“And they overcame him by the blood of the Lamb and by the word of their testimony, and they did not love their lives to the death” (Revelation 12:11). This chapter emphasizes the finished work of Christ on the Cross and at the Resurrection. The first step in overcoming is “the blood of the Lamb.” We must continually build our faith in what Jesus did for us, what He accomplished for us, and what His promises and purposes are for us. We live in a negative world, and it is difficult to keep our minds positive and upbeat. Focusing on what Jesus did and not so much on what we can do is a necessary point of beginning.
When I need to overcome, I spend whatever time and energy needed in order to hear what God has to say about my situation. Everything else must take second place! If I can hear Him speak, I am on the way to victory! Usually the word that God will speak will have something to do with what He accomplished for us. It is often centered around the finished work of His Cross, His grace, and His mercy. Once you receive this promise from God, then continually meditate on it. This procedure will fulfill what we are calling, “the blood of the Lamb.”
The Word says that anything that is not of faith is sin. “for whatever is not from faith is sin” (Romans 14:23b). That does not necessarily mean that you are "sinning," as in some moral act or in un-forgiveness or the like, but it does mean that you are living in the natural and missing God's mark.
The Word says that faith pleases God. “But without faith it is impossible to please Him, for he who comes to God must believe that He is, and that He is a rewarder of those who diligently seek Him” (Hebrews 11:6).
The Word says that if we wake up and see who we really are, then we will not be so prone to live on a lower level, or missing the mark in sin. “Awake to righteousness, and sin not; for some have not the knowledge of God: I speak this to your shame” (1 Corinthians 15:34, KJV).
How do we receive this faith? “So then faith cometh by hearing, and hearing by the word of God” (Romans 10:17, KJV). The word "Word" in this Scripture is rhema, which means a personal word spoken out of the mouth of God and customized for you personally. How do you hear in this manner? I suggest that you practice the "Relationship Skills" that we have outlined in the attached appendix.
Having said that, now ask God to make these Scriptures and truths real to you from His mouth so that you may hear the Word and that faith would rise in your heart, and that your life would turn from one that is lived on the lower level of the common (sin) to the abundant life which comes by faith.
Here are some Scriptures and Scriptural facts that can let you know who you are; they can help to give you your real identity. Meditate upon them, study them for yourself.
A blood covenant has been applied to your life. You are clean by the blood of Jesus! It is up to you to accept it or reject it, or perhaps ignore it out of ignorance. A great exchange has taken place between you and Jesus Christ. On the Cross, He took every bad and negative thing in your life. At the resurrection He gave you every positive thing in the nature of God Almighty! He begot you as sons and daughters and seated you with Him in a realm far above all your enemies. Satan, your enemy, will do all in his power to steal this from you with lies. However, if you know the truth, and stand on the truth, you will be a winner! You went through the crucifixion with Him, His death with Him, and have already been resurrected with Him.
These facts are good seed, which will bear good fruit in your life. They require a faith in God’s Word that surpasses your natural senses. What is more reliable to you, the Word of God, or your senses? They are generic facts that apply to all believers. Besides these, God may give you a specific promise that applies to your situation. The Holy Spirit through the Word can make who you are in Christ a reality. You need to take the Word at face value and believe it as a legal document.
You were hopelessly lost. That means that someone else had to search for you. Ephesians 2:12 (a & b) says, “that at that time you were without Christ, …having no hope and without God in the world.”
You were dead in your sins. There is no way out for a dead man, except to receive life. Ephesians 2:1 says, “And you He made alive, who were dead in trespasses and sins.”
The blood Jesus shed on the Cross removed your sins. He took your place. Ephesians 1:7 says, “In Him we have redemption through His blood, the forgiveness of sins, according to the riches of His grace.” The word, “forgiveness,” actually means to separate or cut away. Our sins have been taken away from us and put onto Jesus, our sacrificial Lamb.
You were already “In Christ” when the following events took place.
You were crucified with Christ. “I have been crucified with Christ; it is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me; and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave Himself for me” (Galatians 2:20).
You died with Christ. “For if we have been joined together in the likeness of His death, we shall also be in the likeness of His resurrection” (Romans 6:5).
