I realize how shocking and controversial and prime-for-misunderstanding this title is, but I keep it for 1) the shock value and 2) because it's the truth.

Christians SAY, "Jesus saves you just as you are," but they don't mean a word of it. Not only must a person put his or her rebellion (his or her sin) on hold long enough to make a wise, uninfluenced decision concerning Jesus Christ, but must also strain, thereafter, to live a sin-free life. While the Christians refuse to say that one can lose one's salvation by sinning, they WILL say that sinning is "evidence that one was never saved in the first place." It's the same thing—with a time game added. Sin still blocks salvation.

The radicalness of Paul's gospel is seen to its fullest extent in Romans 6 and 7. Romans six declares that our old humanity was crucified with Christ, and that we were actually considered to have died with Christ. In Romans 7, Paul offers up an analogy explaining this.

It's the analogy of a woman "becoming another man's," that is, a woman having sex with someone besides her husband (Romans 7:2-3). While her husband is alive, the woman is an adulteress upon having sex with another man. But if her husband dies, she's no longer guilty of adultery. Understand: If the woman has sex with her husband's best friend on Friday (her husband is alive), she's a sinner and condemned. But if she has sex with her husband's best friend on Saturday night (her husband dies Saturday morning), she's no longer an adulterer.

In Paul's analogy, the husband dying corresponds to our old humanity having died with Christ. So now, the very sins that got us condemned when we were lawfully "wed" to the old humanity ("in Adam"), no longer condemn us (we're talking about the same sins) now that we are delivered from the old relationship into a new humanity ("in Christ").

The shock of this is that we are talking about the same sins. What changes in the analogy of the woman? Nothing. She's doing the same thing in both cases: become another man's. The only variable is that, in the first case, the husband is living, and in the second case, he's dead. NOTHING CHANGES ON HER PART.

Likewise justification by faith. NOTHING CHANGES ON OUR PART. Condemnation or justification depends, not on us changing our behavior, but on what Someone else does, namely, Christ.

 "For one who dies has been justified from Sin" (Romans 6:7).

Ka-boom.