Destined to Reign (6 page)

Hebrews 8:8–12

8
“… I
will
make a new covenant with the house of Israel…
9
not according to the covenant that I made with their fathers… I
will
put My laws in their mind and write them on their hearts; and I
will
be their God, and they shall be My people…
12
For I
will
be merciful to their unrighteousness, and their sins and their lawless deeds I
will
remember no more.”

The old covenant of law is based on “you shall not… you shall not… you shall not...” while the new covenant of grace is the Lord saying, “I will… I will… I will…” It is clear that the emphasis and demand of the covenant of law is on
you
performing, while the emphasis and demand of the covenant of grace is on
God Himself
performing! He will do everything on our behalf. In fact, because Jesus has already died on the cross for us, He has already
done
everything on our behalf. Remember, Christianity is “done, done, done”, not “do, do, do”. Jesus came to establish the new covenant of grace and under this new covenant, God is no longer angry with you because His anger and wrath have already been exhausted on the body of Jesus on the cross.

Grace imparts righteousness and has accomplished everything on your behalf.

Pay close attention to this, for it will radically transform your life: The only reason Jesus could cry out “It is finished!” on the cross was that the full anger of God against sin had been totally exhausted on His body. Jesus cannot lie! And if the anger of God has already been completely exhausted, how can God be angry with you today? How can God be angry with you when He has already declared, “Your sins and your lawless deeds I will remember no more”?

How Do You See God Today?

The reason many believers are living a life of defeat is that they believe the LIE that God is angry with them. The reason many are not able to reign in life and experience a life of victory is that they carry around with them this guilt and condemnation that God is angry with them because of something that they have done in the past. My friend, be careful when you hear sermons that make God look like an old man with a big stick, waiting to unleash His wrath on you when you fail to live up to His standards!

When I was growing up in the Lord, that was exactly how I pictured God. In my mind, He was an elderly, unsmiling man with white hair, white eyebrows and a white beard. I used to see Him holding a big club, waiting to bash me on the head as soon as I sinned. Of course, when I grew in the understanding of God, I started to see Him without that big menacing club, but He was still not smiling and He was still very old.

One day, when I was a teenager, I was on a bus and praying to the Lord, and I heard God’s voice saying to me, “Son, why do you picture Me like that, as an old man?” I replied confidently, “Well, you are a Father and that’s how fathers look like, right?” He replied, “Son, do you know that growing old is part of the curse that came upon the earth because of Adam’s sin? In heaven, there is no curse. We are forever young.”

When I heard Him say that, all of a sudden, I began to see God as the same God who spoke with Abraham as a friend under the terebinth trees and showed him the stars, the same God who parted the Red Sea and delivered the children of Israel from slavery, the same God whose hand of favor made a young shepherd boy king over all of Israel. That’s how I see my God today.
He is forever young, strong and loving!
He is not wielding a club and ready to punish me. His arms are spread wide, ready to embrace me.

My friend, do you see an angry God today, or a God who is smiling and ready to embrace you? Because of Jesus’ finished work, we are no longer under the covenant of law where God is happy with you sometimes and angry with you at other times.
Today, He is always well-pleased with you because of Jesus Christ
.

Let that truth sink in and fall in love with Him all over again.

What About God’s Wrath?

Several years ago, I was walking to my car after a preaching engagement when a guy came running after me from the auditorium. Just as I was about to open my car door, he stopped right in front of me, wheezed and said, “Wait, pastor…” He was panting very hard and trying to recover from his sprint. “Wait… I have a question for you.”

He looked very disturbed and said, “You talked about God’s love, but the Bible also says that God is wrath!”

Right there in the parking lot, I began my next sermon. I explained that while God
has
wrath, the Bible never defines God
as
wrath. Instead, according to the Bible’s definition, God is
love
.

He then exclaimed, “But Pastor Prince, sometimes I see God being angry!”

I explained, “We do see God being angry in the Old Testament, and in the book of Revelation, where His anger is toward those who have rejected Jesus. But for you and me, believers in the new covenant, we are not part of the Old Testament and we will never be punished because we have already received Jesus. As believers, God is no longer angry with us because all His anger for our sins fell upon Jesus at the cross. Jesus became the Lamb of God who takes away all our sins. On the cross, Jesus cried out, ‘My God, My God, why have You forsaken Me?’ Why do you think He cried that? He cried that so that we would all know specifically that at that point in time, God’s wrath fell upon Him. He became our sin offering and the fire of God’s wrath devoured Him completely as He who knew no sin became our sin, so that you and I will never experience God’s wrath again.”

God is no longer angry with us because all His anger for our sins fell upon Jesus at the cross.

After I had explained this, he thanked me. The disturbed look that had creased his face had given way to a smile. I believe that as he walked away, there was a peace and assurance in his heart that God was no longer angry with him because his sins had already been judged completely on the cross at Calvary. Hallelujah!

There are many sincere believers today who are like this man. They believe that God is a God of love, but at the same time, they also believe that He can be a God of great wrath. When they read the Bible, they get confused because they see an often-angry God in the Old Testament, but a loving God in the New Testament. Is God schizophrenic? Is He really angry sometimes and loving at other times? Let’s find out in the next segment.

Rightly Dividing The Covenants

It is important that we understand that God works through covenants because that explains how God blesses people. Under the old covenant of Moses, if the children of Israel obeyed the “big ten” — the Ten Commandments — they would be blessed, otherwise, they would be cursed and punished. Think about this for a moment: Were they cursed because God is a God of wrath? No, they were cursed because they had failed to keep the terms of their covenant. It was a covenant that depended on their ability to keep the law and they could not.

