There once was a brother who had truly repented, believed in the Lord, and had been regenerated. After a while his feeling within him suffered a change. He felt inwardly terrible, and therefore he concluded he would perish. Another brother asked him, “How do you know you will perish?” “I am different from what I was before,” answered that brother. “I feel icy cold inside, and my prayer and Bible reading are weak.” “But that is viewing the matter from the condition of your side,” observed the second brother. “Let us instead look at a few things from God’s side: Has the work of the Lord been discounted? Has the work of Christ changed?” “No, it has not,” replied the first brother. “Has the New Covenant been abrogated?” “No.” “Good, then,” continued the second brother, “it is now ascertained that there has been no change on God’s side. And thus, according to the truth—according to reality—you have not been changed from being saved to being unsaved. You may feel you have changed; but that is only your feeling. Irrespective of how you feel, God has declared that you are saved. Will that be subject to change? Remember that salvation is a matter of truth, not one of feeling.” After the first brother heard this, tears ran down his face as he said, “It really does not matter how I feel or what I say; God says that I am saved, so I am saved.” Now this is how the truth can set a person free. Spiritual reality delivers people from their own feeling and sets them free.

Let us take a step further to see how the truth makes us free. God’s word not only shows us how our sins are forgiven and we are regenerated through Christ’s bearing our sins on the cross; it also shows us that in the death of Christ, God has put us in Him so that our old man was crucified with Him. His death is not the death of a single person, it is instead a corporate death. When Jesus died on the cross, we died in Him. On the ground of what Christ has accomplished, we are already dead. This is the truth, this is reality.