DOES THE BIBLE REALLY SAY ...

THAT OUR RELATIONSHIP WITH GOD IS BROKEN WHEN WE SIN? - 3

As we have seen in previous meditations, Paul teaches that the person who believes in Jesus Christ is united to Christ by faith. Because of Jesus Christ and what he did in and through his death, the sin that formerly separated us from God can no longer do so. In the death of Christ he, as our substitute fully bore all the separation from God that our sin caused. Paul teaches in Romans:

Our union with Christ unites us to his death (6:3).
We died with Christ (6:8).
We are united with him in his death (6:5).
We were crucified with him (6:6).
We have been buried with him (6:4).

Paul is not telling us here that we should ‘crucify ourselves’ or ‘put to death the old man’, as he does in some places. He is telling us of something that took place at the point of our conversion: at that historic moment in our lives when we repented and believed in Jesus Christ. This, he says, is what took place: we became united with Christ our substitute in such a way that all that he did on our behalf is from that point on considered ours. We died with him, when he died. As far as God is concerned we are crucified, dead and buried. He no longer relates to us as we are, in our human flesh, any more. All of our sins were nailed to the cross of Christ, so effectively that there is no more legal record of our sins. God relates to us only as we are united to Christ.

Because the death of Christ was death to bear the punishment due to sin, as demanded by the law, our union with Christ in his death means: we died to sin (6:2), we are dead to sin (6:11), we died to the law (7:4).

In addition, because we have in this way died in the death Christ, fully meeting the just requirements that the law imposes on the sinner, Paul also affirms: we have been freed from sin (6:7), we have been released from the law (7:6).

In other words, that guilt and condemnation and separation from God in which we were bound and trapped by sin and law have been disempowered. As Paul states it in Romans 8:2: ‘through Christ the law of the Spirit of life set me free from the law of sin and death.’ The person who is united by faith to Jesus Christ no longer relates to God in terms of the law of sin and death. That law condemned us and held us in a state of condemnation. The believer now, in Christ, relates to God in terms of the law of the Spirit of life. That ‘law’ (principle) sets us free and maintains us in a state of freedom. Whereas apart from Christ the sin/law/death trilogy holds us captive, united to Christ the faith/grace/life trilogy sets us free, and continues to set us free, from that sin/law/death trilogy.

Sin can no longer separate us from God.
The law can no longer condemn us.
Death (the punishment due to our sin) can make no more demands on us.

In Christ our substitute we have fully met the demands of all three of them. Neither sin, nor law nor death have any legal right to make any more claims of us. We are crucified, dead, and buried.

This is why we must never again see ourselves as isolated individuals still relating to God on the basis of what we ourselves do; we must never again credit sin with the ability to cut us off from God. We must never again credit the law with the right to legally disqualify us from God’s presence. We must never again credit death with the power to threaten us.

In ourselves these three still dog our footsteps. But we are no longer in ourselves, we are no longer relating to God on the basis of who we are, what we are or what we do. We are relating to God in Christ, on the basis of who he is, what he is and what he has done.

Does a breakdown in the believer’s relationship with God occur when the believer sins?

No. It can’t. Because the believer is related to God only and always in Christ.

What does happen is that the believer is perceiving his relationship with God to be based on his own performance, and when he sees his performance failing he perceives his relationship with God to be shaky, when he sees his performance to be successful, he perceives his relationship with God to be good. All of the fluctuations are in his false perceptions, not in reality, but because he is basing his life on his perceptions the reality he actually lives with is that of his perceived fluctuating relationship with God. And he has no peace. He has short-circuited the gospel. For him, as Paul told the Galatians, Jesus might just as well not have died (Galatians 5:2-4).

As we look at ourselves and other believers we will find that a large percentage of the uncertainties and insecurities, a great deal of the lack of peace, joy and contentment, and most, if not all, of the guilt feelings that hound us today are the direct result of our failure to understand, or remember, this foundational truth of our relationship with God in Christ. Our persistent error is to relate to God on the basis of our own merits, as if we are still under the dominion of the law of sin and death, as if God had not sent Jesus to be our Saviour.

If lack of assurance dogs our footsteps this is the first question we must ask ourselves: how am I relating to God - in myself, or in Christ? On the basis of my performance, or on the basis of his performance?

Am I abiding in Christ – living every moment in the presence of God in the glorious reality of all that Jesus Christ is and has done for me?