How God sees us in Christ.

God presently sees us “in Christ”. Once we believe in Christ for salvation then we are considered justified to God. “Justification is an instantaneous, past act of God by which one is saved from the guilt of sin-his record is cleared and he is guiltless before the Judge (Rom 8:1).”[1]
To help us understand this we must consider Romans 3:23-26. Justification is a judicial act where by God, on the basis of the finished work of Christ, declares us not guilty. Because of this declaration God is able to place us in Christ and begin to work on us in order to conform us to the image of Christ. This allows God to maintain His perfect justice, and righteousness while still being able to deal with us as sons.
God is able to do this because Christ functioned as a propitiation for sin. This means that the sacrifice that Christ made was acceptable to God; because it was acceptable God is able to impute our sins to Christ and impute Christ’s righteousness to us. This imputation allows all of the legal charges against us to be cleared and in the court of heaven we are moved from the docket of the Great White Throne Judgment (Revelation 20:11-15) to the docket of the Judgment Seat of Christ (2 Corinthians 5:10). The difference between these two judgments are that those at the Great White Throne will have their deeds examined in order to prove that they were not effective to save them; whereas at the Judgment Seat of Christ the motives behind the deeds will be used to assign rewards.
At no time throughout this processes does who we are or what we have done count for anything. (Isaiah 64:6) We have no standing before God apart from Christ. In Christ, however, by yielding to the Holy Spirit we can let God accomplish much (Philippians 4:13).

[1] Systematic Theology Volume Three, p 235, Dr. Norman Geisler.