It’s been said that when two people marry the devil takes a holiday. Why? Because after that, he knows they’ll accuse each other.

An uncomfortable truism. But it applies to more than marriage.

Jesus paid a big price to end condemnation for us all. It was a huge thing high on His agenda.

Most Christians know he paid the price for the list of things that condemned us in God’s eyes and thereby wiped out the Almighty’s case against us. What an amnesty that was.

But the outcome of it is that we don’t have to accept accusations about ourselves as a daily bombardment. Clearly, bombardment with accusing thoughts is something common to much of the population, Christian or not.

What mother thinks she did all she was supposed to do for her children? What husband thinks he’s made his wife happy with her lot? Most Christians think getting their Christian life right is some sort of high point awaiting them in the future and that they aren’t doing as well as that now. Apparently something like a third of all teenagers have contemplated suicide at some point, convinced things in their life are beyond hope and that they’re not fit to live.

It isn’t for nothing that the Bible calls the enemy of mankind, ‘the accuser of the brethren.’ Under his influence we all carry a profound sense of being either too much or not enough, unbacked and faulty in a world that seems to want too much from us. We think we ought to do better or more.

When Adam and Eve came under the influence of the enemy, one of the first things they felt was uncovered. In truth they’d come out from under the cover of their Father and under the economy of the devil. And under him they felt unbacked and exposed to anything that wanted to get them, seemingly the whole of the planet, and that survival was down to them winning the fight.

We were shaped in that fallen way of things and partly the accusations stick because we still carry the conviction we’re supposed to try with everything we’ve got to succeed, that the outcome to everything is down to us. But Jesus has placed us back under the Father, covered for by the One who cares for us. We are backed in everything we attempt, covered for in every run we feel we have to make, covered for every failure. Right standing with God is back again apart from working for it and it is all due to grace, not in succeeding. In other words, we’re okay now. It’s all going to be alright. The bottom line is that, ‘it has pleased the Father to give us the kingdom’, and ’surely mercy and goodness will follow [us] all the days of our lives.’ He isn’t recording failures, only watching to bless us on our way and get us back on our feet when we fall.

Check yourself out. Do you have an inner dialogue during your day where you tell yourself off to make yourself work better; do you hear a replay of what your mother or father or your teachers used to hound you about as you go to clean your house or do your job? How about words from your spouse? Or bad memories that keep flashing back? Have you got an ‘unholy rosary’ you recount about yourself, citing all your bad points in your head or what bad things will happen if you don’t do well? Old habit patterns die hard and the devil exists to pump life into them.

You might want to enter more into the perfect freedom from all these things that you have as a reinstated child of God. Do take every thought prisoner and make it obey what you have in Christ. And rest, child. You don’t have to answer to the devil anymore.