That is not a topic I want to delve into -- it's God's business, not mine. However, a picture came to me recently of what it is that we as believers in Christ have been redeemed from.
The Greek word for "sin" was also an archery term. It meant "to miss the mark." Whether you miss the mark by a hair or whether your arrow lands in a neighboring farmer's field, you've still missed the mark. No one but God is holy by nature. The only way we can become holy is if God's own holiness is imputed to us, which only happens when we see our own need for Christ, acknowledging His substitutionary death for us.
A few days ago while I was having routine car maintenance done, I learned that the underbody of my car had begun to rust -- enough to compromise the fuel/brake line. Ack! Frustration. I don't spend a lot of time crawling under my car, so I depend on auto maintenance people to flag potential problems or recommend preventative care, but no one had done this. A simple rustproofing about a year and a half ago would have prevented the expensive repair I'll soon have to have done.
No doubt I still had rust and decay on my mind while I was driving home, because I began thinking about the fact that there is no person in the world who does not face the eventuality of physical decay and physical death. But that's not our whole problem. All humans -- rich or poor, old or young, healthy or unhealthy -- are involved in a lifelong dance of internal "rust"-prevention. Yet (unlike with cars) we can't prevent this "rust" any more than we can prevent physical decay. As beings who are not holy by nature, we have no way of completely insulating ourselves from the destructive forces that exist both within us and outside us. Even if we were able to seal ourselves off entirely from negative external influences, we would fight internal wars. Most days we might live a healthy, gentle existence, yet we would still be unable to shield ourselves from all unhealthy, ungentle thoughts and actions, because those things are part of our fallen nature. I'm not saying we would be monsters, but we would be at least to some extent destructive and self-destructive.
Enter Christ, who -- unlike us -- IS holy by nature. When Christ's holiness is imputed to us, we take on His spiritual nature. We continue to live in an internally and externally precarious environment, and (despite what some very misguided people say) we do not become immune to sin. To use the rust example, it's a little bit like the underbody of my car, which will not become unrusty once the repairs have been made and rustproofing has been applied.
...The analogy breaks down about here, sorry. There is some related imagery, however.
Even though we, as born-again believers in Jesus Christ, have no choice but to spend our mortal lives struggling against internal and external destruction, positionally we are without decay, just as though we had been born holy and had never sinned.
What's interesting is that some people take this to mean that we now get to choose to do whatever we want to do, leaving God out of the picture. This would be as sensible as getting your car repaired and rustproofed, then dropping it at the bottom of a swimming pool. Not only would the rust spread like wildfire, the car (sitting at the bottom of a swimming pool) would become useless. A Christian who is positionally holy but not growing in real-time holiness by surrendering daily to the will of God becomes as useless to God's purposes as that car in the swimming pool.
I mention all this not by way of a sermon, but because it gives me perspective on my own innate self-destructive/destructive nature. Not that I'll ever (on earth) be free from the struggle with my not-holy-by-nature nature. On the contrary: the more I know Christ, the more I see the fiery stubbornness of my own sin nature. But I am pleased -- no, ecstatic -- to discover that as I allow Him fuller and fuller access to my rebellious heart, He begins, in "real time," to remake me in the image of His own holy-by-nature, incorruptible (utterly "rust"-proof) Self.
I love You, Jesus. :)