Oh, How Blessed I am!

“Blessed is the man to whom the Lord will not impute sin.” Romans 4:8

A sinner that has been born again will never realize the blessing until they realize how they were born again. Please give a little thought to the words “born again” as we find it in John 3:3 “Jesus answered and said unto him, Verily, verily, I say unto thee, Except a man be born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God.” People make a lot of these words but if properly defined they have a very deep and gracious meaning. Why did Jesus use these two words, why didn’t He just say “saved”, or maybe “redeemed”, because of the exact Greek wording here. The word “born” means – to be generated – which means – to cause to arise or come about – and the word “again” means - from above – so the two word together in the Greek means – to be generated from above or born of God. If you do a word study on the Greek word “gennaō” or “born” as we see it in John 3:3 you will find it is used innumerable time when talking about someone begetting someone else like “Abraham begat Isaac…” Matthew 1:2 meaning Isaac was born because of his father. It is like The Father begetting Jesus by putting His seed in Mary. God the Father begat all that are saved. You (if saved) were born from above or from God the Father, therefore He is “our Father”, while we were not born of His seed as Jesus was, He caused us to be born anew by His power. This is why John wrote these words, “Which were born, not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God.” John 1:13 because flesh had no part in our second birth, it is of God in its entirety. Secondly, God elected to send His believed Son in the likeness of sinful flesh in order to provide God the ability to forgive our sins. God forgives our sins, because Jesus Christ (as our scapegoat) died for them. They were not just forgiven, or not just pardoned, this was possible because Jesus Christ died on the cross and shed His blood. Jesus being the foreordained slain Lamb of God was born for the sole purpose to redeem us. His death was our death penalty, and His blood was our sin cleaning solution. To God, sin must be paid for and Jesus Christ was sent from God to do that, “Surely he hath borne our griefs, and carried our sorrows: yet we did esteem him stricken, smitten of God, and afflicted…But he was wounded for our transgressions, he was bruised for our iniquities: the chastisement of our peace was upon him; and with his stripes we are healed.” Isaiah 53:4 – 5 Of God, because it was God that elected Him to suffer for our “death penalty” due to our sin, and to shed His blood to cover our sins. This is all summed-up by Paul in Ephesians 2:8-9 “For by grace are ye saved through faith; and that not of yourselves: it is the gift of God: Not of works, lest any man should boast.”

I elected to take this route to better explain why the Lord God will not impute our sins toward us. That is “take an inventory” of our sins as our debt, God never said our sins did not have to be accounted for, He said we would not have to account for them. This is why God elected this route, it is because we can never atone for our own sins, it is impossible. This is why all unredeemed souls will be punished in the fires of eternal hell, Jesus did not redeem them from their sins. This is the blessing that Paul wrote about in our text, Peter wrote it this way, “Who his own self bare our sins in his own body on the tree, that we, being dead to sins, should live unto righteousness: by whose stripes ye were healed.” 1 Peter 2:24 Sin is often spoken of as a disease, and redemption from it as a blessing to us who are redeemed. The blessing is Jesus suffered your hell penalty on the cross in His death, and washed your sins in His blood, all a blessing from The Sovereign God Who loved you before the world ever began. Yes indeed, we are blessed if our Heavenly Father does not impute our sins to us. Let’s conclude with this from Paul’s writing’s, “That as sin hath reigned unto death, even so might grace reign through righteousness unto eternal life by Jesus Christ our Lord.” Romans 5:21 Are you blessed?