How to Prevent Spiritual Identity Theft
By Jay Wegter
INTRODUCTION: As Christians, we are locked in combat in a spiritual war and a culture war that has radically different ideas about what will give a person his or her identity. We live in an identity hungry culture. The perception of your true identity is a battle ground. Now, either one’s identity is from the world, or it is from the gospel. You can’t get your identity from both—anymore than you can serve two masters (James 4:4; Lu 11:23). The gospel is a whole different way of seeing what is important in life. The gospel radically transforms your relationships because it identifies who God is who you are in Christ. This satanically energized world system is dead set on having you forget your identity in Christ—we’ll call it identity theft.
Our identity in Christ is continually realized only as we keep preaching the gospel to self. Victory as an overcomer involves keeping our identity in Christ in view. We should always be matching His all-sufficient Savior-hood with our sinner-ship—always dwelling upon how His redeeming work is a perfect fit for our ruin due to sin (Heb 7:25-27).
Reckoning who we are in Christ means that our identity in Him will exert an ever-greater sway upon our daily life choices. The true believer is Christ’s sheep, a freeman, a son, a beholder, an heir, and an overcomer, etc., means that we are becoming what we really are.
Reckoning our true identity in Christ is a spiritual discipline vital in spiritual warfare. We keep presenting to the eye of faith that Christ is our source of: sonship, status, acceptance, adoption, heir-ship, power, truth, fellowship, love, wisdom, righteousness, and sanctification (1 Cor 1:30).
Our identity in Christ is a battle front because the gospel is utterly counter-intuitive. Everything in our natural reason loathes being an object of pity and mercy—we want our worth, importance, respectability, and acceptance to flow from virtues in us and to rest upon our performance. We want to ‘be in charge of’ our own lovability, adequacy, and security. We were born with a satanic religion of self-help which says, “The more perfect I am the more love I will receive—I can do it.”
Speaking of how counter-intuitive the gospel is, think of God’s redemptive plan—that Almighty God should take pleasure in bruising His Son in our place (Is 53:10). Consider that the Father treated Christ as the worst criminal who ever lived so that I could be adopted as a child of God. All of this was necessary so that I could be brought to heaven without God striking a single blow to me in wrath. It is amazing beyond words that the Son should be sent to earth to reap the eternal consequences of what I had sown, and to provide the perfect obedience I could not supply.
Thinking this way does not come natural to me—to consent to let Another, Christ, work for me and to reckon that He has earned every blessing I enjoy. I must train my mind to think this way by preaching the glorious gospel to myself. Only the word of grace, the gospel, can cut new grooves in our thought life. Only by feeding on the gospel can we reckon, as a habit, that our acceptance and fellowship with God are grounded upon who Christ is and what He has done as our Substitute.
As we feed on the gospel, divine grace increasingly becomes part of our reasoning processes and our affections are conformed to the precious things of God. It is a blessed exercise to cut these new channels in our thought life because gospel-reasoning (grace-based thinking) over time becomes a way of re-educating the mind and affections (renewing our minds—Romans 12:2).
By means of ‘gospel reasoning’, we gain the sweet optimism that God desires to meet with us for fellowship and intimacy for Christ’s sake, and that God is glorified in giving His people endless installments of mercy, grace and love (Heb 4:15-16). Grace then becomes the subject of our meditations—and not for our comfort alone. For the grace of God in the gospel teaches me about my completeness in Christ (Col 3:10). This, the gospel is able to lift me out of self-concern to be burdened in behalf of others. It gives me joy in God which overflows into love for others (1 Jn 4:19).
The gospel is vital to the ‘treasure principle.’ As a man thinks in his heart so is he (Prov 23:7). The mind of a man always returns to what he esteems as his treasure. No wonder Jonathan Edwards described true religion as existing primarily in the affections. In Matthew six Jesus drove home the treasure principle—explaining in just a few words how life-directing and life-dominating a man’s treasure really is. A man: reviews his treasure, displays his treasure, adds to his treasure, speaks of his treasure, follows his treasure, and is ruled by his treasure (Matt 6:19-21).
