Today we are going to talk about how we should stop listening to the voice of the accuser and listen to the advocate instead.
We all do things we shouldn’t do, and we all regret doing them. We want to put them behind us and forget they ever happened. However, from the moment we wake up until we fall asleep, a voice in our head reminds us of all our mistakes, failures, and sins. It tells us that we are terrible people, that we are hypocrites, and that there is no hope for us. This is the voice of Satan, the Accuser, that great enemy of God and man.
Satan is relentless in his accusations because he knows they weigh us down with guilt and that it can destroy us. Guilt drains us emotionally. It wears us out physically. It makes us feel unworthy spiritually. When we try to tune Satan out, he will use other people to accuse us, hoping we will give up our walk with God and become his slaves again. So many good men and women of God have returned to the ways of the world because they haven’t been able to deal with the force of these relentless accusations.
Satan accuses us before our God, too, day and night. But Christ Jesus who died —more than that, who was raised to life —is at the right hand of God and is interceding for us. Satan thinks his accusations are going to lessen God’s love or diminish God’s mercy, but Christ is there to shut him up, saying the debt has been paid for all time, and nothing—absolutely nothing—is going to separate us from the love of God.
We need to tell the Accuser to shut up too. We need to listen instead to the voice of the Advocate, the Holy Spirit that Jesus said the Father would send in his name to teach us all truths. And one of the truths he teaches us is that we have been justified. If we are justified, we have peace with God! “Who will bring any charge against those whom God has chosen?” Paul asks. “It is God who justifies. Who then is the one who condemns? No one! Therefore, there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.”
If we confess our sins, God is faithful and just and will forgive our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness. Furthermore, God forgets our sins, keeping no record of them! If God forgets our sins they no longer exist in time and space and it is like we never committed the sin! If we listen to the Advocate’s voice, instead of the Accuser, he will remind us of this, so we no longer carry the heavy burden of guilt that so many of us carry.
So square those shoulders and shrug off the guilt, dear friend, and walk with the confidence of a true child of God.
May the Spirit be with you.
[See Revelation 12:10, John 14:26, Romans 5:1-2, 8:1, 33-39, 1 John 1:9, Hebrews 8:12]