Today’s New Covenant nugget is from Acts 20:32 (TPT)
And so now, I entrust you into God’s hands and the message of His grace, which is all that you need to become strong. All of God’s blessings are imparted through the message of His grace, which He provides as the spiritual inheritance given to all of His holy ones.
The New Covenant is a covenant of grace…the message of grace is a message of freedom and power, it makes those who have a revelation of it strong and all of God’s blessings are imparted through the message of His grace, which He provides as the spiritual inheritance given to all of His holy ones.
In part one of this teaching, we began highlighting some of the differences between the current revelation of grace among the body of Christ and many past teachings. I shared how that there has been a recent, fresh impartation on ‘grace’, and a fresh impartation on ‘understanding the New Covenant’. A fresh revelation beyond what that many of our ‘fathers of the faith’ had received. The revelation on the New Covenant message of grace has set me free.
In yesterday’s teaching I shared two points about the blessings of the message of grace…
1. The message of grace brings freedom from dead works…
2. The message of grace brings freedom from the ‘performance pleases God’ doctrine…
Today’s impartation on the New Covenant, message of grace is…
New Covenant grace sets us free from sin-consciousness.
The Lord does not want us sin-conscious, or being continually mindful of our failures, shortcomings and sins. He wants us to be Jesus-conscious, righteousness-conscious and Word-conscious!
Romans 6:14 says that sin shall not have dominion over you, for you are not under law but under grace. Sin-consciousness gives sin dominion over a believer… even though he is blood washed, righteous and forgiven, the devil whispers, “you are a sinner, you blew it, you do not deserve the favor of God, you do not qualify to get anything that you are believing for, you just disqualified yourself, and, all of your problems are due to your sin.”
Because of New Covenant GRACE, sin no longer has dominion over you… this means that Jesus does not want us sin conscious… He wants us grace conscious, righteousness conscious, and blood of Jesus conscious!
One of the teachings that have emphasized sin-consciousness the most is from 1 John 1:8-9,
“If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us. If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.”
It has been taught that ‘if you want God to forgive you that you have to confess your sins to God and ask for forgiveness, then and only then will you be forgiven.’ This teaching leads to sin-consciousness, condemnation and continually feeling guilty… “is there a sin that I may have forgotten to confess?” Before praying, or stepping out in faith, believers first had to ‘qualify’ by becoming righteous through the confession of their sins. I personally was taught that 1 John 1:9 described true repentance.
The bible is clear, “If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us”… the Greek word for sin literally means, ‘to miss the mark’, like throwing a dart and missing the ‘bullseye.’ Let’s face it, we all continually miss the mark… strictly speaking, the smallest mistake is sin, this is why, under the Law, ‘sin-consciousness’ and sins dominion ruled over believers… but under grace, sin shall not have dominion over you, for you are not under law but under grace.
The truth that the Lord is imparting in 1 John 1:8-9 has been ‘lost in translation’. The Greek word for ‘confess’ in 1 John 1:9 is ‘homologéō’, literally meaning, ‘to say the same thing’, or to praise or celebrate. The Greek word for ‘He is’ literally translated is, ‘are’, or ‘was’, or ‘were’. The Greek word translated as ‘if’ literally means, ‘whosoever’.
This is a clearer translation of verse nine, “Whosoever says the same thing as God about sin, celebrates and praises God, and confesses that his sins were forgiven and that he has been cleansed from all unrighteousness and has been made completely righteous.”
You ‘were’ healed, forgiven, delivered, prospered and made righteous on the cross of Calvary, the way that you receive ‘salvation’ (forgiveness, healing, wholeness, provision, prosperity, and deliverance) is by confessing with your mouth and believing in your heart. CONFESSION IS MADE ‘homologéō’ unto salvation. (Romans 10:10) When you say the same thing as God… when you speak the Word, you RECEIVE everything that God has given you in the New Covenant, including forgiveness. So, 1 John 1:9 should really lead to ‘Word-consciousness’ and grace-consciousness, not sin-consciousness’.
By the way, the Greek word for ‘repent’ means to change the way you think, not to rehearse your shortcomings to God. God knows what you have done, He does not condone sin, He sent His Son to destroy the power of sin, and in Christ, you are righteous, forgiven, pure, sanctified, justified and perfect… be conscious of that… now that is true freedom! Thank God for His grace!
In His amazing love, Nick
