One of the things I have consistently seen through the years in counseling, deliverance, and in my own life is Satan’s attempt to make us feel disqualified.  Let me explain.  The enemy’s first strategy ys is to keep us from receiving God’s grace though the sacrifice of his Son. In the Parable of the Sower, Jesus explained that, for many, the enemy simply takes the word of God from their hearts before they can believe.  He works hard to keep us from an encounter with God’s word and then works hard to keep us from opening our hearts to God.

Having failed at keeping a man or woman from being touched by God’s word and his Spirit, one of his standard strategies is to make the saved or those close to salvation feel disqualified.  Satan is referred to as the accuser of the brethren.  He accuses us before God, but he also accuses us in our own hearts and minds.  To those close to salvation, he whispers that they need to be better and do better before God will accept them.  They never surrender to Jesus because they don’t feel “good enough.” Perhaps, past sins haunt them and Satan whispers that  they are beyond God’s grace.  Of course, that is a total misunderstanding of grace.  We don’t clean ourselves up so we can come to Jesus, we come to Jesus so he can clean us up.  But in a world of highly conditional love, grace can be a difficult concept to grasp. Satan somehow seems to skew the message of grace so they don’t hear it clearly. Their sense of disqualification keeps them from moving ahead.

Even if a person surrenders to Jesus, Satan continue the accusations.  He will whisper continually that even though we are saved, we are still disqualified from God’s further blessings or from serving him in any significant way.  He reminds of past sins and suggests that we were not sorry enough, did not repent enough, or did not hate the sin enough for God to forgive that sin.  We live as if God is still holding something against us.  The enemy always implies that the blood of Christ is not really sufficient…for us. Feeling as if God is holding something against us, we have little faith that he will answer our prayers, bless us by meeting our greatest needs or deepest desire, or that all the promises in scripture are available to us.  When asked to serve in any significant capacity in the kingdom, we retreat, feeling that we simply don’t measure up.  We may even feel as if God would be angry if we took such a “presumptuous” step.

The truth is that none of us measure up, are “good enough,” or are worthy of His promises based on our own merit and righteousness.  It is only by the blood of Jesus that we can stand in the presence of God and be confident that he will answer our prayers.  Jesus gives us a position in heaven long before our condition matches that.  When we can accept our position as sons and daughters who are seen by God through the lens of his Son’s righteousness, we can then begin to pray with faith and expectation that God will care for us and use us in his kingdom in ways that we could not anticipate.

Faith is certainly based on our view of God and his character, but Satan uses our own doubts, insecurities, and self-image issues to cloud our view of the Father and the complete adequacy of his son’s blood to make us totally acceptable to our Father.  This, I believe, is the primary area in which we must take every thought captive and align our thoughts with the Father’s truth.

Most of us can stand a healthy dose of what God says about us on a daily basis by speaking the things that God has said about those who belong to him.  You can probably Google “Our identity in Christ” and get a great list of scriptures that declare what God has said about his children. When other thoughts enter our minds regarding our standing with God, we need to rebuke those thoughts as lies and speak God’s truth over ourselves.  Old ways of thinking are engrained in our brains and it takes an intentional season of declaring God’s truth over the old thoughts before God’s truth becomes our primary way of viewing ourselves…especially when the enemy keeps whispering our disqualifications to us. 

Sometimes we assume that what we think about the Father, Son and Holy Spirit is all that matters. But, all of His truth matters and what he has done for us through the cross is just as significant because our righteousness in Christ and our state of being “new creations” also reflects on God.  The quality of a sculptor’s work reflects on him as a person and God is sculpting us through Christ.  

So…when the accuser of the brethren comes around, recognize him, reject him, and silence him by declaring God’s truth about you in response to the lies he whispers.  Part of our transformation comes from the renewing of our minds and that renewing comes from saturating our thoughts and words with God’s truth.  You are not disqualified but made totally acceptable in Jesus Christ for salvation, blessing and even challenging assignments.

Reading through 1 John this morning, I was reminded of a seeming paradox in that epistle and a helpful explanation that was shard with me years ago. I thought it might be helpful for you as well. 1, 2, and 3 John are letters written by the apostle John who also wrote the gospel of John and the Book of Revelation. He was the youngest of the apostles and, perhaps, the one that Jesus loved the most. He and his brother James were the ones who offered to call down fire on a Samaritan village because they had not welcomed Jesus (Lk.9:54). Jesus called them the Sons of Thunder (Mk. 3:17) which suggests that, in his younger days, John was passionate, boisterous and. perhaps, given to anger. In his later years, he was known by the church as the “apostle of love.” In 1 John, the apostle is writing a general letter to the church that would be read aloud, passed along to another church that would read it aloud, and so on. It is a letter with a strong emphasis on love, but also on living for the Lord.

