The Scriptures are all powerful in breaking down strongholds, raising up those who are pressed down, and guiding us into experiencing the Lord’s victory over all things. In this segment we set forth a series of subjects with appropriate Scriptures that strengthen faith, and lead to overcoming in the Lord.
Subject areas will be changed regularly, and previous scriptural readings and commentaries may be accessed by clicking different weeks in the calendar below.
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“You are of God, little children, and have overcome them, because He who is in you is greater than he who is in the world.” 1 John 4:4-5.
This is a comparison between He who is in you, who is Jesus Christ, and he who is in the world, who is Satan. In times of spiritual warfare and suffering, we can be reassured that Jesus Christ within us is far greater in power that Satan and his demon spirits.
“As the living Father sent Me, and I live because of the Father, so he who feeds on Me will live because of Me.” John 6:57-58.
God sent Jesus to live His life on this earth in union with Him, drawing on the indwelling life of the Father to meet every need. Jesus instructed us to live our lives in the same manner, feeding on Him, or drawing on His indwelling life to meet our needs. He who feeds on Jesus will have the source of divine life that supplements his own ability and capacity.
“Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall trouble or hardship or persecution or famine or nakedness or danger or sword?...For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.” Rom 8: 35-36 and 38-39.
There are times when we are faced with dire circumstances that make us feel estranged from God. Satan directs accusations into our minds, like, God has abandoned us; we are about to die; our sins have separated us from God and His love; God can’t help us, and so forth.
The first thing to realise is that these accusations do not originate from us. They are directed into our minds by Satan who is a liar, and that we can completely disregard them. The second thing is to believe the Scriptural truth spoken by the apostle Paul. NOTHING can separate us from the love of God and His desire to help us. Even when he was in the belly of the great fish at the bottom of the ocean, God heard Jonah’s prayed and came to his rescue.
There are times when God delays helping us, but these times of suffering are for our refinement, forging holiness in us, so that we may draw closer to Him.
“This is how God showed His love among us: He sent His one and only Son into the world that we might live through Him. This is love: not that we loved God, but that He loved us and sent His Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins.”
1 John 4:9-10.
God’s love towards us is absolutely unmerited by us, not depending on our love for Him, or our moral purity. He loves us because His nature is to love even sinners, desiring that they might believe on the Lord Jesus and be saved. Not only does He desire our salvation, but that we might receive Jesus Christ as our life, and learn to live through Him.
“For scarcely for a righteous man will one die; yet perhaps for a good man someone would even dare to die. But God demonstrates His own love toward us, in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.”
Rom 5:7-8.
There is nothing in ourselves that warrants God’s love for us. Even in our sinful state, God sent His own Son to suffer an agonizing death on the cross to bear the punishment for our sins. Peter explains His ultimate purpose, “For Christ also suffered once for sins, the just for the unjust, that He might bring us to God…” 1 Peter 3:18-19. His purpose was to reconcile us to Himself that we might be accepted as beloved children, holy and righteous in His sight. Such is the nature of God’s love.
“And we have seen and testify that the Father has sent the Son as Saviour of the world. Whoever confesses that Jesus is the Son of God, God abides in him, and he in God. And we have known and believed the love that God has for us. God is love, and he who abides in love abides in God, and God in him.” 1 John 4:14-16.
The confession that Jesus is the Son of God who was sent to be the Saviour of the world, is the basic testimony that procures our salvation. This reading assures us that if we are saved, that God dwells in us by His Spirit, and we in Him. By believing in His abiding presence in us, we are assured of His love for us. God is love, and if we abide in Him, we naturally abide in His love. This then is the test. If God’s love is in us, and we abide in His love, the consequence should be that we have love for one another.
“All of us also lived among them at one time, gratifying the cravings of our sinful nature and following its desires and thoughts. Like the rest, we were by nature objects of wrath. But because of his great love for us, God, who is rich in mercy, made us alive with Christ even when we were dead in transgressions-it is by grace you have been saved.” Eph 2:3-5.
In all honesty, we have to acknowledge that we were like all worldly sinners, allowing our minds to be drawn into carnal thoughts and imaginings, into carnal judgments of the world and those in it, opening ourselves to all manner of resentments, judgments, pride and self-righteousness. We too harboured fleshly desires, satisfying the cravings of the flesh and the mind. There is no moral ground that we can stand on to claim worthiness. In our hearts we have to agree totally with this reading – it is because of God’s love, and the abundance of His grace that we have been led by Him to the Lord; salvation, and accepted as holy and blameless in His sight.
“Through the LORD's mercies we are not consumed,
Because His compassions fail not.
They are new every morning;
Great is Your faithfulness.” Lam 3:22-23.
God’s love, mercy, and compassion are like an inexhaustible spring of sweet water that never fails to refresh our spirits and, restore our souls.
“If we are faithless,
He remains faithful;
He cannot deny Himself.” 2 Tim 2:13
“For we ourselves were also once foolish, disobedient, deceived, serving various lusts and pleasures, living in malice and envy, hateful and hating one another. But when the kindness and the love of God our Saviour toward man appeared, not by works of righteousness which we have done, but according to His mercy He saved us…” Titus 3:3-7.“For we ourselves
God’s love towards us does not depend on our good works, or righteousness and kindness towards one another. When we have allowed our fleshly nature to overcome us, and have reacted badly towards others, Satan’s spirits heap shame on us, and accuse us that we have isolated ourselves from God’s love. This Scripture assures us that no matter what state we are in, God’s love is constant towards us, always reaching out to comfort us and restore our souls.