The good news is that you and I are no longer under the requirements of the old covenant. Through Jesus’ finished work, we are now under the new covenant, and in this covenant, we are blessed not because we are good or because we do good. To put it simply, we are blessed because
Jesus
is good, and
He
made us good and accepted by washing away all our sins with His own blood! We have to rightly divide the covenants.

“Pastor Prince, are you saying that God has gone ‘soft’ on sin?”

No way, my friend! Listen carefully to what I am saying: God is holy and righteous, and He hates sin. There is no question about that. But the full anger and judgment of God against sin fell upon Jesus on the cross. Have you ever wondered how it was possible for Jesus to be punished for sin since He committed no sin? The Bible says that He who knew no sin became sin
1
. Jesus committed no sin, but the past, present and future sins of humanity were all collectively punished on His body! He knew no sin, but was punished for our sins. So God has not gone soft on sin. Sin has been judged at the cross of Jesus!

All Your Sins Have Been Forgiven

“Pastor Prince, how can you say that even our future sins have been forgiven?”

My friend, when Christ died on the cross, you weren’t even born yet. You weren’t even an idea to your parents! All your sins were thus “future” sins. So
all
your sins have been forgiven, and it was accomplished through one sacrifice, by one Man. His name is Jesus. Jesus’ finished work is outside of time. His blood that was shed forgives
all
your sins — past, present and even future sins.

Many Christians have the erroneous belief that only their past sins have been forgiven. They believe that when they received Christ, only their past sins were forgiven. So they believe that they have to be very careful from that point onwards. That was the impression that I was given by preachers and teachers when I was growing up.

Then, I read the Bible for myself and saw that it said that God, “having forgiven you
all trespasses
…”
2
My friend, “all” means
all
. It refers to
all
the sins of our lifetime! God didn’t just take away one segment of our trespasses. He forgave all — past, present and future — of our trespasses! God’s definition of “all” is not limited by time and space the way man’s definition of “all” is. When God said “all”, He really meant all! Understand that Jesus does not have to be crucified again for your future sins. They were all forgiven at the cross as well!

Let me illustrate it this way. Imagine that you and your family have managed to wriggle your way to the front of a jostling crowd in Disneyland, where the street parade is about to start. You and your children can’t wait to see Mickey Mouse and his friends riding past on their beautiful floats. Donald Duck sails past and your children wave in excitement. Next comes Goofy, and then Pluto, and wow… is that Mickey coming up next? That’s how we see life. We have a linear perspective and we see events unfold day by day. However, God’s perspective is different. He has a “helicopter’s view”. He is up there, high above the parade, and He sees all the floats from the beginning to the end. He is “the Alpha and the Omega, the Beginning and the End”
3
.

In the same way, when God forgave your sins at the cross, He saw the sins of your entire life from beginning to the end. God has taken all your sins, even the sins that you have not yet committed, and put them all on Jesus. All your “future” sins have been fully judged on the cross!

Does knowing this make you go, “Whoopee! I can do anything and commit any sin I want since I’m already forgiven”? Or does it make you want to live a life of honor that glorifies your God, who loves you so perfectly and completely?

When you are under God’s grace and His perfect forgiveness, you will experience victory over sin.

I don’t believe for one moment that a believer who has truly encountered the complete forgiveness of Jesus and the perfection of His finished work would desire to live a life of sin. It is His grace and forgiveness that gives you the power to overcome sin. Apostle Paul said, “Sin shall not have dominion over you, for you are not under law but under grace.”
4
When you are under God’s grace and His perfect forgiveness, you will experience victory over sin.

Testimony Of His Grace

I received this written testimony from a precious brother in my church:

Pastor Prince, I just want to share with you what the grace of God has done for me in my life. I was born into a Christian family. When I was growing up, I was forced to attend church. All I learnt was that Jesus hung on the cross, but why He was there, I did not know. I hated going to church. My parents would force me to go and reprimand me, but it didn’t help.

In high school, I got involved with gangs, and started to smoke and drink heavily. I started to live a life of crime, stealing, vandalizing and getting into fights. I became rude, hot-tempered and extremely vulgar. My parents, teachers and school counselors tried to help me, but nothing worked. It wasn’t long before I was expelled from school and became a full-time gangster. I frequented the pubs every day, and became a heavy drinker and smoker. Most of my friends were drug addicts. I got involved in armed robberies and I saw my life going into a downward spiral. It went from bad to worse and there was a cry within me for things to change.

This whole bondage by the devil came to an end just a few years ago when I got to know this girl called Faith. Even though Faith was a new believer, she would tell me about the grace, mercy and love of God, and why Jesus died for me. I was amazed at her knowledge of Jesus. I was born into a Christian family, but this new convert knew more about Jesus than I did. She then brought me to her church, called New Creation Church, and as you began to minister, I felt a warmth all over me and I started to cry. I felt like I was falling in love, but I did not know with whom. It was a love beyond the love of man, and I raised my hands up high and said the sinner’s prayer at the end of the service.

From that point on, my life was no longer the same. Jesus began to deliver me from so many bondages. I heard you share a testimony about how another church member was delivered from a smoking addiction by confessing the righteousness of God and I started to do the same. I would smoke and confess that Jesus had taken my smoking addiction on the cross and that He still loves me even though I was still smoking.

Amazingly, two weeks later, nine years of heavy smoking and six years of alcoholism were gone! And as time went by, Jesus delivered me from the gang that I was in. I was even delivered from many other bad habits, like my addiction to pornography. I truly became a new creation in Christ Jesus! Everyone who knew me was shocked at my transformation. I was even healed of a 10-year urinary problem. I used to have to go to the toilet many times in the night, but now I am able to sleep through the night in peace.