Preaching the Gospel to ourselves is a spiritual discipline or habit that is to be learned. This discipline is not simply entertaining general thoughts of Christ and grace. The discipline of preaching the gospel to one’s self involves specific ways that Christ’s redemptive work answers our need and ruin, and our yearning and longing. To preach the gospel to oneself is to always be about the business of ‘matching’ Christ’s Person, work, and resources with our spiritual poverty, ruin, yearning, and need.
These points of contact between our need and Christ’s sufficiency, may be designated “access points” for preaching gospel specifics. By that I mean that we find “access” to subjects for gospel meditation by thinking through and contemplating God’s saving activity toward us in these specifics. In this message we will look at the following six “access points.” Meditating on the gospel is inseparable from godliness. If we do not feed our faith, we will feed our flesh upon the bogus promises of the world (Is 55). Six “access points” whereby the gospel feeds our souls are:
- The Gospel is the VOICE of Christ’s love to His sheep
- The Gospel is the VERDICT of God’s justice at the cross
- The Gospel is the VALUE of justification by faith through grace
- The Gospel is the VIEW of God’s glory in the face of Christ
- The Gospel is the VANTAGE point whereby we see the kingdom
- The Gospel is the VICTORY won by Christ at Calvary
I. The Gospel is the VOICE of Christ’s love to His sheep
Christ as redeeming shepherd restores our ability to be taught of God (Jn 6:45). He renews our teach-ability and guide-ability. “My sheep hear My voice, they follow Me” (Jn 10:4, 16). The sheep cherish their Savior as He is revealed in the gospel. Under the Spirit’s conviction, they were crushed over their sin—and by an act of divine grace they were enabled to ‘hear’ the voice of Christ in the Word of Grace, the gospel (Jn 10:2-5, 16). The gospel is addressed to faith alone; not to the righteous, or the worthy, but to the guilty, the weary, the defiled, the helpless, the condemned, the broken, and the foolish. To “hear” Christ’s voice is to believe God’s testimony that there is love, mercy, righteousness, and cleansing for the defiled who entrust themselves to Him.
The Father sent Christ to be the slain lamb—the propitiation for our sins (the epitome of love) (1 Jn 4:9-10). Christ’s love for us was there even while we were helpless enemies (Rom 5:8).
We refer to Christ’s love as His ‘voice’ because Christ’s love is not a bare proposition, it is personal and transforming—Christ takes up residence in His people by His Spirit. The ‘voice’ is Christ’s Word in the Scripture speaking to the newly created faith that has been planted in the bosom of His child by the new birth. This love is not theoretical for the believer—it is a reality that the believer experiences (Rom 5:5). But, it is not merely a generalized sentiment that God loves us. It is joined to the comprehension that God has moved heaven and earth in the atoning death of Son in order to purchase an eternal love relationship between His people and Himself (Eph 5:25-27).
Thus, the believer experiences Christ’s love by faith in the revelation of Christ in the Word of grace, the gospel. Christ manifests His love when the believer is dwelling upon and contemplating God’s saving acts toward us in Christ (Rom 15:13).
Central to God’s plan to communicate His love to us is the doctrine of adoption (1 Jn 3:1). The believer is held in the Father’s heart of love (Eph 2:4). The Spirit of Christ is the ‘Spirit of sonship’—the indwelling Spirit produces in the believer the disposition and the consciousness that we are sons of God loved by the Father (Rom 8:14-17; Gal 4:6-7). To be focused upon the spiritual reality of your sonship in Christ totally conditions your behavior (living out your worldview and identity).
To know His love is to be controlled by His love. To be the object of this ‘other worldly’ exotic love (1 Jn 3:1) is to be transformed by that love. To be animated by this love is to be driven with a holy unction to pass on that love to God and to others—to receive His love engenders the desire to reciprocate that love. “We love because He first loved us” (1 Jn 4:10, 19). Feeding on the gospel is the means by which we perceive and deepen our understanding of God’s love for us in Christ. We love God and the brethren as a reflex response to receiving God’s love for us in Christ. In this way His love for us keeps us from loving the world (1 Jn 2:15-17).
