How do you know if you're born again?

2 Corinthians 13:5
Examine yourselves, to see whether you are in the faith. Test yourselves. Or do you not realize this about yourselves, that Jesus Christ is in you?—unless indeed you fail to meet the test!

I've done a lot of research on near death experiences and this has greatly magnified my fear that Jesus wasn't kidding around when he said the road to eternal life was narrow and few find it. When someone asked Jesus if few were saved, rather than giving him assurance, He said to make every effort to make it through the narrow way because a lot of folks strive to enter but few make it through.

So in a lot of these near death experience accounts report that about 25 out of 1000 people made it to heaven versus hell. I give credence to these experiences after reading this article:

http://www.newsweek.com/proof-heaven...fterlife-65327

In other words about 2.5% of folks make it to heaven versus hell.

Jesus said unless a man is born again he cannot see the Kingdom of God (John 3:3). So the question on how do you know if you're born again is probably one of the most important questions you can ask yourself. I believe Jesus answered this clearly in his teachings, the other New Testament writers also addressed including Peter, Paul, James and John.

Jesus said a bad tree cannot produce good fruit and vice versa. Numerous places throughout the gospels (such as Luke 3 and John 15) say that all the bad trees are cut down and cast into the fire. This tree is our heart which can only be made new via a born again experience (see Ezekiel 36, Psalms 51). So what Jesus was really saying was the way you tell someone is saved is if you look at their actions which are produced from the heart.

I believe scriptures clearly shows that our actions, or our works are considered "good fruit" if they're born of the Holy Spirit. Galatians 5:22-23 says the fruits of the Spirit are love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, gentleness, self control. If these qualities of yours are growing everyday it's probably because you have a new spirit and new heart God gave you which you are feeding by spending time in God's presence and doing his will by practicing his word.

Actions that are bad fruit are works of the flesh. This is also in Galatians chapter 5.

Galatians 5:19-21
Now the works of the flesh are evident: sexual immorality, impurity, sensuality, idolatry, sorcery, enmity, strife, jealousy, fits of anger, rivalries, dissensions, divisions, envy, drunkenness, orgies, and things like these. I warn you, as I warned you before, that those who do such things will not inherit the kingdom of God.

So if you are enslaved to any of these kinds of things, you may be in eternal danger and this is when we need to cry out to the Lord to save us. This is the true context of Romans 10:13 "whoever calls on the name of the Lord will be saved". It's realizing that we can't save ourselves because of our flesh and we need the Lord to deliver us which he will tangibly through his Spirit and not just on a legal level. So basically when you do this, it's part of your full hearted repentance.

So Galatians chapter 5 is a wonderful chapter on this question. There are many others as well. Peter tells us that if we practice righteousness and are increasing in "good fruit" qualities with each passing day, we will "confirm" our calling and election and never fail.

2 Peter 1:5-11
For this very reason, make every effort to supplement your faith with virtue, and virtue with knowledge, and knowledge with self-control, and self-control with steadfastness, and steadfastness with godliness, and godliness with brotherly affection, and brotherly affection with love. For if these qualities are yours and are increasing, they keep you from being ineffective or unfruitful in the knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ. For whoever lacks these qualities is so nearsighted that he is blind, having forgotten that he was cleansed from his former sins. Therefore, brothers, be all the more diligent to confirm your calling and election, for if you practice these qualities you will never fall. For in this way there will be richly provided for you an entrance into the eternal kingdom of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.

But the most important thing is that we must be born again to begin with.

My take on what it takes to be born again is to first make your heart the good earth in the parable of the sower. This is done through repentance by turning from all wickedness and turning to the Lord in full surrender. At this point the word of God will grow in you into it's full measure because you will have been given a new heart and new spirit which will impel you to walk on the path of righteousness through loving and obeying Jesus which are the conditions for the indwelling of the Holy Spirit (see John 14) not just mere belief in Jesus. You won't be perfect because as James said we all stumble in various ways, but the Holy Spirit will convict you to repentance every time because you will have no peace in your soul when you sin.

1 John 3:6 is relevant:
No one who abides in him keeps on sinning; no one who keeps on sinning has either seen him or known him.

The strongest verse for turning from wickedness is probably in 2 Timothy 2:19.

2 Timothy 2:19
But God's firm foundation stands, bearing this seal: “The Lord knows those who are his,” and, “Let everyone who names the name of the Lord depart from wickedness.”