You were buried with Christ. “We were buried therefore with Him through Baptism into death” (Romans 6:4). “Having been buried with him in baptism” (Colossians 2:12).
You were made alive with Christ. “And you being dead through your trespasses and the uncircumcision of your flesh, you did He make alive together with Him” (Colossians 2:13). “Even when we were dead through our trespasses [God] made us alive together with Christ” (Ephesians 2:5).
You were raised with Christ. You are seated with Christ. “He [God] made us alive with Christ even when we were dead in transgressions--it is by grace you have been saved. And God raised us up with Christ and seated us with him in the heavenly realms in Christ Jesus” (Ephesians 2:5,6).
That is our legal standing with God today and the foundation of our legal rights. As far as the spiritual world is concerned, your position is with Christ in the heavenlies. You are in a seat of authority. Satan and your mind will tell you that you are not seated with Christ in the heavenlies, but that is a lie! You need to know that God seated you with Him while you were yet a sinner!
You are a new creation. “Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; old things have passed away; behold, all things have become new” (2 Corinthians 5:17).
You might ask, how can this be? Good question. God put us in Christ. “But of Him you are in Christ Jesus, who became for us wisdom from God--and righteousness and sanctification and redemption” (1 Corinthians 1:30). Being in Christ is like you were in your father and mother as a sperm and an egg. You inherited their history in your genealogy. Just imagine that you are a marker inside of a book. When the book is moved, the marker goes with it. When the book is put on the shelf, the marker goes on the shelf. If the book is burned, the marker is burned. If by some miracle the book is restored and put back on the shelf, so is the marker.
You were redeemed. Redemption is a Bible word that confuses many people. Let’s see if we can dig out the hidden treasures in its real meaning.
According to Vines Complete Expository Dictionary, redeem means “to buy” or “buy out,” especially of purchasing a slave with a view to his freedom. It means “to release by paying a price of ransom from bondage.” It was a word commonly used in the market place. Think of it as going to a pawn shop to redeem something that was sold in the hands of a stranger, the wrongful but yet legal owner.
The price of redemption was the blood of Jesus. We are not explicitly told to whom the price was paid. I submit that the price was due to God Himself. And it was God Himself who paid the price.
Colossians 1:14 says, “in whom we have redemption through His blood, the remission of sins.”
1 Peter 1:18,19 says, “knowing that you were not redeemed with corruptible things, like silver or gold, from your aimless conduct received by tradition from your fathers, but with the precious blood of Christ, as of a lamb without blemish and without spot.”
The worth of an object is ultimately established by the price one is willing to pay for it. God thought that you were so valuable to Him that He paid that price of His own son for you. Your worth is not established by what other people think of you, how much money you have, how much education you have, or how successful your life has been. Your worth, and your identity is based upon the fact that the Creator of the Universe paid the highest price He could pay to purchase you, His own Son!
The parables in Matthew chapter 13 tell the story. “The kingdom of heaven is like treasure hidden in a field. When a man found it, he hid it again, and then in his joy went and sold all he had and bought that field” (Matthew 13:44).
The man who found the treasure is Jesus. The field is the world. This is stated in Matthew 13:38 in another parable. When the man discovered that there was a treasure, he hid it. This is like Jesus putting a cover on us so that Satan cannot steal us. He did not really want the field, but he was realistic enough to know that in order to get the treasure, he had to pay the price for the field. The price of the field was very high. It cost him all he had.
You were reconciled.
“Reconcile” is a powerful word. Strong's Concordance defines it “to bring back a former state of harmony.” It is defined “to repair, to put back into working order, making peace between two opposing views or groups.” “Reconcile” infers that changes have taken place, even exchanges. Why do you suppose it was God’s plan to reconcile us to Him? I submit that the end goal for this and all of the other aspects of the Cross we have been writing about is friendship and intimacy with God. He desires to be close to you. He said in John 15 that we were His friends, not only His servants. That is a very foreign concept to many people, and is easy for even Christians to forget and to fail to nurture. Our “normal” position with God is intimacy.
All evil was reconciled.
