In our previous episode, we examined the importance of “knowing” that when Jesus was crucified, our old nature was also put to death. That is a historical fact which can never be undone. So now we must move on to the next step in the process of our sanctification, which Paul explains in Romans 6:11: “So you also should consider (reckon) yourselves to be dead to the power of sin and alive to God through Christ Jesus.” Just as we saw with “knowing” our old self was crucified with Christ, “reckoning” must also become real to us through divine revelation. Our spiritual eyes must be opened in a supernatural way in order for us to translate intellectual belief into tangible certainty. This should be a high priority in our prayers, that God will open our understanding to see that we are a new creation in Christ.

The word translated as “consider” or “reckon” is an accounting term. It has the sense of something that is entered into a ledger of accounts reflecting an actual, accurate statement of a financial transaction. It’s important to note that if you want your accounts to balance, you don’t record your income as what you think you deserve to have or what you wish you had. If your paycheck is $1000, you don’t write down $800 in your ledger because you feel you deserve less, nor do you record $1200 because you feel you deserve more. Our human feelings and desires are irrelevant to what God has said; we are only told to “reckon” something to be a fact that God has already declared to be true. So in the context of reckoning ourselves to be dead to the power of sin and alive to God through Christ, we are not reckoning in order for this to be true, but because it already is true.

Now all of this is well and good, but we know that while we’re in this body, we still think and act in ways which would seem to prove that we are not dead to sin, no matter how much we “know” or “reckon.” How do we reconcile this seeming contradiction? First, notice that we are not told to reckon ourselves dead to sin because sin has been eliminated from our lives. Far from it! As we saw in Romans 7, as long as we inhabit these fleshly bodies, there will always be a struggle between doing what we want to do as Christians and what sin tempts us to do. We continually find ourselves falling into old patterns of thought and behavior because sin is still very much active in the world. Thus we will always need the cleansing power of the Blood of Jesus applied to our hearts even after our initial justification experience.

But as we have already seen, it is the Cross of Christ which we must turn to in order to mature in our Christian walk. The Cross speaks of death—not only Christ’s death, but our participatory death with Him. And what exactly is it about us that must die? Sin did not die because of the Cross, so it must be something else—or rather, someone else. Since the Cross does not eradicate sin, it must eliminate the sinner. It is our old sinful nature which must be progressively and irrevocably put to death, so that what we “reckon” to be true in concept becomes true in our lived experience. Our death to sin has already been entered into God’s accounting ledger as a fact, but the outworking of dying to the old self experientially is an ongoing process.

In 1 John 3:9 we read, “Those who have been born into God’s family do not make a practice of sinning, because God’s life is in them. So they can’t keep on sinning, because they are children of God.” This passage is clearly referring to the maturing Christian who is continuously “reckoning” themselves to be dead to sin and alive to God through Christ. We no longer make a “practice” of sinning; it is no longer in our nature to do so. Believers who reckon themselves to be dead to sin will find that sin no longer holds sway in their lives; sinning becomes more and more foreign and unnatural. At the same time, they find that they are irresistably becoming more and more like Jesus.

But what are we do in the meantime, while this maturing is still in progress, when Satan continually bombards us with evidence of our faults and failures? This is a crucial issue which we must address, because don’t think for a moment that the enemy is going to stop doing what he has always done. He has been a liar and an accuser of the righteous from the very beginning; that is his nature and he will always act accordingly. Satan will resort to every kind of lying signs, feelings, and experiences in order to shake us from our faith in what God has declared to be true. Now when I use the phrase “lying” signs and emotions, I don’t mean to deny that we will, in fact, experience these things in a real, tangible way. But they are still “lies” because they do not conform to Biblical truth. I may feel like a loser, but God has declared me to be a winner. The evidence around me may seem to prove that I’m still the same worthless sinner I used to be, but God’s Word has already assured me that I am a new creation in Christ Jesus.

So it all comes down to choosing: either to listen to the father of lies, or putting my trust in the Way, the Truth, and the Life. This is not a choice that I only have to make once when I receive my salvation. The overcoming Christian life is the result of a constant series of choices made all day, every day. There’s a reason the Scriptures describe the Christian experience as warfare; Satan fights against God’s truth without ceasing, and our hearts and minds are the battlefield. In our own strength we are too weak to overcome Satan’s attacks, but there is good news! “This is what the Lord says: Do not be afraid! [F]or the battle is not yours, but God’s. (2 Chronicles 20:15). “My grace is all you need. My power works best in weakness…For when I am weak, then I am strong. (2 Corinthians 12:9-10). When the enemy throws our weaknesses up into our faces as “proof” of our unworthiness, we don’t have to try to defend ourselves against his accusations. We can, by an act of faith, simply hand them to Jesus, and He will fight our battles for us.

Please join me next time as we explore THE PATH OF PROGRESS: ABIDING.

Grace and peace be unto you!

