Christians
are involved in a tremendous conflict that spans the whole universe,
from heaven to earth. The battle is between God and the
forces of
good on the one hand, and Satan and the forces of evil on the
other. The devil is an archangel who, because of pride, led
his
angels in rebellion against God and set up a rival kingdom. The
Scriptures picture him as a dragon, a serpent, a murderer, a liar and a
thief. Satan opposes God, God’s purposes, and
God’s
people, and in his opposition to us he has three objectives: to steal,
to kill and to destroy.
Fortunately, the good news
of the gospel
is that through Jesus’ death on the cross, He defeated Satan
on
our behalf in two primary ways. First, He made it possible
for us
to obtain forgiveness of past sin. Second, He made it
possible
for us to receive God’s righteousness by faith without having
to
observe the law. In this way Jesus deprived Satan of his
chief
weapon against us, which is guilt.
Spiritual Weapons
Jesus
has also put spiritual weapons in our hands with which we can
administer His victory over Satan. In 2 Corinthians
10:4–5
we read,
"For the
weapons of our warfare are not of the flesh [they are
not physical or material], but divinely powerful for the destruction of
fortresses" (NAS). Our spiritual weapons
supplied by God are
divinely
powerful—literally translated, they are "powerful through
God." As we operate these weapons that God has given us, in
faith
and in dependence upon Him, the very power of God Himself is available
to us.
We are not to be on the defensive in our
battle with the
enemy, wondering where Satan is going to strike us next, but we are to
be moving out on the attack against his fortresses to destroy them with
our spiritual weapons. We must not remain passive. We may tend
to say, "I am so weak; I am so unworthy. How can I fight?" But it
is the devil who puts these words into our minds. In a
certain
sense, we are weak. However, listen to these words of Paul in
1
Corinthians 1:27–28:
But
God chose the
foolish things of
the world to shame the wise; God chose the weak things of the world to
shame the strong. He chose the lowly things of this world and
the
despised things—and the things that are not—to
nullify the
things that are. (NIV).
In
His infinite wisdom, God
has chosen
weak and unworthy people like us to overthrow "the things that are":
Satan’s kingdom. Our confidence is not in
ourselves, but in
our weapons.
What are our spiritual
weapons? One passage
that describes them is Revelation 12:10–11, which immediately
follows the passage describing Satan as the dragon and the serpent:
Then
I heard a loud voice in heaven say: "Now have come the salvation and
the power and the kingdom of our God, and the authority of his Christ
For the accuser of our brothers, who accuses them before our God day
and night, has been hurled down. They
overcame him by the
blood
of the Lamb and by the word of their testimony; they did
not love their
lives so much as to shrink from death." (NIV)
The
crucial statement here is this:
"They
overcame him." Notice
the
direct, person-to-person conflict of believers with the
enemy. Their weapons in the fight were the blood of the Lamb and the
word of
their testimony. In addition, they were totally committed to
the
battle, even to death.
I interpret this text in a
simple,
practical way: We overcome Satan when we testify personally to what the
Word of God says the blood of Jesus does for us. When we use
these three weapons together—the blood of Jesus, the Word of
God
and our personal testimony—we make them effective. But to
do this properly, we must know what the Word of God says about the
blood of Jesus.
The Passover Lamb
In
1 Peter 1:18–19 we read:
For
you know that it was not with perishable things such as silver or gold
that you were redeemed from the empty way of life handed down to you
from your forefathers but with the precious blood of Christ, a Lamb
without blemish or defect. (NIV)
Here
Jesus is
compared to the Passover lamb.
Under
the old covenant, the blood of the Passover lamb was applied to the
homes of Israelites. The father of each family killed the
Passover lamb, collected the blood in a basin and transferred the blood
from the basin to his home with a simple instrument—a little
bunch of hyssop. He dipped the hyssop in the blood and then
sprinkled it on his home. So the hyssop was essential because
the
blood in the basin gave no protection. But the blood placed
on
the home by the use of the hyssop protected the family.
Our
hyssop is our testimony. When we testify about what the Bible
says the blood of Jesus does, that is like taking the blood from the
basin and sprinkling it over the place where it is needed—the
place where we live.
Redemption and Forgiveness
In
Ephesians 1:7 Paul says,
"In
him [Jesus] we have redemption through his
blood, the forgiveness of sins, in accordance with the riches of
God’s grace" (NIV). Paul here states
two things
that are
provided for us by the blood of Jesus: redemption and forgiveness of
sins. In order to make these provisions effective in our
lives,
however, we have to make the appropriate testimony. This is
the
message of Psalm 107:2:
"Let
the redeemed of the LORD say so, whom he
has redeemed from the hand of the enemy" (NKJV). We have
to
declare boldly, "I am redeemed from the hand of the
enemy"—that
is, from Satan.
