Jesus didn't come to deliver you from the punishment of sin. Jesus came to reconcile you with the Lord! To bring you to the Lord and make you pleasing in His sight! To make you a pillar of righteousness in His kingdom!

I shouldn't. I mustn't. But I will. You've probably read so many randomly quoted verses, you're sick of it. Here's one:

"And she shal bring forth a son, and you shall call his name JESUS: for he shall save his people from their sins."

What version is it? It doesn't matter. What chapter and verse isn't a concerning at this point, either. Now, it says, from their sins, not in their sins. There's a big difference. You'd think people would know the difference. But how many people do you know that say that they follow Christ and love Him and get that tear in their eye when someone talks about them, but go on doing whatever it is they want to do? Is that serving Christ? Did He say, Go before all the nations and do what you want to do? Or, you shall love the Lord your God...and continue to sin? And they think they're saved and that gives them a printed ticket to sin or do what they want without serving the Lord, and they go to church once every few week and and think that they're pleasing God.

When their sins and their serving-self puts thems o far from God it's like hugging someone 1300 miles away! So you're saved. What are you saved FROM? The punishment of death? Hell the grave? So am I to say, "I'm saved, I'm not going to hell, so I can go ahead and curse and use the Lord's name in vain and lie..."
God says, "All liars shall have their part in the lake of fire that burns forever." And it doesn't matter whether you ask for forgiveness: if a criminal says he's sorry to the judge, it doesn't excuse him from the punishment of the law. The only way to get out of that is to serve the time. The saving grace of our Lord Jesus Christ is that He paid the punishment, but if you're continue-ing in your sins, you're not receiving and walking in the Spirit, and that saving grace isn't upon you. God didn't take the old sinful man and dust him off: He took him and killed him in Jesus Christ, buried him in death, and gave transformation to the new man with new desires. A willingness to obey God. Now that's the Gospel. Not that Jesus can make your life prosperous and take away your depression and make you lose weight. Those all may be fruits of the Spirit, but Jesus didn't die to make you prosperous - He died to make you righteous before God. He didn't live a life in pursuit of prosperity. He lived a life of righteousness He didn't need to pursue. He IS righteousness! And if the Spirit of God dwells within you, your very nature will be the tendency to do right! Imparted righteousness.

(2) I'm going to give another quote. "That death is the wages of sin. In order to destroy sin, death is not the wages of sin that somehow you have to get someone else to pay for you - death is the wages of sin in that it destroys sin. ... The Father hates and detests sin, and has to burn it out of existance. That's why He said the wages of sin is death. That's why the bible says he who has died is free from sin. Not from the consequences of sin. The consequnces of sin is death. And death is there to destroy sin. That's the very purpose of death. And the purpose of Jesus's death is to free us from our sins. To destroy sin in us! To free our lives from sinning! It isn't so that we'll be able to go on sinning in this life, and yet have the feeling 'Yeah, yeah, that neighbour of mine or that colleague in the office - he sins and I sin yet he'll have to face the consequences of sin, but lucky ol' me, I'm not going to have to do that.' That's not true. God's desire in Jesus and in Jesus's death, is to free our lives from sins."

"If you're sitting there with that complacent laxidaisical attitude and say, 'Oh well I may not have all the sins out of my life. But I know that I believe Jesus died for me. So I believe I'm okay anyway. So I'll try my best anyway.' ...That's a perversion of the Gospel. The Gospel isn't believe that Jesus is going to die instead of you, and do your best to please God. No - It's not believe and try! Be willing to die with Jesus! [Die] to running your own life, and come alive with the power of His Spirit, to living like Him. The Gospel is not...a suggestion."

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If I say I am a Christian, and yet I lust after women as they walk by: I may have the leisure of calling myself a Christian, but to God I'm not a Christian. I'm not a Christian. The ONLY way to stay away from returning to the old man is to take up the newness and walk in the new nature given by the Spirit. The only WAY is Jesus Christ.