There's a firm foundation that cannot budge and a seal that cannot change. Everyone that belongs to the Lord has to depart from wickedness. Those that are practicing wickedness probably don't belong to the Lord and that's important because Jesus promises that he won't lose any that Father has given him. Only those that belong to Jesus can make it with him in eternity.

If by this criteria you don't think think you're born again don't worry! Just turn from your sin and surrender every aspect of your life to Jesus. Make Jesus your Lord not just in name but in your heart and receive the gift of the Holy Spirit (Acts 2:38)! The Holy Spirit will help you obey and love the Lord Jesus and overcome addiction to sin. All God needs is your willing heart, his grace will take care of the rest.

Free Grace, Lordship Salvation, Arminianism and Calvinism

Free grace is the concept that you receive eternal life immediately and can never lose it after believing that Jesus is Lord and Savior. Because eternal life is the greatest gift anyone could ever receive, the definition of belief here seems critical. Many understand "belief" to mean intellectual acknowledgment of something you cannot see or "credence", e.g. "I believe Santa Claus exists". However the Greek word for belief "pisteuo" goes beyond credence, this is Strong's definition of pisteuo:

Pisteuo means not just to believe, but also to be persuaded of; and hence, to place confidence in, to trust and signifies, in this sense of the word, reliance upon, not mere credence, hence it is translated "commit unto", "commit to one's trust", "be committed unto".

So pisteuo means to trust or to "commit oneself to". Some scholars have likened it's use to "clinging" on. e.g. we need to cling on to Jesus! 

How much do we have pisteuo Jesus to inherit eternal life? A plain reading of John 3:16 seems to imply we only need to believe once, but the use of pisteuo in verses like John 3:16 is in the present continuous tense "pisteuodon". So the implication is one has to remain trusting and committing oneself to Jesus in order to inherit eternal life, which free grace seems to go against since you only need believe once in a lifetime to receive eternal life forever. However some who adhere to free grace theology will concede that if you "truly believe" once, you'll also continue to do so until the end of your Christian race.

Lordship Salvation teaches that you have to go further than credence and confess Jesus as Lord not in name only but also in your living. So you actually have to surrender every aspect of your life under the Lordship of Jesus Christ. Lordship Salvationists say if Jesus is Lord in name only but not in your heart, then you lie by confessing Jesus is Lord. Free grace contends that this is adding works to salvation because grace is unmerited favor and not something you work for, they define surrendering your heart to Jesus counting as works whereas Lordship salvationists seclude surrendering to the Lordship of Jesus Christ in the area of free will which does not count as works.

Within Lordship Salvation are adherents of Arminianism and Calvinism. Those are the two well known extremes and there are many that adhere to a combination of each, or are simply undecided because there is so much scripture supporting both positions.

Arminianism teaches that salvation can be gained and lost. They use the parable of the sower as evidence. The seed that fell on the rocky place is the believer that believed and received the word with joy but perished because it had no root. They view this as a person who lost their salvation. For example in John 15, Jesus says that the only way we can bear fruit and not be cast in the fire is to remain in him and his words. Eternal life is thought of something that is only in Jesus Christ, so we have to remain in him until the end in order to inherit eternal life. There are bunch of verses to this regard which suggest that one is only saved if they "endure" to the end (Matthew 24:13, Ezekiel 18:24, Hebrews 3:14, 2 Peter 2:20-22, Hebrews 6:4-8). They also view falling into sin as something that will put you in eternal danger even after a born again experience (Hebrews 10:26-27, Galatians 5:19-21, Ephesians 5:3-5, 1 Corinthians 6:9-10).

Calvinism teaches that once a person is truly saved, God's grace will preserve them until the end, this is known as sovereign grace, or irresistible grace. They agree on the same conditions for persevering until the end and not living in sin similar to Arminians, the difference is they stress the grace of God guaranteeing God's elect to overcome whereas Arminians focus on man's exercise of free will and God's foreknowledge of who will overcome. 

Among Calvinists, there are many different views on what constitutes being truly saved. Some say it's when you are born again after surrendering your all to Jesus, others say theres no way you can tell you are God's elect until you die and find yourself in heaven (experimental Calvinism). Calvinists view Christians who commit suicide or die in unrepentant sin as those who were never saved or born-gain to begin with, unlike Arminians who believe such people were saved but lost their salvation. As I describe this you can start to tell that it's largely a debate on the semantics of what salvation means.