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In the small Pentecostal church I grew up in, one of the well-established traditions was “testimony time.” Usually after the congregational music was done, there would be a time set aside for anyone who felt led to stand up and “testify”—give the Lord praise for some specific good thing that had happened in their lives, ask for prayer, or just give thanks in general. One of the phrases that was repeated often during this testimony time, usually referring to salvation or to God’s goodness, was “I know that I know that I know.” As a child I didn’t really understand what that meant, but today I’d like to use that sentiment as the stepping-off point for this teaching episode.

The victorious Christian life has as one of its bedrock principles the concept of knowing that what God has declared to be true in our lives can and should be lived out in our day-to-day experiences. This is much more than just knowing about something or having an intellectual understanding of Christian doctrines. The only way to truly “know that I know that I know” is through divine revelation, an opening of the eyes of my heart so that I can have an assurance that can withstand any trial or circumstance.

Now before I go any further, I don’t want there to be any confusion regarding this “knowing” I speak of, because unfortunately there are a lot of folks in the Christian realm today who claim to “know” all kinds of things that do not line up with Scripture. Psalm 119:105 says, “Your word is a lamp to guide my feet and a light for my path.” In Ephesians 1:16-18, Paul declares, “I pray for you constantly, asking God, the glorious Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, to give you spiritual wisdom and insight so that you might grow in your knowledge of God. I pray that your hearts will be flooded with light so that you can understand the confident hope he has given to those he called—his holy people who are his rich and glorious inheritance.” The only sure source of true knowledge is the Word of God as it is illuminated for us by His Spirit.

Now, you may ask, “Is there a difference between believing and knowing? I submit that there is, even though the two concepts are closely intertwined. In 1 John 5:13 we read, “I have written this to you who believe in the name of the Son of God, so that you may know you have eternal life.” John is writing to those who have already believed in the name of Jesus—they are already Christians. But John sees the need to go beyond simply believing in Jesus into a state of knowing that as believers we have eternal life. The meaning of the word “know” in this passage goes beyond an intellectual belief that something is true and into the realm of actually seeing it in a tangible way.

With this is mind, let’s take a look at some of the New Testament passages which speak to this concept of knowing:

Romans 6:6 - “We know that our old sinful selves were crucified with Christ so that sin might lose its power in our lives. We are no longer slaves to sin.”

Romans 6:8 - “And since we died with Christ, we know we will also live with him.”

Romans 8:28 - “And we know that God causes everything to work together for the good of those who love God and are called according to his purpose for them.”

1 Corinthians 2:12 - “And we have received God’s Spirit (not the world’s spirit), so we can know the wonderful things God has freely given us.”

2 Corinthians 4:6 - “For God, who said, “Let there be light in the darkness,” has made this light shine in our hearts so we could know the glory of God that is seen in the face of Jesus Christ.”

Philippians 3:10 - “I want to know Christ and experience the mighty power that raised him from the dead. I want to suffer with him, sharing in his death.”

And 2 Peter 1:3 - “By his divine power, God has given us everything we need for living a godly life. We have received all of this by coming to know him, the one who called us to himself by means of his marvelous glory and excellence.”

We can clearly see the importance the New Testament writers placed upon knowing—truly seeing—God’s purpose, power, and promises for us. Referring back to Ephesians 1:18-19, I like the way the English Standard Version translation speaks of “having the eyes of your hearts enlightened, that you may know what is the hope to which he has called you, what are the riches of his glorious inheritance in the saints, and what is the immeasurable greatness of his power toward us who believe…”

So how exactly does this supernatural work of knowing take place in our lives? Again, it’s more than just believing in the efficacy of the Blood and the Cross, more than learning about God and His promises. Paul reveals the answer, again in Ephesians 1, when he says “I pray for you constantly, asking God…to give you spiritual wisdom and insight…I pray that your hearts will be flooded with light…” God wants us to specifically ask Him for this divine revelation to take place in us so that we can move from the shallows of intellectual knowledge into a deeper spiritual experience with Him. This has to be more than a quick “Now-I-lay-me-down-to-sleep” kind of prayer, but rather the passionate cry of Paul in Philippians 3:8-11: “Indeed, I count everything as loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. For his sake I have suffered the loss of all things and count them as rubbish, in order that I may gain Christ and be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but that which comes through faith in Christ, the righteousness from God that depends on faith—that I may know him and the power of his resurrection, and may share his sufferings, becoming like him in his death, that by any means possible I may attain the resurrection from the dead.”

Before we conclude this lesson regarding truly knowing God and His will for our lives, it’s important to remember that this is part of our sanctification in Christ. This means that divine revelation will almost certainly be an ongoing process, a progression from faith to faith. The fullness of knowing rarely happens instantaneously. But we can be encouraged by Paul’s writing in 2 Peter 3:18 - “You must grow in the grace and knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.” Paul repeats this sentiment in Colossians 3:10 - “Put on your new nature, and be renewed as you learn to know your Creator and become like him.” In the meantime, let us stand firm in whatever degree of revelation God gives us while He completes the process of opening our spiritual eyes to truly see Him in the fullness of His power.