To
redeem means "to
buy
back." We were
once sinners, displayed in Satan’s slave market for
sale. But Jesus walked into Satan’s slave market and bought
us back
out
of the devil’s possession with His own precious
blood. This
redemption from the enemy is based upon the forgiveness of our sins.
To
make Christ’s redemption and forgiveness effective in our
lives,
then, we must use our personal testimony, saying,
"Through the
blood of
Jesus, all my sins are forgiven. Through the blood of Jesus,
I
have been redeemed out of the hand of Satan." That
testimony,
when we make it with our own lips, is like the hyssop. It
transfers the power of the blood of Jesus from the realm of the
potential into our practical daily living.
Cleansing
Yet
another vital provision of the blood of Jesus is cleansing from
sin. This provision for cleansing from sin is stated in 1
John
1:7:
"But if we walk in
the light as He Himself is in the light, we
have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus His Son
cleanses us from all sin" (NASB). If we walk in
the light,
then,
the first result is fellowship with one another, and the second result
is that we are cleansed by the blood of Jesus.
All
three
verbs—walking, having fellowship, being
cleansed—are in the
continuous present tense. They do not just happen once; they
must
go on continually. We must continually walk in the light to
continue having fellowship one with another and for the blood of Jesus
to continue cleansing us.
Although we may claim the
cleansing of
the blood of Jesus, if we are not meeting the conditions, we will not
really be cleansed. The blood of Jesus does not cleanse in
the
dark, but only as we walk in the light. The first test of
whether
we are walking in the light is whether we are having fellowship with
one another. If we are not enjoying fellowship with our
fellow
believers and with the Lord, then we are not in the light. And if
we are not in the light, the blood of Jesus does not cleanse us.
The
next question, then, is how we walk in the light. The first
condition is that we must walk in obedience to the Word of
God. Psalm 119:105 says,
"Your
word is a lamp to my feet and a light for my
path" (NIV). The second requirement is that we
must have
fellowship with one another.
This is summed up by
Paul in
Ephesians 4:15 where he says,
"Speaking
the truth in love, we will in
all things grow up into him who is the Head, that is, Christ"
(NIV). In this passage, walking in the light is
defined as
relating to our fellow believers in truth and in love. We
must be
willing to act out the truth in our relationships with one another, but
we have to do it in love.
Walking in the light
consists of two
actions put together: walking in obedience to the Word of God, and
walking in truth and love with our fellow believers When we meet those
conditions then we can say with full assurance that the blood of Jesus
cleansing us from all sin.
Today we are very
conscious of the
physical pollution of the atmosphere around us. But the
spiritual
atmosphere around us is also polluted—by sin, corruption and
ungodliness. In order to be kept clean, we need the continual
cleansing of the blood of Jesus.
Having made sure
that we are
meeting the conditions for cleansing, we are in a position to make the
appropriate confession. Our testimony should be this:
"As I
walk
in the light, the blood of Jesus is cleansing me from all sin now and
continually." If we believe that, we will begin
thanking
God. And as we thank Him, we will feel pure and clean in a
new
way.
Justification
A further
provision of the blood of Jesus is justification. This is
made clear in Romans 5:8–9:
But
God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still
sinners, Christ died for us. Since we have now been justified
by
his blood, how much more shall we be saved from God’s wrath
through him! (NIV)
The
key phrase is
"justified by his
blood." Justify
and
justification
are key words in the New
Testament. To
justify
actually means "to make righteous, to
acquit from sin, to hold guiltless." The best definition of
justification that I have ever heard is this: Through the blood of
Jesus, I am justified—"just-as-if-I’d" never
sinned. How can we say that? Because we are justified through the
blood
of Jesus, we receive the righteousness of Jesus Christ, not our own
righteousness—and Jesus Christ never sinned.
In
2
Corinthians 5:21 Paul says,
"God
made him [Jesus] who had no sin to be
sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God"
(NIV). Notice the exchange. On the
cross, Jesus
became sin
with our sinfulness, assumed the penalty and the judgment of our sin,
and paid the full price of redemption by shedding His own
blood. In Him we become the righteousness of God—not our own
righteousness, nor any kind of human righteousness, but the very
righteousness of God Himself. God has never known
sin. He
has never been defiled with sin. That is the righteousness we
receive through faith in the blood of Jesus. Through the
blood of
Jesus, then, I am justified, made righteous with God’s
righteousness; I become just-as-if-I’d never sinned.
