Affirmation of Identity

The following is from Paul E. Billheimer's excellent book Destined for the Throne:

"One of our great difficulties, after we know who we are [in Christ], is that under satanic pressure we so soon forget.  For although Satan knows what Christ did to him at Calvary and through the Resurrection, and realizes that as a part of Christ the believer is his master, he still carries on a guerrilla warfare against the Church [the body of Christ] through the use of subterfuge, deception, and bluff.  While guerrilla warfare is illegal, it is still warfare and must be faced and overcome. 

"God could put Satan completely away [and He will someday], but He has chosen to use him to give the Church 'on-the-job' training in overcoming.  Otherwise, there would be no more warfare of any kind.

"We are in apprenticeship for our place with Christ on the throne following the Marriage Supper of the Lamb.  The crown belongs to the conqueror--and without an adversary there would be no practice in overcoming. [Compare Judges 3:3: "Now these are the nations which the Lord left, to test Israel by them (that is, all who had not experienced any of the wars of Canaan; only in order that the generations of the sons of Israel might be taught war, those who had not experienced it formerly)."]

"Thus, when God permits Satan to throw his black mantle over our spirits, we are in danger of forgetting who we are.  We are like the man James tells us about, who looks at his face in a mirror, and looking at himself, goes away and immediately forgets what he looks like (Jas. 1:23-24).

"Because we forget so easily that we have passed from Satan's authority, we allow him to threaten and oppress us.  We forget that we are actually a part of Christ and that Satan is subject to us.  We unconsciously lapse into our old life of fear and defeat, seeing ourselves as we were and not as we are.

"We must constantly remind ourselves and affirm [until it becomes spontaneously a part of us] that we are in Christ--and because Satan cannot touch Christ, he cannot touch us.

"'No one who has become a part of God's family makes a practice of sinning, for Christ, God's Son, holds him securely, and the devil cannot get his hands on him' (1 John 5:18 Living Bible).

"Satan wants the believer to forget that he is risen and exalted with Christ, that he is now, in his real person, that is, his spirit, united with Christ on the throne with all enemies under his feet.  If he is held in bondage to demons of fear, sickness, disease, or limitation of any kind, it is only by ignorance of what Christ has done for him, or by forgetting who he is.

"We need constantly to remind ourselves of our identity by affirming:  'Because I am a part of Christ, "accepted in the Beloved," I hold the same place in the Father's bosom as He does.'

"'Because I am part of Christ, the Father loves me as much as He loves Christ (John 17:23,26). 

"'Because I am part of Christ, I have His wisdom--because He is made wisdom to me (1 Cor. 1:30).  Likewise, I have His righteousness.  My righteousness is as good as His in the eyes of the Father because it is His righteousness.

"'Because I am organically a part of Him, because Head and Body are one unit, all that Christ is and has is accredited to me.'

"It is the Father's purpose to make all of the sons as nearly equal with the Son as it is possible for the finite to be like the Infinite. 

"This equality is to be first in character and then in privilege and power.  It is to be not only legal and theoretical, but in essential reality.

"'For all who are led by the Spirit of God are sons of God.  And so we should not be like fearful, cringing slaves, but we should behave like God's very own children . . . . And since we are his children, we shall share his treasures--for all God gives to his Son Jesus is now ours too.  But if we are to share his glory, we must also share his suffering' (Rom. 8:14,17 Living Bible).

"All of this is assurance that it is God's intention that the Church militant should walk in the same life, power, and divine liberty as Jesus walked.

"'As the Father hath sent me, even so send I you.'  This 'even so' suggests that we are sent under the same circumstances, with the same authority, and with the same resources as the Father sent the Son.

"God does not set any arbitrary limits to the Church's use of divine resources.  He has made available all that He is to a believing Church.  'Of his fulness have we all received' (John 1:16).  'And to know the love of Christ, which passeth knowledge, that you might be filled with all the fulness of God' (Eph. 3:19)."