Romans 8:23 “Not only that, but we also who have the firstfruits of the Spirit, even we ourselves groan within ourselves, eagerly waiting for the adoption, the redemption of our body.“

Galatians 5:22-23 teaches us that the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, longsuffering, kindness, goodness, faithfulness,  gentleness, self-control. If born from above and saved, this fruit is GIVEN to you by God by grace alone. You might have thought before this point, you possessed these fruits, but did you? Or were they unnaturaly imitations based on conditions, meaning you imitated kindness for example with expectations of gaining something in return.

The FIRSTfruits of the Holy Spirit is something not to yawn at. Again if saved, God granted you this awesome fruit! And each, as a fruit, GROWS, the fruit of God never dies, it doesn’t stay stagnant or get moldy. You won’t be perfect in this lifetime, but the steady growth of the fruit God grants should be evident if saved.

And as God commanded the Israelites in the OT, the firstfuits are given to God. You do this naturally, not as a chore. You aren’t exhibiting self control and are miserable for example.

Examine the fruit of the Spirit in your life, can you see them in yourself? Or is peace missing, or is joy missing, because they are the two fruits which will always evade the imitators, the false converts. You can play act all the other fruit in an unregenerate state, but peace and joy will always be missing!

Make a practice to give your firstfruit to God each day! Start each day in worship to Him. If He isn’t your first priority, your faith is discerned. Not just here and there or when times are good or when you feel like it, but each day this practice must be naturally exhibited. Again, if true PEACE and true JOY are missing, you have been deceived and must repent and believe the Gospel, because you have not been granted that fruit.

If there couldn’t be false and aren’t conversions, the devil would be out of business!

If you read and study Scripture carefully, you’d know that there is a repeated warning that goes out from God, and that is to the sinners who think they are saved, but are actually false converts. The misnomer is that the devil and his demons are working on the atheist, the wiccan, the unbeliever. If we use logic, this would be a waste of their time because there is nothing they really to do.

So who are they busy working on? These would be those who are convicted by guilt of their sins, they know there is going to be a judgment. They would like the sinner to believe they are saved, when they are not, so they lead these sinners into false gospels and to false teachers. The devil is a master at understanding the fallen nature of man, and our humanistic pride, and this is what he feeds upon and utilizes.

How do we discern from being a false convert and true convert? The key here is repentance and the CHANGE in desires. If you are a true convert, God made you into a NEW creation. There is no longer an inner tussle going on with Him, you aren’t trying to get away with your sins, you confess and understand who you are in light of Him. Now it doesn’t mean you are perfect in the flesh, it means you are being perfected in Christ who is perfect. The only way God sees you as “perfect” is by seeing you are IN Jesus Christ. Meaning His righteousness, obedience, perfection are credited to you by your faith alone in Jesus.

Some believe they have been saved or being saved, but will NOT place their faith alone in Jesus. They fight this notion, and add that humanistic pride to God’s work. So they believe their inherent self-righteousness is the key, the deserving factor, of which God will judge them. This is the devil’s ploy! The devil builds up by that pride the notion of “I can’t just believe in Jesus, I must DO something to be saved”.

Now think about it! It would be like a fireman standing outside your burning home, and the devil puts in your head, “the fireman won’t come in here, unless I do something”. You wouldn’t think much about that coward egocentric fireman would you? Or a doctor before a major surgery you needed, saying “I can’t work on this patient, he or she does fit not my type of goodness”. But surely this is the mentality that MANY have with Jesus. That He is some egocentric coward of a Savior who won’t do as He promised, that He sits on the sideline watching you perish unless you make yourself DESERVING enough!

Now the devil knows there is NOTHING you could do to make yourself deserving enough, but you don’t know that, so he puts that in your head. So then you work work work, always uncertain, always insecure, and in the end you end up in hell with him! You seek churches which abide by this lunacy of the God/human cooperative in salvation, and the devil rejoices while he says “strive harder in your ‘free-will’, I am sure God will save you”. If you go that route, you bought the devil’s LIE.

Again the devil knows your self-righteous humanistic pride perfectly. He manipulates this to a tee! So in the end, you are left with Jesus saying “I never knew you, be gone from Me you worker of lawlessness” (Matt 7:23).

