What is the normal Christian life?

The apostle Paul gives us his own definition of the Christian life in Galatians 2:20.It is no longer I, but Christ.Here he is NOT stating something special or peculiar  a high level of Christianity. He is presenting God’s normal for a Christian, which can be summarized in the words: I live no longer; but Christ lives His life in me.

God makes it quite clear in His WORD THAT He has only one answer to every human need-His Son, Jesus Christ.In all His dealings with us He works by taking us out of the way and substituting Christ in our place.The Son of God died instead of us for our forgiveness. He lives instead of us for our deliverance.So we can speak of two substitutions  a substitute on the Cross who secures our forgiveness and a substitute within who secures our victory.It will help us greatly, and save us from much confusion, if we keep constantly before us this fact, that God will answer all our questions in one way and one way only, namely, by showing us more of His Son.

We have dual problems Sins and Sin

In our study of the normal Christian life we find in the first eight chapters of the book of Romans that there is a natural division of this section of Romans into two.In the first section, chapters 1:1 to 5:11 we find the plural word sins given prominence.In the second section 5:12 to 8:3the singular word sin is used again and again and is the subject mainly dealt with.The first section deals with the sins we have committed before God and the second section deals with sin as a principle working in us.No matter how many sins we commit, it is always the one sin-principle that leads to them.We need forgiveness for our sins, but we need also deliverance from the power of sin  forgiveness for what we have done and also deliverance from what we are.

God’s dual remedy – The Blood and The Cross

 Again in the first eight chapters of the book of Romans we see that the Blood deals with what we have done, and the Cross deals with what we are.The blood disposes of our sins, while the Cross strikes at the root of our capacity for sin.

Within our capacity for sin there are three aspects that the Lord Jesus Christ had to do something about:

• Our sins had to be dealt with, and this was effected by the precious Blood of Christ.
• Our guilt has to be dealt with and our guilty conscience set at rest by showing us the value of the Blood.
• The attack of the enemy has to be met and his accusations answered. In the Scriptures the Blood of Christ is shown to operate effectually in these three ways Godward, manward and Satanward.

The Blood is primarily for God

The Blood is for atonement and has to do first with our standing before God.The Blood is therefore not primarily for us but for God.It is Gods holiness, Gods righteousness, which demands that a sinless life should be given for man.There is life in the Blood, and that Blood has to be poured out for us, for our sins.God is the One who requires it to be so.God is the One who demands that the Blood be presented, in order to satisfy His own righteousness.

1 Peter 118:1 – We have to believe that the Blood is precious to God, because He says it is so. If God can accept the Blood as a payment for our sins and as the price of our redemption, then we can rest assured that the debt has been paid.If God is satisfied with the Blood, then the Blood must be acceptable.

The Believers access to God

The Blood has satisfied God; it must satisfy us also.It has therefore a second value that is manward, in the cleansing of our conscience.We find that the Blood does thiswe see in Hebrews 10:22 we are to have our hearts sprinkled from an evil conscience.We need to be careful that we do not interpret this verse incorrectly. The cleansing work of the Blood is in relation to the conscience. What has happened by the Blood is that our conscience is cleared and our sense of guilt removed and we have no more an evil conscience towards God.However, as far as the heart is concerned we need a new one.Ezekiel 36:26 A new heart also will I give, and a new spirit will I put within you.

A clear conscience is never based upon our attainment; it can only be based on the work of the Lord Jesus in the shedding of His Blood.Whether we have had a good day or a bad day, whether we have consciously sinned or not, our basis of approach is always the same  the Blood of Christ.

As with many other facts of our Christian experience, this matter of access to God has two phases, an initial and a progressive one.Initially, our standing with God was secured by the Blood, for we are made near in the blood of Christ (Ephesians 2:13).But there after our ground of continual access is still by the Blood, for we see in Hebrews 1019, 22 having therefore ..boldness to enter into the holy place by the blood of Jesus  let us draw near.To begin with we were made near by the Blood, and to continue in that new relationship we come through the Blood every time it is not that we were saved on one basis and that we now maintain our fellowship on another.The trouble with many of us is that we have moved away from this simple fact.We have thought we had progressed and so could dispense with it, but we can never do so.Our initial approach to God is by the Blood, and every time we come before Him it is the same.Right to the end it will always and only be on the ground of the precious Blood.

So let us be bold in our approach because of the Blood Lord I do not know fully what the value of the Blood is, but I know that the Blood has satisfied You; so the Blood is enough for me, and it is my only plea.I see now that whether I have really progressed, whether I have really attained to something or not, is not the point.Whenever I come before You, it is always to be on the ground of the precious Blood of Jesus.Then our conscience is really clear before God.No conscience could even be clear apart from the Blood.It is the Blood that gives us boldness.

Overcoming the Accuser

It is a further aspect of the Blood which is Satanward. Satan’s most strategic activity in this day is as the accuser of the brethren (Revelation 12:10) and it is as this that our Lord confronts him with His special ministry as High Priest through His own Blood (Heb 9:12). The Blood operate against Satan by putting God on the side of man against him.We need to recognize the absolute sufficiency of the precious Blood. Christ having come as High Priest . Through His own Blood, entered in once for all into the Holy of Holies, having obtained eternal redemption (Heb 9:11-120.he was Redeemer once.He has been High Priest and Advocate for nearly two thousand years.He stands there in the presence of God, and He is the propitiation for our sins. (1 John 2:2).

Heb 9:14 How much more shall the Blood of Christ .cleanse your conscience. So what should our attitude be to Satan since he not only accuses us before God but in our own conscience.You have sinned, and you keep on sinning.You are weak, and God can have nothing more to do with you.This is his argument.And our temptation is to look within and in self-defense to try to find in ourselves, in our feelings or our behavior, some ground for believing that Satan is wrong. We are tempted to admit our helplessness and to yield to depression and despair.Thus accusation becomes one of the greatest and most effective of Satan’s weapons.He points to our sins and seeks to charge us with them before God, and if we accept his accusations we go down immediately.

We so readily accept his accusations because we are still hoping to have some righteousness of our own.The ground of our expectation is wrong.Satan has succeeded in making us look in the wrong direction.Therefore he wins his point, rendering us ineffective.But if we have learned to put no confidence in the flesh, we shall not wonder if we sin, for the very nature of the flesh is to sin.It is because we have not come to appreciate our true nature and to see how helpless we are that we still have some expectation in ourselves, with the result that, when Satan comes along and accuses us, we go down under it.

God is well able to deal with our sins; but he cannot deal with a man under accusation, because such a man is not trusting in the Blood.The Blood speaks in his favor, but he is listening instead to Satan.Christ is our Advocate, but we, the accused, side with the accuser.We have not recognized that we are unworthy of anything but death (as we shall see in future lesson); we are only fit to be crucified.We have not recognized that it is God alone that can answer the accuser, and that in the precious Blood He has already done so.

Our salvation lies in looking away to the Lord Jesus and in seeing that the Blood of the Lamb has met the whole situation created by our sins and has answered it.That is the sure foundation on which we stand.Never should we try to answer Satan with our good conduct but always with the Blood.Yes, we are sinful, but, praise God. The Blood cleanses us from every sin.God looks upon the Blood whereby His Son has met the charge, and Satan has no more ground of attack.Our faith in the precious Blood and our refusal to be moved from that position can alone silence his charges and put him to flight (Rom 8:33-34); and so it will be, right on to the end (Revelation 12:11).