2 Corinthians 5:18 says, “All this is from God, who reconciled us to himself through Christ and gave us the ministry of reconciliation.” This is our ministry here on earth, to take all the enemies of our lives, dip them into the blood and Cross of Jesus Christ, and turn them into friends. We covered this subject at length in chapter 5.
Propitiation.
Propitiation, according to The American Heritage Dictionary, [1] means to “conciliate (an offended power); to appease wrath.” The Bible clearly states that God is love, yet God has wrath that must be appeased. How do these two apparent opposites become reconciled?
Without wrath, a law cannot accomplish its intended good.
God is a God of mercy and judgment. Actually they are not contrary to one another, in fact one cannot exist without the other. The are interdependent.
God set up the universe and man to operate under laws. The law of gravity is one example. If someone abused the law of gravity, they would feel the wrath of that law. But if they for some reason would not feel the wrath of gravity, neither would gravity be capable of its intended good, keeping us planted on Earth without floating around. Hebrews 1:3 states that God upholds all things by His Word. If His Word fails then the entire creation would fail and most likely implode. Therefore God must maintain His laws with justice and judgment. If we have laws prohibiting murder, our government must prosecute those who break that law and bring them to justice. In the same way, the breaking of God’s laws must be prosecuted, otherwise we could not exist. Therefore God cannot wink at sin, or at the man who sins. He cannot simply excuse sin or unrighteousness. If He did, His Word and His laws would fail.
In the Garden of Eden as recorded in Genesis chapter 3, God did two things that I would like to mention in reaction to the sin of Adam and Eve. First He informed them that they had come under a curse (as He also did to Satan) and had lost the blessing of being connected to Him, and second He made coats of skin and clothed them. These acts of wrath and kindness taken together can tend to confuse man’s view of God’s nature.
All of God’s wrath was put on Jesus at the Cross. The Passover Lamb is your example. The Israelites who were in Egypt did not deserve to be delivered from the horrible plagues that were coming on the land and its people. However they were instructed by God through Moses to take a perfect lamb, kill it, and spread its blood over the doorposts of their homes. That act of faith kept them perfectly safe. The lamb took their place. Jesus took your place. Jesus was your propitiation. God took the wrath due to you, and to those you need to forgive, and put it on Jesus.
You were made righteous. Righteous means to have a right standing with God. A son (or daughter) is righteous with his father by birth. He is in the family and he has a right standing that the neighbor does not have. We are righteous by our new birth, not by anything we have done. “God made him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God” (2 Corinthians 5:21). We are righteous because God put His life in us, not because of the way we act or live.
You were justified. This subject will be covered in chapter 9.
Satan’s dominion over you is broken. Satan had dominion of your old nature, but your new nature is Christ’s own Spirit that has already defeated Satan. Romans 6:8-10 says, “But if we died with Christ, we believe that we shall also live with Him, knowing that when Christ was raised from the dead, He dies no more; death no longer has dominion over Him. For in that He died, He died to sin once; but in that He lives, He lives to God.” If the spirit world has had you living in fear, God will set you free right now!
All of these wonderful things we just described were a free gift from God. You did not deserve them, and you could not earn them. Keeping the Law could not obtain them. God just loved you so much that He gave them to you for free. Now it is up to you to treasure these rich, eternal gifts. Amazing grace!
The solution is to move from hope to faith.
When you focus on what the blood of Jesus and the finished work of the Cross has accomplished, you will move from just hoping that God will do something to knowing that He has already done it. You are righteous, you are reconciled. You have been crucified with Christ, you have been translated out of the kingdom of darkness and into His Kingdom. The difference between hope and faith is a time issue. Hope sees it in the future, faith has it now even though it cannot be seen with the physical eyes. Only God can do that. You cannot work up faith. Faith comes by hearing God speak to you personally, and that comes by pressing in to a one on one relationship with Him. It comes by taking up your cross, obeying His Word, and seeking Him until you find Him. When your personal revelation of Jesus burns in your heart, you will know that you have the victory. Then you can put the Word that He has given you on your lips and proclaim the victory. Doubt may come, but you do not have to give into it.
Soak in the Word of God and prayer until He becomes real to you!
Click here to Return to Front Page of Junk to Jewels Click here to Go to Chapter 8
[1] American Heritage Dictionary, Standard Edition, computer version.