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Today's talk comes from Grant Partrick.

If you were at church last week, the message was called, good by shame. And we were talking about the freedom that Christ has purchased on our behalf by standing in our place and taking and paying for all the debt that our sin had caused.

It's in theological terms last week we talked about the idea of justification. Romans chapter 8 is where we spend our time in the first few verses that say, therefore, there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.

That somehow by the grace and mercy and power of God, as he looked on your life and looked on my life for those of us who are in Christ with all the information laid out on the judge's table, he looks at us and sees the price his son paid.

And when the gavel drops on our life somehow guilty, though we are, we are declared innocent. We are declared not guilty.

This is what justification means. And this is reason for celebration that our condemnation was transferred on to Jesus and Jesus' righteousness was transferred on to our lives. This is what's known as the great exchange.

So I want to talk about how do we respond to that kind of mercy, to that kind of miraculous gift, mercy that made us alive with Christ, even while we were dead in our sins.

This is a very gift, it's a birth day month in our house, my wife and I's birthdays are just five days apart and so we are gearing up for that and Christ misses around the corner. And I don't know if you can remember I was thinking earlier about the time when Maggie and I were dating and we got to the point where we were going to do Christmiss gifts for the first time.

I think it's a little bit of a scary thing because you never talk about like a budget, you know, like when you're married you got budgets and stuff but when you're just dating you don't talk about that. So when you get to the moment and you never want to be the first person to go by the way, you want to be the second person to go so that when you open up the gift you have two options, you either feel really good about the gift you have or you can prepare to blame everything on shipping delays.

I really have part of your gift but the other half of the gift is still on the way, have you ever been there? It's like you got her a candle and she's like, well I got you this iPad and you're like, well you're the rest of your gift I promise you've heard about you know all these shipping delays it's coming.

And I remember at Christmiss time you ever opened a gift and it's really fun to give a gift because as soon as somebody opens it you can see on their face their response like that's one of my favorite things about our young kids is like if we give them a gift and they love it they're going to tell you and if we give them a gift that they hate they're not going to fake that they like it they're just they're just not going to do that I can remember opening gifts from one of my grandmother's when I was growing up and I love her she's with the Lord now she's amazing no knock on her.

I remember every single Christmas opening up the gift she would give me and I would want to say to her, hi I'm Grant your grandson have we ever met before because I would never wear that you know like why are you getting me a sweater I'm 14 years old.

In our house to grow up in the house of all boys and I don't know if you have a house of all boys but the way we would do Christmas is you would get the gift from under the tree you would shake it and if it wasn't heavy and didn't make noise you would just throw it to the back like nobody's interested in getting more clothes but every gift elicits a response.

I want to talk today about what should our response be to this miraculous gift that we've been given that we talked about last week that guilty though we are as in the high court room of heaven the gavel drops that somehow by the grace of God we are declared innocent.

It's Luther that said it this way that justification this idea of us receiving a verdict of not guilty that's what justification means he says justification is by faith alone but not by a faith which is alone.

That a faith that saves us and doesn't change us is really no faith at all.

God's desire if you want to know the 30,000 foot view of what I believe God wants us to hear today and you want to check out for the rest of the message here it is in one sentence that God's desire is for you to be conformed into the image of his son in every way.

The moment the gavel drops we are declared righteous we're in a position of being righteous we are declared holy there is a stamp on our lives and we are not guilty and yet at the exact same moment a process begins in us where we actually are becoming righteous and becoming holy.

We have the status of being righteous because of justification but there is a lifelong process of becoming righteous which in theological terms is known as sanctification and as Paul is writing his theological masterpiece of Romans he never separates the two ideas where there is freedom in Christ there is a desire to grow and be like Christ.

sanctification simply means being set apart for holy purposes in core we define it this way it's the process by which we become more like Jesus over the course of time.

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