Destined to Reign (21 page)

How do you see yourself today? Are you more conscious of your sins, or are you more conscious of your righteousness and what Jesus’ blood has done? Tradition has taught us to be occupied with self, but grace teaches us to be occupied with Christ. The more you are occupied with yourself, the more dejected, oppressed and depressed you become. From whichever angle you see yourself, you’ll see ugliness, unworthiness and disqualification.

To be occupied with Christ is to turn away from self and to see Jesus. He is like a precious diamond. When you hold Him up in the light of God’s Word, whichever way you turn Him, He sparkles with rays of beauty, perfection, righteousness, holiness and wholeness. Can you see that? Look away from your own frailty and see Jesus because the Word of God says, “
As He is, so are you in this world
.”
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Is Jesus holy? Then so are you!

Just
how
holy are you? Earlier on, I explained that you are not made holy by your thoughts and actions. You are made holy because of Jesus’ sacrifice on the cross. Now, let’s go just a little deeper to examine the sacrifice that was made on your behalf.

The book of Leviticus talks about the five offerings of the old covenant: The burnt offering, peace offering, meal offering, sin offering and trespass offering. These offerings are shadows or typologies of what our Lord Jesus accomplished when He offered His life for us on the cross. Jesus, as our sacrificial offering, did such an amazing work that it takes five offerings to depict the one act of His sacrifice on the cross! I will just focus on two of the more important offerings in this book — the burnt offering and the sin offering.

The Sin Offering

Let’s focus on the sin offering first. According to the law, a man must bring a sin offering to the priest whenever he sins. Imagine that you are living in Old Testament times. You have sinned and you are now bringing a lamb as your sin offering to the priest.

The first thing that will happen is that the priest will examine the lamb to ensure that it has no blemishes. The lamb must be without blemish and perfect because it speaks of Jesus’ perfection. Jesus knew no sin and committed no sin. He is the true sacrificial Lamb without blemish.

After the priest has examined your sin offering, you must lay your hands on its head.

The Sin Offering

Why must you lay your hands on the lamb’s head? Laying hands on the animal that you bring to the priest is an act of identification. When you lay your hands on your sin offering, your sins are transferred to the innocent lamb. After you lay your hands on the lamb, you must kill it. The lamb must die because all your sins have been transferred to its body. And because it dies bearing your sins, you can go free.

In the same way, Jesus had to die on the cross with your sins so that you might go free. He was not murdered. He came to lay down His life for you and me
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. He chose to become our sin offering on the cross. That is why, when John the Baptist saw Jesus, he said, “Behold! The Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world!”
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That is why Apostle Paul said, “For He made Him who knew no sin to be sin for us.”
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Do you know what all this means, my friend? It means that the moment you received Jesus Christ into your life,
all
your sins were transferred to Jesus…
forever
! Jesus died in your place as your sin offering, so that you might go free. What a wonderful Savior we have!

By Jesus’ one sacrifice, you are forever perfected, every single day for the rest of your life.

But there is a big difference between the sin offering in the Old Testament and Jesus’ sacrifice for you on the cross. In the Old Testament, the blood of bulls and goats could only provide a temporal covering for sin. Every time man failed, he had to offer another sin offering. Praise be to God that in the new covenant, the Bible declares that “by one offering He has
perfected forever
those who are being sanctified”
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.

The blood of bulls and goats could never take away sins, so the sacrifices had to be offered repeatedly. But Jesus’ sacrifice was “
once for all
”
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. It is a complete and finished work, and He never needs to be sacrificed again! Jesus
is
the perfect sin offering. His blood does not just cover your sins temporarily.
All
your sins have been removed permanently! Even if you fail tomorrow, Jesus would not need to be offered again. His sacrifice has perfected you… for how long? Forever! You are
forever
perfected, every single day for the rest of your life. The blood of Jesus is continually cleansing you. You are now under the waterfall of forgiveness and you are sanctified perpetually. Hallelujah!

The Burnt Offering

The sin offering speaks of your sins being transferred to the body of Jesus on the cross. That is why God does not want you to be conscious of your sins today. He wants you to be conscious of your forgiveness.

Let’s look at the burnt offering now. The burnt offering is beautiful because while the sin offering speaks of Jesus taking your sins on His own body, the burnt offering speaks of the righteousness of Jesus being transferred to you at the cross.

When you read the book of Leviticus, you will see that of the five offerings, God put the sin offering last and the burnt offering first. Man puts it the other way round — we first come to God with all our sins, and all our sins are judged as a sin offering at the cross of Jesus. There is nothing wrong with this order, but God does not expect us to stop there. He wants us to know that Jesus did not just die for our sins, He also died as our burnt offering to make us well-pleasing, righteous and favored before God. That is why when the burnt offering is offered, it ascends as a “sweet aroma” to the Lord
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. (There is no sweet aroma in the sin offering.) The sweet aroma from the burnt offering speaks of Jesus’ beauty, perfection and loveliness to the Father.

This may be the first time you are hearing all this, so let me reiterate the difference. The sin offering speaks of your sins being transferred to Jesus, while the burnt offering speaks of Jesus’ worthiness before God, His acceptance before God and His delight before His Father
being transferred to you
. Today, God favors you in exactly the same way He favors His Son.

