There is this constant apprehension or you may call it fear among a lot of Christians that sinning stops God's blessing or favor in a person's life. We hear this sort of teaching among religious church groups everywhere in the world. Is this true? Now, some say, if you sin, the blessing or favor of God in your life will stop. Then others say that when you sin, God will be angry with you and withhold his blessing or favor from you. How true are these in the light of the new covenant age in which we live today?
We're going to find out from the word of God. But before we go ahead to dismantle these religious misconceptions, let me point out some very important things here. Very, very important. The first thing I'm going to point out, is that if your reason for not wanting to sin, is based on the fear that God will be angry with you and withhold his blessing or favor from you, then you are simply living in bondage to fear and to Satan's lies. This is the first thing I want you to understand. It means you are living in bondage to fear and this is because to fear sin is sin itself and you've got to also understand that there is a big difference between to fear sin and to dislike sin. They are two big different things, praise God! Now the second thing I also want to point out here, is that to fear sin because of what religious teachings makes you think that God will punish you or that the individual will lose heaven in this grace dispensation is complete unbelief. Such fear is an expression of unbelief because you don't believe that Jesus has forever settled the sin problem of man once and for all and that is why such fear still dominates your thinking. It still dominates your mind. Praise the Lord Jesus! This is what God himself has done for us concerning sin. Through the one time perfect substitutionary sacrifice of Jesus Christ to solve the sin problem and get rid of all the penalties.
This is something we could never do for ourselves no matter how much we try. With all our morality, all our religious performances, all our good works. And even if we are given a gazillion years to live over and over again, sum up all our good and moral performance together, it will still amount to nothing. The Bible tells us in Isaiah, he said that all our self-righteousness is like as a filthy rag before the Lord.
For we cannot please God. God is not pleased by your performance. God is pleased by the perfect performance of Jesus Christ, in His substitutionary sacrifice for humanity.
Romans chapter five, reading from verse six to verse eight. Now hear this, he said for when we were yet without strength in due time Christ died for the ungodly.... verse seven for scarcely for a righteous man will one die yet for a good man some would even dare to die. Now verse 8, but God commended his love towards us in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us. Now, hear this. If Jesus took our place and died on our behalf while we were yet in sin, then tell me what sin are you going to commit today that will now make God to turn his back on you? None! Nothing! When Jesus died on the cross, we were yet in sin. And God saw all of the horrible sins and all of the terrible sins, both in the past, in the present, and in the future. And Jesus died for all of these sins. So if Jesus already died for us, even when we didn't know what God was doing, when we didn't understand what God was doing, even when we were not the ones who invited God to come redeem us. If he did all of this back then, then tell me what sin do you think you can commit that will make God to turn his back on you? Definitely nothing!
Secondly, reading from the book of Romans chapter 8 verse 32. It says, He that spared not his own son, but delivered him up for us all. How shall he not with him also freely give us all things?
How shall he not also with him freely give us all things, not some things, all things freely! Praise God! Now, what this means is that, Jesus is God's best gifts for humanity. So if God gave us his best, If he gave us his best when we were still in sin, when we didn't even know him, then tell me, what else can he withhold from you? Nothing. Nothing. If he gave you his best when we were still in sin, and he didn't withhold his best from us, which is Jesus, tell me, what sin do you think you can commit today that will now make God to withhold other things from you that are not even equal to his best, which is Jesus Christ. Praise the Lord Jesus! So that is the second thing we have to also understand. Now, let's look at Romans 8, verse 32. There's a word there which strikes attention. The word "freely". I love that word, "freely". Hallelujah! This word freely, in this verse means...You don't have to qualify to meet up to any standard to receive or enjoy God's blessing or favor. Some people make it look like, you have to meet up to God's standard before God will bless you and before God will favor you, but that is contrary to what Paul teaches here. That's contrary to scripture, to the new covenant truth. The Bible said, He gave us all things. How shall he not with him also freely give us all things? Freely give us all things. So what this means is everything God gives today is totally free. Praise the Lord Jesus! Totally, completely free, which means your sins can't stop everything.
If everything is given freely then you don't have to qualify before you receive God's blessings. You don't have to qualify before you receive God's favor because all of it is given freely and so your sins can't stop something that have been given freely to you. There's nothing God is requiring you to pay for everything is given freely.
Praise the Lord Jesus! And this is awesome truth. This is gospel reality.
