The Cleansed Life

Welcome to this weekend's In Touch Podcast with Charles Stanley. An effective Christian life requires addition and subtraction. Let's get the math correct with a lesson on living the cleansed life. Now, if you grew up in a church or in a community where someone told you that the Christian life was primarily composed of asking the Lord Jesus Christ if he'll give you your sins, writing your name in the Lamb's Book of Life, and one of these days you'll die and go to heaven, friend, you have missed the vast majority of the great blessings and the supernatural provision that God has provided for his children. And you see, the life that wins is a life that reaches out to take not a settled for experience with Jesus Christ, but the maximum of our potential to receive and to become and to be what Almighty God wants us to be. You see, the life that wins isn't a life of self-effort whereby we struggle along in the Christian life doing the best we can, one of these days dying and be rewarded. The Christian life is a life that wins.

It is a life whereby Christ, knowing our inadequacies, comes into our life to release himself through us in order that you and I may reach the maximum of our potential. We may be able to receive all the blessings that God has for us. We may be able to become the total men and women that he's provided. And he has enabled us through his indwelling presence to become what he for ordained me would be and the person we'll never be able to be unless we're able to understand and apply in our own lives what it means to be filled with the life of Jesus Christ through his Spirit.

And you see, one of the prerequisites to that, one of the necessities of that is cleansing. Now, let me just give you a little note of something that I want you to watch for for your own benefit as you watch and as you listen to all kinds of sermons on television, radio. You're going to hear a lot of people talking about, well, if you want this experience and that experience and you want to add this dimension to your life and that dimension to your life, hear all the wonderful things God will do. Now, let me tell you something that I notice in most of those offers that's missing. Everybody wants to heap on Christians today all of these blessings. If you'll just confess this and if you'll just speak the truth and if you'll just believe God and if you'll just do this and so, you can have all of this and become all this and be all of this. There is a dramatic absence in most of that. And the absence is the requirement by God of the cleansing of our sin. Now, let me tell you what this is like. When people tell you that all you've got to do is just believe God. Just believe God and you'll get anything you want.

All you have to do is just confess the right thing and you'll get it from God. There's one dramatic note missing and this is this. It's like a man painting a wall and the wall is dirty with the scum and years of wear and tear and at the same time, the paint has already begun to crack and to peel. So, you take a gallon of fresh paint and you, brother, you just began to just smear the paint everywhere. You just paint, you want to put on one coat, two coats, three coats, you're going to cover all that up and it looks absolutely beautiful. Well, you know what happens when you cover up a dirty wall where the paint is already chipping and already cracking. After you finish your paint job, you may say, man, that looks absolutely great exactly the way I want it to look.

It won't take many days before out from under that beautiful fresh paint comes the same old dirt and filth and grime and grease and your fresh paint job begins to crack likewise for the simple reason you can't cover up a dirty wall with cracking paint covered up and keep it covered up long. And the same thing is true in the Christian life. You can't cover up wickedness and sin and disobedience and rebellion toward God with some new, fresh, exciting spiritual experience and have it last.

It just won't work that way. And you see, everything that you and I need, He has provided, but one of the prerequisites is cleansing of our life. If you go back to 1 John now in chapter 1 verse 5, he says, this then is the message which we've heard of him and declare unto you. Listen, God is light. Now light means holiness and righteous and purity. God is light. And in him is no darkness at all. There is no unrighteousness, no impurity and no ungodliness in him.

He's absolute righteousness, absolute holiness and absolute purity. He says, now, if we say that we have fellowship with this God who is light and yet we walk in darkness, he says, we lie and do not the truth. Now watch this. Then he says, if you'll notice, but if we walk in the light that is in righteousness with God, as he is in the light, we have fellowship one with another and the blood of Jesus Christ, his son cleanseth us from all sin. Now watch this. How in the world can you and I say that the blood of Jesus Christ that dried up on the cross and was washed into the sand at the foot of the cross 2,000 years ago have absolutely any effect whatsoever in your life to cleanse you 2,000 years later?

Well, here's the reason. And if you'll go back down to verse seven, he says, but if we walk in the light as he is in the light, we are having fellowship one with another and the blood of Jesus Christ, his son, listen, present tense is cleansing us from all sin. Now watch this. In the present tense in the Greek, here's what that means. That means that something is continuously going along. Here's what he's saying, that all of us who are believers are living under, listen, living under the immediate ever present flowing of the blood of Jesus Christ from God's point of view. Now I look around, I don't see any blood, but from God's point of view, and that's the way I have to look at it, from God's point of view, he sees all the way from creation to an endless eternity. Here out here in this span of time somewhere, God sees the cross, which he executed.

And what does he see? He sees the blood of Jesus Christ on that cross as effective all the way back to Adam's day. He sees that blood effective all the way to the end of eternity. And from God's point of view, the blood did not drop on the cross.