1 John is perhaps the most Calvinist book in the NT. For example 1 John 5:4 says he who is born of God overcomes the world. 1 John 3:6 says whoever continues in sin has neither seen him or known him (they were never born again). In Matthew 7:21-23, Jesus says depart from me you workers of lawlessness, "I never knew you", etc. These people were never born again, they were deceiving themselves by living as mouth professing Christians who knowingly transgressed his laws by practicing sin.

While lauded as a theological system that is consistent with all scripture when understood correctly, the drawbacks of Calvinism is that it can be easily abused and misunderstood. Some may be tempted to rest on the assurance of salvation provided by perseverance of the saints and irresistible grace and start sinning when they were never born again to begin with. Others who struggle with sin and addiction can feel hopeless concerning their salvation because they may feel that because God has not chosen them they are destined to end up in hell no matter what they do because they are not God's elect. There are actually cases of atheists who skirted with the idea of repentance at their deathbed but gave up because of their misunderstanding of the Calvinistic belief system, thinking that it predetermines their destiny to hell.

Bringing things back to the Lordship Salvation versus Free Grace controversy: Some free grace believers adhere to a kingdom exclusion doctrine like Watchman Nee taught which is the teaching that you can enter the kingdom of God after being excluded from the millennial kingdom. Lordship Salvationists all hold that outer darkness is for eternity. They believe when scriptures mention The kingdom of God or heaven, it is the equivalent of inheriting eternal life and not the millennial kingdom.

The kingdom of God is often juxtaposed against going to hell in many places in scripture.

Examples are Mark 9:47
And if your eye causes you to sin, tear it out. It is better for you to enter the kingdom of God with one eye than with two eyes to be thrown into hell,

Matthew 18:9
And if your eye causes you to sin, tear it out and throw it away. It is better for you to enter life with one eye than with two eyes to be thrown into the hell of fire.

Notice how "life" and kingdom of God are used interchangeably in the same verses of two different gospels.

Also in 1 Cor 15:50-58, Paul talks about the the righteous being resurrected to eternal life in the context of entering the kingdom of God.

This is significant because of verses like these:

Galatians 5:19-21
Now the works of the flesh are evident: sexual immorality, impurity, sensuality, idolatry, sorcery, enmity, strife, jealousy, fits of anger, rivalries, dissensions, divisions, envy, drunkenness, orgies, and things like these. I warn you, as I warned you before, that those who do such things will not inherit the kingdom of God.

Ephesians 5:3-5
But sexual immorality and all impurity or covetousness must not even be named among you, as is proper among saints. Let there be no filthiness nor foolish talk nor crude joking, which are out of place, but instead let there be thanksgiving. For you may be sure of this, that everyone who is sexually immoral or impure, or who is covetous (that is, an idolater), has no inheritance in the kingdom of Christ and God.

1 Corinthians 6:9-10
Or do you not know that the unrighteous will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived: neither the sexually immoral, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor men who practice homosexuality, nor thieves, nor the greedy, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor swindlers will inherit the kingdom of God.

Most bible scholars have lively debate over Arminianism and Calvinism, however the theology that seems least defendable in light of scriptures is free grace and the millennial kingdom exclusion. Regardless of your beliefs on grace, if you've only said the sinners prayer and believed in Jesus once but haven't fully repented of your sins and made Jesus Christ your Lord from your heart, don't take any chances! Surrender your whole heart to Jesus and make him your Lord, why take any chances on your eternity?

Does 1 Corinthians 3:15 promise salvation or is it a warning?

1 Corinthians 3:15
If anyone’s work is burned up, he will suffer loss, though he himself will be saved, but only as through fire.

Many proponents of free grace have used 1 Corinthians 3:15 as evidence that our salvation is guaranteed, but is this what Paul was saying? 

Hebrews 12:29 says God is a consuming fire. Isaiah was the most holy man of Israel, a man who lived in repentance and obeyed the Lord. Yet when he appeared before God's presence he was totally undone simply because he dwellt among sinners.

Isaiah 6:5
And I said: "Woe is me! For I am lost; for I am a man of unclean lips, and I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips; for my eyes have seen the King, the LORD of hosts!"