Roman Catholics for example pervert Matthew 25:31-45 to mean if they clothe the naked, feed the poor, visit people in prison, that Jesus will save them. But was that what He meant? NO! You see, God demands absolute perfection, so unless you are doing those things PERFECTLY since birth and all of your life, you have come up short by the law. And the false convert believes they can be saved BY THE LAW instead of by Jesus. So the passage is meant to CONVICT the sinner, not as a viable template to be saved! The saved sinner will confess, “I DID NOTHING OF THOSE THINGS and Jesus saved me”. The false convert will say “I did some of those things or tried to, so God should save me”.

Proverbs 11:1 Dishonest scales are an abomination to the Lord, But a just weight is His delight. ² When pride comes, then comes shame; But with the humble is wisdom.

What is a discernment point of one who has been born-again by God and one who is masquerading as a Christian? That would be honesty in your sins and who you are, and the reaction to that type of honest witness.

Before one is born-again, dishonesty and concealment REIGNS throughout our entire being. We don’t like admitting our faults, our sins, or shotcomings. And if there is any doubt in what I said, social media exposed this clearly!

Upon my rebirth, God showed me my sins, and just how dark, evil, and decrepit I truly was. Before that point, I tended to hide that shame and the external “goodness” was all that one saw. So I wrote a tell all portion in a book called “The Roman Catholic Problem” which disclosed the final days leading up to my rebirth and the debauchery I was involved in. There would be NO WAY I would have admitted to these things before God changed my heart! Not for a second!

But discernment came in when I listened to some of the reactions from that honest witness. Roman Catholics who are dead in their sins and trespasses, scoffed and mocked me. “How could you be so stupid” and “sorry you were so sinful” is what I heard, as IF they were perfect. But this is how one is before a rebirth, we look down our noses at the honest witness very well knowing we are equally if not more degenerate in our behavior.

The honest witness KNOWS what Jesus paid on their behalf, so it is beyond reasoning to hide that reason of His sacrifice if born again. The humility is engrained with this realization of who Jesus is, what He did, and what YOU did to CAUSE it all. There is no more hiding your sins from others! It would be like someone paying all your credit card bills off in one full swoop without any help from you, and you denying that you had any debt? Again, that would BEYOND reasoning!

So one way to KNOW you are dealing with a Christian and not a poser, examine their witness. How do they react to honest witnesses, and what if anything are they hiding. We know one thing for certain! Every human being is FALLEN in nature, and has sinned! Failure to disclose this would demonstrate one is not born-again, but still concealing themselves as Adam and Eve tried to conceal themselves from God after their sin.

And remember this if anything! You might be able to FOOL your fellow mankind, but you NEVER fool God! He knows! So don’t be a fool!

Galatians 5:1, “Stand fast therefore in the liberty by which Christ has made us free, and do not be entangled again with a yoke of bondage.“

Until you are born-again and realize the salvation you received from Jesus Christ, your yoke of bondage will be to your sins. It is Christ which has set you free, if saved! Thus the battle cry of FREEDOM is the Gospel of Jesus Christ, His Good News!

Those entrapped and entangled in world religions are led to believe there is a freedom carrot in front of their nose, and if they strive hard enough, one day they’ll obtain it. That somehow if you do enough good works, and are moral and religious enough, you will be deemed worthy enough, deserving enough to be saved by Jesus. And sadly, they’ll perish without ever reaching that carrot, never experiencing the true peace and rest in Jesus.

John 8:32 “And you shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free.”

If saved by Jesus, you won’t be asking as Pilate asked Jesus “what is truth?”, because as Jesus said you shall KNOW the truth. And that truth is He alone is the Redeemer the promised Messiah, and no one will be saved outside of Him. That He died for you, He was your substitute on the Cross, and PAID IN FULL your sin debt. And by this simple truth, it has made you FREE!