APPLICATION: The believer has every warrant to go to God for love daily. Salvation imparts a relationship of love. We often go to God in prayer for our needs, for strength, to fulfill our Christian duty; but do we go to God for love? We can and should; it is enlivening to our affection for God to do so. How radical the thought that Christ Himself is our eligibility for divine love and favor.
II. The Gospel is the VERDICT of God’s justice at the cross
“It is finished” were Christ’s last words from the cross (Jn 19:30). We must remember that the cross was a kind of courtroom in which the justice due the trampled law of God was addressed decisively. Absolute justice had to be accomplished in the case of the sinner’s guilt before the sinner could be freely accepted by God. The sinner’s transgressions had to be judged in the body and soul of Another—in our Messiah. Christ’s work of propitiation was a ‘verdict’—He took the wrath of God due our sins and absorbed it into His own person (1 Jn 4:10).
Nothing can bring a person’s conscience to a full stop—to a place of absolute peace and rest except the justice which satisfies God Almighty. And, nothing satisfies God on behalf of the sinner except the finished work of Christ. Therefore, under God’s moral government, a person will never have a clear conscience UNTIL he hears by faith the verdict of God’s justice accomplished at the cross (that is the gospel) (Heb 9:14). But hearing that verdict and reckoning that verdict are two different matters. Receiving the liberating message of the cross is not a one-time event. Yes, salvation takes place at a point in time, but feeding on the verdict won at Calvary is a lifetime endeavor. Here is one of the reasons why that is so:
The conscience of man is ‘wired’ for strict justice—it is suspicious of mercy and compassion. How true this is—the conscience of man is tied to law—to crime and punishment. It is like a private eye hired to collect dirt on you. In our fleshly reasoning it is remarkable how much emotional energy we dissipate trying to quiet our conscience with arguments: “I’m generous, considerate, a hard worker, a provider, well-liked, kind, a servant, etc.” The most common way man seeks to ‘bribe’ and balance the conscience into silence is by comparing self to others. But if the whole human race, outside of Christ, is on an ‘escalator to hell’, being a couple (of moral) steps above another doesn’t change one’s destiny—the whole thing is going downward into perdition. The point being, every carnal attempt to quiet conscience will utterly fail.
The blood of Christ alone has the power to cleanse the conscience down to the smallest crevice (Heb 9:14). We need to preach the gospel to ourselves each day because we sin each day. There is no effective ‘book keeping’ for the conscience other than the blood of Christ. The comfort we need in order to serve, love, and worship will only be there if our consciences are clear. One divine (a preacher from Scotland) noted that if even one sin is bouncing around in the conscience it can kill your joy, numb your confidence before God, weaken your resolve to holiness, and shake your assurance of salvation. No wonder Paul claimed that he always kept a clear conscience! (Acts 24:16). Without a clear conscience we won’t be optimistic about usefulness; about blessing and answered prayer.
APPLICATION: To preach the gospel to your self is to labor to have the verdict of the cross as the loudest verdict in the conscience. When the verdict of conscience is brought in line with the verdict of heaven—there is overflowing joy, peace, hope, and comfort. But how many believers really enjoy this on a daily basis? How many Christians have as their goal to bring their conscience in line with the verdict of heaven at Calvary? We rob ourselves of comfort by our apathy on this point.
As we trod this vale of tears, what remains of indwelling sin acts up and defiles us. We fall to temptation and the guilt of sin throws mud in the eye of faith. We become temporarily blinded to God’s verdict at the cross. God’s decisive work through Christ at Calvary becomes remote.
That’s exactly when experience at preaching the gospel is so valuable. We must enthrone the gospel in our conscience again so that the gospel is allowed to make the call (the ‘peace of Christ’ in Colossians 3:15). If we don’t turn again to the liberty promised in the gospel, we sentence ourselves to be stuck in the futile activity of self-justification.