It did not disappear in the sand at the foot of the cross. The blood of Jesus Christ is continuously and ever presently, always presently cleansing us from all sin. We have to get it from God's point of view. That's why the worldly man says don't tell me any dried up blood that dried up on the cross and disappeared in the sand has any effect upon me 2,000 years later.

He's looking at it from a worldly point of view. He doesn't see that that blood was foreshadowed in the Garden of Eden, promised all the way through the Old Testament before they knew about Jesus Christ. That blood was a symbol, a foreshadowing, and a promise of the blood that was to come. So that blood 2,000 years ago is as effective today as it was the day when Jesus turned his head, stretched that on the old rugged cross and said to a dying thief, today thou shalt be with me in paradise.

Why? Because the blood of Jesus Christ is ever present. Now the question is how do I get that blood applied to my heart? Now you and I are able to have the blood of Jesus Christ applied to our hearts 2,000 years later with the same eternal consequences as on that day by looking to the Lord Jesus Christ, accepting Him as our Savior and His work on the cross as approved by God. And the moment we do that, He says that God Almighty applies the effective work of Christ 2,000 years ago, 2,000 years later to every single soul who says I will receive Jesus Christ as my Savior. It wasn't His life that saved you. It was His death that saved us.

It is His life that equips us to live victoriously a winning life here and now. That's why the blood of Jesus Christ is absolutely essential. He says without the shedding of blood, there is no forgiveness and no cleansing of sin. Now the next question we have to ask is what is the means by which we use to get that blood and its effect into our life to cleanse us?

Now I've given you sort of a theological approach, but from a practical point of view, what do we do? Look, if you will, in verse 9 chapter 1 of 1 John. He says now if we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.

I don't know of a verse in the New Testament that is more wrongly used than 1 John 1. Now He says the way that we have cleansing and forgiveness is by confession. So let me define and sort of analyze for a few moments here what we mean according to the Scripture by confession. Now confession in essence in the Greek word means to agree with. That means when I confess, I am agreeing with God about a particular thing. Now when I come to the Lord to deal with the sin, I've got to be honest and open and there's got to be a penitent spirit.

Listen, if I have sinned against God and every act of rebellion is a sin, and I simply tell Him about it, and I may be open and honest about the nature of it, and I may rationalize about it, or it may be that my real problem is that I'm sorry because I got caught. Lord, I really regret this. Oh, God forgive me. What I'm really saying is, Lord, I'm hurting over this thing. I'm suffering because this.

I'm aching on the inside. I wish I'd have never done it. That's not confession that brings cleansing. That doesn't say anything about being grieved toward God.

Now watch this. It isn't only agreeing with Him that I've done this thing. It isn't only feeling the suffering of being caught or of the consequences of disobedience, whether it's financial or something else. It isn't just a matter of acknowledging that I'm guilty. It is a matter of acknowledging that I've grieved the heart of God Almighty who loved me. If He sent His only begotten Son to the cross and I defy that, turn my back on it and rebel against His forgiveness, I've grieved God.

If my confession is genuine and my cleansing is going to be a reality of experience, my friend, there's no way in this world under God's Almighty heaven for me to sin against God and come to Him and just carelessly or callously check off 1st John 1-9 and say, well, the Bible says we confess our sins. I've done what God says and that's it. I know I'm forgiven and go right out and do the same thing, confess the same thing all over again and think, well, God just keeps on forgiving me because after all, brother, I'm living under the canopy of God's grace.

I want to tell you what that does. That doesn't make God angry. That grieves God's loving, forgiving heart because you see, He's done everything there is for a holy God to do to make it possible for you and me to live a winning life. And confession of a mediocre, calloused, careless type with no sense of grief toward a holy, righteous, pure, loving, forgiving God.

Think about how patient He's been to us, how loving He's been to us, how gracious and kind and forgiving and generous He's been to us. Then we just say, Lord, I should have done that, forgive me for it and call 1st John 1-9. I want to tell you, my friend, that won't get cleansing from God. Now listen to what He says back in 2nd Corinthians chapter 7 because here's an area that I think we have to check up on. Somebody says, well, if you just confess it, God gets rid of it.

That's not what He says. Listen, 2nd Corinthians chapter 7 verse 1, having therefore these promises, dearly beloved, watch this, let us cleanse who? Ourselves from the filth, all filthiness of the flesh and spirit perfecting wholeness in the Spirit of God. You say, but now wait a minute, you said confession will do it. All right, confession is our part. God must do the forgiving and God must do the cleansing. You and I have two responsibilities. First of all, open, honest, proper confession. Secondly, you and I have to take the initiative of getting that thing out of our life, whatever it may be.