Now freedom doesn’t mean you can go and sin up a storm, because that would be again entangling yourself in bondage to sin. Salvation isn’t some license to sin without ramifications. It is a freedom from the PENALTY of sin, which is the wrath of God. And by that grace and the indwelling of the Holy Spirit, your new natural desire is a disdain, a true hatred of sin. Does it mean you will never stumble? No! It means you will repent and do this naturally, not unnaturally, because you naturally LOVE the freedom Christ has granted you and thus naturally HATE the bondage to sin.

John 8:36 “Therefore if the Son makes you free, you shall be free indeed.“

When Jesus speaks, LISTEN! He said if He makes you free, you ARE free! This means He alone “makes freedom” for the sinner. Not your church, not you by cooperation, not by religiousity, not by sacraments, not by your deeds, it is He who made you free by what He did alone on the Cross!

Those who shirk the battle cry of freedom are not just the atheists and agnostics, there are many who consider themselves “Christians” who do so with zeal and vigor. If you reject that battle cry, you are still in rebellion to God and His Kingdom, the Son has NOT set you free! You are still in very much bondage to evil, to sin, to the world.

Salvation is by grace alone through faith alone in Christ alone to God’s glory alone! This is the battle cry of freedom!

Exodus 32:7 “And the Lord said to Moses, “Go, get down! For your people whom you brought out of the land of Egypt have corrupted themselves. ⁸ They have turned aside quickly out of the way which I commanded them. They have made themselves a molded calf, and worshiped it and sacrificed to it, and said, ‘This is your god, O Israel, that brought you out of the land of Egypt!’ ” ⁹ And the Lord said to Moses, “I have seen this people, and indeed it is a stiff-necked people! ¹⁰ Now therefore, let Me alone, that My wrath may burn hot against them and I may consume them. And I will make of you a great nation.”

If you don’t believe the fallen nature is the total depravity of man, you will never understand why one needs to be born-again (John 3:3). The above account should be a WAKE UP call for those who think man is merely wounded, but not totally depraved, that Pelagian heresy which says man possesses the ABILITY to believe in Jesus. And make no mistake, it was the preincarnate Jesus who led the Israelites out of Egypt (Jude 1:5).

Remember the Israelites who for 40 years were in bondage, living in squalor and misery in Egypt, was just saved out of their slavery. They witnessed the Red Sea part before their eyes. They witnessed the POWER of God as the sea consumed the Egyptians pursuing them. Before this, they witnessed the power of God that Moses told Pharaoah of events that were about to happen, to the exact extent.

And yet, in the Wilderness just after this, they made themselves a golden calf and started worshipping it, almost immediately after their redemption from bondage. So not even the signs and wonders of God Himself could make them believe! This is a lesson in total depravity. Man left to the heart they are born with, will naturally reject the things of God, they are spiritually discerned (1 Cor 2:14).

Another example is the miracles of Jesus in the NT. He opened the eyes of the blind, cured the sick, cured the deaf, walked on water, calmed the sea, turned water into wine, and brought back the dead to life. Including Lazarus, who He brought back to life after 4 days of being in a tomb. These events were witnessed by the Pharisees and other religious leaders and the people of Israel in real time. They weren’t tales, but miracles right before their eyes. Now let’s look at total depravity with two examples.

Peter and Judas, called Apostles of Jesus were eye witnesses to all of Jesus’ miracles. No one could deny the most powerful miracle, Jesus brought back the dead to life, and they were right there witnessing these powerful events! An event only God could do. Then Peter went onto deny Jesus, 3 times just as Jesus prophesied, EVEN when Jesus told Peter he would deny Him. Judas went onto betray Jesus just as He prophesied, and disclosed to the Apostles including Judas. Both were fallen in nature, so their natural desire was to reject God EVEN UPON this witness they had!

So it is beyond reasoning when some claim that man doesn’t need to be regenerated/born-again FIRST in order have actual faith in Jesus. You simply would be like Peter before his regeneration, and Judas in his fallen nature if you claimed to follow Jesus without being born-again. It won’t take much for you to REJECT Him when pressed for your self-preservation!

The fact is Jesus could manifest His incarnation once again, perform many POWERFUL miracles in person, and He’d be swept aside by fallen man just as the Israelites did. This is the lesson of total depravity, which is the innate desire to REJECT the things of God, not to accept them, not to actually believe in Him.