The Spirit is solution-oriented—He never tires of pointing to the blood. I like what one of the Puritan divines said. Guilt harasses us—robs our peace—accuses us—calls for a verdict. But how are we to tell the convicting work of the Spirit from the accusing machinations of the devil?
The answer is simple, the Spirit will always point to the blood so that we may repent, be pardoned and restored to fellowship with the Lord. By contrast, the devil is like an irritating horsefly. He accuses without a solution—he wants the child of God to descend into fear, uncertainty, doubt, alienation, legal working, and despondency. Therefore, learn to preach the gospel to yourself and you will instinctively run to the atonement when you fail (1 Jn 1:9).
To draw near to Christ is to have the Lord expose what He wants changed in our lives. It is to give Him such full access to the soul that He can rearrange the priorities of life and heart to His specifications. A lot of believers aren’t sure they want to get that close to the Lord! To draw near to Christ through the gospel is not merely to seek our own soul comfort—it is to be ruled by Christ, examined by Him, and surrendered to Him—ruled by His Word.
This is of course why your conscience is very much a barometer of your intimacy with Christ. The Spirit is constantly at work in the believer. It is our task to cooperate with His sanctifying purposes (Phil 2:12-13; Jas 4:5).
There is no exit out of the castle of self but the gospel preached to self. As long as I listen to self instead of preaching the gospel to myself, I stay confined in the gray castle of self. What is the answer? Look to the cross again and embrace God’s verdict there. Enthrone the gospel in your conscience as ‘umpire’ to make the call—until you are able say to your conscience—God’s verdict brings the light and cleansing I need today (1 Jn 1:7-9). The gospel preached is God’s invitation to come out of our dank hiding places and back into the sunlight of His fellowship (1 Jn 1:6-9).
III. The Gospel is the VALUE of justification by faith through grace
In His incarnation and passion, Christ identified with our dilemma and ruin. He became radically identified with us (yet without sin) that we might become radically identified with Him. Christ entered the great cog works of God’s justice in order to be crushed for sinners. He lived the life of a perfect disciple—all to affect the most magnificent exchange in time or eternity. “. . . So that we might become the righteousness of God in Him” (2 Cor 5:21).
The wonder of justification is that Christ traded places with us so that under God’s government Christ might become ‘officially’ guilty of the sins of His people (Rom 3:24-26). My sin was imputed to Christ so that He might bear it up to the cross and judge it in His own Person (1 Pet 2:24; 3:18). To be ‘justified in Christ’ is to have my sin removed and to have Christ’s perfect righteousness given to me in its place. God is the ‘Architect’ of this great exchange which took place in our justification. Its purpose is to bring us to God and to give God’s joy and glory to us. My sin charged to Christ’s account, and Christ’s righteousness credited to the believer’s account means that I am fitted for communion with God and ultimately for life in His presence.
God’s work in Christ of justifying us and definitively sanctifying us is ‘preemptive’—in other words, God declares the believing sinner ‘pardoned and righteous’ ‘up front’ BEFORE works. This is so significant. Because of our ‘lust for law’ and works righteousness, God knew that we would approach progressive sanctification with legal motives. The gospel order, or God declaring us righteous up front (Rom 4:5-8), is designed to make the entire Christian life ‘all of grace.’
This means that the Christian can pursue sanctification from the position of full acceptance because he is already pardoned and accepted by God in Christ. This shapes all of our incentives for personal holiness—it always brings us back to an attitude of gratitude, rather than working for acceptance through our performance.
Closely related to this is the provision for constant cleansing from sin. The new covenant has a boundless provision for cleansing (Heb 8:12; 9:14). We must avail ourselves of this cleansing provision as often as needed. William Romaine reminds us that only pardon, and consciousness of that pardon, can ultimately cancel sin’s hold on us. Says Romaine, “No sin can be crucified in heart or in life unless it is first pardoned in the conscience.” His words are a fitting reminder that guilt cannot sanctify us. In fact. our resolve to pursue personal holiness is best activated by the awareness that we have no guilt or condemnation in God’ sight. Only blood-bought pardon breaks sins’ chains.
