What does justification make us before God?
Justification makes the believer before God as though they had never sinned. The old Adam nature is reckoned dead and completely put out of God’s sight, so God sees him no more. This is not based on experience, because old Adam remains active in the believer’s daily life, but before God the sin is removed.
Les teaches that justification is God reckoning old Adam as crucified and dead, so that God sees him no more. It is just as if we have never sinned, and old Adam has been completely put out of God’s sight. Yet in the believer’s experience, old Adam is still there. Les explains that God also puts within us a new nature, the very mind and nature of Christ Himself, and that is what it means to become Christlike or Christian. The hope is that God has intervened to help us control old Adam and keep him defeated.