Have you ever heard of the 18” rule on faith?  It goes something like this.  The difference between heaven and hell is 18”, the distance between believing the gospel in your head vs. believing it in your heart.  I suspect those who use that are getting it from Romans 10:9 “that if you confess with your mouth the Lord Jesus and believe in your heart that God has raised Him from the dead, you will be saved.”  However, it’s clear Paul was referring to our conscious mind because his explanatory statement in v. 10 “For with the heart one believes unto righteousness;” clarifies it. 

I used the term conscious mind because it is the essence of who we are as individuals.  It is the center of our identity and understanding of the world around us.  BDAG defines its usage in Romans 10 as the seat of our physical, spiritual and mental life. 

I know the people who push the idea of head knowledge vs. heart knowledge mean well.  And they don’t mean to confuse people about faith, but in reality, that is what they are doing.  They are suggesting there is more than one way to believe.  Just like those who speak of genuine faith or saving faith vs. non-saving faith they are implying there is a way to believe in Jesus Christ that does not bring everlasting life.  And that can create doubt which will rob people of assurance and peace with God. 

Jesus Christ always treated believing as a binary function, you either believe Him or you don’t.  There was never an almost kind of faith.  Believing is recognizing a proposition as being true.  So, why not just say it the way Jesus Christ said it. 

John 3:16 For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life.

John 6:47 Most assuredly, I say to you, he who believes in Me has everlasting life.

Paul warned the Corinthians to not corrupt the simplicity of the saving message. And that warning applies to us.  Don't complicate what God has made simple.

2 Corinthians 11:3 But I fear, lest somehow, as the serpent deceived Eve by his craftiness, so your minds may be corrupted from the simplicity that is in Christ.
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I’m sure you don’t want to trust your final destiny to a false doctrine. And I hope you don’t want to contribute to someone else getting it wrong either.   So, again stand on what the Lord Jesus Christ said.

2 Corinthians 5:19 says “that God was in Christ reconciling the world to Himself, not imputing their trespasses to them.”  So, what does that mean.  When reconcile is used of relationships between people it means to restore friendly relations.  And that certainly seems to be the meaning Paul applied here under the guidance of the Holy Spirit.  Not imputing sin to the world means no one is being charged with the sins they have committed.  In John 1:29 we have the testimony of John the Baptist who said Jesus Christ is “the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world.”  The apostle John confirmed that in 1 John 2:2 when he wrote “And He (Jesus Christ) Himself is the propitiation for our sins, and not for ours only but also for the whole world.”

So, if God is open to having friendly relations with the world because Jesus Christ has removed the one thing that had driven a wedge between us, what is the missing link. 

That would be 2 Corinthians 5:20 “Now then, we are ambassadors for Christ, as though God were pleading through us: we implore you on Christ’s behalf, be reconciled to God.”

That could be one of two things.  1. it could be the failure of His ambassadors to reach out with the good news about His desire to join with us.  Or 2. your reluctance to be reconciled to God.  Either way the issue is not God.  If you’re reading this and have not yet believed in Jesus Christ for everlasting life then the problem is your unwillingness to believe and receive the gift of everlasting life.  Belief is simply taking Him at His word that everlasting life is a gift freely given to those who will believe Him for it.  It is a gift that will last forever and includes other benefits. 
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Like a declaration of righteousness.

2 Corinthians 5:21 “For He made Him who knew no sin to be sin for us, that we might become the righteousness of God in Him.”

When Paul pointed out in Romans 3:25 how “God set forth (Jesus Christ) as a propitiation by His blood, through faith, to demonstrate His righteousness, because in His forbearance God had passed over the sins that were previously committed” he was referring to the sacrificial worship system the Lord implemented the day Adam sinned.  Specifically, Genesis 3:21 “Also for Adam and his wife the Lord God made tunics of skin, and clothed them.”

We know God gave them an explanation about what this meant because chapter 4 begins with the story of Cain and Abel's offerings in worship to God.  Abel obeyed the instructions God had given his parents on the order of worship, Cain did not.  It was this system of worship built around animal sacrifices that provided a way for God to remain righteous while carrying out His plan of recovery for the human race and the Kingdom.

Forbearance is not patience.  In this case it is God willfully holding back from taking action on sin even though it creates an internal conflict for Him.  That is where the real issue resides.  Because He feels the need for justice with the same intensity by which He wants to express His mercy and Love.  His need to do what is right is every bit as intense as His need to express compassion and seek mercy.  

This internal conflict within the Godhead was not resolved until Jesus Christ died on the cross and took away the sin of the world.  This is something the false doctrine of limited atonement fails to consider.  If Christ only died for the elect which is defined as those who God willed to believe in Jesus Christ, then the internal conflict He endured would have remained unresolved.  Propitiation would not have been achieved and the Scriptures not fulfilled.    
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2 Corinthians 5:18-19 Now all things are of God, who has reconciled us to Himself through Jesus Christ, and has given us the ministry of reconciliation, 19 that is, that God was in Christ reconciling the world to Himself, not imputing their trespasses to them, and has committed to us the word of reconciliation.

For us justification and reconciliation to God is the really big deal about the incarnation of Jesus Christ.  There isn’t anything more important for us than assuring our final destiny will be with God in the New Heaven and Earth.  But for God there was a much bigger objective driving the advent of Jesus Christ.  To understand what that is we need to go back to Genesis, the book of Beginnings. 

Genesis opens at the same point of history at which that John began his Gospel. 
Genesis 1:1 In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.

Why?  The Bible gives us part of the answer in Genesis 1:26-28.
Then God said, “Let Us make man in Our image, according to Our likeness; let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, over the birds of the air, and over the cattle, over all the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.” 27 So God created man in His own image; in the image of God He created him; male and female He created them. 28 Then God blessed them, and God said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply; fill the earth and subdue it; have dominion over the fish of the sea, over the birds of the air, and over every living thing that moves on the earth.”

God created the human race in His image and likeness.  Not multi-personed individual life forms, but intelligent persons with some of His characteristics.  We’re not divine nor do we have super powers, but we do have creative imaginations and a will to exercise that creativity.  God then commissioned mankind to rule over this planet.  I also suspect His intention was that we would expand into the rest of the universe.  Why else would He have made it so big? 

Genesis 1”26-28 is actually the first mention of the Kingdom Jesus Christ spoke of in the Gospels.  All of that was put on hold when Adam sinned.  Adam and Eve had brought sin into the creation and with it, death. 

Romans 5:12 “Therefore, just as through one man sin entered the world, and death through sin, and thus death spread to all men, because all sinned.”

The human race would now have to be redeemed, bought back from the curse of death.  However, for God there is also an internal conflict that must be resolved.  He is perfectly righteous and just as well as compassionate, loving and merciful.  These moral attributes are all equally active within His person so any solution to the problem of sin must be consistent with and satisfy the requirement of each attribute.  That is why Jesus Christ offer Himself to die in our place. 

Romans 3:21-26 But now the righteousness of God apart from the law is revealed, being witnessed by the Law and the Prophets, 22 even the righteousness of God, through faith in Jesus Christ, to all and on all who believe. For there is no difference; 23 for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, 24 being justified freely by His grace through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, 25 whom God set forth as a propitiation by His blood, through faith, to demonstrate His righteousness, because in His forbearance God had passed over the sins that were previously committed, 26 to demonstrate at the present time His righteousness, that He might be just and the justifier of the one who has faith in Jesus.
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I’ll break that down in my next post.