I put it this way in the past, if the incarnate Jesus showed up at your door and said “follow Me”, meaning you’d leave your family, relationships, and career, sell everything, could you? If you weren’t born-again, you’d ask for more time, you’d ask question after question, you’d doubt Him, because this is NATURAL to the fallen nature. Don’t be deceived, many are merely just FANS of Jesus and I’d sadly say without equivocation that Elvis Presley has more devoted diehard fans than He does, again because of the TOTALLY DEPRAVED fallen nature of man and the lust for idolatry.

This is why Jesus said in John 3:3 that you cannot see the Kingdom UNLESS you are born-again. Some think they saw the Kingdom before that point, you are mistaken! Again, Peter and Judas ate with, slept with, traveled with Jesus in person, in real time, and they both rejected Jesus. Peter was then born-again, and only THEN he saw the Kingdom! Judas killed himself. So what makes you think you are somehow or were somehow more special? That you believed BEFORE God regenerated your heart? Or that man is not truly and totally depraved in that now man is not like mankind as I described in those Scriptural accounts?

If you get total depravity wrong, you will get the Gospel wrong, and you will unwittingly as well plant tares instead of seeds which lead to growth!

Satan, by his influence in the modern church has greatly confused the masses, and so-called Christians, and even some who are Christians as to when salvation took place. So instead of beating around the bush, I will answer the question, it took place on the Cross 2,000 years ago, when Jesus died and rose again 3 days later. When Jesus made the sacrifice, that is WHEN salvation took place, when He rose again that is WHEN the confirmation of His sacrifice was realized.

God is omniscient, all-knowing. Salvation then cannot be an on-going ideology or a process, it is was event which happened! This is VERY IMPORTANT to understand, because many have this idea that God has some sort of list and by your choice, you decide to be saved or not. Or that God is deciding like the ideology of Santa Clause who is “naughty or nice”. No! If saved, you were saved 2,000 years ago, that is WHEN Jesus paid your sin debt!

Roman Catholicism for example perverts this Gospel greatly by saying the sacrifice is still on-going, and by their blood-less sacrifice of the Mass, Catholics are gradually being saved. Others believe their salvation came at their desired point in time, “it was Janaury 1, 1991”, or some other date they believe their salvation took place and use this in their testimony. Or “it was when I was baptized on (such and such date)”. They are sadly mistaken! Now they MAY have been saved, but got the time frame wrong by either a humanistic approach or a preacher who led them to believe something different.

It is when God gives a rebirth, when you are born-again, that is WHEN you realize what Jesus did for you 2,000 years ago, that He saved you at that point in time. Your heart being turned on by God finally is made to understand the gravity of this. Your salvation happened on the CROSS, not sometime you chose, it was when God chose to save you from all eternity, paid for by Jesus, fully redeemed, and when the Holy Spirit came upon you, it is THEN you realized your salvation, that you were SAVED (past tense).

When God gives a rebirth, a regeneration, your heart and mind is changed, it is regenerated. And THEN you place your faith alone in Jesus, again realizing what Jesus did for you 2,000 years ago. If you aren’t placing your faith alone in Him, most likely you aren’t born-again and/or forgiven by what He did! Why? Because an unregenerated heart won’t have any faith in Jesus or place their faith alone in Him. Romans 8:7-11 is clear, one who has not been indwelled by the Holy Spirit will NOT have faith in Jesus, because they are incapable of doing so.

You might hear some say “you need to get saved”, and my response is “IF you have been saved, it was 2,000 years ago when Jesus paid your sin debt”. So there really is no “getting saved” or “I got saved” at some point in the present, because that salvation happened! It is when you are born-again, at that point the realization comes in, and you place your faith alone in Jesus, you realize you were SAVED, past tense, by His work.

Another IMPORTANT point to make in this, if salvation occurs when you freely choose, then the sacrifice Jesus made did not complete, it isn’t finished, and God would be no longer omniscient. Jesus would not KNOW who He saved or what sins He paid for when He died, again negating God being “all-knowing”.

