1 John 1:9
If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.
Paid in Full
When Jesus died on the cross, the last thing He said was “it is
finished,” and in the Greek, it essentially means “paid in full” (John
19:30). So my question is how many of our sins were ahead of us when
Jesus died on the cross? The answer is all of them! Every single sin
that we would commit would be hundreds of years in the future. Do you
think Jesus’ death on the cross was enough to pay for our sins, which
means that all our sins, including every past mistake we’ve made, would
be forgiven? If my son came to me after committing something I told him
to not do and asked me for forgiveness, would I keep bringing it up
every time I spoke with him? Certainly not. In the same way, we don’t
have to keep asking God over and over again to forgive us of certain
sins that we have already asked to be forgiven, do we?
Do We Accept Forgiveness?
I can’t tell you the number of people I have spoken with who still
feel like they’ve never been forgiven for things they’ve done in the
past, even though they’ve asked God for forgiveness. They still carry
around the heavy yoke of guilt and a burden that they were never
intended to carry. This robs them of their joy, strips them of any
witnessing they might do for the Lord, and loads them down with
unnecessary guilt that they have absolutely no reason to still carry.
When Isaiah saw a vision of the Lord and felt unworthy to speak with
unclean lips (Isaiah 6:5), the Lord sent a seraphim to touch his lips
and told him his sin is taken away and his guilt cleansed (Isaiah 6:6).
That’s what forgiveness is. We who trust in Christ have been given the
very righteousness of Christ, and that’s how God now sees us (2 Cor.
5:21). So why do some still feel overburdened and overwhelmed by guilt?
God has forgiven them, but they won’t forgive themselves. Maybe it’s
because they trust their feelings, which are highly subjective and
subject to error, over what the Word of God objectively says–that our
sins are all forgiven.
Washed and Cleansed
In Psalm 51, David’s great psalm of repentance, he asks God to wash
away all his iniquity and cleanse him from all his sins (Psalm 51:2), to
create in him a clean heart (Psalm 51:10), and to restore to him the
joy of his salvation (Psalm 51:12), not to restore his salvation but the
joy of his salvation, indicating that David thought he would not lose
his salvation but the joy of it. David was forgiven, and he must have
known it because he goes on to say that he will declare his praise and
sing aloud of God’s righteousness (Psalm 51:14). Doesn’t that sound like
David accepted God’s cleansing, for how can a guilty sinner who is
condemned sing of God’s forgiveness like that if he has not truly been
forgiven of his past mistakes? Remember that David had committed
adultery of the heart, then adultery in the flesh, then conspiracy to
commit murder, and then murder in the first degree, all of which were
punishable by death. That’s about as serious as it could be, but later
in David’s life, by reading the psalms, you could see that he didn’t
carry this guilt around for his past mistakes. Guilt strips our joy away
because we haven’t realized how forgiving our God truly is.
A Closing Prayer
You, Oh Father, are such a gracious God, rich in mercy and full of
grace. By Your loving kindness, You sent Your Son to die for me;
otherwise, I could never move beyond my guilt of the past and all the
mistakes I’ve made and will yet make in the future. For such goodness of
Yours, I give you thanks in Jesus’ name.
Amen
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