Please join me next time as we explore THE PATH OF PROGRESS: RECKONING.

Grace and peace be unto you!

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Over the past several episodes we’ve been laying the Biblical groundwork regarding the work of the Blood and of the Cross in establishing our justification before God and the grounds for our ongoing sanctification into Christian maturity. I know at times it may have felt like slow going up to this point, but we can’t talk about the “how” of the victorious life in Christ without understanding the “why.” I hope that together we’ve established at least the basics of why, in the Blood of Jesus and the Cross of Jesus, we find everything we need to successfully run the Christian race until we hear the Father say, “Well done, my good and faithful servant.” (Matthew 25:23).

So now let’s begin to explore how we can live out in practical experience what God has declared to be true about us in concept. To start with, we must always keep this one fact uppermost in our minds: everything starts—and ends—with God’s grace which He gives us through no merit of our own. Period. Dot. The End. So, for instance, when Paul tells us in Philippians 2:12 to “Work hard to show the results of your salvation, obeying God with deep reverence and fear,” he immediately reminds us how we can do this in the next verse: “For God is working in you, giving you the desire and the power to do what pleases him.” We are only able to walk in victory because God has already provided the two ingredients victorious living requires: the desire to do it and the ability to do it.

This is the crucial difference between the Old Covenant and the New. The Mosaic Law was and is true and righteous, but it has no power to free us from sin; on the contrary, it brings condemnation on us because we’re unable to keep its commandments. Contrast that with what Paul says in Romans 8:1-4: “So now there is no condemnation for those who belong to Christ Jesus. And because you belong to him, the power of the life-giving Spirit has freed you from the power of sin that leads to death. The law of Moses was unable to save us because of the weakness of our sinful nature. So God did what the law could not do. He sent his own Son in a body like the bodies we sinners have. And in that body God declared an end to sin’s control over us by giving his Son as a sacrifice for our sins. He did this so that the just requirement of the law would be fully satisfied for us, who no longer follow our sinful nature but instead follow the Spirit.”

Notice that Paul says the Law in itself is “just.” And Paul does not say that Christ came to do away with the Law, but rather that Jesus fully satisfied the Law. And Paul makes it very clear that we are no longer bound—or free—to follow our old sinful nature. These are all extremely important distinctions, because they address several heretical teachings that are still alive and well today. One of these is that the Old Testament teachings are no longer relevant to us now that we’re under the New Covenant. Another false teaching goes to the opposite extreme by denying the work of grace, declaring that Christians are still obligated to follow the Law, and that failing to keep the Law completely will lead to eternal judgment. And a third dangerous fallacy that existed in the Early Church era and is still around today is that sin really isn’t that big of a deal, and that as long as a person repeats a “sinner’s prayer,” they can keep on living the same lifestyle as they always have.

All of these perverted views of Christianity are answered totally and completely by one thing alone: the grace of God. It was the grace of God that gave mankind the Law so that we could recognize both our sinfulness and our inability to atone for our sins on our own. It was the grace of God that sent Jesus to the Cross to provide that atonement and fulfill every requirement of the Law that we could not. And it is the grace of God that empowers us by the Holy Spirit to walk out our salvation in the real world, no longer slaves to our old way of living.

Please join me for our next episode entitled, THE PATH OF PROGRESS: KNOWING.

Until then, grace and peace be unto you!

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit wordonthemountain.substack.com

Today we’re continuing our Bible study series based on the book, The Normal Christian Life by Watchman Nee. In the previous episode we looked at how Adam’s sin in the Garden of Eden created a sinful nature which has been passed down to every human being since the Fall. Because Adam sinned, we all became sinners; we’re not sinners because we sin, we sin because we’re sinners—thanks (or no thanks) to Adam. So now we’re faced with the question, “How do I get out of the sinful nature I inherited from Adam?”

The answer is found in Romans 5:18-19: “Yes, Adam’s one sin brings condemnation for everyone, but Christ’s one act of righteousness brings a right relationship with God and new life for everyone. Because one person disobeyed God, many became sinners. But because one other person obeyed God, many will be made righteous.” In order to exchange the sinful nature we inherited from Adam for the righteous nature of Christ, we must die to the first and become alive to the second. Just to be clear, we’re no longer focusing on our initial justification through the Blood of Jesus; that is an accomplished fact and we can stand firm on that solid ground. But while the Blood alone is sufficient to make us right in God’s sight, the work of the Cross must now come into play in order for us to die to our old sinful nature.

We often hear it said that Jesus died on the Cross so that we don’t have to. That’s true in the literal, physical sense; we don’t have to be literally nailed to a cross in order for us to atone for our sins and die to our sin nature. But in God’s way of reckoning, we still must die—not physically, but by partaking in the death of Christ on the Cross through faith. “Since we believe that Christ died for all, we also believe that we have all died to our old life. He died for everyone so that those who receive his new life will no longer live for themselves. Instead, they will live for Christ, who died and was raised for them.” (2 Corinthians 5:14) Notice that Paul says that in the same way we believe that Christ died for us, we also believe that we have died to our old life by virtue of Christ’s death.

