will happen in the future. Jesus and the Apostles in the New Testament, as did all the early Church fathers talk about Healing/Salvation in these different tenses. Something that happened in the past and is complete; Something that happened in the past and is still happening; Something that is happening in the present; Something that is happening in the present and will continue to happen; and something that will happen and become complete in the future.
So where you adequately describe Christ's completed work in the past and its present effect from HIS (God's perspective) you have not described our answer to it, and the Holy Spirit's work with us and in us in the present, nor the completed work "in that great day."
God is Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, and the Holy Spirit is NOT blind to us as you indicate, but rather examines us and reveals new layers of sin to us, for which we MUST repent, progressively as we GROW and go from simple Repentance/Conversion (which you describe) to Enlightenment/Maturity (translated "perfection" in the KJV) and finally to Sanctification/Theosis/Deification, actually becoming a part of God Himself, that is in hypostatic union with Him, sharing with him the common Divine Human Nature of Jesus Christ. BTW when I say that you "skew" the one-third of the story of salvation and salvation history in your little theological presumption, what you present is actually a heresy called, "forensic justification" a core heretical teaching of the "reformed" movement. Forensic Justification claims that our Justification happens "outside of us" "independent of us" and that our own sinfulness cannot change that "forensic justification." Such is not the teaching of Jesus and the Apostles, or the teaching of ANY teacher of the Church, only the confused teaching of heretics.
Even Saint Peter's healing the lame man by the "Gate Beautiful" was not a completed thing, but required something of the man. He did not say to him as it is translated into English for convenience sake, "stand up and walk", the literal meaning is "stand up and begin to walk about, and continue to walk about for the duration." And this is an excellent picture of the "work of salvation." IT is not a legal game, but an organic process.
God is NOT blind to us as you indicate, but rather a healing presence to us, able to guide us, teach us, give us the lessons we need, to both "persevere" and "become completed" in HIM.
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