This,
then, is the answer to Satan’s accusations against
us. Why
is he accusing us? Because he wants to prove us
guilty. Therefore the primary testimony that overcomes
Satan’s
accusations is this:
"Through the
blood of Jesus I am justified, made
righteous, just-as-if-I’d never sinned." For
that
reason I
can stand before God without shame or fear, and I can answer Satan with
total boldness: "Satan, it is vain to accuse me, because I am
not
meeting you in
my own
righteousness. I am meeting you in the
righteousness of God which is without spot, without sin, without stain."
Sanctification
The
next provision of the blood of Jesus is sanctification. To
sanctify
means "to make holy," and to make
holy
means "to set something
or someone apart to God." A
holy
person is
someone who is set
apart to God. Hebrews 13:12 says,
"Therefore
Jesus also, that
He
might sanctify the people with His own blood, suffered outside the
gate" (NKJV). In other words, He was crucified
outside the
city
to sanctify the people through His own blood.
The
use of blood
for sanctification is clear in the
Passover.
The blood of the
Passover lamb set Israel apart to God in a specific way. In
Exodus 11:4–7 God’s intention to set the Israelites
apart
is revealed:
So Moses said, "This is what the LORD
says:
‘About midnight I will go throughout Egypt. Every
firstborn
son in Egypt will die, from the firstborn son of Pharaoh, who sits on
the throne, to the firstborn son of the slave girl, who is at her hand
mill, and all the firstborn of the cattle as well. There will
be
loud wailing throughout Egypt—worse than there has ever been
or
ever will be again. But among the Israelites not a dog will
bark
at any man or animal.’ Then you will know that the LORD makes
a
distinction
between Egypt and Israel." (NIV), emphasis added
The
Lord made a
distinction
between those who were His people and those who
were not His people. Wrath and judgment came upon those who
were
not God’s people, but God’s people were so totally
protected that not even a dog would bark against them. The
basis
of this distinction, this separation, was the blood of the Passover
lamb. Any home that had the blood on the outside was
sanctified,
or set apart to God. No evil power could invade that home
because
the Lord had made a distinction between His people and those who were
not His people. The distinction was made by the applied blood
of
the lamb.
In the same way that we have applied the
other
provisions of Jesus’ blood by giving an appropriate
testimony, we
can apply the provision of sanctification with these words:
"Through
the blood of Jesus, I am sanctified, made holy, set apart to
God. The devil has no place in me, no power over me, no unsettled
claims
against me. All has been settled by the blood of Jesus."A
Continual Plea
There is another precious provision
made for us by the
blood of Jesus, one of which many Christians are not aware. Hebrews
12:22, 24 says,
"You
[all true believers] have come to Mount
Zion. . . . to the sprinkled blood that speaks a better word
than
the blood of Abel" (NIV). In the heavenly Mount
Zion the
blood of
Jesus was sprinkled in the Holy of Holies, before the very presence of
God, on our behalf. He entered there as our forerunner,
having
obtained eternal redemption through His sacrifice, and He sprinkled the
evidence of that redemption in the very presence of Almighty God the
Father.
We should notice an important contrast
here. Early
in history Cain murdered his brother, Abel. He then tried to
disclaim responsibility, but the Lord challenged Cain and said, "There
is no way you can conceal your guilt, because the blood of your brother
that you shed on the earth is crying out to Me for
vengeance." (See Genesis 4:10.) In contrast, the blood of Jesus
sprinkled in heaven
cries out, not for vengeance, but for mercy. The blood is a
continual plea in the very presence of God for His mercy.
Once
we have testified personally to the power of the blood of Jesus, we do
not have to repeat those words every few minutes, because the blood of
Jesus is speaking all the time on our behalf in the very presence of
God. Every time we are troubled, tempted, fearful or anxious,
we
should remind ourselves:
"The blood of
Jesus is speaking in
God’s
presence on my behalf right now."In
our fight
against Satan we
must move out actively in faith to attack. Jesus has supplied
us
with the weapons of His blood, the Word and our testimony, and our
personal testimony is the key to employing the other two weapons.
The
blood of Jesus has made provision for redemption, forgiveness,
cleansing, justification, sanctification and intercession on our
behalf. By testifying personally to what the Word of God says
about Jesus’ blood, we can apply these provisions to our
lives. In this way, Satan is deprived of his primary weapon
against us—guilt—and we are enabled to live in the
victory
Christ accomplished long ago on the cross.
---
Excerpted
from
The
Blood of the Lamb by Derek Prince, New Wine, Vol.
14, No.4, April
1982.