APPLICATION: Justification gives us a new identity. Having been given this new identity of sonship in Christ; I therefore reject the world’s offers to establish my identity through my performance in the world. Yes, I have an earthly place of employment, a vocation and calling, but my gracious identity in Christ is who I really am. The more in tune I am to the gospel, the more consistently I will live out my identity in Christ. This is precisely where the gospel is strategic in fitting us to deny ungodliness. Justification is the defining truth of our relationship with the Lord.
Paul is the only N.T. writer who uses the word ‘reconciliation.’ He uses that word to describe the relational benefits of having been justified by God (declared righteous for Christ’s sake). Reconciliation brought us from a place of estrangement to a place of nearness to God (Eph 2:13-18ff.). Reconciliation speaks of relationship restored. As Puritan author John Owen says in His book, Communion with God, when we bring our sin to Christ and go to Him for righteousness, we are having communion with God.
What a blessed thought that the exchange of sin for righteousness continues throughout our earthly life—Christ taking our sin away and giving us His righteousness. This is the continual use of Christ for the reasons God gave Him. In giving us Christ, God has provided every incentive for maintaining our relationship with Him (1 Jn 1:1-6).
Christ is the very sphere in which the believer lives, moves, and has his being. To be ‘in Christ’ as our sphere of life is to have every benefit found in His Person. We are accepted in the Beloved. It is by union with Christ that the infinite benefits of His life, death, resurrection, and High Priesthood become ours. When Paul says “Put on the Lord Jesus Christ and make no provision for the flesh,” (Rom 13:14), he is saying that we must reckon Christ as our sphere, then trample the world’s offers of sinful pleasure. How we need to preach the gospel to ourselves—that God has transported across time and eternity His own joy and given it to us in Christ. We cannot exhaust the subject of who God is toward us in Christ. As John Flavel said, “Christ is the fountain of life.” Unlike earthly sources of supply, when we draw upon His infinite wealth it does not reduce the principle. God is glorified when we make withdrawals from His infinite treasuries of grace to us in Christ.
IV. The Gospel is the VIEW of God’s glory in the face of Christ
To receive the good news of the gospel is NOT merely the acceptance of the historical facts of Jesus’ life. No, to become saved is to have ‘seen’ the glory of God in the face of Christ (2 Cor 4:4-6). It is to behold by faith the divine identity of the Good Shepherd. A saved person has Christ revealed to him as the Lord of Glory, the Jehovah of the O.T.—for no one can say ‘Jesus is Lord but by the Holy Spirit’ (1 Cor 12:3). Even the Apostle Peter could not say “Thou art the Christ, the Son of the living God” apart from the revelation of the Father (Matt 16:16-17). Paul’s own testimony extolled God as the One who ‘revealed Christ in me’ (Gal 1:16).
I want you to understand that salvation restores our ability to behold the glory of God and to be captivated by His majesty. We are all familiar with the verse, “For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God” (Rom 3:23). But what often goes unnoticed in this verse is the fact that by our sin we have forfeited not only our ability to reflect God’s glory, but also our capacity to see (behold) God’s glory. The glorious gospel restores our ability to see the glory of God.
The new birth gives God’s glory back to us—it is a miracle of revelation and restoration. By the Spirit’s regenerating work, we are given a revelation of Christ—we see who Christ really is and we see the glory of God in the face of Christ (2 Cor 4:4-6). We receive a new faculty known as “eyes of the heart” (Eph 1:18) which allows us to grasp and perceive spiritual realities (1 Cor 2:10-13, 15-16).
While we were spiritually dead we could not see the Lord’s glory and His beauty. We did not love His glory or live for His glory—we had zero passion for His glory—no sentiment for His ultimate purpose to extend His glory. Therefore, we worshipped and served the creature and the creation (infatuated by world’s promises). Our hearts were not the temple of God—they were idol factories (a veritable ‘zoo’ of lusts, producing coveting of every kind as the Apostle Paul says—Romans 7:8).
