This is wrong, totally wrong: wrong answer from wrong text, misrepresenting grace, too!

Rom 5:17 speaks of gifts "received", not gifts "bestowed" as the lesson says: I regularly use the German published SS lesson and it states that the gift is a "blanket gift", and directly reverses the condemnation resulting from Adam's sin, "lifting it up" for "all men". Rom 5:18 isn't discussed in the English lesson, and it states the condemnation from one offence is matched and surpassed by the free gift of justification for life coming "upon all men" by the righteous act of one.

This direct intervention of grace in human affairs is the true size of grace, and the lesson needs urgent correction! This size and language of agape motivates to heart felt obedience, not so!

Colin, what are, in your view, "the corrupt channels of humanity"?

The bodies of sinners: "corrupt" describes the result of sinning. "Carnal" is like this, too, but we are not born carnal or corrupt, just sinful. Despite sinfulness being a condemned state of being, sinning is necessary to become corrupted. Jesus didn't sin so his humanity wasn't spoiled by corruption.

Otherwise, I don't dwell on "corrupt" much, as you know.

But if something in us is corrupt, how can you say that "our walk with him in developing Christlike traits is untainted"?

We learn about righteousness and abandon sinful habits & traits for Christlike alternatives, till even only our sinful inclinations remain to be rejected: this all is nothing meritorious but fitting us for heaven.

That Jesus wants to and is able to perfect this experience of righteousness in us with us, teaching us with his own character, is the essence of "present truth": that our characters lose all taint of sin to be fully Christlike (Eph 4:13b) is all we know, so let's not get picky about our abhorred sinfulness that we are growing out of, hey?

???
Colin, even if we could reach a point where we could be considered free from all taint of sin, how can the process which leads to this, and takes a lifetime, be considered "untainted"? We don't become perfect in an instant, and our flaws during the whole process are quite evident.

From before:

I think the questions I asked in the other thread come into play here. That is, what was man's problem, and how did God fix it?

The following has been helpful to me in thinking about this:




This really gets at the issue of why the lost will be lost. It's all about character.

The character doesn't change at death. We need to have characters in harmony with God and the principles of His government, or we wouldn't be happy in heaven. Thinking about things in this terms begs the question: How does God prepare us for heaven? How to get from "me first" to agape?

Continuing:

I don't think all the talk about imputed/imparted righteousness is really getting to the core issue, which is how is it that we can be resurrected so that we would be happy in heaven, given that our characters won't change at death. What needs to happen? And how does imputed/imparted righteousness fit into this?

1.Where did Colin say anything about the process being untainted?

2.What would this mean? (that the process is untainted)

Where in the Bible or the SOP does it say it takes a lifetime to reach Adam's prefall state of sinlessness? Inspiration clearly teaches sinless perfection is received the instant we experience the miracle of rebirth. The problem is most people do not experience rebirth. Jesus is the standard of what rebirth looks like. In Christ true, genuine rebirth enables people to be like Christ. They are born again dead to sin and sinful flesh and are wide awake to righteousness and true holiness. Jesus implants in them all the righteous fruits and attributes of God's character the instant they are born again. Not one is missing.

Then, in Christ and like Christ, they spend the rest of their life growing in grace and maturing in the fruits of the Spirit from "faith to faith", from "glory to glory", from "grace to grace" - not from greater sins to lesser sins until they cease to sin. God is a creationist not an evolutionist. The Holy Spirit will not, cannot, dwell in them while they are learning to sin less often and less intensely.

The difference between getting angry and merely yelling at someone rather than punching them is not growth in grace. Nor is it representative of the process of sanctification. Instead, such "progress" is evolution and the difference results in fewer "stripes" during final judgment. It is condemnation not sanctification. The idea that sanctification is a process whereby people become more and more like Jesus by becoming less and less like Satan is a fatal deception.

In Christ and like Christ growth in grace is a process whereby people who are born again and who are abiding in Jesus mature more and more in the fruits of the Spirit. Sanctification is the process of "perfecting holiness" not unperfecting unholiness. It's "an advance from one stage of perfection to another." While they are actively and aggressively abiding in Jesus they "do not sin" and, in fact, they "cannot sin".

This is not to say, however, they are incapable of sinning. They are always free to sin. In reality, though, no one is free to sin until they are free from sin. Otherwise, they are natural-born slaves of sin, self, and Satan. All they can do, apart from Jesus, is sin.

The moment they neglect to abide in Jesus they resurrect, as it were, their old man and they instantly resume sinning. The Holy Spirit immediately begins impressing them to receive the gift of repentance, which, when received and experienced, enables them to repent and to resume abiding in Jesus resisting temptation and maturing in the fruits of the Spirit.

Also, merely possessing corrupt channels, defects, weaknesses, and imperfections is not the same thing as being in the mind of the old man and sinning. People are not guilty or condemned because they inherited inbred evil inclinations, tendencies, propensities which continually tempt them from within to be unlike Jesus. So long as they are abiding in Jesus and reining in their inbred evil, subjecting it to the control of a sanctified will and mind, the Holy Spirit empowers them to satisfy their appetites and passions to the honor and glory of God.

This is what it means to "overcome as Christ overcame."

No it doesn't. Do you realize this is a radical pronouncement? I don't think I've ever seen this before.

Sinless perfection is something reserved for Jesus Christ. By the grace of Christ, we can achieve the condition of sinlessness which Adam had before his fall (famous EGW quote) but

1.Nothing says this happens immediately as soon as one as converted.

2.She speaks of a "condition of sinlessness" which means living without sinning. It doesn't mean "sinless perfection," a phrase which Ellen White never used except in relation to Jesus Christ.