Quoting Paul, Carmen reminds us of this –
We are to come to God’s Throne, come to His presence, sit down in front of Him with no Sunglasses on. And to contemplate the Lord’s glory, and by doing so be joyfully transformed into His image [become in character like God].
This harkens back to Exodus 34:6,7. Merciful, gracious, longsuffering, abounding in goodness and truth, forgiving of iniquity and sin.
Edited:-- IN or OUT
God so loved the World — the billions of humans before A.D 31 and the billions of humans after A.D 31.
That He gave His only Son.
This says that EVERYONE IS IN in God’s thinking. Everyone is potentially Saved. People just need to be made aware of the fact that they ARE Saved.
What we need to be doing is assisting with promoting saved behaviors — Gal 5:19-22. Giving up sexual immorality, impurity, lustful pleasures, idolatry [paul says GREED is idolatry], sorcery, hostility, quarreling, jealousy, outbursts of anger, selfish ambition, dissension, division, envy, drunkenness, wild parties, and similar sins.
Embrace love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control.
Romans 14:17-- The Kingdom of God is righteousness, peace, and joy with the Holy Spirit."
[if one notices the list of “sins” – they are pretty much in the category of Lack of Self-Control, and/or under the control of the EGO] In the writings of Paul his use of the word “FLESH” can be interchanged with the word “EGO”.
When one REALLY thinks about it, ALL the sins of the 10 Commandments revolve around the EGO. Lack of self-control, lack of self-constraint, being First. Killing is the final form of anger, rage, hatred, revenge, lusting after what someone else has that EGO gets one into.
It is SO EASY to be “God-Like”, to be “Perfect”, but it is also very hard, very difficult, almost impossible.