Tenses of Our Pilgrim Walk
Scores of people who truly and whole-heartedly confess the Lord Jesus as Lord and Savior are inclined to doubt the certainty of their salvation due to the occasional resurrection of old desires in their lives. This meditation is therefore devoted to helping us realize our position in Christ Jesus and our responsibility as saints towards the ultimate realization of God’s purpose. It is to this effect that we shall speak of the pilgrim experience under three tenses as applicable to the Christian believer.
First, we shall consider God’s position on our past.
For every soul that has trusted in Christ for the forgiveness of sins and has been regenerated by the saving power of the risen Christ, the Holy Scriptures declares an unchangeable fact. We have been saved. The Bible illuminates our understanding with eternal light. Knowing this that our old man was crucified with Him, that the body of sin might be done away with, that we should no longer be slaves of sin. For he who has died has been freed from sin-- Rm.6:6-7, For you died and your life is hidden with Christ in God--Col.3:3. The Scriptures are plain. Our old man, that is our old nature of sin was crucified when we believed. No longer are we in danger of the possibility of an eternal loss of our souls. Between us and the dominion of Satan is an impassable gulf. We are dead to sin. Death describes cessation of life, and in this case, insensitivity to the kind of life that once controlled and ruled me. By the entrance of God’s word, my soul has been made to experience an irreversible spiritual revolution. My citizenship as an indigene of Satan’s kingdom is eternally revoked and nothing anywhere can change that fact. Every passion and desire that motivated me yesterday and continued then as the joy of my heart are now separated from me by a difference whose vastness is only captured in the difference illustrated between life and death. And those who are Christ’s have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires-Gal. 5:24.
