291 The Only Benchmark: Why Yahusha’s Perfection Sets Us Free
On Justification, Sanctification, and the Lie of Comparing Our Holiness
Good morning, and hello friends.
I feel an urge this morning to speak about the only man who has never sinned: Yahusha. For most of my decades living in the world and being of the world, one thing repelled me most from “religious” people. I believed they thought they never sinned, or at least no longer sinned. I avoided conversations with anyone who seemed to hold that thought about themselves.
Then I got on this path. I realized we all fall short. That’s why we use the word “grace.” Romans 3:22-24 says it plainly: “The righteousness of God through faith in Jesus Christ for all who believe. For there is no distinction: for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, and are justified by his grace as a gift, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus” (ESV).
During the time of the first covenant, God’s chosen people lived according to Levitical law and its system of atonement. The agreement was simple: follow my rules and I will bless you, I will be with you, no one will mess with you without paying for it. I am generalizing, but you get the gist. And of course, the Israelites, being human, would inevitably let those rules slide. The cycle repeated: renewal, adherence, then degeneration into lawlessness. God would send prophets with warnings. Judgement would come. Bad things would happen for a while. Then God would lead them back…..GRACE.
If you are reading this, you know that cycle.
So what is this article about?
Romans 3:23 reminds me that no one is perfect. I cannot reach God’s standard by my own effort. It shows me my deep need for Yahusha’s grace to bridge the gap between me and my Father. Romans 3:24 gives me the answer: I do not have to earn my way back to God. He gives me a gift. Yahusha paid the price to redeem me. I am right with my Father now because of what Yahusha did for me.
Justification sounds like a big legal word. I think of it as a court case. I stand before the judge. The evidence proves I broke the law. I deserve the penalty. Then Yahusha steps in. He takes my place. He pays my debt in full. The judge looks at me and declares me righteous. He does not say I am perfect. He says I am right with God because Yahusha is right with God.
Romans 5:1 says, “Therefore, since we have been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ” (ESV).
This changes my life. I no longer fight to earn my way into the Kingdom. I stop trying to impress the Father with my works. I live in peace because the judge closes the case.
Justification is my position. I am right with God. It happened once. It is a finished work. Yahusha did it all. I just believe.
Becoming holy is my process. I call this sanctification. This is a daily walk. I am not perfect, but I am changing. The Holy Spirit works in me to remove the old habits of the empire.
I think of it like this. Justification is being adopted into the family. I am now a son. Being holy is learning how to act like a son.
1 Thessalonians 4:3 says, “For this is the will of God, your sanctification” (ESV).
Justification saves my soul. Sanctification transforms my life. I am justified for eternity, but I am made holy every single day.
Now, here is where the trap lies. I wrote about this before in an article called “I am a better Christian than...” The ego and pride inside us want to compare. We look at the Christian we were a year ago and think, “I am doing better now.” We look at a brother or sister struggling with what we consider a “worse” stack of sins and think, “At least I am not that bad.”
But that is a lie. The benchmark God set for us is not ourselves yesterday. It is not our neighbor. The benchmark is His only begotten Son, Yahusha. He is the one man who always did what God asked of Him. Scripture does not show us that He has ever sinned or disobeyed the will of His Father. We walkers of The Way are not that. We have all sinned. As we walk this path, there may be episodes of less sinning and repentance, but we have all sinned and we are not Yahusha. Yahusha is our benchmark.
In that earlier article, I quoted C.S. Lewis: “The safest road to Hell is the gradual one—the gentle slope, soft underfoot, without sudden turnings, without milestones, without signposts.” That gentle slope is the path of comparison. It is the path where I measure myself against you instead of against the perfect Son. It feels safe because I am always ahead of someone. But it leads to a destination I do not want.
One is not more holy than the other because they sinned less today than the next guy. I am preaching to myself more than anyone else right now. My performance when comparing my “holy’ness” today to my holy’ness a year ago is not the baseline by which Yahusha will judge me when He returns. We will be judged by the content of our hearts and how we walked that transformative path that the Master Artist, our Father, has custom-tailored for us. It is about what is in our hearts while we walk the walk. Are you walking in the Spirit or walking in the flesh?
When I fail, I often feel like I lost my standing with God. I feel like I am no longer a son. But I know that is a lie from the enemy. My performance does not determine my justification. Yahusha already paid my price. I remain right with my Father.
I handle failure with confession. 1 John 1:9 says, “If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness” (ESV). I tell God what I did. I ask for His help to do better.
I also remember that I will fall during my walk. Proverbs 24:16 says, “For the righteous falls seven times and rises again, but the wicked stumble in calamity” (ESV). The righteous do not simply never fall. Instead, the righteous get back up.
Yahusha shows us what this looks like. After healing the invalid at the pool of Bethesda, He found him later and said, “See, you are well! Sin no more, that nothing worse may happen to you” (John 5:14, ESV). And to the woman caught in adultery, after her accusers left, He said, “Neither do I condemn you; go, and from now on sin no more” (John 8:11, ESV). In both cases, He extended mercy first. The command to sin no more was not the condition for receiving grace. It was the expected fruit of having received it.
Every failure reminds me that I cannot be holy on my own. I need the Holy Spirit. Failure strips away my pride. It drives me closer to my Father.
I was having a conversation recently with a sister in Christ. We laughed about how, if we were still bound to the Levitical sacrificial system, the planet would run out of goats and sheep in short order. That is the weight of our sin. But we do not live under that system anymore. We live under grace.
I felt the need to write about this topic because I have been writing about God’s commandments and obeying them. Scripture tells us one of the ways we indicate our love for God is by obeying His commandments. These are the types of things that resulted in my beliefs in my youth about “religious” people. Those beliefs led me to thinking they were better than me because they never sinned. But that belief was a lie. We have all sinned and we all fall short of the glory of God.
I am not more righteous or more holy than the next creation because I commit different sins or commit fewer sins. Those are not God’s benchmarks.
Yahusha is the only benchmark. He is the only one who never sinned. And because He took my place, I can stand before the judge without fear. Not because I am good, but because He is good. Not because I am perfect, but because He is perfect for me.
That is all and thank you for reading.
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I agree with what you wrote, but on a quibble, I feel I need to share my testimony about these things. Bear in mind that it has taken me over 52 years in the Lord to get here. But…
It is possible to live without sin. I base that on one major truth. When I ask the Lord to forgive me, He does and forgets it. In other words, after repentance and forgiveness I am not in sin—until I sin again. My Dad taught me when I first met the Lord to regularly (like daily or more) ask the Spirit to show me all my sin. He will do that. I remember back in the mid-70s when I was still stumbling out of my drug-crazed hippy life that hearing the list of my sins was often a bit tough to deal with. But somehow, through my life, I have persisted with that process of asking the Spirit to show me ALL my sin.
The result is that I am much more aware of when I sin. So, I repent more quickly and am cleaned up sooner. I've come to hate sin in my life so much, that I am eager to repent and get cleaned up again. Again, it is all the Lord doing it. But it works.
Now, I can say that I normally live sin free. With all my sin forgiven and forgotten. It's no big deal because all it does is bring me up to zero on the righteousness scale. However, and this is important. While I am living 'fessed up, the Holy Spirit can work much more freely in my life. It really helps me grow in the Lord. It's nothing I do except walk with Him, talking with Him throughout the day, every day. It's all Him, but the level of freedom and power in my life is much better. It's really helpful.
Once I have repented of all my sin, I am clean, at least for a little while. During those times, my communication with the Lord is greatly enhanced. So, I take advantage of that. But AGAIN, it is all something He does in my New Covenant life, walking in the Spirit.