A Review Of Covering In The New Testament

There are three subjects in the New Testament which encompass this whole matter of covering in Christ.

The name of the Lord

We will start by looking at John 14:13-14:

And I will do whatever you ask in my name, so that the Son may bring glory to the Father. You may ask me for anything in my name, and I will do it.

What an astounding statement! What did Jesus mean by this? He certainly didn‘t mean that we just tack ‘in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ‘ onto the end of any prayer, like a little charm that works a miracle. Many Christians seem to think that the name of Jesus works like a charm! You can’t just take the name of Jesus like that. What is in the prayer and behind the prayer must be true and real and, above all, in the will of the father. Then you can take the name of Jesus on your lips and all hell will shake. But not otherwise.

what does ‘in the name of Jesus’ really mean? It means that you are in Him! I have eight fingers and two thumbs and they are all in Paul Little. They are no one else’s. These fingers can ‘speak’ in the name of Paul Little.

When the Lord Jesus said, ‘I will do whatever you ask the Father in my name’ what did He mean? I believe he was teaching us that when we are in Christ we come to the Father in Him. Then we can simply say, ‘Father, we are not approaching you in our merit -- we are approaching you in your Son.’

We are in Him. We have a right to His name. So, we read in Colossians 3:17:

And what ever you do, whether a word or deed, do it all in the name of the Lord Jesus…

For that is our position. It is not just a matter of when we pray. It simply means that as we abide in Him we do everything from a covered position.

So we should not separate the spiritual and the secular sides of our lives. We cannot live a godly life in the church meeting and in ungodly life at home are in our leisure pursuits. That is impossible. You’re either in Christ or you are out of Him. If God has put you in Him, you should not be doing anything outside of Him.

Proverbs 18:10 says:

The name of the Lord is a strong tower; the righteous run to it and are safe.

That is where we are meant to be as Christians: in the strong tower, which is our Lord Jesus Christ.

The blood of Christ

What does it mean when we speak of the blood? Look at 1 John 1:7:

If we walk in the light, as he is in light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus, his Son, purifies us from all sin.

We must all note that there is an ‘if’. In other words, if we don’t walk in the light with God and with one another, then the blood of Jesus Christ doesn’t go on cleansing us. We see it again in verse 9:

If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins.

But there must be confession! Confession means ‘to say the same thing’. To recognize what God calls it and call it the same. If God says it is sin, then I say it is sin! If God says, ‘That was disobedient!’, I say, ‘Lord, I was disobedient!’

Some people have said to me after having been through terrible experiences and having really been ‘carved up’ by the enemy, ‘I can’t understand it! I repeated again and again “the blood of Jesus, the blood of Jesus.”’ But you can’t appeal to the blood of Jesus and live in disobedience, as if, by referring to the blood of Jesus, you can somehow ‘take Satan in’ or fool him.

If Satan knows that he has got a foothold in your life you can’t just say, ‘The blood of Jesus!’ Satan laughs! What you must do is get that matter put right, with confession and, if necessary, restitution. Then when Satan comes and says, ‘What about this and what about that?’ you can say, ‘It is put under the blood of the Lamb’, and there is peace in your conscience immediately. You cannot be unreal in this matter. The invisible world around us sees the reality of things.

The blood of Christ speaks of peace, of being made near to God, of immediate access to God, of victory. The blood speaks of life. The life is in the blood. Satan knows his defeat was in the shedding of blood, as we read in the book of Revelation 12:10-11:

For the accuser of our brothers,

Who accuses them before our god day and night

Has been hurled down.

They overcame him

By the blood of the lamb

And by the word of their testimony;

They did not love their lives so much as to shrink from death.

We can learn something more from the old testament here. We read about the Passover in exodus 12.god said (v 13), ‘When I see the blood, I will pass over you.’ The power of Egypt and of pharaoh, and the power of unseen forces, was broken that night by the blood of the Lamb. Any Hebrew without the blood on his house was visited by the angel of death, and any Egyptian with blood on his house was passed over.

God sees blood upon everyone who is saved by His grace. He sees the blood of His Son. When He sees a you are covered and protected. But it is possible to come out from under that covering in ways which we shall spell out in the chapters which follow.

The righteousness of Christ

When we are in Christ we can speak and act in His name, we are cleansed by His blood and we are robbed in His righteousness. As Paul says in Philippians 3:9:

Not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but that which is through faith in Christ -- the righteousness that comes from God and is by faith.

