The Gentiles were never promised a Messiah. “But Now” marks a great change. The very blood that was to initiate Israel’s New Covenant, believers have a fellowship in that. Believers have a communion with the second Adam’s blood. It’s the blood that redeemed believers as well. God wants believers to all think the same way, to all think along the same lines, to be on the same page when it comes to what’s happening in this Age of Grace. What God is doing today and how’s he doing it. Believers are called saints today, set apart ones. Saint is God’s word for a believer. God sets the believer apart. The Bible is really the story of two men and the people who are related to these two men. The issue for life everlasting is not what church you attend or to which denomination you belong or how religious you are or even whether or not you are a good person in the worldly sense of the word good. The issue in eternity will not be how many sins you’ve committed or how many sins you have promised God you will abstain from committing. It will not be whether you’ve walked an aisle, recited a particular prayer, or asked Jesus into your heart. 


The issue in eternity will be to which man are you related? Do you have your identity in the first Adam, or do you have your identity in the second Adam, Jesus our Savior. You have to believe that the second Adam died, and not just died for your sins, but what was accomplished when he died for your sins; what was accomplished where those sins were concerned. You cannot be related or identified in both. What if Paul were found in the Savior having his own righteousness? What if that was the only way Paul could stand before God was to stand before God in his own righteousness? How did Paul end up Romans chapter 7? Oh wonderful Christian that I am? Romans 7:24 O wretched man that I am. Paul wanted to be found before God not bearing his own righteousness for his purpose in being there, but having the Savior’s righteousness attributed freely to Paul’s account. That’s what he wanted. Understanding the truth of Romans 7:23 is not something to overcome but it’s a reality to be understood. We’ll never escape. You see, this is not something we could overcome, this is something Jesus had to overcome on our behalf and he did so on the tree of crucifixion. The battle within Paul proved to him that absolute impossibility of performance based righteousness. Paul always found himself a do short and a don’t late.