What did He say? He said, let us cleanse ourselves from all filthiness of the flesh and spirit perfecting wholeness in the fear of God. That is, if there's something in my life or habit or whatever it might be, I'm not only responsible for confessing it, but listen, if my confession is pure and right and true and honest and open and genuine, then I'm going to take the necessary steps to get that thing out of my life, whatever it may be.

It may be difficult, but you see, at least I'm going to take some steps to start moving toward getting that thing out of my life, getting that relationship straightened out, whatever it might be. Genuine confession is going to result in our taking the initiative. You recall when Joshua was on his face prostrate before God, praying, oh God, we took Jericho, but why did we let this little city of Ai beat us and put us in humiliation and in retreat? You remember what God said to him?

He said, Joshua, get up, find out who stole the silver, who's got it hidden in their tent and take them out and stone them and their family to death, an order that Israel and the world may know that almighty God Jehovah is a sovereign holy God and will not tolerate sin among his people. You know what we do sometimes, and all of us have done it, I'm sure I have, when God says, deal with that, I've said, yes, Lord, I'm really going to pray about that. You know, praying about something that God says, deal with it. Now, sometimes you may have to pray about something.

At first, you may not know how to deal with it. But you see, the important thing is that you at least take a step toward dealing with it right now. But if we keep saying, I'm praying about it, I'm going to pray about it, I'm going to do this and I'm going to do that, it is so easy to do that and rationalize and say, God knows I'm working on it. And I've had to fight that battle just like you have.

It's easier to do that. That sounds good, but God says, deal with it. And you see the reason people go to church or go to revivals and they confess and they get right and they weep and cry and carol and everything looks great.

Everybody says, praise the Lord, they're right with God. And a week later, you can't tell them the difference. It isn't because they didn't intend to do the right thing.

They didn't know what to do. And here's what I want you to see. It is an open, honest confession that not only have I sinned, but named a sin, confess it as being a sin. And then there must be some sense of grief. If I don't feel grieved, if I don't feel any regret in my heart that I've sinned against God, not that I got caught, not that I've suffered, but that I've sinned against a righteous holy God who loves me enough to send His only begotten Son to save me. If there is no grief and no feeling about that, there's something wrong with that confession. I'll tell you, it's just surface confession and it brings no cleansing whatsoever. And if we're going to be forgiven and cleansed, there's got to be honest, open, genuine confession that comes out of our heart that recognizes that the sin is that what I have done has grieved the heart of God. That's more important than what I did against somebody else.

It's grieved the heart of a loving God. And when I see that and I'm able to understand that and acknowledge that, then my forgiveness and my cleansing are going to come just like that. You say, well, suppose I go to my vocation tomorrow morning and I'm sitting across the desk and somebody makes some sly remark toward me and really embarrasses me and I just haul off and give it back to them.

And immediately God convicts me. What should my response be? My response should be, Lord, forgive me for grieving you by acting like the world. And then confess, Lord, my short temper or my resentment suddenly burst forth on the surface and I acted uncross, just tell him what it is, give him all the facts. Listen, here's the thing I want you to see.

Oh, God, please help you see this. When you're confessing, don't cover it up. Just tell him like it is, yes, Lord, it is sin. No, it wasn't a mistake.

I didn't just falter. God, I sinned against you. And I'm asking you to forgive me for this sin, call it by name, and claim the application of his blood, which is eternally available. Claim his forgiveness based on what he did and claim his renewedness in your heart and all of that you can do quickly. But my friend, listen, not in the word, not in prayer, living a callous carnal Christian life, you won't do that. You may go through the actions, but there'll be no heart in it. And it's the heart in it that makes confession real before God. Friend, if you live slightly distant from God, and you keep the book sort of partially closed, and you don't give him much time in prayer, here's what you'll do. You'll live slightly distant from where God wants you to be living. And from your point of view at this angle, everything looks pretty clean. My friend, when the more of this book you get in your heart, and the more you get on your face, and you begin to talk to him about your life, the more the dirt comes to service.

Now listen, I don't mean you ought to get introverted by saying, Oh, what have I done next? I don't mean that. I mean you and I ought to live daily in relationship to him. And here's what you'll discover.

Watch this. The closer you live to Jesus Christ, the less it will take to grieve your heart, and make you aware of how unclean you are, and how holy God wants you to be. And my desire for you, my friend, is that you may live the life that wins, with all the blessings of it. But if you do that, it begins with a cleansing by the blood of Jesus Christ. And then the cure, possession, control, and use of your life to Jesus Christ from this day forward.

And that will open the door to you for the life that wins. Thank you for listening to The Cleansed Life. We would like to invite you to join us in celebrating 45 years of God's faithfulness. Stop by Intouch.org slash 45 years to learn more. This podcast is a presentation of In Touch Ministries, Atlanta, Georgia.