Paul and Silas in Acts 16:30-31 told the Philippian jailer when he asked “what must I do to be saved”, their response was “believe on the Lord Jesus Christ”. Because just as I said, IF the jailer’s heart was turned on by God, he would place his faith alone in Jesus now realizing what Jesus did for him on the Cross, which is forgiveness of ALL his sin!

Again, this is VERY IMPORTANT to understand. If you desire salvation, believe on Jesus, believe in Him alone that He alone paid for each and every one of your sins, not now, but 2,000 years ago when He was tortured and died in your place on the Cross. Only THEN when you claim salvation, you can say you were saved by His sacrifice, NOT BY YOUR CHOICE, but His choice (past tense). Not by your self righteousness, but His perfect righteousness. Only then, you will realize what Paul was saying by “work out your salvation with fear and trembling” because of the ENORMITY in the cost of which Jesus purchased you by!

Psalm 147:5 Great is our Lord, and mighty in power;
His understanding is infinite.

It is human fallen nature to attempt to reduce God into another human being, albeit a very smart one, maybe the smartestest one, but the very false belief is the way He thinks, feels, and His knowledge is accumulated just like human beings.

The Psalmist above writes “His understanding is infinite”, which is a praise of His omniscience. God is ALL-KNOWING. There isn’t a thought you could dream up of which could be hidden from Him or known by Him before you even attempted to think it. He knows every action and inaction in human and world history down to very last detail, there is NOTHING He does not know.

If you get God’s omniscience wrong, you will get MANY things wrong on His doctrines!

And this is probably the major problem sinners have with God, that they cannot evade justice from Him as they would their own human authorities. In a court case, a criminal will hire a defense attorney who will try to convince a jury of their peers of reasonable doubt. Evidence or the lack thereof is produced, an argument is given, and since the jury does not have infinite understanding, but finite understanding, they make their decision accordingly.

God doesn’t work that way! He has all evidence of everything you did, you did not do, what you thought about, what even your thought process was, your rationalizations and justifications, your excuses, the exact time down to the very second. God NEVER learns, He knows everything of every single human being, His angels, and even Satan and his demons!

God is never reactive. Now in Scripture, by His grace, He entertains human beings or speaks to them at their level, but make no mistake He knows. It is like asking someone if they did something wrong, when you know they did, just to convict them.

Many think that they can manipulate God into believing in them, instead of believing in Him, by this false notion that God is like every other human being in their life. The Pharisees for example could deceive the masses by their religiousity, and solemn piosity, but they could never fool Jesus Christ who called them out all the time.

Jesus would share exactly what they were thinking, and the Pharisees scoffed as to believe Jesus was some sort of silly mind reader. But what they could not bring themselves to believe was that He was God in the flesh. Jesus was not merely reading their minds, He KNEW what they thought before they thought it. And there wouldn’t be anyone who could trip Him up because His understanding was infinite!

God knows each and every hair on your head down to the last number. He knows the exact second you awoke this morning, and if challenged could tell you how many breaths you will take today and how many beats of your heart will have. And not only you, but every created being there ever was! Contemplate and meditate on His knowledge and it will give you a better understanding of who He is and how world religions attempt to negate that knowledge.

Take the billion of the greatest and brilliant human minds all together, and they would not register on any scale against God’s knowledge! We will NEVER come close to understanding the full counsel of Him, but what we CAN understand is that He is ALL-KNOWING and thus apply that to our understanding of Him. It will give you a better grasp on what His revealed word in Scripture is teaching as well! The more you understand that He is omniscient, the more you are humbled before Him, the more you praise Him, the more you will submit to Him, the more you will stop trying to negate that knowledge for your useless finite thinking!

John 14:6 “Jesus said to him, “I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through Me.”

“You be you”, “Be your truth”, “You believe your truth, and I will believe mine”, “Just be the best version of you”, “you only live once so do what makes you happy”, “the truth is what you make of it”, are just some of the calling cries from post-modern relativism of an unbelieving fallen world.

With this comes whatever “truth” they want to make up about Jesus, what you want to make up about God, is deemed the truth. Which is called subjective “truth” or in other words there isn’t a standard, as every individual can come up with their own version, the version which makes them the most comfortable.