Unfortunately, there are believers today who only understand that they have been forgiven. They do not understand that they have been made righteous as well by the cross of Jesus. Because of this, they have allowed themselves to come under condemnation. If this describes you, then rejoice — let the truth that God sees you clothed with the righteousness of His Son, because Jesus became your burnt offering at the cross, set you free today from every guilt and condemnation!

If you believe that you don’t deserve success but deserve to be punished, you will unconsciously punish yourself and cause yourself to fail.

Self-Condemnation Is Destructive

The reason that some believers are sick, depressed and oppressed is that instead of being conscious of their righteousness in Christ, they have sin on their conscience. The moment they sin, they unconsciously feel that
someone
(usually themselves) must pay.

If this describes you, then pay attention because I am going to tell you what happens to you when you are conscious of your sins, instead of your forgiveness and righteousness. When you sin and come under condemnation, your mind and body begin to say, “He wants to punish himself, so let’s make him pay.” Your body will respond to this need for punishment, and you may start to develop depression and sickness in your body.

Many believers are sick today not because of sin, for sin has already been punished on the body of Jesus, but
because of condemnation
. In the earlier chapters, we looked at condemnation from the accuser, but now I am talking to you about self-condemnation and your unconscious desire to inflict punishment on yourself when you know that you have sinned.

My friend, self-condemnation is destructive. When you fail to see that Jesus has already borne your punishment, you will punish yourself, or take it out on your family with verbal or even physical abuse. If you believe that you deserve to be punished and that you do not deserve success, you will unconsciously activate a self-sabotaging mechanism to punish yourself and cause yourself to fail. You could be on the brink of a lucrative business contract, or about to embark on an exciting career opportunity, but somehow, you find yourself doing something that sabotages the entire deal and causes it to crumble before your eyes. Why? Because deep down you think that you do not deserve it.

Self-condemnation also manifests itself with destructive effect in relationships. If you are in a wonderful relationship with somebody who really loves and cares for you, you will inevitably do something that sabotages the relationship because again, something inside tells you that you do not deserve to be loved by this person.

Psychiatrists will tell you that a person with such behavior is driven by guilt and has a perpetual sense of wanting to punish himself. The world has all kinds of fancy terms to describe people who exhibit an unconscious desire for punishment, but it cannot show you how to overcome it. It takes a revelation of the finished work of Jesus to overcome it.

Beloved, wake up and realize that Jesus has already been punished on your behalf. Stop condemning and punishing yourself because Jesus has already been condemned and punished on your behalf! If you say that you believe that God has forgiven you of all your sins, then why are you still feeling guilty? The existence of guilt and condemnation in your life tells you that you do not really believe that all your sins have been forgiven.

In the Old Testament, the Israelites had a consciousness of sins because their repeated sacrifices reminded them of their sins. The blood of bulls and goats just could not take away sins
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. However, today, believers have no business living with sin-consciousness because Jesus, their once-for-all sin offering, has already taken away all their sins! And because of the burnt offering of Jesus, they should be living with righteousness-consciousness!

Pay Attention If You Desire To Glorify God

Let me just qualify that I am writing to believers who have a desire to glorify God in their lives, but are struggling with guilt and condemnation. If you are living in sin and have no desire to leave this kind of lifestyle, that’s a different story. You can try not to be sin-conscious all you like, but you will not succeed simply because you are living in sin (for example, staying in an adulterous affair with no desire to terminate it). Get out of that lifestyle of sin by the grace of God!

Do you understand that there is a distinction? You can be struggling with sin-consciousness even though you are not living in sin. I am writing to those of you who desire to break out of the cycle of defeat that self-condemnation brings. I am writing to those of you who are trapped in the lie that you do not deserve success in life. I am writing to those of you who want to stop sabotaging yourself because of guilt and condemnation. I am writing to those of you who are not living in sin, but are nevertheless struggling with sin-consciousness.

Beloved, I am writing to those of you who have been robbed of the boldness to enter God’s presence and worship Him because after “searching your heart”, you have convinced yourself that you do not qualify. If I am describing you, my friend, I pray that today will be the day of your freedom.

Jesus Was An Overpayment For All Your Sins

You and I owed God a sin debt that we could never pay. But Jesus has already paid our debt. In fact, He OVERPAID it so that we would never have the debt on our conscience ever again! Let me share an illustration with you that I pray will open your eyes to just how fully paid your debt is.

I’m going to use two of my pastors for this illustration — Pastor Henry and Pastor Lawrence. Let’s say that you borrowed US $50,000 from Lawrence and promised to pay him back in a month. But as time went by, you simply could not pay him the money. Now, even if Lawrence does not ask you for the money, what would happen to your relationship with him because of this
debt on your conscience
? Would you be going up to him and slapping him on the back, saying, “Hey, brother, how are you?” No way! If you ran into Lawrence, you would probably sheepishly mutter something like, “Oh, hi… er… sorry, I have to go now, see you around… er… sometime.” Most of the time, you would probably go out of your way to avoid him.