This concept of dying with Christ through faith is further explained in Romans 6:4-8,11: “For we died and were buried with Christ by baptism. And just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glorious power of the Father, now we also may live new lives. Since we have been united with him in his death, we will also be raised to life as he was. We know that our old sinful selves were crucified with Christ so that sin might lose its power in our lives. We are no longer slaves to sin. For when we died with Christ we were set free from the power of sin. And since we died with Christ, we know we will also live with him…So you also should consider (reckon) yourselves to be dead to the power of sin and alive to God through Christ Jesus.” Later in this study we’ll be expanding on the significance of that word “consider” or “reckon,” but for now we can clearly see that we die to our old selves by faith in what Jesus has already accomplished on the Cross.

In I Corinthians 15:45,47, Paul identifies Jesus Christ in two remarkable ways. The first is that Christ is “the last Adam,” and secondly He is “the second man.” These descriptions are very deliberate and speak very clearly to the theme of today’s episode. As “the last Adam,” from Bethlehem to Golgotha, Christ gathered up everything that was of the first Adam and took it to judgment and death. As “the second man,” Jesus became the head of a new race of blood-bought believers, no longer held captive by Adam’s sinful legacy. “Anyone who belongs to Christ has become a new person. The old life is gone; a new life has begun!” (2 Corinthians 5:17)

I don’t believe we can emphasize too strongly how important it is to our spiritual maturity to understand that our spiritual death to our old sinful nature has already been accomplished by the physical death of Jesus on the Cross. The reason this understanding is so vital is that Satan and our own feelings are constantly trying to convince us that we’re still living the “old man” life, that we haven’t really died with Christ at all. Every time we mess up, the enemy is right there in our ears telling us that this idea of a new life in Christ is all just a lie. When that happens, we must stand firm on the truth of God’s Word. God has declared us to be dead to sin, therefore we are dead to sin, regardless of our feelings or circumstances. “If the Son sets you free, you are truly free.” (John 8:36)

Please join me for our next episode entitled, IT’S ALL ABOUT GRACE, as we begin to explore how we can take what God has declared to be true about us and put that into practical experience in our everyday lives.

Grace and peace be unto you!

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In previous episodes we’ve focused on the importance and efficacy of the Blood of Jesus for the forgiveness for the sins we have committed, in order to be in right standing before God. We’ve seen that the Blood has been declared to be wholly sufficient by God, and therefore it is wholly sufficient for us to be declared righteous before God, to answer our own guilty consciences, and to refute Satan’s accusations against us. This is what we call justification, meaning that the righteousness of Christ has been credited to our account solely on the basis of what Jesus has done. “But people are counted as righteous, not because of their work, but because of their faith in God who forgives sinners…Oh, what joy for those whose disobedience is forgiven, whose sins are put out of sight. Yes, what joy for those whose record the Lord has cleared of sin.” (Romans 4:5, 7-8)

But after we have been justified by God’s grace through faith, we soon become aware that there’s still something not right within us, because we find ourselves falling back into the same patterns of sinful behavior over and over again. This is where we see the Cross of Christ come into play. The Blood of Jesus has cleansed us from our sins, but it is the Cross that deals with our sinful nature. The Blood gives life, while the Cross brings death. This seems like a contradiction, but it’s all part of the same Gospel message, as we will see.

In Romans 6:1-4, Paul asks this question: “Should we keep on sinning so that God can show us more and more of his wonderful grace? Of course not! Since we have died to sin, how can we continue to live in it? Or have you forgotten that when we were joined with Christ Jesus in baptism, we joined him in his death? For we died and were buried with Christ by baptism. And just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glorious power of the Father, now we also may live new lives.” Baptism in the Scriptures is symbolic of death; it’s impossible to experience new life in Christ without also participating in His death. This dying to our old self and taking on the life of Christ is central to what we call our sanctification, the ongoing process of becoming like Jesus in actual experience. We’ll be exploring this concept in much greater depth as we move forward in this series.

It doesn’t take long after our initial salvation experience for us to realize that while we’re no longer in trouble with God, so to speak, we’re still very much in conflict with ourselves. We haven’t yet experienced the “peace which surpasses all understanding” spoken of in Philippians 4:7. We have peace with God by faith in the shed Blood of Jesus, but we have no peace within. The reason for this is that while my sins have been forgiven, my sin nature is still very much alive and well! There is something inside me that constantly draws me back to sin, no matter how hard I try to “be good.”

Paul deals with this dilemma at great length in Romans 7:19,21-25: “I want to do what is good, but I don’t. I don’t want to do what is wrong, but I do it anyway…I have discovered this principle of life—that when I want to do what is right, I inevitably do what is wrong. I love God’s laws with all my heart. But there is another power within me that is at war with my mind. This power makes me a slave to the sin that is still within me. Oh, what a miserable person I am! Who will free me from this life that is dominated by sin and death? Thank God! The answer is in Jesus Christ our Lord.”

