One of Satan’s great tools to handicap God’s people is the tool of condemnation. In fact, there are spirits of accusation and condemnation that are attached to many of God’s people with the sole assignment of making them feel unacceptable to God.
I have known faithful believers who knew the Word but never felt fully forgiven nor acceptable to the Father. In fact, they could read through such affirming books as Ephesians and Philippians and still walk away with a crippling sense of condemnation. Something in them filtered out every positive promise and every affirming word about their identity. Even if they understood what they were reading, they believed those promises and affirmations were for other believers, but not for them.
Condemnation seems to carry the message that not only have you done some things that are wrong, but you are defective, you are rejected, you are not enough. Of course, the good news of Jesus is that, by his death, he has taken away our defectiveness, taken away rejection, and he has made us enough in the eyes of God.
The writer of Hebrews declares, “For by one sacrifice he has made perfect forever those who are being madeholy” (Heb. 10:14). Notice the fact that you have been made perfect in the eyes of God by that sacrifice. The verb is past tense. It is not something we can earn or strive for or beg for. The blood of Christ has already given us a standing of perfection in heaven while we are yet imperfect.
So, does God then simply ignore the sin in our lives, the failures, the imperfections. In one sense, the answer is “Yes.” He ignores it in the sense that he does not hold those things against us or even see us as being defined by those things. We may define ourselves by those things but God does not. We are defined by who we are in Christ and those weaknesses and failures (past and present) no longer have any condemnation attached to them.
In addition, although those things bring no rejection or condemnation from God, he is faithfully working to make us holy. This is the sanctifying work of the Holy Spirit. He isn’t doing this in order to make us acceptable, but simply to make us everything we can be in Jesus.
Satan’s ploy is to get us to focus on every past sin, every imperfection, and every failure. The old axiom is, “We become what we behold.” What we focus on defines us and we typically live up or down to the view we have of ourselves. God’s strategy is to get us to focus on who we are in Christ…children of God loved and forgiven; citizens of heaven walking in power and authority, representatives of Christ on the earth with a destiny established by God; the forgiven, the cleansed, the perfected, saints of God on this earth with an unimaginable inheritance waiting for us in heaven.
As we consistently focus on those realities, we become them – those realities define us. Knowing that, Satan continually whispers condemnation in our ears, speaks it through the broken people in our lives, and keeps us in a constant state of self-rejection and insecurity.
As a result, we never feel the love of God, never have faith that he will answer our prayers, and never step into significant roles in the kingdom that God has ordained. As long as we are bound up by condemnation, Satan wins.
But Paul put condemnation to rest in his letter to the Romans. He said, “So I find this law at work: Although I want to do good, evil is right there with me. For in my inner being I delight in God’s law; but I see another law at work in me, waging war against the law of my mind and making me a prisoner of the law of sin at work within me.What a wretched man I am! Who will rescue me from this body that is subject to death? Thanks be to God, who delivers me through Jesus Christ our Lord! So then, I myself in my mind am a slave to God’s law, but in my sinful nature a slave to the law of sin. Therefore, there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus, because through Christ Jesus the law of the Spirit who gives life has set you free from the law of sin and death” (Rom. 7:21-8:2, emphasis added).
Notice, Paul still struggles with sin and often does what he doesn’t want to do and feels the frustration of living out that reality. However, he stands on the truth that the blood of Christ covers those failures and weaknesses in the courts of heaven. He boldly declares to us, to himself, and to Satan there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ. That must be our answer to every condemning thought that trickles across our minds.
Some of those thoughts are our own. In that case we need a renewed mind where God’s truth replaces our habitual thoughts that do not line-up with his thoughts. We must constantly say what God says about us in Christ. Some of those thoughts are from broken people. Maybe we need to distance ourselves from them, if possible.
Some or most of those thoughts are from Satan. Because you are a child of God with power and authority, you need to call Satan out when those thoughts immerge in your mind. Call him a liar, renounce the lie he has spoken to you, and then command him to be silent and depart. James tells us, “Submit yourselves, then, to God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you” (Ja. 4:7). We submit to his truth about us by giving his Word more authority than our feelings or thoughts. We them must actively resist the devil by declaring God’s truth and exercising the authority you have in Jesus. Command Satan’s demonic representative – the spirit of condemnation to leave and he will.
If you struggle with condemnation, stay in the Word, submit your mind to God’s truth, and constantly say only what God has said about you. Jesus himself told us we will know the truth and the truth will set us free (Jn. 8:32). When the enemy comes, pull out the Word of God which is the sword of the Spirit and contend for God’s truth about you!
