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By Hellen J. Kuleskey
Do thoughts repeatedly trouble your mind? Do you, for unknown reasons, feel shame and guilt? Do past mistakes, failures, humiliations and rejections often parade through your mind?
You are a born-again believer in Christ and are living for Him. You know the Word of God and you are claiming God’s promises. So you conclude that God must be dealing with you because Jesus is returning for a Church that is “without spot or blemish.” You think that must be God purging you, so you confess and repent of the same sins over and over again. Then the thought comes to you that the Lord cannot use an unclean vessel, so you begin searching for hidden sin in your life. More confessions follow.
What is actually happening? Is this the conviction of the Holy Spirit or is it condemnation from the devil? Let us look at what occurred at salvation when you accepted Jesus Christ as your Lord and Savior.
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Your sins were forgiven. “If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness” (1 Jn. 1:9). “Who forgives all your iniquities... As far as the east is from the west, so far has he removed our transgressions from us” (Psa. 103:3a,12). “In whom we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of sins” (Col. 1:14).
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You became a new creation. “If anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; old things have passed away; behold, all things have become new” (2 Cor. 5:17). A person, at the new birth, does not receive a new body, though someday he or she will. It is the inward man (the real person) that becomes a new creation, born anew by the Spirit of God.
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You are now righteous. “For he has made Him who knew no sin to be sin for us, that we might become the righteousness of God in Him” (2 Cor. 5:21). Righteousness means right standing with God. Jesus who is righteous became our righteousness. Therefore, we can stand in the presence of God as though we had never done any wrong.
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You are justified. “Having now been justified by His blood, we shall be saved from wrath through Him” (Rom. 5:9). Justified means just-as-if-I-never-sinned!
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You have been redeemed. “Christ has redeemed us from the curse of the law, having become a curse for us; for it is written, ‘Cursed is everyone who hangs on a tree’ ” (Gal. 3:13). We are redeemed from the curse of the law which is threefold: poverty, sickness and the second death. (See the last half of Deut. 28.)
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You were delivered. “He has delivered us from the power of darkness and translated us into the kingdom of the Son of His love” (Col.1:13). When you were born again and confessed the Lordship of Jesus Christ over your life, you were delivered from the authority of darkness, the power of Satan, and were transferred into the kingdom of God’s dear Son.
From the above Scriptures we learn that at the moment of conversion we become God’s children who are new creations in the inner man. Now we must begin the task of renewing our minds—putting off the “old man” and putting on the “new man.” (See Ephes. 4:22, 32.) God’s goal for us from the moment of our new birth is to conform us to the image of Christ. As we learn His Word and obey it, we begin to mature spiritually—our minds are gradually being changed and we show the fruits of the Holy Spirit in our lives.
But Satan is opposed to our maturity and will do anything to keep us from realizing who we are in Christ and our inheritance in Him (what we have in Him). Our minds are the battleground. He plants in our minds negative thoughts such as fear, unworthiness, blame, weakness, guilt, shame, etc. When we accept and believe these thoughts as truth, the enemy gains a foothold in our lives and begins to torment us. If we don’t realize where the accusations are coming from and confess what God says about us in His Word, the torment increases. Although we are not in the kingdom of darkness, we give the enemy power by believing his lies.
How do we find release from such tormenting thoughts? We do as Jesus did in the wilderness temptation. We use the “sword of the Spirit,” the Word of God. Jesus said, “It is written” and quoted what God says on that subject. He knew that “the Word of God is living and powerful, and sharper than any two-edged sword.” (See Heb. 4:12.) Someone has said that winning this battle is not a power encounter with the enemy, it is a truth encounter. We have to out-truth him.
Jesus said, “You shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free” (Jn 8:32). God’s Word is truth, but for it to become our Sword, we must believe it in our hearts and confess it with our mouths—the same way we did to get saved. (See Rom. 10:10.) The victory of Calvary is ours. We can boldly say, “Now thanks be to God who always leads us in triumph in Christ” (2 Cor. 2:14).
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