“A Song of Ascents. Out of the depths I have cried to You, O LORD. Lord, hear my voice! Let Your ears be attentive To the voice of my supplications. If You, LORD, should mark iniquities, O Lord, who could stand? But there is forgiveness with You, That You may be feared. I wait for the LORD, my soul does wait, And in His word do I hope” (Psa 130:1-5, NAS95).
The accuser wants to keep you from trusting God. Whenever you slip into sin, he is there to say, “You are not a Christian.” Or, “God will never forgive you because you keep sinning; you are just a hypocrite.”
Thankfully, we are not accepted because of our performance. We are accepted because Christ’s righteousness has been imputed to us. As the psalmist asks, if God should mark iniquities, who could stand? The answer is no one.
But we do stand because we have a loving Savior who intercedes for us continually (Romans 8:34). It is because of the work of Christ that we stand forgiven, past, present, and future. This does not give us a license to sin. “Therefore do not let sin reign in your mortal body so that you obey its lusts, and do not go on presenting the members of your body to sin as instruments of unrighteousness; but present yourselves to God as those alive from the dead, and your members as instruments of righteousness to God. For sin shall not be master over you, for you are not under law but under grace” (Rom 6:12-14, NAS95). If one thinks the blood of Christ gives him license to sin, that attitude would be a cause for serious concern.
“The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit; A broken and a contrite heart.” (Psa 51:17a, NAS95) So, remember, “If we confess our sins, He is faithful and righteous to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness” (1Jn 1:9, NAS95).
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