This is clear evidence that “getting saved” by believing that the Blood of Jesus washes away our sins is only the beginning of a life-long process of being crucified with Christ. Going back to my own religious experience, there was a great deal of emphasis placed on the initial salvation experience, but after that there was an almost complete lack of teaching regarding how to live an overcoming, victorious Christian life. What instruction I did receive was focused almost entirely on what I needed to do in order to “stay saved,” not on the principle of exchanging my old life for a new life in Christ. My focus was on becoming a better version of myself, when in reality what I actually needed was to die to myself completely so that “it is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me.” (Galatians 2:20)

So we’re beginning to understand that the Blood of Jesus must work in concert with the Cross of Jesus in order for our justification and sanctification to be made complete. To have one without the other is to be a shallow, frustrated, spiritually weak Christian without any lasting peace within. It’s not enough to keep sweeping away the spiderwebs; we need to deal with the spider.

Please join me as we look deeper into the origins of our sinful nature in our next episode, THE LEGACY OF ADAM.

Grace and peace be unto you.

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This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit wordonthemountain.substack.com

In the last two articles we’ve looked at how the Blood of Jesus both satisfies God’s holy demands and is the answer to our guilty consciences. Now we will examine how the Blood is our defense from Satan’s accusations against us.

Revelation 12:10 speaks clearly of Satan as the accuser of the saints. As we know from experience, the enemy’s accusations deal directly with the sins we have committed before we became believers as well as the sins we continue to commit after our conversion experience. Not only does Satan try to bring condemnation on us before God, but he also attacks us with feelings of guilt and shame when we sin. So in that sense there’s an overlap between the need for the Blood to deal with our guilty consciences as well as with Satan’s accusations against us before God. The good news is that the Blood of Christ is more than sufficient to defeat all of Satan’s attempts to condemn us.

Having said that, we should not minimize the grounds upon which Satan has reason to bring accusations against us in the first place. When Adam and Eve sinned in the Garden, they effectively abdicated humanity’s rightful place of dominion over God’s creation and gave the enemy a foothold in his ongoing battle against the Kingdom of God. The curse of sin has been passed down to every generation since the Fall, and we’re still struggling with it today. There would be no need for the Blood to answer Satan’s accusations if Satan had nothing to accuse us of! We have sinned, and we continue to sin, and our enemy never grows weary of constantly throwing our sins up into our faces and before our holy and righteous God.

Now when this happens, when Satan tries to drag us down with the weight of our sins, it’s very important that we understand where the answer to his accusations must come from. What we must not do is to try to counter Satan’s condemnations by scrambling around inside ourselves looking for some evidence that we’re actually not that bad. No! The fact of the matter is that we are that bad! In Romans 7:18,19, Paul pulls no punches: “And I know that nothing good lives in me, that is, in my sinful nature. I want to do what is right, but I can’t. I want to do what is good, but I don’t. I don’t want to do what is wrong, but I do it anyway.”

This is why a works-based view of Christianity is doomed to fail. It is simply impossible for us to do enough good works to counteract the weight of our sins. Of course we need to pray, read the Bible, treat others with kindness, give generously, and all the other instructions we’re given in God’s Word. But none of those things are sufficient to deal with the problem of our sins. Referring again to Galatians 2:16, “We know that a person is made right with God by faith in Jesus Christ, not by obeying the law…For no one will ever be made right with God by obeying the law.”

But not only must we avoid the temptation to try to find enough good in ourselves to defend against the enemy’s attacks, we must also avoid going to the other extreme and give in to total despair at our own sinfulness. All that does is give Satan even more ammunition to use against us, which in turn causes us to fall deeper into self-condemnation and alienation from God. Basically what we’re doing in this scenario is agreeing with our accuser that we are unworthy of God’s love.

So if we can’t answer Satan’s accusations on the basis of our own righteousness, and we mustn’t surrender to his condemnations in defeat, what are we left with? The only answer is to stand by faith in the assurance that the Blood of Jesus is totally, completely, irrevocably sufficient to answer every accusation of Satan. God is satisfied with it. This is the great mystery of the Gospel: we are unworthy of anything but death because of our great sinfulness. But when Jesus Christ took every one of our sins upon Himself on the Cross, and we became worthy in the eyes of God, Satan has no more grounds upon which to accuse us. God has pronounced us holy, and Satan has no higher court to which he can appeal.

“Who dares accuse us whom God has chosen for his own? No one—for God himself has given us right standing with himself. Who then will condemn us? No one—for Christ Jesus died for us and was raised to life for us, and he is sitting in the place of honor at God’s right hand, pleading for us.” (Romans 8:33-34)

Now that we have seen how the Blood of Jesus is the one and only answer for our sins, we must now turn our attention to how the Cross of Christ deals with our sinful nature. Please join me next time as we examine THE CROSS AND THE PRINCIPLE OF SIN.

Until then, grace and peace be unto you.

