According to Jesus, eternal life is not only life everlasting, but it is also knowing the Father and knowing the Son whom He has sent. Jesus promised that if we would keep His commandments He and His Father would come and make their abode with us! We must also remember, the apostle Paul's exhortation, “without holiness no one will see the Lord.”


We have been made the righteousness of God in Christ by grace through faith. Through faith in Christ, we have been justified. We have been and are being sanctified, and if we continue in Him faithful to the end, we will be glorified. God chose to be in a relationship with us before the worlds were framed. By grace through faith we chose to be in a relationship with Him when we heard and understood the gospel of our salvation, repented of our sins, put our faith towards God, and were baptized in water in the name of the Lord.



Again, in choosing to believe the good news of our salvation and through receiving Jesus Christ as our personal Savior, we experienced justification for our past sins. In other words, we were made innocent in God’s eyes of our past transgressions against Him, ourselves, and our fellow man. We were born again, “not of the will of the flesh, nor the will of man, but by the will of God.”

“If any man be in Christ Jesus, he is a new creation; old things have past away; behold, all things have become new.”



The thing that we Christian believers must all realize and come to fully understand is that the Bible teaches that there is an additional experience of grace available to each and every one of us. God's desire for us is not only for us to come to Christ and be born of His Spirit, but also for us to continue in a deep unbroken relationship and fellowship with Christ through receiving the baptism in the Holy Spirit (with the evidence of speaking in tongues), remaining filled with the Holy Spirit (“through singing psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs, making melodies in our heart to the Lord, “I will sing with the spirit and I will sing with the understanding; and I will pray with the spirit and with the understanding"), and by following the leading of the Holy Spirit in every area of our lives. This means spiritually, mentally, physically, financially, and socially. (As many as are led by the Spirit, they are the sons of God.) In doing this we can increase in our faith as His witnesses in the earth and even increase in our faith regarding His promises. Through living and walking in the Spirit, we are also influenced and enabled to continue and increase in faithfulness and obedience to His commandments. “My sheep know Me and I know them; they hear my voice and they follow me; another they will not follow.” Both His promises and His commandments are sound doctrine to be fully trusted in and adhered to, and if done so through the power of the indwelling Holy Spirit, both will result in overcoming victorious living in this present life, as well as eternal rewards in the next life.



Thus, through receiving the baptism with the Holy Spirit, and by living and walking in the Spirit, we begin to experience the liberating sanctification from the despicable sin nature inherited through Adam’s transgression. In other words, this sanctification from sin nature was provided for us on the cross of Christ and is now fulfilled in us through receiving, living, and walking in the Holy Spirit. Now God, in His faithfulness towards us, is working in us to accomplish this very thing in all of our lives. Let’s choose to work with Him towards this glorious end. Christ’s past, present, and continuing work on our behalf results in our salvation, sanctification, and glorification, or, if you will, our translation, transformation, and transfiguration. Now, our work involves chosen consecration unto God through yielding to the leading of the Holy Spirit regarding the spiritual disciplines of covert prayer, fasting, and giving in obedience to Christ’s word and beginning and continuing in the overt disciplines of His word that involve rejoicing evermore, in everything giving thanks, and worshipping God in Spirit and in truth, just to name a few.


Sincerity
It is essential that we realize that there is an ultimate truth and that it is discovered in the sound doctrine of the Christian Bible and revealed to the Christian believer by the revelation of the Holy Spirit, who has been sent by Jesus Christ in His place in order to lead us into all truth. Jesus testified, "I am the Way, the Truth, and the Life, no man comes to the Father but through Me."



The Holy Spirit will not speak on or of His own, but will only speak what Jesus speaks from heaven. In like manner, Jesus did not speak on or of His own while on the earth operating as the Son of Man. He only spoke what His Father in Heaven gave Him to speak. The Bible makes reference to the doctrine of Christ which is also called, "the knowledge of the truth," "the knowledge of God, the knowledge Christ," "the law of faith," "the law of the Spirit of life in Christ," and "the royal law of liberty whereby we will all be judged." The apostle Paul writes, “If we or anyone else or even an angel from heaven preaches another gospel than the one that was preached to you from the start, let him be accursed.” He then repeats himself for emphasis.



There is only one foundation for the building of God, which is His church, those redeemed from Satan’s power by the blood of the Lamb, the universal community of believers. That foundation is the revelation of the apostles and prophets, that Jesus is Lord, the All Mighty, the Supreme Authority. He is also the chief cornerstone of the building and the Head of the body which is the church. Without Christ there can be no spiritual structure at all. It is upon the apostle Peter’s revelation that Jesus is the Christ, that Jesus said he would build His church, and the gates of hell would not prevail against it! This is also why Jesus said that in order to see the kingdom of Heaven, you must be born again. and why the apostle John said that as many as receive Christ, to them He gives the power to become the children of God, who are born not of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of the will of God. One cannot grow in grace until one is born of grace. In other words, one cannot grow spiritually until one is born of the Spirit. That is why all "spiritual" pursuits apart from Christ and the revelation of Christ are full of vanity and void of the ultimate truth.



We must understand that sincere faith must be based on truth, or it will be sincerely wrong. There are many souls in the world today who are exercising sincere faith in a multitude of gods and a multitude of doctrines, but if they are not based on the doctrine of Christ and his apostles as revealed by the Holy Spirit, they are sincerely wrong. Regrettably, this is not only the case of those who put their faith in other religions and religious leaders, but also in many who profess to be Christians.




Our only safe guard against such error is to be in close relationship with God the Father and God the Son through God the Holy Spirit, around the sound doctrine revealed in His Holy Scriptures. This is what we must choose to do as opposed to following blind leaders who contradict the word of truth. They are blind leaders of blinded souls, and both will fall into a ditch. Remember, a ditch is nothing more than a grave with both ends open. Jesus made many references to Hell while teaching His disciples. He chose to use the valley of Hermon, a large ditch outside of Jerusalem used for dumping refuse, also called "Gehennah," as an object lesson in order to help His followers relate to the reality of such a place. It was a dark ditch hidden from sunlight where the fires were never quenched, and where the worm never died. Let’s not go there by following blind leaders, but let’s go to Heaven by following the Good Shepherd, the leading of His Holy Spirit, and the sound doctrine found in the Holy Bible.