BE FREE FROM CONDEMNATIONMessage
by Ronny Cham preached at the SIB Metro Church Evening English Service at 6.00
p.m. on Sunday, 30th November 2008 “BE SET FREE FROM CONDEMNATION” SCRIPTURE:
Rom 6:21-23 21 What
fruit did you have then in the things of which you are now ashamed? For the end
of those things is death. 22 But now having
been set free from sin, and having become slaves of God, you have your fruit to
holiness, and the end, everlasting life. 23 For
the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus
our Lord. (NKJV) We sang
songs declaring God’s mercy and grace and love. We declare the power of His Love and the
might of His Word and the indwelling strength of His Holy Spirit in our
lives. We call for His help and we
pray for his abiding presence so that we can conquer the works of darkness, be victorious overcomers. We thank Him for his saving Grace
and tender Mercy, for His unfailing Love and everlasting faithfulness. We
acknowledge without a shadow of doubt that we are more than conquerors through
Him who loved us by giving us His one and only Son, Jesus Christ, who redeemed
us from the kingdom of darkness into the Kingdom of Light. We proclaim Romans
8:38-39, “For I am persuaded that
neither death nor life, nor angels nor principalities nor powers, nor things
present nor things to come, nor height nor depth, nor any other created thing,
shall be able to separate us from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus our
Lord.” (NKJV) Most of
us find absolute solace and peace to meditate on His Word in Isaiah 40:31,
which says, “But those who wait on
the LORD shall renew their strength; they shall mount up with wings like
eagles, they shall run and not be weary, they shall walk and not faint.”
(NKJV) Therefore,
if we, as Christians are now living in the power of His love, the strength of
His Grace and the might of His Spirit, who can be against us? We certainly
agree that there shall be no one who can stand against us. We proclaim His victory over Satan. We
are overcomers. We trust in our
God, we shall have no fear, we shall mount up wings
like eagle and rise above all circumstances. Well
said indeed, but if we are to realistically assess our daily life on earth,
yes, even the daily life in and with the Lord Jesus Christ, as a Christian, how
many would identify with me that it is a constant struggle every day to walk
according to the Spirit. Furthermore,
sometimes, we hear James speaking to us and encouraging us in James 1:2-3 that,
“My brethren, count it all joy when
you fall into various trials, 3 knowing that the testing of your faith produces
patience.” (NKJV) Sure enough, we are determined to rise up in our
spirit to overcome all trials and temptations. Yet there are times, we feel like caving
in because of the weight of the burden of trying to live a victorious Christian
life in the power of His love, strength of His Grace and the might of His Holy
Spirit. Why is
it so? Well, let me share with you one truth the Lord has shown me [I testified
this truth when I was preaching this message in church]. One of the greatest attacks of the enemy
on our Christian life is condemnation.
In Romans
8:1, the Apostle Paul gave us a clue, he said, “There is therefore now no condemnation to those who are in Christ
Jesus, who do not walk according to the flesh, but according to the Spirit.”
(NKJV) This is to say, if we walk according to the Spirit, there will be no
condemnation, but if we walk according to the flesh, there will be
condemnation. Is it
possible that a Christian will continue to walk in the flesh? Yes, and this is the sad truth and that
is why the Bible is full of warnings to us, Christians, not to walk according
to the flesh anymore; not to yield to the lust of the flesh any more, but to
walk and live according to the Spirit! Why do
we go back to do or live or walk in the flesh? What draws us back into the
things of the flesh? What prevents us from going full swing to walk and live
according to the Spirit? I believe that God, through Romans 8:1, is telling us
that condemnation will prevent us from moving forward whole hearted in
accordance with the Spirit. How
does Satan attack us with condemnation?
It is not what we are doing as Christian because as a son of God, with
His Holy Spirit dwelling inside of me, it is impossible for Satan to come inside
of me to attack me, unless permitted by God. Condemnation is a subtle feeling inside
of me. It is within me, within my
spirit. It is within my control to
rid of it. I came
to know through my own life experience that this condemnation is not my guilt
about what sin I am committing now as Christian. According to 1 John 1:9, all I need to
do is to confess it and He is faithful and just to forgive me my sins and to
cleanse me from all unrighteousness.
But, rather, the condemnation that I feel is actually my guilt about my
past sins which I have continued to keep inside a corner of my heart, tied to
my inner soul which I have never let go and it remains as a secret in my life,
this is what the Apostle Paul said in Romans 6:21, “the things of which you are now ashamed”. It is
common to find that people would say we should not talk about the past sin. We feel
that whatever we have done in the past, there is no need to dig out the filth
and the dirt now. We must sweep the sins of the past under the carpet, never to
remember them again. We can even
quote the Bible in Hebrews 8:12 where God says, “For I will be merciful to their unrighteousness, and their sins and
their lawless deeds I will remember no more." (NKJV) So, we
will say that if God Himself says He will remember no more our past sins and
our lawless deeds, why should we remember it? I believe that God, in Hebrews 8:12, is
saying, when we confessed our sins, He forgives, He forgives completely and
totally our sins and will not ever hold any of them against us. In this
sense, it is complete and total confession of our sins that brings about
complete and total forgiveness of our sins. For example, the people of God in the
Old Testament, they had done treacherous and unspeakable sins against God. As
they confessed, God forgave them and saved them. Then they sinned again, they confessed
and God forgave them again and so this confessing and forgiving repeated
throughout the Old Testament. But God
did not bury these past treacherous and unspeakable sins of His people and
never to speak about it again because He had promised not to remember
them. Instead, all their past sins were
carefully and meticulously written in detail in the Old Testament and God asked
one generation to tell the next generation of His judgment on their sins and
His gracious forgiveness and unfailing love as they returned to Him. Another
example was King David, who committed shameful sin with Bathsheba in adultery
and in murder. That was unspeakable past sin of one of the genealogical
forefathers of our Lord Jesus Christ, it should not be remembered, it must be put away! No,
not at all.