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This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit wordonthemountain.substack.com

In our previous article we took an in-depth look at the value of the Blood of Jesus as it relates to our standing before God. Now we must explore how the Blood deals with our own guilty consciences. As sincere believers, we can become so acutely aware of the weight of our sins that we can very easily begin to measure the value and effectiveness of the Blood of Jesus by how we feel at any given time. We think: “If I feel forgiven, I must be forgiven. If I still feel guilty, maybe I’m not really forgiven.” As long as we view the value of the Blood subjectively we will never find peace.

The only antidote to our own guilty consciences is accepting by faith that the Blood of Christ is sufficient because God says it is. “For you know that God paid a ransom to save you from the empty life you inherited from your ancestors. And it was not paid with mere gold or silver, which lose their value. It was the precious blood of Christ, the sinless, spotless Lamb of God.” (1 Peter 1:18-19)

The Blood’s value isn’t determined by my feelings about it. It’s determined by God’s acceptance of it. And God has accepted it — fully, completely, and permanently. His righteousness has been satisfied. When He looks at the Blood of His Son, He is satisfied.

So here’s the practical question for you: when you approach God, on what basis are you coming to Him? Are you coming because you had a good morning of Bible reading? Because you were kind to someone today? Because you feel spiritually “up”? Or are you coming solely on the basis of the shed Blood of Jesus? Because that’s the only ground that stands firm. My performance fluctuates. My feelings fluctuate. But the Blood never does. Whether I’ve had a spiritually rich week or a spiritually dismal one, my basis of access to God is exactly the same — the Blood of Christ.

This doesn’t mean we can live carelessly. But it does mean our boldness before God is never earned; it’s always given. A clear conscience isn’t something we achieve. It’s something we receive, through what Jesus has already done.

It is only when we accept by faith that the Blood of Jesus has been counted as sufficient by God that we can “come boldly to the throne of our gracious God…receive his mercy, and…find grace to help us when we need it most.” (Hebrews 4:16) My “boldness” towards God cannot be based on how kind or patient I’ve been today, how many good deeds I’ve done, or on any other grounds except the shed blood of Jesus Christ. There are going to be days when I haven’t been kind or patient, when I have failed to do good to those around me. So if I’m measuring my “worthiness” to approach God by my own efforts, my relationship with the Lord will constantly be in flux and turmoil. I’ll never have a lasting assurance that God loves me regardless of how “up” or “down” I feel spiritually.

It’s no coincidence that the means by which we were initially brought near to God are the same means by which we can continue to come near to Him. In Ephesians 2:13 we’re told that “Once you were far away from God, but now you have been brought near to him through the blood of Christ.” And after our initial salvation experience, “we can boldly enter heaven’s Most Holy Place because of the blood of Jesus” and we can “go right into the presence of God…for our guilty consciences have been sprinkled with Christ’s blood to make us clean.” So “Let us hold tightly without wavering to the hope we affirm, for God can be trusted to keep his promise.” (Hebrews 10:19,22,23)

Well might we sing out the words of that great hymn:

This is all my hope and peace, nothing but the blood of Jesus.

This is all my righteousness, nothing but the blood of Jesus.

Thank God for the blood!

Please join me next time as we consider THE BLOOD AND SATAN’S ACCUSATIONS.

Grace and peace be unto you.

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If I had a dollar for every time I’ve sung a song about the Blood of Jesus, I’d be on a long extended vacation on a beach in Hawaii right about now. Songs like Are You Washed In The Blood, Nothing But The Blood, There Is Power In The Blood, The Blood Will Never Lose Its Power, Thank You Jesus For The Blood—the list goes on and on. Sadly, for most of the years and decades I’ve been singing those songs, I didn’t really have a clue as to what I was actually singing about. I didn’t understand just how precious the Blood of Jesus actually is—not just to me, but to God.

As we saw in our previous article, TWO PROBLEMS, ONE GOSPEL, from the very beginning of human history, God has ordained that our sins must be dealt with by the shedding of blood. This principle reached its complete fulfillment when Jesus Christ spilled His precious blood on the cross of Calvary for the atonement of our sins, once and for all time. “He is so rich in kindness and grace that he purchased our freedom with the blood of his Son and forgave our sins.” (Ephesians 1:7). Our sins are not forgiven because God overlooks them, but because when God looks at us, He sees the Blood of Jesus. When the Blood has been applied to our sins, there is no longer anything for God to overlook. I think this is one of the hardest truths for us to accept, that God is not keeping a running list of all the bad things we’ve done. “And I will forgive their wickedness, and I will never again remember their sins.” (Hebrews 8:12) We cannot truly understand how precious the Blood of Jesus is to us until we see how valuable the Blood is to God.

Throughout the Bible, there are numerous references to the Blood as it relates to atonement, and the common thread running through these declarations is that the Blood is primarily for God. Here’s what I mean.