APPLICATION: Now, through the miracle of the new birth, believers have become the ‘unveiled ones’ able to behold the glory of the Lord. Our new identity is that of an unveiled one, and our new vocation is to behold His glory. God’s glory of course is the outshining of His perfections made manifest in Christ, and revealed in the wonderful plan of redemption. God’s majesty and excellence is put on display in our redemption. Beholding the glory of the Lord is now the vocation of the church that we might proclaim His excellencies (1 Pet 2:9-10).
To behold the glory of the Lord is to be ravished by the sight. The reason why is stunning—to begin to understand the vastness and supremacy and dignity of the Person who gave His life for us is to rocked and staggered at His majesty. He lavished grace on you for His Name’s sake. He is fulfilling God’s plan to reveal the divine perfections in an awesome manner—by the redemption of sinners. Let this sink in and it will blast you out of the ‘blahs.’ It will fill you with passion for the glory of the Lord. For in Christ, God’s glory and your eternal good are eternally joined (Eph 2:6-7).
V. The Gospel is the VANTAGE point whereby we see the kingdom
The gospel brings Christ’s kingdom into our hearts. Only through the gospel can we reach a vantage point high enough to see the grandeur, wealth, and scope of the Kingdom of God. When the Lord saved you, He invited you into His story—into His ‘kingdom plot’ (this is the polar opposite of thinking that we can add Christ to our lives).
The glory of the Lord’s kingdom will fill the universe someday. There is more here than we can imagine. The Lord is recovering His image by calling out a portion of the human race—forming them into the moral likeness of Christ. With Christ as their ‘Head’ this new humanity is being fashioned for life in the Father’s house and in a restored planetary paradise (Jn 14:2-3; Rev 21:1-7).
We saw under view of glory that we are transformed into Christ’s likeness by beholding the glory of the Lord. In a very similar manner meditating on the gospel of the Kingdom instills in us a ‘kingdom consciousness’ which deepens our hope of glory. The gospel feeds our kingdom awareness, causing us to be controlled by an eagerness to see the Lord face to face, and to live with Him, and to finally be free of personal sin (1 Cor 13:12-13; Rom 8:23-25; Titus 2:13; 1 Jn 2:28).
Kingdom consciousness is a kind of ‘lens’ through which the believer sees all of life. Those who love the world are warned that they will pass away with it (1 Jn 2:15-17). Those who love the world have never seen the infinite value of the Kingdom of God. By contrast, the saints are controlled by their hope of glory (Heb 11:14-16; 12:25-29). Those who love the world will lose their treasure, their glory, and their souls (1Cor 2:6-8). The cruelty of the devil’s lie is that since we were created to serve—those who refuse to serve their Creator serve Satan by default (Jn 8:38-47). Satan is the default god of this world’s inhabitants (2 Cor 4:4; 1 Jn 5:18-19; Eph 2:1-3).
By blessed contrast, the child of God has undergone a ‘kingdom transfer’—he has been moved from the kingdom of darkness into the kingdom of light (Col 1:13-14). This change in kingdoms is a change in masters. As a child of the King, the Christian is willing to suffer with Christ his King (Rom 8:18-23). The believer is willing to suffer for the sake of inheriting the Kingdom of God (Acts 5:39-42; 14:22; 9:16; 2 Thess 1:5; 2 Tim 3:12).
As a result of being ‘transferred’ into Christ’s kingdom, the redeemed are able to perceive the infinite value of the kingdom (Matt 13:44). Jesus described this perception of the preciousness of the kingdom in a most unusual manner: “. . . violent men seize it by force” (Matt 11:12). In other words, once a person has seen the infinite preciousness of the kingdom—that man or woman has to have it! As Jesus said, ‘they are forcing their way into it’. They are making whatever sacrifices necessary to have it. How opposite this is from the world, the natural man is lethargic and complacent about eternal issues.