“Love suffers long and is kind; love does not envy; love does not parade itself, is not puffed up; does not behave rudely, does not seek its own, is not provoked, thinks no evil; does not rejoice in iniquity, but rejoices in the truth; bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. Love never fails.” 1 Cor 13:4-8.
Paul’s well-known summary of the virtues of love, expresses attributes of God’s love towards us, expressed through Jesus Christ. That love in a person expresses itself in patience and kindness towards others, is not easily provoked by their hostility or shortcomings, looking for their good points rather than their bad. Love does not envy others or make a show of one’s own virtue – and so forth. Whilst that form of love may appear to be beyond our human natures to manifest, it is in us in Jesus Christ who dwells in us by His Spirit. His desire for us is that we draw on His love by faith, so that it may flow out and encompass those whom we encounter.
For by Him all things were created that are in heaven and that are on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or principalities or powers. All things were created through Him and for Him.
Col 1:16-16.
Mankind was created through Jesus, and was for Him, and so He took responsibility for man’s reconciliation to God. The thing that had caused this separation from God was our sin, for, if we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us. 1 John 1:8. A holy God could not dwell in the presence of sin, and before we could be accepted by Him, the power of sin that separated us had to be eliminated.
For He God made Him Jesus who knew no sin to be sin for us, that we might become the righteousness of God in Him. 2 Cor 5:21.
To restore us to Himself, God made Jesus, who knew no sin, to become the sin of mankind, so that it could be judged and put to death. On the cross, it was not Jesus who was being judged and put to death, but the sin of mankind, my sin and your sin. Jesus willingly accepted the label of the sin of mankind, and willingly bore its punishment, the penalty of sin being death. In Jesus case, this meant the horrifying death of the cross.
To be set free from the power of sin that separates us from God, we have to believe in our hearts, and confess with our mouths that Jesus has borne the punishment for our sins, and that we are now accepted as being righteous by God.
Or do you not know that as many of us as were baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into His death? Therefore we were buried with Him through baptism into death, that just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, even so we also should walk in newness of life. Rom 6:3-4.
Our baptism is a further example of God delivering us from the power of sin. We were baptised into the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, but the above reading states that we were baptised into Christ’s death. Spiritually, our old man, under the power of sin, was incorporated into Christ’s death, so that the body of sin may be done away with. At the time of our baptism, what happened spiritually was not apparent, but later in our spiritual walk, when we do understand, we can claim it by faith, and apply it in our pathway to holiness.
For our light affliction, which is but for a moment, is working for us a far more exceeding and eternal weight of glory, while we do not look at the things which are seen, but at the things which are not seen. For the things which are seen are temporary, but the things which are not seen are eternal.
2 Cor 4:17-18.
There are two types of truth, physical truth, which is what we perceive in our physical surroundings, and spiritual truth, which in our spiritual walk is all that Jesus procured for us by His sacrificial death on the cross. If our eyes are on physical truth, we see a path of continually sinning and repenting. If our focus is on spiritual truth, we walk in the light of our righteous before God because of the blood of Jesus that continually cleanses us of sin. The physical path is one of walking in the shadow of sin and death, but the spiritual walk is one of life and peace.
But if we walk in the light as He is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus Christ His Son cleanses us from all sin. 1 John 1:7.
Walking in the light is walking in spiritual truth, which is one of righteousness, because the blood of Jesus continually cleanses us from all sin. This is the basis for fellowship with other Christians who are walking in the light.
For those who live according to the flesh set their minds on the things of the flesh, but those who live according to the Spirit, the things of the Spirit. For to be carnally minded is death, but to be spiritually minded is life and peace.
Rom 8:5-6.
The physical truth is that Jesus had to die physically to actually pay the penalty of sin, which is death. Therefore, just as through one man sin entered the world, and death through sin, and thus death spread to all men Rom 5:12.
The spiritual reality is that in accepting by faith the fact that Jesus bore the penalty for our sin, we can embrace the spiritual truth that God has accepted Christs sacrificial offering to exonerate us, and that we are now righteous in the sight of God.
‘If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us. If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. If we say that we have not sinned, we make Him a liar, and His word is not in us.’ 1 John 1:8-10.
In Paul’s letter to the Romans, he stressed that all have sinned and fallen short of God’s righteousness and holiness. ‘There is none righteous, no, not on...for all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God.” Rom 3:10 &3:23. The other side of the coin is the sure promise of our gracious and merciful God, that it we confess our sins, He will forgive us, and the blood of Jesus Christ will cleanse us from all unrighteousness. The word cleanse means to purge out, telling us that when we testify to the power of the blood of Jesus by faith, it has the capacity, to gradually purge out all unrighteousness as we persist and become grounded in belief in our testimonies,
“Though your sins are like scarlet,
They shall be as white as snow;
Though they are red like crimson,
They shall be as wool.”
Isa 1:18.
Even though we may have committed the vilest of sins, we have God’s promise that if we confess our sin in repentance, we will be forgiven. The essence of God’s forgiveness is that He remembers them no more. But often we cannot forget, and revisit our sin over and over again, praying repeated prayers for forgiveness. We must take our minds off ourselves and our own unworthiness, and turn them to the worthiness of God’s atoning sacrifice. It is by the blood of Jesus, the spotless lamb of God, that our sins have been forgiven. “In Him we have redemption through His blood, the forgiveness of sins.”. Eph 1:7.
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