Or again in 2 Corinthians 5:21:

God made him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.

Notice it is in Him. God places me in Him, where I am made righteous, justified, acquitted, covered. We are in His righteousness. This is the garment of salvation which we have already referred to in Isaiah 61:10.

Do you know about the garment of salvation? Do you wear it? Or do you wear the spotted garments of your own good deeds?

What are you doing coming to worship the Lord, coming to the wedding feast, without your garment on? God has provided the garment of salvation, Christ’s robe of righteousness, in which we can approach Him. Then He will say, ‘You are all fair, my love!’ Some people get a terrible shock when the Lord says, ‘I can’t find anything wrong in you!’

Many Christians suffer from depression, and in the end oppression from the enemy because they don’t know how to wear the robe of righteousness, the garment of salvation. Having been saved by the grace of God, they slip off the garment of salvation and start to walk before God as if they were something in and of themselves.

Abiding in Christ

When the Lord Jesus knew that He was living in the last days of His life He was at great pains to teach the disciples one thing. He used one littlee phrase over and over again. It was, ‘Abide in me!’ Look at John’s Gospel chapters 14 to 16. He wanted His disciples to know that their place of safety was abiding or remaining in Him. There and there alone was where they would be safe and protected.

To abide simply means to remain, stay, continue, dwell. You don’t have to fight in order to ‘abide’, or to get under covering. All you have to do is to stay work God has put you. Where is God put you? In Christ. Stay there and if you do get out, get back immediately. Whatever the cost, get back!

Another New Testament picture of our being hidden in Christ is that of armor. This uses the idea of a battle and an enemy.

The armour of God

In addition to the well-known passage in Ephesians 6:10-18 we should note is also a little passage in Romans 13:12-14:

The night is nearly over; the day is almost here. So let us put aside the deeds of darkness and put on the armor of light. Let us behave decently, as in the daytime, not in orgies are drunkenness, not in sexual immorality and debauchery, not in dissension and jealousy. Rather clothe yourselves with the Lord Jesus Christ, and do not think about how to gratify the desires of the sinful nature.

It is so often the desires of the flesh, which entice us and bring us out of our place in Christ. We fight not only an enemy from without, but also an enemy from within!

In Ephesians Paul tells us to put on the whole armor of God. The enemy will get you at the one part you leave off! There is no point in putting the rest on and leaving one part off. That is exactly where the enemy will attack!

Have you discovered that the Lord Jesus is your armor? Do you know Him as your helmet of salvation? Or are there times when your mind can be attacked because you haven’t got a helmet on? The head (the mind) is the most vulnerable part in many ways.

Do you know Christ as truth? This means having your loins strapped, called in with truth and reality. If there Is unreality in our lives we feel ‘loose’.

The breastplate of righteousness, or the modern versions sometimes say ‘integrity‘, should be over our hearts. He alone is our righteousness, as we saw when we looked at Levitical offerings.

Our feet should be shod with the gospel of peace. We must have good shoes -- shoes of peace on our feet. Do you know the peace of God? Do you know Christ as the peace of God? You can’t walk in the ways of God without that peace. It is the same piece that will ‘arbitrate’ in your heart, or (Good News Bible) ‘guide you in the decisions you make’ (Colossians 3:15). You will know whether you should go this or that way by the peace of God.

Do you know Christ as ‘the shield of faith’? The shield is what you must have in front of you, and move about when the fiery darts of the enemy come.

Why must we put on the whole armor of God? The answer comes in Ephesians 6:13:

…so that when the day of evil comes, you may be able to stand your ground, and after you have done everything, to stand.

This is really just another way of saying ‘abide’! We are not told that, having done everything, we are to march forward 1000 miles. No! This battle is won by abiding. It is a victory already won, which has to be ratified. When we see that it makes a great difference. This isn’t a victory we win by going forward. We win by standing in Christ. As we remain in Him, so the battle is won. It is ratified. It is manifested. It is registered in heavenly places first and then on the earth.

Now suddenly the Old Testament pictures and symbols start to mean something. Christ is our fortress, stronghold, strong tower and refuge. He is the wings under which we have come to dwell. He is the shield and buckler. He is the rock in whom I take refuge. He is our place a sanctuary, are hiding place or covert.