In the Old Testament, there was one day each year called the Day of Atonement. On that day, the high priest would take blood from the sin offering, walk into the innermost part of the tabernacle — the Most Holy Place — and sprinkle the blood of the sacrifice seven times before the Ark of the Covenant. The sin offering itself took place in full view of the people, but the sprinkling of the blood was done behind the veil of the Most Holy Place, out of view of the congregation. It was a transaction between the high priest and God, in private. The Book of Hebrews makes it clear that the Levitical high priesthood was a foreshadowing of the ministry of Jesus as our Great High Priest. “With his own blood—not the blood of goats and calves—he entered the Most Holy Place once for all time and secured our redemption forever.” (Hebrews 9:12) The blood offered by the Old Testament high priest in the Most Holy Place directly foretold of the Blood of Christ offered on the Cross. And just as the sprinkling of the blood of the sin sacrifice by the Levitical high priest was done in the sight of God alone, so Jesus as our Great High Priest took His own blood and offered it to the Father alone. Thus we see that the Blood is meant for God, first and foremost.

We see this same principle at work in the Passover in Egypt. The blood of the lamb was put on the doorposts and the lintel, which were on the outside of the Israelite’s houses. The sacrifice was eaten inside the house, but the blood was applied to the outside of the house. God said, “When I see the blood, I will pass over you.” (Exodus 12:13) The people eating inside the house couldn’t even see the blood—because it wasn’t there for them to look at — it was there for God to see.

God is holy and righteous by His very nature. Because of this, He cannot allow anything unholy or unrighteous to stand in His presence. That becomes a problem for us because we, by our very nature, are unholy and unrighteous. If it were up to us to make ourselves acceptable in God’s sight, we would be doomed, plain and simple. “For no one will ever be made right with God by obeying the law.” (Galatians 2:16)

But thank God, it is not up to us! From the very beginning of human history, God ordained that only by means of the Blood would humanity find atonement and ultimately complete deliverance from the penalty, power, and presence of sin. God put a value on the Blood that can never be diminished, and because He counts the Blood to be precious, so can we. When we truly understand how important the Blood is to God, we can begin to see how important it is to us as well.

Please join me for our next episode, THE BLOOD AND MY GUILTY CONSCIENCE.

Grace and peace be unto you.

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As I mentioned in the previous article, the goal of this study series is to offer hope to those who find themselves in a never-ending cycle of sinning, repentance, forgiveness, sinning again, repenting again, over and over with no end in sight. The good news, the literal Good News of the Gospel, is that God has made a way out of this rat maze if we will only accept it by faith.

In this episode, I’d like to lay the groundwork for the first part of our journey together. In a nutshell, God’s plan for humanity addresses two aspects of the Christian experience that must both be dealt with. The first is that “Everyone has sinned and fallen short of God’s glorious standard.” (Romans 3:23) Our sins have separated us from God, and only the Blood of Jesus can bridge the gap. This is the concept of justification, the initial work of salvation that takes place when we believe the Gospel message, repent, and accept that the Blood of Jesus washes away our sins. At that very moment, without any other action required on our part, we exchange our unrighteous, sinful existence for the holy righteousness of Christ, and we are justified, made right, in the eyes of God.

Then there is the second, ongoing work of sanctification, by which our old habits, thoughts, feelings, and emotions are brought under the Lordship of Christ by the Holy Spirit. Unlike the instantaneous experience of justification, sanctification is a life-long process. But in the same way that justification is made possible solely on the basis of the shed blood of Jesus, sanctification also takes place by virtue of what Christ accomplished on the Cross, not by any righteousness of our own. So in the coming sessions of this study, we’ll see how both the Blood of Jesus and the Cross of Jesus work together to lead us into the victorious Christian life.

Let’s begin with the first problem addressed by the Gospel, which is our track record of sins—all the things we’ve done wrong in our lives which have alienated us from a holy God. It is the Blood of Jesus that provides forgiveness for these sins we have committed. In Romans 3:23-25, the Apostle Paul declares, “For everyone has sinned; we all fall short of God’s glorious standard. Yet God, in his grace, freely makes us right in his sight. He did this through Christ Jesus when he freed us from the penalty for our sins. For God presented Jesus as the sacrifice for sin. People are made right with God when they believe that Jesus sacrificed his life, shedding his blood.” And in Romans 5:8-9 we read, “But God showed his great love for us by sending Christ to die for us while we were still sinners. And since we have been made right in God’s sight by the blood of Christ, he will certainly save us from God’s condemnation.” In both of these passages we see that it is the Blood of Jesus that deals with the problem of our sins, our willful disobedience to God’s commandments.

The roots of that disobedience go all the way back to the Garden of Eden in the Book of Genesis. When God created Adam and Eve and placed them in the garden, He gave them very explicit instructions regarding the tree of the knowledge of good and evil— specifically, He told them not to eat the fruit of that tree. Then we see that Satan, in the form of the serpent, deceived Eve and she ate the fruit of the forbidden tree. Eve then gave the fruit to Adam, and he ate it also. Immediately their eyes were opened, and they realized they had sinned against God. Their sin resulted in guilty consciences, which led them to try to hide from God in the cool of the evening. Because of their disobedience, God had no choice but to pronounce judgment on Adam and Eve, as well as on Satan. From that moment, humanity, Satan, and creation itself became cursed, and that curse has persisted down to this very day. In Romans 5:12, Paul states that, “When Adam sinned, sin entered the world. Adam’s sin brought death, so death spread to everyone, for everyone sinned.”