APPLICATION: Kingdom hope is more than just comfort and eternal values. Kingdom hope sanctifies us. “Whoever has this hope fixed on Him purifies himself just as He is pure” (1 Jn 3:2). Hope is part of our spiritual armor. It lets us see the world for what it is—a mirage of stimuli that cannot offer a crumb of nutrition to our hungry souls, or a speck of hope (1 Thess 5:8; Rom 13:12).
Kingdom consciousness is an essential habit of godliness—it helps drive our victory because it reminds us that we are locked in a combat to the death in a battle between temporal and eternal values. When Christ came to earth He did not find one square foot of real estate completely devoted to the knowledge and glory of God. The coming Kingdom of God will change all of that. “[Someday] the earth will be full of the knowledge of the Lord as the waters cover the sea” (Is 11:9). The Lord’s prayer will be answered someday, “His kingdom will come and His will is going to be done on earth as in heaven. God’s great gift to His people IS the kingdom (Luke 12:32-35).
VI. The Gospel is the VICTORY won by Christ at Calvary
Because of Christ’s substitutionary death for us, sin’s dominion is broken for God’s people. Christ came to destroy the works of the devil (1 Jn 3:8). Christ as Creator and Ruler of all did not need personal victory over sin and the world. He came to earth to be an overcomer for the sake of His bride. He gained the victory over sin, death, and hell in order to give it to His church.
Everything Christ endured from His birth to His ascension was for His people. His vicarious life had one great aim for His people—to give them life, righteousness, sonship, pardon, holiness, adoption, and victory. He gave His life to make you an overcomer. His conquest over the enemies of our souls was not merely an example to follow—His conquest and victory is ours. By faith and obedience, we participate in His conquests. We enter into His conquest by faith—it is a conquering of the world, the flesh, and the devil. Victory is obtained by disciplining our thought life through Scripture truth.
The only possible way we can live our lives for God is to ‘die with Christ’. This is exactly what happened—our sin natures were judged in the body and soul of our Savior 2000 years ago so that we would no longer live for self. but for Him who died and rose on our behalf (2 Cor 5:14-15). By reckoning these truths (or spiritual realities) by faith, they are worked into our daily walk so that they become inseparable from our Christian experience.
The victory Christ won is the rightful property of His church. But it is not a victory that is enjoyed passively. The saint is commanded to enter into Christ’s victory by feeding the mind upon gospel realities. We are commanded to reckon, to count, to consider ourselves dead to sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus (Rom 6:11f.). All that Christ has accomplished at the cross is ours by virtue of being in union with Him. When the Spirit placed us in Christ, all of the benefits of Christ’s ‘crosswork’ became our possession. But this is a ‘positional truth’ that it not immediately experiential. You may not wake up tomorrow morning and ‘feel’ dead to sin. In fact, if you allow yourself to be gripped by fear, anger, resentment, or lust, you may ‘feel’ very alive to sin!
Paul’s point is that we are to reckon ourselves dead to sin regardless of how we feel. This reckoning is not an attempt to make something fictional into something real. It is an appropriation of Christ’s victory by faith. The Lord accomplished a mighty conquest of our enemies. Our part is to believe it. That is how we participate in victory that Christ has purchased for us.
We must be convinced (by counting God’s promises about us in Christ as fact) that we are dead to sin before we can fight sin successfully. The gospel order is, reckon yourselves dead to sin; then say ‘no’ to sin’s overtures. That is the gospel order—this is the means whereby we enter into Christ’s conquest (Col 3:5). God commands us to believe something BEFORE we seek victory over indwelling sin. We must be convinced that Christ died to give us real objective victory over sin.
APPLICATION: Victory over the world, the flesh, and the devil is not an option, it is the condition necessary to finish the race. The citizens of heaven are said to be overcomers (Rev 21:7). Those who live by faith in Christ are overcomers (1 Jn 5:4-5). Overcoming is set up in stark contrast to who are overcome by the world instead. Scripture refers to them as ‘cowardly and unbelieving’ and not heirs of eternal life. What a cause for sober reflection. Those who do not overcome; but instead are overcome by sin and the world, will not enter heaven (Rev 21:8; 2 Pet 2:18-22).
