So, where's the encouragement? There is encouragement in what is and in what will be. So, in terms of what is, yes, we live in a broken world and, yes, sin continually works to trip us up (and too often succeeds). But instead of giving in to discouragement and despair, we hold on to this. Our ongoing wrestling with, and falling into, sin does not change what the Father thinks of us - not even a little. Because of Jesus, He sees us as righteous. He sees us as sinless. He sees us as perfect. This is terribly important. Without this we will view our efforts against our sin in terms of somehow trying to make the Father like us. And when we fail, (and we will!) we just assume that He doesn’t like us anymore. He can't. He has to be mad at us. After all, once again we’ve done something stupid. We’ve sinned. But Jesus has dealt with all of that. He has taken our sin and given us His perfection. And that's how the Father sees us: as perfect as Jesus. And that is so freeing. One result of that freedom is that we deal with sin from a position of strength and not out of desperate need. We wrestle with sin confident that the Father likes us and that He always will. That changes our motivation in the battle. That frees us to focus on battling the sin since we don’t have to worry about our relationship with the Father. We deal with sin in the strength of the Gospel. That is encouragement in what is.
From 'Problems'