The presence of God is so holy that it seems to have a nature of obliterating everything that is not holy. You get a sense of this when Uzzah laid his hand on the ark of the covenant and got blasted to death because he did not go through the proper consecration rituals laid out in Leviticus (2 Samuel 6).

If God's holiness has this effect on people who are pretty righteous, what effect would it have on mouth professing Christians who say they believe in Jesus, go to church on Sundays, but live like heathens the rest of the week?

In 1 Cor 6:13 Paul says that God will destroy the stomach along with the food that is inside it. He then relates this analogy to the Corinthian believers who may be practicing sexual immorality. This is interesting because earlier in 1 Cor 3:16-17 Paul states that the believers are the temple of the Holy Spirit and warns that God will destroy them along with the practice of sin that has defiled it if they don't repent:

1 Corinthians 3:16-17 

Know ye not that ye are the temple of God, and that the Spirit of God dwelleth in you? If any man defile the temple of God, him shall God destroy; for the temple of God is holy, which temple ye are.

Now if Jesus' blood has washed our sins away, not just from a legal standpoint, but also tangibly whereby the power of sin is no longer over us and we are freed from being slaves of sin (Romans 6) whereby we can become slaves to Christ, then we have nothing to worry about because our temples will be clean and spotless. In this case, our temple would pass through God's consuming fire without a problem.

So in the preceding verse 15 Paul is talking about two things getting burned when we are judged: our works and our temples. Our salvation is not based on works, so whether or not our works are burned has no bearing on our status for inheriting eternal life. However whether or not our temples can make it through the fire *DOES* matter for salvation.

1 Corinthians 3:15 

 If any man's work shall be burned, he shall suffer loss: but he himself shall be saved; yet so as by fire. 

1 Corinthians 6:13  

Food is meant for the stomach and the stomach for food"--and God will destroy both one and the other. The body is not meant for sexual immorality, but for the Lord, and the Lord for the body. 

1 Corinthians 6:18 Flee from sexual immorality. Every other sin a person commits is outside the body, but the sexually immoral person sins against his own body. 

Matthew 10:28And do not fear those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul. Rather fear him who can destroy both soul and body in hell.

Regarding works, I believe the only works that will pass through God's fire are those that were born out of faith working through God's love.

Galatians 5:6For in Christ Jesus neither circumcision nor uncircumcision counts for anything, but only faith working through love.

A great story to read on this is Howard Pittman's testimony. He was a baptist preacher who helped raised 32 orphans, preached the gospel etc. but God showed him none of his works would pass through the fire because he did those things to soothe his own conscience and they were not born out of love.

http://www.freechristianteaching.org/modules/smartsection/item.php?itemid=253#axzz2qJFbbs4h

What is God's Grace?

To me God's grace is everything he does for us to make sure we become his children in eternity, and the bride of his son Jesus short of violating our free will. So the amount of activity required on our part would be exercising our free will to turn from our sins and obey and follow Him through faith. In other words "desiring God" :) Faith is implied because God is invisible and we can't see him, yet we choose to desire him above all the things that we can see in this world. (Abraham believed in God and it was counted to him as righteousness - Genesis 15:6)

God's grace works on a legal level by providing the sacrifice for our sins by which He can blot out our transgressions and remember them no more, but it also works tangibly when God gives us his Holy Spirit when we obey him.

And we are witnesses to these things, and so is the Holy Spirit, whom God has given to those who obey him.  Acts 5:32 

And I will give you a new heart, and a new spirit I will put within you. And I will remove the heart of stone from your flesh and give you a heart of flesh. And I will put my Spirit within you, and cause you to walk in my statutes and be careful to obey my rules. Ezekiel 36:26-27 

(Side note: this was the passage Jesus was probably holding Nicodemus accountable for when he quizzed him about the need for his spirit to be "born again")

Although we have his Holy Spirit, God still cannot violate our free will, so we still have to live according to the leading of the Spirit, which we are able to when God gave us a new heart after we were born again.

There is therefore now no condemnation to them which are in Christ Jesus, who walk not after the flesh, but after the Spirit. Romans 8:1 (KJV)

Yesterday as I was reciting Psalms 23, I meditated on the verse "He leads us in paths of righteousness for his name's sake." and realized it's a reference to God not being able to deny himself and thereby remaining faithful to us even when we are shamelessly unfaithful (2 Tim 2). We're like these hopeless sheep who always go astray, fully at the mercy of our Shepherd who leads us on the narrow path that leads to eternal life. Without God's faithfulness we would be totally lost not knowing where to go and our desire to come to Him would be in vain.