We must constantly keep in mind that Christ is our ‘sphere’ of life. “Put on the Lord Jesus Christ and make no provisions for the flesh in regard to its lusts” (Rom 13:14). There is the gospel order again—‘put on’ then ‘make no provision for the lusts of the flesh.’ Co-crucifixion with Christ is the ‘staging area’ from which the practical work of mortifying sin takes place. I reckon who I am and what I am in Christ—a child of God who is dead to sin—THEN from that perspective of co-crucifixion I make my forays against temptation and indwelling sin.
Defining myself as crucified with Christ (a positional truth) is an act of obedient faith. At the moment of salvation, the Holy Spirit set me apart in Christ as belonging to God. Definitive sanctification (positional sanctification) is an accomplished fact that allows me to live the rest of my earthly life as God’s own possession (Heb 10:10). The more I trust in this fact of definitive sanctification (that I am set apart from sin unto God); the more I will understand why Christ does not want to share my heart with idols.
Though the Christian is to pursue moral excellence (2 Pet 1:5), moral striving has its limitations in making us good. Bare morality cannot sanctify us—pulling oneself up by our own bootstraps will not ultimately make us like Christ. Having a sin nature is a deadly serious thing—everyone in this room has a sin nature, and the gospel of Jesus Christ is God’s only answer to human depravity.
CONCLUSION: We have seen that feeding upon Christ as He is displayed and offered in the gospel is the spiritual discipline of the godly. Our part in preaching the gospel to self is to view these treasures by faith and then meditate on them until we are able to explain them to our own souls. We should always be matching His all-sufficient Savior-hood with our sinner-ship—always dwelling upon how His redeeming work is a perfect fit for our ruin (Heb 7:25-27).
Preaching the gospel to ourselves has a sanctifying effect—contemplating God’s saving activity towards us in Christ means that our identity in Him will exert a greater sway upon our choices. Thus, to define ourselves as Christ does (as a son, a conqueror, an heir, and an overcomer) means that we are becoming what we really are. This is the God-ordained way of knowing Lord more intimately. By contemplating the Father’s saving actions toward us in Christ and investigating all that God is toward us in Christ (Phil 3:7-16), the Lord continually pours joy and delight into our souls.
Preaching the gospel to self is to grow in our knowledge of the Lord. To deal with the wealth of the gospel is to deal directly with Christ’s Person. For the benefits He has won for us are not ‘commodities’ that have an existence apart from Him. Our wealth is in Him—we are sons in Him; overcomers through Him, heirs in Him. As we meditate upon our union with Christ, all that is ours through Him tends to put our Savior into more clear focus. Our hearts are drawn out in love and adoration to Him—our affection deepened, our loyalty to Him becomes more stable and firm.
We must always remember that Christ’s work in His atonement was a purchase—not only a purchase of eternal life, but also a purchase of ourselves as well. To have received God’s free gift of redemption is also to have become God’s own possession. It is to be owned by the Lord as His possession (1 Cor 6:19-20). It is to be Christ’s ‘slave’ who is ruled by His Word. The Lord has an absolute right to control all aspects of the life of His child. What follows the rest of our lives (in time and eternity) is giving our selves back to God in overflowing gratitude (Rom 6:12-23).
Grace is commonly defined by professing Christians as boundless kindness but not as absolute obligation. Paul, in Titus 2:11-14, corrects this misnomer by declaring that grace instructs us in holiness. Grace fits us and motivates us to live our entire lives as an answer to God’s calling—to present ourselves back to God without reservation as our daily privilege (Rom 6:11-13).
In this life, you will never outgrow your need for the gospel. The word of grace provides the foundation, the formation, and the motivation for loving obedience to Christ—which is the reason He called us to Himself (Acts 20: ). Preaching the gospel to ourselves is the key to thinking spiritually, it is the chief spiritual habit which the Lord utilizes to form Christ in us. When we are gospel-centered, it is normal for us to experience fruitfulness and as well as victory over the world.