The Bible recorded the full story. God took away the baby, the fruit of their
sin. King David confessed to Prophet Nathan that he had sinned against the Lord
(2 Sam 12:13). After he had confessed his sin, with the same woman Bathsheba,
who had then become his wife, gave birth to another child Solomon and the Bible
says, “the Lord loved Solomon”. Thus,
we note that the actors were the same, it was King David and Bathsheba and a
child was born as the fruit of their sins, and God did not allow that child to
live, but after confession and repentance, it was the same King David and the
same Bathsheba which gave birth to another child, Solomon, whom God loved. We would not have known the forgiving
grace, mercy and love of God if King David’s sins and transgressions was NOT recorded in the Bible. Therefore,
how do we deal with our past sins? A lady told me how she found it so agonizing
for not being able to tell her husband about her past sin because she thought
her past was really not good, too dirty to talk about. She thought it was better for her past
to remain as a secret in her life and let it stayed in a corner of her
heart. But she said, it hurt so
much because she felt as if the past was really haunting her because she was unable
to love her husband whole heartedly. She felt so condemned that she was unable
to fully open up her heart to him, to be completely honest and truthful to him,
to be in the light and not living under the shadow of her guilt of the past
sin. I
shared with her from Romans 6:21-23. First, by asking her to consider the fruit
or the result of the past sin she had, what was the end of that sin? She answered, it was bad; death could have been the choice. Secondly, I asked her to think about
what happened when she gave her life to the Lord whether she had felt a freedom
from those past sins? Yes, she said.
Then I asked her, did she feel that God has caused her husband to come
into her life for a purpose? Yes, certainly. She testified that God has through him
given her security and a good home and a happy family with wonderful
children. So, I got her to
appreciate what God’s Word in Romans 6:22 says that after we have been freed
from our past sins, and as we begin a new life in Christ Jesus, walking in His
Spirit, we receive the fruit of holiness and our home, our family, our children
are just some of the evidence of the fruit of holiness. Therefore,
I said to her, “do you now know that the wages of sin is death and the
gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus? Do you still want to have anything
to do with those things which we now consider as shameful, which we now know as
wages of sin?” She
hesitated. I knew she was confronted with the challenge of letting go the past,
her past sins which she was still refusing to talk about, which she was still
keeping inside a corner of her heart as a secret. I said to her, the Apostle Paul has
wanted us to consider “what fruit did we have then in the things of which
we are now ashamed of?” (Romans 6:21) This means that it is proper to
think about the past and consider what were the results of
the things we had done which we now feel ashamed. We don’t keep those things as
secrets in our heart, we don’t let those things
to continue to tie to our soul. I
challenged her that until and unless she was willing to talk about it, (which
means literally to confess it), these things would continue to remain in her
heart in her soul and would continue to haunt her conscience. Weeks
later, she told me that she had taken the opportunity to empty “these
things” out of her heart and told her husband everything, as much as he
has wanted to know. She said, it was like cutting loose the rope that tied these things
to her soul. The end result was that, she was able to free herself from the
condemnation of her past sin after she confessed the past to him, she felt free
and she felt for the first time, she was able to truly love him so honestly and
truthfully and completely. As far
as her husband is concerned, I was told he was able to see how gracious God has
been to the family, appreciating the fruit of holiness
God has given them. He was able to
appreciate truthfully what it meant when God said, “I will remember no
more”. Why do
we need to confess our past sin even though we have given our life to the Lord?
It is because the past sin was associated with the things of the flesh we did
in the past that caused us death. We must empty them out of our heart, this soul
ties must be completely cut off.
How do we know whether they have been completely emptied and cut off? When
we have confessed them, renounced them, we shall know we are set free from them. After we have confessed them and
renounced them, they no longer stay in our heart, in our soul as “secrets”
or “unspeakable things of the past”. As long as they stay in our heart, in
our soul as “secrets” or “unspeakable thing of the
past”, I believe God, who hates secrets and things of darkness, will expose
it, by allowing Satan to take the opportunity to use these “secrets”
or these “unspeakable things” to haunt our conscience as
“condemnation”, until and unless we set our heart to live according
to the Spirit, we decide to rid our lives of anything that holds us to the past
sin, and bring everything into the light and be transparent before Him. Therefore,
as Paul said in Romans 6:21-23, my friends, dare yourself to ask what fruit
have you then in the things of which you are now ashamed? Think of those things, one by one, and
confessed it to your loved one, or to a brother or sister in the Lord. Remember, it does not matter what your
loved one or the brother or sister in Christ will think about those things, it
matters that you speak out, confess and renounce those things so that you can
be freed from them. Empty and
release them out of your heart, cut off from your soul, then you will appreciate
what Paul said, ‘you have your
fruit to holiness, and the end,
everlasting life.’ There
shall be no more condemnation. Remember, through the inspiration of the Holy
Spirit, every shameful past sins and transgressions of God’s people are
confessed in writing in the Old Testament and even some in the New Testament,
that His people can continue to trust in the forgiving grace and everlasting
love of God. James 5:16a, “Confess
your trespasses to one another, and pray for one another, that you may be
healed….” (NKJV) Ronny Cham |
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