Ezekiel 36 is also a good OT chapter to read on this subject. It gives a wonderful picture of the plan of God's grace proving that the NT doesn't have a monopoly on the revelation of grace.

Ezekiel 36:32 "But remember says the Sovereign Lord, I am not doing this because you deserve it..."

Grace is grace because we don't deserve it. Hence spiritual pride doesn't make sense in this context but only humility. So God gives grace to the humble, whilst resisting the proud (James 4:6)

Word of encouragement for those recovering from unhealthy churches

Many Christians who leave the Local Churches or similar unhealthy churches become disillusioned and often spiral into a spiritual pit and become worse than before. People within the LCs use this as evidence to warn others against leaving (this happened to me personally), however the word of God helped me greatly overcome many pitfalls after I left.

A verse the Lord gave me today was Proverbs 29:18 (KJV)

Where there is no vision, the people perish: but he that keepeth the law, happy is he.

If we just stay where we are and try to overcome the world and sin it will be hard and the results may not be much different from asceticism. If you study the apostles and disciples of the early church, they lived a life driven by a vision to serve God and were willing to follow the Holy Spirit wherever He took them. Because of the vision that carried them, they simply didn't have time to get caught in the affairs of the world that entangle so many of us living in the Laodiciean church age today.

For myself this vision has been the realization that this world is passing away with its desires (1 John 2:17) and the only thing that really matters is my eternal home. I want to do my best to impact people's eternities today so I can see them in heaven. With this vision, I haven't waited around for leaders in my church to give me a job, but I've simply asked God how I can use my gifts to best serve Him. Back in the LCs when folks including myself served, we often looked for some form of credit or praise for giving up our time. With my new vision in mind I care little about the praise of others-- and that is really *FREEING* when you start working to only please God, because he sees everything and is the best boss anyone could ask for.

All this is being made possible through faith in our heavenly home which God has prepared for us (Hebrews 11:16). I used to use Christianity as fire insurance to make sure my eternity was secure while getting the most I could from the world in the most likely chance that God was real. But when I started to take Jesus seriously I realized he was 100% real and I was dealing with a true and living God.

Going back to having a vision, in Ephesians 6, Paul tells us to take on the whole armor of God. It's interesting that he includes in this list, the sandals of the Gospel of peace, which many Christians tend to overlook. When we live our lives in pursuit of a vision God gives us concerning the gospel, we're better equipped in spiritual warfare. God knows it's much harder to hit a moving target than one that is standing still.

Yet no matter how equipped we'll be, like in any war many of us will stumble because of the enemy's attacks, but God's grace empowers us to get back up to rejoin the battle. The only thing that should worry us is when we give up and surrender.

And because we're in a spiritual battle we should expect persecution, including those from the LC. Jesus told us to expect it and he even said we'll be blessed in eternity when we do receive hate (Matthew 5:11-12). Jesus told us to expect trouble in this world (John 16:33) but not to worry because he's got it all taken care of in eternity so we can have peace. Therefore there's no reason for us to ever become bitter or hate our enemies because we *ALWAYS* have a reason to rejoice and unceasingly pray for the reward God has prepared for us (1 Thess 5:16-18)! And when we do so the reality of heaven will invade our lives and empower us because we'll be living in agreement with the way God sees things.

Romans 8:28
And we know that for those who love God all things work together for good, for those who are called according to his purpose.

What does it take to have saving faith?

According to the Strong's the Greek word rendered as faith, "pistis" is the conviction of truth. Hebrews 11 expounds the definition of faith further as the 1. assurance of things hoped for and 2. conviction of things we can't see.

I've come to understand that the Hebrew 11 definition of faith is describing the same faith that God required of the Israelites to trust in Him to deliver them from every need or dire situation until they made it into the good land and conquer it. I'll break it down below.

1. Faith is the assurance of things hoped for:

God gave the Israelites assurance of their deliverance in every situation based on the miracles he had previously performed. Witnessing the ten plagues in Egypt and the parting of the Red Sea should have been enough assurance to the Israelites for them to hope that God could continue to deliver on his promises. God gifted faith to the Israelites based on his perfect integrity, but it was up to them to receive this gift.