Number three, we're going back again. We're reading Romans chapter number eight, verse 35 to verse 39. It says, who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall tribulation or distress or persecution or famine or nakedness, or peril or sword. As it is written, for thy sake we are killed all day long. We are counted as sheep for the slaughter. Verse 37, In all these things, we are more than conquerors through him that loved us. Hallelujah! Verse 38 goes on to say, for I am persuaded that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers, nor things to present, nor things to come, nor heights, nor death, nor any other creature shall be able to separate us from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus our Lord. Praise God!
So you see, in this passage, Paul just gives us a list of all the things that Satan can bring against anyone, to try to discredit the person from enjoying the things of God which of course he can't.
Praise God, because he's already defeated. Now all of those accusations are false accusations. They're all lies. All of Satan's accusations against you are all lies. satan doesn't even have the power to enter God's presence anymore today. Praise God! Satan doesn't even have the rights, the authority, the audacity to get into God's presence against you anymore. He can no longer go there like he did in the book of Job. Paul said none of them shall be able to separate us from the love of God and that includes your sins.
The love of God for you does not change. It will never fluctuate. Praise the Lord Jesus! things present, things to come. What does this mean? The things to come refers to your sins yet uncommitted, to future sins. Those things you have not even committed at all.
You can imagine the length and breadth of God's love. The depth and the height. How unsearchable. His love for us is constant. His love for us is consistent. His love for us does not fluctuate. It doesn't change. God loves you. And that love is constant. That love is permanent. Praise the Lord! But you see, how you respond to God's love, now, that depends on you. Depends on the knowledge and understanding of the love of God and the word of God and all that Jesus Christ has accomplished for us in his death, burial and resurrection, ascension and sitting at the right hand of the Father that you have understanding of. This determines how you respond to God. If you have the right knowledge, right understanding of this truth, you're going to respond to God just the way I'm responding to my Father. Hallelujah! Praise God!
When you have the wrong knowledge, you're going to respond to God in fear, in trepidation. But your father loves you. He wants to wrap his arms around you and let you know how much he loves you, how much he cares for you, and all that he has done for you through Jesus Christ, our Lord.
There's nothing you do today that can satisfy God other than the satisfaction the appeasement he has already received as a result of Jesus' death, burial, resurrection, ascension and all of that. So God is already appeased by the substitutionary sacrifice of Jesus. So based on this, he has already accepted you. Now, the question is do you accept him? Do you accept all he has done for you in Christ Jesus? So you see, if God forgave you and blessed you in advance, if He did all of this in advance because of Jesus' sacrifice for you, even before you were born into this world, or even before you got born again, then it means, it's not your repentance or the amendment of your ways that inspired Him to bless you in the first place. Praise the Lord!
If Jesus already died for you and all of that, and based on all that Jesus did God accepted you then, it leaves no place for your repentance, it leaves no place for your amendment of ways and all of that, and I'm not saying that your repentance is not good, your repentance is good, having a change of mind concerning things that are not of God. That's very wonderful. But understand that your repentance actually does not move God. Your repentance doesn't move God in any way. But your repentance moves you. It moves you to accept the love of God demonstrated for you in the substitutionary sacrifice of Jesus Christ.
Your repentance or amendment of your ways, is not what makes God to bless you or favor you today. God has blessed you. God has favored you. God blesses you. God favors you simply because of all that Jesus Christ has accomplished for you. And if you think that God is going to bless you or favor you because of some other thing that you need to do, you are indirectly teaching people or saying that all that Jesus Christ did for you is not enough. And guess what? That's unbelief. You are repudiating the work of Jesus Christ.
Let me just mention, for instance, salvation is a gift. Grace, God's grace is a gift. Faith is a gift. And there are so many of them. I could mention a lot of things, from the scriptures that the Bible tells us are God's gifts. And so he says the gifts and the calling of God is or are without repentance. In other words, what this simply means is this, when God gives you something he's not going to change his mind from it, He's not going to take it back from you. This is one big truth we have today. He's not taking it back from you maybe when you mess up. Some people think when you mess up if God blessed you before when you mess up He's going to remove that gift from you.
That's a lie. God is not going to change his mind. He's not going to take the gift from you. God has given you his gift forever, as his child. And he's not going to take it back from you.
He's not going to take his blessing away because you slipped somewhere and you messed up, or because maybe you've been committing one particular sin for a long, long time and you've not come out of it, so to speak. And so because of that, He now decides that, He is going to withhold this gift from you. That's a lie. God isn't going to do that.
God is not like humans. Hallelujah! He never withholds or withdraws his blessings or favor from you because of your sins. This is the gospel of Jesus Christ. Praise the Lord Jesus!
(A Prize Chukwuka Teaching)
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