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Everybody asks
me about this. Beats me why. I thought it was pretty obvious. Here's
the 5-minute version:
When we
receive Jesus into our lives, God imputes Jesus' righteousness onto
us. We are forgiven. Our sins are cleansed and we are called
"Positionally Righteous" before God. God sees Jesus'
righteousness when He looks at us and He considers us clean and
blameless because we accept the gift of God through the price Jesus
paid for us. That's called Justification.
Practically -
in practice, in our words and actions we are still sinners. We still
fall short of His glory. We still sin and at any given time are prone
to sin. While we are justified immediately upon our conversion, we
still need to have the Holy Spirit clean our lives, our thoughts, our
attitudes, and our actions - to make us more like Jesus day by day as
we seek to know Him. That's called Sanctification.
Sanctification
is a life-long quest to have God's heart, and God's compassion, to do
what's right at all times - in practice, in our actions and our
thoughts to be right. When we follow Jesus, we embark on this quest
to become Practically Righteous
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