What does God see when He looks at believers in Christ?
God sees only the righteousness and holiness of Christ, not the believer's former sin in Adam. Because every believer is now in Christ through faith in His finished work on the cross, God does not see the individual's old identity at all; He sees Christ's righteousness alone.
Les explains that when Christ died on the cross and a person believes what God says about the cross, that believer is taken out of Adam and placed into Christ. Instead of God seeing us in the cesspool of sin we were in Adam, He now sees only the righteousness and holiness of Christ because we are in Him. In fact, if you are in Him, God does not see the old self at all. Les connects this to Paul's words in Colossians 3:1-2, where believers who have been risen with Christ are told to seek things above, where Christ sits at the right hand of God, and to set their affection on things above, not on things on the earth. This gives the believer a whole new mental attitude.