But even in the story of the Fall we see a foreshadowing of God’s provision of a solution to our sin problem. God determined that the fig leaves Adam and Eve used to cover themselves were inadequate, so in Genesis 3:21 we read, “And the Lord God made clothing from animal skins for Adam and his wife.” The blood of an animal was shed in order for humanity to be properly clothed. Thousands of years later, animal blood sacrifice would be instituted as a means of atoning for sins under the Mosaic Law, which was later fulfilled completely by the shed blood of Jesus Christ on Calvary’s cross. So we see that “Without the shedding of blood, there is no forgiveness.” (Hebrews 9:22)

In the next few episodes, we’ll see how the Blood of Jesus impacts our standing before God, provides the answer to our guilty consciences, and is our defense against the accusations of Satan. We’ll begin next time with an exploration of THE BLOOD AND MY STANDING BEFORE GOD.

Grace and peace be unto you.

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit wordonthemountain.substack.com

I’ve been a Christian for over 50 years. Half a century. And for the vast majority of that time I have struggled with my faith. I’m convinced that, if we were to be totally honest, many Christians would say the same thing. I believe that at the root of this struggle is one burning question:

If I am saved, if I’ve truly been born again and am a new creation in Christ, why don’t I FEEL like it and why don’t I ACT like it?

For most of my life, there’s been a disconnect between what I wanted to believe about my salvation and what I actually experienced on a day-to-day basis. I have always sincerely wanted to live an overcoming Christian life, but I found myself stuck in Romans 7:24—“Wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from this body of death?” For decades I read Galatians 2:20 where Paul said, “It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me,” yet I had absolutely no clue what he was actually talking about. I grew up believing Christianity was about living a changed life, never realizing the Christian experience actually requires an exchanged life.

I think it would be helpful at this point in the introductory episode of this study series to talk a little about what I call the “fringe Pentecostal” tradition I grew up in and how it influenced my spiritual viewpoint for decades. Without getting too deep into the weeds, I can say that my religious upbringing was dominated by four driving forces: emotion, performance, guilt, and fear. My assessment of my spiritual condition depended entirely on how I felt and how I was performing. Everything I did, said, and thought was focused on what I believed I had to do to make God happy and convince myself and those around me that I was still saved. But since my feelings and my performance fluctuated wildly, I spent most of my life feeling guilty because I wasn’t measuring up to our standard of “holiness.” Then, of course, since I was almost constantly weighed down by condemnation, I lived in a near-constant state of fear of what God was going to do to me because I was such a failure as a Christian.

In my religious world, there were no such things as assurance of salvation or God’s unconditional love. On the contrary, within the tiny bubble of my religious experience, we looked down on other “so-called Christians” who emphasized God’s love and grace. We even had a label for it: “easy-believism.” We prided ourselves on being part of the chosen few who understood that salvation was something you had to fight for, every minute of every day. Heaven was only for those who had earned their way into it, and you wouldn’t know if you had made it until you died.

Looking back now, I realize that we were held captive to a religious system just as oppressive as the Old Testament Law. Every sin had to be atoned for, not with an animal sacrifice, but by what we called “repentance”—anguished weeping and wailing down at the altar every Sunday night until we “prayed through.” Exhausted, we could finally go home with our consciences temporarily soothed over, still nervously hoping it was enough to last us until the next Sunday when we would do it all over again.

Not once in my formative years do I recall hearing about being justified by the blood of Jesus. As far as I knew, the only thing that could “justify” me was my own efforts to do all the right things, or, to be more accurate, my desperate striving to not do the wrong things. And of course, that meant I never considered myself justified before God, because I never stopped sinning and I never did all the right things a “good” Christian should do!

If that sounds like a miserable way to live, that’s because it is—and I don’t want anyone else to go through life trying to carry that kind of burden. My goal in leading this Bible study is to speak to those who have never truly experienced the freedom we have in Christ, and who are tired of living a works-based, guilt-ridden, fear-controlled life.

Our study will draw heavily from the book The Normal Christian Life by Watchman Nee, which is available as a free PDF download here. I highly recommend that you take the time to read it in conjunction with this teaching series.

The Normal Christian Life

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We’ll begin our journey by focusing on what Watchman Nee calls “Our Dual Problem: Sins and Sin.” We will explore the importance of both the Blood of Jesus and the Cross of Jesus as they relate to our initial justification before God and our ongoing sanctification into spiritual maturity.

We’ll begin next time with an episode entitled, TWO PROBLEMS, ONE GOSPEL.

Thank you for joining me on this journey. Grace and peace be unto you.

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit wordonthemountain.substack.com