The most used and most common subjective truth about Jesus is this depiction of a totally passive peace activist. The most often used line from Jesus is “love your neighbor as yourself” by unbelievers as a way to say “hey, stop triggering me, you need to tolerate my debauchery and degenerate ways”. Which is NOT at all what Jesus was saying by “love your neighbor”, He was saying “tell them the TRUTH”.

There are all sorts of ways sinners pervert Jesus into a false Jesus. The common way is to invent a Jesus which fits your lifestyle and pre-set conceived notions, not the Biblical Jesus. A Jesus which will conform and tolerate your life, who changes His edicts and promises daily to suit your needs.

World religions most often will present a false Jesus that bows to their religious practices. The false premise is always an authority issue. “Jesus left us His authority”, which some like Roman Catholics believe made their church now omnipotent over mankind. The truth can change, because Jesus doesn’t hold all authority, as they falsely believe.

Blasphemy of Jesus are the spoken words about Jesus which are false! Some flippantly blaspheme Him with ease and claim He said something He didn’t or meant something that He didn’t or did something He didn’t do, totally perverting His character, His omniscience, His omnipotence. In effect, telling Jesus He must bow before this new truth you invented, this is called blasphemy of His name.

When you read the Bible, if Jesus promised something such as eternal security, you must believe it as an irrefutable and immutable truth or you do not believe in Him. Many will be saddened on Judgment Day when they see Him face to face and He is nothing as you dreamed up in your mind! He wasn’t this passive, weak, carpet bagger as you thought, but the very KING who was always SOVEREIGN, who never bowed before you or your church!

Invariably, every unbeliever and those encapsulated in a false world religion will do something very similar. They will claim to have read the Bible, but are reading INTO the Bible something called presuppositions. By this they are asking God to believe in them, rather than believing in God. They tell God “either You submit to what I think You are, or get lost, You are not my God”.

Are there certain non-negotiable conditions in your mind that must be met first by God in order for God to be your God? That these certain pre-conditions or characteristics need to be entertained by God, or you could not believe in Him. That He must FIRST submit and comply to your worldview, how one is saved or sent to hell, or when He can save a person and how, and all of His truth must also comply or it must be discarded.

If so, you are in fact reading the Bible the wrong way!

A presupposition is a pre-disposition that you believe and will trump everything else including what God has said in the Bible. For example, you dream up this view of who God is, what He can do or cannot do in order for you to believe He is God and thus read the Bible this way. Or you prop up your world religion and what THEY have taught, and whatever that doctrine is presupposes what God has taught, it trumps any truth God might have told.

This is the WRONG WAY to read the Bible, by those presuppositions. Because it will led to confusion, ignoring vast stretches of biblical truth and perverting the rest so that it meets your presupposing ideology. I have had people show me a verse and try to say it meant something so vastly different than what the plain words are, not even close to what the verse said or in its context with the rest of the passage or chapter or systematic context.

It is quite easy to spot importing of a presupposed doctrine. Usually this is done by cherry picking a verse which will have NO tie, no other support for that doctrine by that one verse. And sometimes as we see Roman Catholics do with James 2 verses for example, what they are cherry picking and claiming a doctrine is will directly contradict Jesus or other biblical writers.

If you are reading the Bible the wrong way, you will also ignore biblical truths which will condemn your lifestyle. Certain sins are spoken of, so you will purposely ignore vast parts of the Bible and just read whatever complies or doesn’t talk about those sins. I have seen some try to license homosexuality this way, or they’ll try to claim it isn’t a sin because Jesus never mentioned “homosexuality”, whereas He did. Jesus is God, so presupposing that His existence began in Bethlehem is a way to ignore the actual truth. Or when the attempt is made to separate Him from the Holy Spirit, and that Romans 1 wasn’t of His office or 1 Cor 6:10 for example.

Now the RIGHT way to read the Bible is an outward approach! You read it as God is speaking to you, not you speaking to Him. You read it as God teaches you His truth, you don’t tell God what His truth is. You read it as an edict from the King, not an edict from the people. You see God as the sovereign One, not your church or worldview as sovereign or equal. You read it as inerrant, not as in error, because it came from God. You SUBMIT to its teaching, you don’t ask the teaching in the Bible to first submit to your worldview or belief.