Now…let me point out the seeming paradox or contradiction in his letter, that actually turns out to be an encouragement. John writes, “God is light and in him is no darkness at all. If we claim to to have fellowship with him and yet walk in the darkness, we lie and do not live out the truth. But if we walk in the light as he is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus, his Son, purifies us from all sin” (1Jn. 1:6-7). He also writes, “And in him (Jesus) is no sin. No one who lives in him, keeps on sinning. No one who continues to sin has either seen him or known him” (1 Jn. 3:6). No one who is born of God will continue to sin…they cannot go on sinning because they have been born of God” (1 Jn. 3:9).

However, John also writes, “If we claim to be without sin, we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us” (1 Jn. 1:8) and “If we claim we have not sinned, we make him out to be a liar , and his word is not in us” (1 Jn.1:10). On the one hand, John tells us that if we say we have no sin we are liars, but on the other hand, he states that no one born of God will continue to sin. When I first began to study these passages, it troubled me, because I knew I still sinned, in some form, on a daily or even hourly basis, but John was telling me that if I had been “born again,” I couldn’t continue to sin. So…was I not really saved? I hope you see my dilemma.

This is where the Greek language comes to the rescue. In Greek, verb forms denote kinds of action. There is “punctiliar” action and “linear” action. “Punctiliar” is like a string of disconnected dots, whereas “linear” is a continuous, connected line. What John is saying is that after we come to Christ, we will sin, but it is punctiliar sin, not linear. In other words, sin is no longer the rule of our life, but the exception. We sin, but these are moments of stumbling separated by righteous living. These are sinful thoughts that do no rule our thinking, but that pop up from time to time. As we grow in Christ, sin should be more ocassional…the points should be further apart. If, we say we are saved, however, and sin still defines our life, then something is out of order.

There is obviously a process of spiritual growth or sanctification that occurs in every new believer. It takes longer for some than for others, but growth and maturity are expected. If we are not growing or are loosing ground, then we may be in bondage to some demonic power or simply have not truly surrendered ourselves to the Lordship of Jesus and that raises the question of whether I truly gave myself to the Lord. But even when we have given ourselves, we will still have those points and moments in our lives when sin occurs. But John encourages us in these moments when he says, “My dear children, I write this to you so that you will not sin. But if anybody does sin, we have one who speaks to the Father in our defense—Jesus Christ, the Righteous One. He is the atoning sacrifice for our sins, and not only for ours but also for the sins of the whole world” (1 Jn.2:1).

Here is my encouragement from John’s writings. When we read that those who are in Christ no longer sin, the devil can begin to fill us with doubt about our salvation or our sincerity However, what John actually says is that those of us who are in Christ will not longer live a live defined by sin, but rather by the righteousness of God. Graham Cooke often reminds us that we obsess about our sin, while God obsesses about our righteousness. We often think about our failings, while God thinks abut who we are in Christ. That is a good perspective to remember. John also tells us that if we say we have no sin at all, then we are deluded or lying, so we need not pretend to be sinless. God knows our weaknesses, but has already made a way for us through Jesus.

God is not concerned if we struggle with sin. He is concerned if we don’t struggle with it, in the sense that we don’t resist it or wrestle with it or if we make a practice of justifying it in our lives. James 3:2 says that we all stumble in many ways, so God does not require that we live a sinless life. The balance is found in wanting to live a sinless life and please God in every way, even though we sin.

A second area where Satan can bring condemnation is when we are growing in the Lord, but start to feel that we are sinning more now than we we first became a Christian. The truth is, that because you are growing, your sin is not increasing, but your sensitivity to sin is increasing. That is a good thing, but we need to be wise so that we do not allow the enemy to use that sensitivity against us. Again, John has a solution to the sin we do recognize in our lives. “If we confess our sins, her is faithful and just and will forgive our sin and purify us from all unrighteousness” (1 Jn.1:9). So, once again, God has made a way for us.

One of Satan’s primary schemes is to make us feel condemned and disqualified from living a joyful life in Christ. Certain scriptures may bring a sense of condemnation if they are misunderstood, so I wanted to highlight those in John that I have to struggled with. Just remember the great promise of Romans 8:1, that there is absolutely no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. Be blessed.