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Learning to Deal with the Accusations of Satan
June 24 2019
We hope you enjoy reading this testimony from a Bibles for America staff member about realizing the effectiveness of the blood of Christ and its power in dealing with accusations from Satan, God’s enemy.
I’d like to share my experience of realizing how amazingly effective the blood of Christ is. I knew His blood cleansed me from my sins, but I didn’t always have such a deep and rich appreciation of its power against Satan, God’s enemy. An excerpt from The Glorious Church by Watchman Nee truly encapsulates my experience. (You can download the entire book for free here.)
The excerpt is from chapter 4, on pages 88-89. It begins:
“Romans 5:9 says, ‘…having now been justified in His blood.’ When many people come into the Lord’s presence, they have no peace in their heart. They also have a feeling of worthlessness and of being wrong within. This is because they have a false hope. They expect that they will have something positive in themselves to offer to God.”
This was my experience over and over. Growing up in a Christian home, I internalized a high moral code. I should be kind; I should be generous; I should never lie; I should live a holy life that expresses Christ—the list went on and on. And my expectation was that eventually, if I tried hard enough, I’d be able to reach that standard. But as time went on, the harder I tried to be good and holy, the more I failed. And the more I failed, the more difficult it was for me to come to God. I was crushed by my failures, and I also thought God expected me to do better, to be better.
The next part of the excerpt says:
“When they discover that they do not have anything positive to offer in themselves, the accusations come. An accusation is like this: ‘A person like you will never have anything good to offer to God.’”
Satan would accuse me like this so often! I felt worthless in my own eyes and in the eyes of God, and I was deeply ashamed of my failures.
Nee continues:
“But we must remember that we originally possessed no positive goodness before God. There was nothing good in ourselves that we could offer to God. We could only present one thing to Him—the blood. We could only be justified by the blood. We do not have any positive righteousness in ourselves. We become righteous only because of the righteousness which we receive through redemption.”
When I finally realized the fact that only the blood of Jesus is worthy, not me, I felt like I’d been saved all over again! I was released from my constant struggle to improve my behavior, and from the ever-present feeling that I hadn’t achieved an acceptable level of goodness to be able to come to God.
First Corinthians 1:30 in the New Testament Recovery Version says,
“But of Him you are in Christ Jesus, who became wisdom to us from God: both righteousness and sanctification and redemption.”
This verse really helped me see that our righteousness is Christ Himself. We have no righteousness in and of ourselves. Isaiah 64:6 even tells us that our righteousnesses are like a soiled garment. But when I was redeemed and believed in Christ Jesus, He became my righteousness. What an amazing fact!
The excerpt from The Glorious Church continues:
“Every time we come to the throne of grace, we can look to Him for grace. It is a throne of grace, not a throne of righteousness. Every time we come before God, our only qualification is that we have been redeemed, not that we have advanced in our Christian life. No Christian can ever reach the stage where he can say, ‘I have been doing pretty well recently; now I have the boldness to pray.’ No. Every time we come before God, our only ground, our only position, is based upon the blood.”
Of course, we should continue to grow in our Christian life. We shouldn’t remain the same, just like a baby doesn’t remain the same day after day. However, it was critical for me to realize that advancing in my Christian life isn’t what qualifies me to come into the presence of God; it’s only being redeemed by Christ. My eternal standing before God is the redeeming blood of Jesus.
Nee goes on:
“We must realize that no amount of spiritual growth can substitute for the effectiveness of the blood. Not one spiritual experience can ever replace the work of the blood. Even if someone should become as spiritual as the apostle Paul, the apostle John, or the apostle Peter, he would still need the blood to stand before God.”
No matter where I am in my Christian walk, no matter how my day goes—whether I feel like I did pretty well, or I failed spectacularly—my basic need before God is always the blood of Jesus.
Nee goes on to discuss how to deal with the accusations of Satan:
“Sometimes when we have sinned, Satan comes to accuse us, and sometimes when we have not sinned, Satan still comes to accuse us. Sometimes it is not a problem of whether or not we have sinned, but a problem of not having a positive righteousness to offer to God; so Satan accuses us. However, we must be clear: We can come into God’s presence only because of the blood, not because of anything else. Since we have been cleansed by the blood and justified by the blood, we are under no obligation whatsoever to accept the accusations of Satan.”
The source of the condemnation I was under for so long was Satan himself. In Revelation 12, he’s called “the accuser of our brothers.” His primary occupation is to accuse God’s children day and night to prevent them from coming to God. I’m learning that when he comes to accuse me, I shouldn’t respond with anything I’ve done, or anything I am. Instead, when Satan tells me, “You’re no good. You can offer nothing to God,” I can point him to the precious blood of Jesus. I can tell him—even “preach” to him—how Christ shed His blood for me, and that He is my righteousness before God.
I really love Revelation 12:11, which says:
“And they overcame him because of the blood of the Lamb and because of the word of their testimony, and they loved not their soul-life even unto death.”
Note 2 on blood in the New Testament Recovery Version is really helpful:
“The blood of the Lamb, which is for our redemption, answers before God all the accusations of the devil against us and gives us the victory over him. We need to apply this blood whenever we sense the accusation of the devil.”
Praise God for the precious blood of the Lamb! It’s by His blood alone that any of us are qualified to come to Him. And by His blood, we can overcome the accusations of Satan that hinder us from coming to God.
This chapter of The Glorious Church says much more about dealing with the accusations of Satan by the blood of Christ. I really encourage you to read it for yourself. The passage that I quoted from is on pages 88-89, and you can download a copy of the whole book for free here.