If you don’t read the Bible the RIGHT WAY? You will always get God wrong, His teachings wrong, and it will culminate errors in your doctrines. You will be engaged in many arguments with those who are reading the Bible the right way, and spend most of your time defending your useless presuppositions.

Lastly, ask yourself, if you can’t read the Bible without your worldview taking priority, do you actually believe in God? Or do you want God to believe in you.

Your right to remain silent with God is non-existent. When He asks you “what have you done?”, silence would be your denial, but if you even think about denying your sins before Him, you will not get away with it because He ALREADY knows.

I see the first lie in denying was conducted by Adam in the Garden. God asked him in Genesis 3, “what have you done?” and Adam’s denial for his sin was to blame God for giving him Eve. As IF God didn’t know what he had done including Adam’s thoughts before he had sinned. Adam tried to deny that he sinned by rationalizing it was Eve’s fault, and God to blame for her causing him to sin, a denial of his iniquity.

If you weren’t aware, and thought we could get away with lying by denying, it might work with man because we aren’t not omniscient, but it never will work with God. Examples would be the husband who cheated on his wife, while his wife has pretty much first hand video evidence, says “You are crazy, I was working late, that’s all”. The 2 year old child who you witnessed eating the cake and has frosting on their nose, in their hair, etc. says “No, I didn’t do it”. I have known Roman Catholics for example who I point out in excruciating detail their blatant idolatry and blasphemy say “that is not idolatry” or “that is not blasphemy”. I could probably write a thousand page book on just the examples of the denials which are lies. Even the denial when casually being asked “how are you doing?” and your response being “I am fine” when you aren’t fine, is a denial in a lie.

Lying comes so easily for us in a fallen state. As I mentioned it didn’t take long for Adam to start lying after he had sinned. The illogical part to lying is to convince yourself that God doesn’t know the difference! Some asks you “did you to it?” to something you blatantly did, and all you have to do is think “no I didn’t”, remain silent, and you sinned, you lied before God. You didn’t get away with it before Him even though you may have convinced your fellow man.

I personally know a person in my life that no matter what they are accused of, good, bad, indifferent, they immediately deny it, especially if they were trying to conceal what they did or you say it in an accusatory manner which should never excuse denying in lying. Their immediate reaction is “no, I didn’t”, when you have video, witness, audio, text, evidence to the contrary, and this person isn’t a 3 year old, but in their 70s.

Now think about Jesus Christ, the perfect Lamb of God, in this context. He was born of a virgin, incarnated, was fully God and fully man as He walked this earth and was tempted in every way but did NOT sin ever. Think how EASY denials are, embarrassing things in our life we don’t want others to know about, and how EASY it is to lie. Jesus must have been a strange person as a youngster, because He never denied anything or tried to conceal anything to get away with anything. He never rationalized in His mind, “I am lying to protect a friend” or “I am denying that, because it is no-one’s business”. This is WHO died in your place if you believe in Him! You lied many times over, He never did! You deserved death, He never did!

Now denials are not always sin if they are truthful, if you truly did not do what you are accused of whether that be good or bad or indifferent. And again, whether or not man believes you is of no consequence, it is whether God believes you and He knows the truth!

Lastly, since denials are a deep seeded sin part of a pride engrained in us, just because one has been born-again doesn’t automatically mean they’ll never falsely deny things to their fellow man, but the difference will come in the automatic/immediate conviction of that sin because they KNOW they just sinned before God and will be disciplined and commanded to repent. One who is being sanctified will grow to not deny, but to tell the truth, pride is being taken away if indwelled by the Holy Spirit. One who has claimed to be a Christian for decades should not be a habitual liar in other words.

I know it is easy to say “do not deny what you did, tell the truth!”, but hard to put in practice, so ask God for help in this! Ask for His provision to be Christ-like and always strive to confess and be as honest and truthful as you can despite feelings, emotions, etc. Telling the truth sets you free, denials put you in bondage to the sin of lying!