2. Conviction of the things unseen

2 Cor 5:7 tells us to walk by faith and not by sight. The ten spies who delivered the bad report trusted in what their eyes saw when they witnessed the thirty foot tall giants in Canaan so they didn't have conviction of the unseen promises of God. However Caleb and Joshua ignored what their eyes were telling them instead choosing to believe in God's promise of conquering the good land because they had "conviction of things unseen".

The implications of this definition of faith is enormous if true. Because Paul says we are saved by faith alone in Eph 2:8, this could be the measure of faith God expects us to have in order to be saved. In other words we actually have to trust in Him all the way until we reach our promised inheritance in heaven.

The bible teaches there is a faith that can save us, and a dead faith that cannot (James 2).

For example say someone was forced to renounce his faith in Christ or be martyred and he chose to renounce Jesus to save his life. Does that person have a faith that can save them even if they at one moment "believed" in Jesus and went to church all their life? I would say this person did not have saving faith because he didn't have "conviction" of the unseen promise that awaits him in heaven. I believe Jesus was serious when he says that if you deny him, he'll also deny you before the Father.

I still believe faith is a gift from God and not something we "work" up. I've personally come to receive faith after God has answered my numerous prayers in circumstances that had could not have been given to chance. Because God has delivered so many promises for me personally in my past, I can trust him to also deliver me in the future. I don't have to trust in my circumstances, because I know that God is in control and will continue to deliver on his promises as long as I walk by faith by trusting in him. Scripture says the righteous shall live by faith, faith is something we "live" out until the end of our Christian race.

It's interesting also that Hebrews 11 which is the hall of fame of people who had faith is also a laundry list of works that were produced out of faith! Crazy faith in God will cause us to trust him to the measure that we'll do some crazy things because we trust not in what we see but what God promises in his word and speaking to us.

God never intended to shame homosexuals, instead he loves and wants to redeem them.

When Jesus preached he was actually very friendly towards sinners. He spent a lot of time eating and drinking with the dregs of society that everyone avoided such as prostitutes and tax collectors. When he preached on hell it was always towards the believing Jews who knew the bible well. Unfortunately many in the church have it the other way around by preaching hell to sinners while focusing on love and mercy inside the church. Paul followed this pattern by telling us not to judge those outside the church but those inside it (see 1 Cor 5:12).

The unfortunate side effect of this is that Christians have been bringing shame unto sinners. However this was never God's intention. Scripture says that Jesus bore all our shame on the cross and everyone who believes into Jesus will not be put into shame. Shame always comes from Satan and never from God. Think of the shame that sunk Judas to commit suicide after betraying Jesus. Scripture tells us there is a worldly grief that leads to death but there is also a Godly sorrow that brings repentance unto salvation. The Holy Spirit always gives us the grace to turn back to God, never bringing shame which only sinks us further.

Another example is the prodigal son. After he returned to the father, he was expecting to be shamed. Instead the father received him with open arms with no mention of the mistakes he made but even threw a huge party to celebrate his redemption. This is the heart of our Father God who is always willing to receive us with open arms when we turn from our sin and run back to him.

That said, after you do become a Christian, there is an expectation on believers to progress from being sinners to saints. Jesus' association with sinners confused the Pharisees, but he explained that he was a physician looking for patients to heal. However it's not normal for the sick to stay sick after seeing the doctor. That's why Paul always addressed his letters to saints and not sinners.

God does put on Christians the burden to turn from sins like homosexuality, simply because his nature can't handle what God considers to be sin-- even for things society deems kosher. Isaiah was one of the holiest men of Israel, yet when he encountered God's presence he was totally undone because his eyes and lips were touched by sin. How much more will this happen to people who have sin dwelling inside them from practicing it?

God loves us and is doing everything he can to be with us. His holiness requires that men repent (turn away) from their sin unto God whereby they can receive the life and blood of his Son Jesus into their hearts as a covering for their past iniquity. Because He can't help his own holiness, God needed Moses to intercede for him in Numbers, and that's why Jesus is our heavenly high priest interceding for us. His holiness is like the incredible hulk, it's a part of his nature that defines who he is. But in his mercy he provided the solution for the problem of our sin versus his holy nature through the sending of his son Jesus to die for us.

Isaiah 43:25 “I, I am he who blots out your transgressions for my own sake, and I will not remember your sins.