The Best Forgiveness of All

Recently, I came across a Christian author’s description of forgiveness in Christ as being ‘one and done,’ historical, completed to the extent that a Christ follower today doesn’t need to ask for forgiveness any more but instead just accept that Jesus has already forgiven your sin on the cross. There is some biblical truth found in his position but there is more to it than this.

Here’s my take on what God’s Word teaches about divine forgiveness in Christ.

I believe there are two aspects of divine forgiveness in Christ. The first aspect is a one-time divine positional type of forgiveness that happens at your spiritual conversion moment when you receive Christ as your Savior by His grace through faith. When this happens you are redeemed by Christ. All your sins have been atoned for by Christ. You are declared righteous in the eyes of God so that you now have an eternal relationship with God and a position with God in His Heaven (see the doctrine of justification). In this divine positional/judicial sense, in Christ, all of our sins, past, present, and future have been forgiven by Christ. Here are a couple verses related to this aspect of divine forgiveness:

Colossians 2:13-14 (ESV) And you, who were dead in your trespasses and the uncircumcision of your flesh, God made alive together with him, having forgiven us all our trespasses, by canceling the record of debt that stood against us with its legal demands. This he set aside, nailing it to the cross.

1 John 2:12 (ESV) I am writing to you, little children, because your sins are forgiven for his name’s sake.

Paul and John, led by the Holy Spirit, were writing to Christians here and they used the past tense about our sins being forgiven because judicially in the eyes of God it is settled and Christ followers can be assured of this. What Christ did on the cross for us atones for all of our sin including our future sins. So, in a divine positional/judicial sense all of our sins are forgiven in Christ. This is great gracious truth. Praise God!

The other aspect of divine forgiveness is an ongoing divine parental type of forgiveness. When we sin our Heavenly Father is grieved. When we sin it has a negative effect on our fellowship with God and our witness for Christ. Sinning as a Believer, a Christian, doesn’t remove our eternal life but it does need to be addressed spiritually by our proper response to God and His Word for His people today. For example, 1 John 1:9 refers to this ongoing divine parental type of forgiveness.

1 John 1:9 (ESV) If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.

The verb tense for ‘confess’ in this verse is continual. We are to confess our sins continually as we sin. The forgiveness referred to here is not the initial divine positional/judicial forgiveness when we first become born again in Christ. This is divine parental forgiveness for specific sins in our Christian lives. When I sin today and tomorrow and the next day I need to apply and cling to the promise of 1 John 1:9.

This cleansing referred to in 1 John 1:9 is not the initial regeneration cleansing of the Holy Spirit when we first become born again (Titus 3:4-7). This is a spiritual cleansing to restore us to a righteous fellowship with God. A Bible illustration of these two types of cleansings is found in the John 13 passage about foot washing. Jesus told Peter that Peter’s whole body was clean but that only his feet needed to be washed. The phrase ‘whole body clean’ here refers to Peter being justified in Christ by faith. The foot washing referred to his ongoing need to confess his sin and be forgiven for specific sins. Yes, even Peter, a leading disciple of Christ. Even you. Even me.

It’s biblical for a Believer to ask God for forgiveness. Jesus taught us, through a regular occurring prayer model to follow, to ask God the Father for forgiveness regularly. Matthew 6:12 (ESV) and forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors.

Note, that in addition to confessing our sin, we are to repent from that sinful behavior. Repent means to change and Believers’ repentance means to turn away from sin and turn to the way of righteousness in Christ. 2 Corinthians 12:20-21 is an example of the importance of Believers’ repentance.

My own parental love and forgiveness toward my kids (our three boys have received Christ as their personal Savior and Lord) is based on this biblical model of divine forgiveness; positional and parental. When my children were conceived and born, I chose and continue to choose to love them unconditionally because they are a blessing from God who created them through my wife and me. They are our biological children and we love them and care about them. They are imperfect and so are we. They obviously sin against us like disobeying and lying to us. These sins don’t remove our love for them or their status of being our children just like the sins of Christ-followers don’t remove God’s love for us or our status of being born again in Christ. The sins of our boys do however grieve God and us. Kym and I believe that these sins need to be confessed to God and repented from for spiritual cleansing and righting their fellowship with God and confessed to us (the sins that are against us) and repented from to restore a right fellowship with us.

Now, let’s say you are a Christ-follower and one night you engage in sinful activity and then die in an automobile crash without having confessed the sin you were engaged in that evening. Because of divine positional/judicial forgiveness you are forgiven by God for that night’s sin. You are eternally secure based on God’s faithfulness and promises in Scripture to His people. If you don’t die that night, God’s Word teaches us that we are to continually confess our sins to Him.

Be careful about pride and spiritual blindness when it comes to your sin. Ask God to reveal to you any unconfessed sin in your life and then agree with God about those sins, repent from that sinful behavior and accept His forgiveness.

God’s forgiveness of our sins is amazing grace. Thank you God! There is human to human forgiveness, which is important in healthy people relationships, but divine forgiveness is the best forgiveness of all. If you have never received this divine forgiveness/eternal life in Christ, check out my blog entry on God’s Plan for True Life (http://mikesmorals.blogspot.com/2013/09/great-news-gods-plan-for-true-life.html).

What do you think about divine forgiveness as revealed in God’s Word?

 

Mike