Forgiveness: Fact or Feeling

I was struck by this excerpt from Watchman Nee's The Normal Christian Life. So often we can try to value our own sense of forgiveness based on our feelings of being forgiven, of behaving well, of having had a good day or a bad day. We must learn to embrace our forgiveness on the fact that the blood of Christ does, in fact, cover our sin - not our behavior, not our noble thoughts, not our days of victory over sin. In Christ's shed blood alone is our forgiveness. Period. So "Let us then approach God’s throne of grace with confidence, so that we may receive mercy and find grace to help us in our time of need." Some say doctrine is dry and boring. Nothing can be further from the truth. Correct doctrine is essential to correct thinking. Correct thinking allows us to reign in our feelings...to bring them into line with the truth. I have come to approach life in this way, "This is how I feel, but what does God's word say." 

Know the truth and be set free to embrace all of the strength and power that His redeeming grace affords you. If you have accepted Christ's shed blood as atonement for your sin, you are forgiven. You can stand before the Holy God of heaven by the merit of His blood, not for anything you have done or not done. "He saved us, not because of righteous things we had done, but because of his mercy. He saved us through the washing of rebirth and renewal by the Holy Spirit, whom he poured out on us generously through Jesus Christ our Savior." (Titus 3:5,6)

If you struggle with your "sense" of worthiness to stand before God, read on. 

(From *The Normal Christian Life, by Watchman Nee, Chapter 1)

GOD IS SATISFIED

It is God's holiness, God's righteousness, which demands that a sinless life should be given for man. There is life in the Blood, and that Blood has to be poured out for me, for my sins. God is the One who requires it to be so. God is the One who demands that the Blood be presented, in order to satisfy His own righteousness, and it is He who says: 'When I see the blood, I will pass over you. 'The Blood of Christ wholly satisfies God.

Now I desire to say a word at this point to my younger brethren in the Lord, for it is here that we often get into difficulties. As unbelievers we may have been wholly untroubled by our conscience until the Word of God began to arouse us. Our conscience was dead, and those with dead consciences are certainly of no use to God. But later, when we believed, our awakened conscience may have become acutely sensitive, and this can constitute a real problem to us. The sense of sin and guilt can become so great, so terrible, as almost to cripple us by causing us to lose sight of the true effectiveness of the Blood. It seems to us that our sins are so real, and some particular sin may trouble us so many times, that we come to the point where to us our sins loom larger than the Blood of Christ.

Now the whole trouble with us is that we are trying to sense it ; we are trying to feel its value and to estimate subjectively what the Blood is for us. We cannot do it; it does not work that way. The Blood is first for God to see. We then have to accept God's valuation of it. In doing so we shall find our valuation. If instead we try to come to a valuation by way of our feelings we get nothing; we remain in darkness. No, it is a matter of faith in God's Word. We have to believe that the Blood is precious to God because He says it is so (1 Peter 1. 18,19). If God can accept the Blood as a payment for our sins and as the price of our redemption, then we can rest assured that the debt has been paid. If God is satisfied with the Blood, then the Blood must be acceptable. Our valuation of it is only according to His valuation-neither more nor less. It cannot, of course, be more, but it must not be less.

Let us remember that He is holy and He is righteous, and that a holy and righteous God has the right to say that the Blood is acceptable in His eyes and has fully satisfied, Him the Lord Jesus. I approach God through His merit alone, and never on the basis of my attainment; never, for example, on the ground that I have been extra kind or patient to- day, or that I have done something for the Lord this morning. I have to come by way of the Blood every time. The temptation to so many of us when we try to approach God is to think that because God has been dealing with us-because He has been taking steps to bring us into something more of Himself and has been teaching us deeper lessons of the Cross-He has thereby set before us new standards, and that only by attaining to these can we have a clear conscience before Him. No! A clear conscience is never based upon our attainment; it can only be based on the work of the Lord Jesus in the shedding of His Blood.

I may be mistaken, but I feel very strongly that some of us are thinking in terms such as these: 'Today I have been a little more careful ; to-day I have been doing a little better; this morning I have been reading the Word of God in a warmer way, so to-day I can pray better!' Or again, 'To-day I have had a little difficulty with the family ; I began the day feeling very gloomy and moody; I am not feeling too bright now; it seems that there must be something wrong; therefore I cannot approach God.'

What, after all, is your basis of approach to God? Do you come to Him on the uncertain ground of your feeling, the feeling that you may have achieved something for God today? Or is your approach based on something far more secure, namely, the fact that the Blood has been shed, and that God looks on that Blood and is satisfied? Of course, were it conceivably possible for the Blood to suffer any change, the basis of your approach to God might be less trustworthy. But the Blood has never changed and never will. Your approach to God is therefore always in boldness; and that boldness is yours through the Blood and never through your personal attainment. Whatever be your measure of attainment to-day or yesterday or the day before, as soon as you make a conscious move into the Most Holy Place, immediately you have to take your stand upon the safe and only ground of the shed Blood. Whether you have had a good day or a bad day, whether you have consciously sinned or not, your basis of approach is always the same-the Blood of Christ. That is the ground upon which you may enter, and there is no other.

*This book and others can be found on 

http://www.worldinvisible.com/library/bookcat.htm