The Bible teaches that salvation means you have been forgiven; yet it also teaches a continuous need for confession and forgiveness. Skeptics twist that into a contradiction. Arminians and Wesleyans twist it into "proof" that salvation is conditional and not secure. Both reflect a need for greater understanding.
Forgiveness or being forgiven means either an action or a state. The word forgiven has more than one meaning.
- Past participle of the verb to forgive — You were forgiven, meaning, God forgave you.
- Adjective — You are forgiven, meaning, since you were declared forgiven, now you are in a state of forgiveness; it is one of your attributes.
- Present participle — You are forgiven, meaning, I forgive you.
I forgive
Before discussing forgiveness in the spiritual context, we need to recognize a practical context. Sin affects everybody.
- My sin affects me because it has consequences for me.
- It affects God because it desecrates His creation, it is an affront to His holiness, and it rebels against His sovereignty.
- Some sins directly hurts others.
So if somebody says, You are forgiven, they might mean that, assuming you have obeyed the gospel, God has forgiven you. However, they might mean that they forgive you for what you did to them.
God forgives
The state of forgiveness cannot be reversed. Therefore there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus (Romans 8:1, NASB).
This is because Christ fulfilled the Law — the Old Testament commandments that condemned us. God God reckons Christ’s death and payment of the debt to our accounts, so in the new birth, we died to the Law of Condemnation and were born into a Law of love.
Romans 7:1–6 uses marriage as an analogy. Marriage is a lifelong commitment. When one spouse dies, the other is free from that first commitment and free to marry another. Similarly, when Christ’s death is imputed to us, it’s like we’ve died to the Law of Condemnation, and God places us under a new law, the Law of Love. So the passage concludes in verse 6,
- But now we have been released from the Law [of commandments that condemn], having died to that by which we were bound [the Law and our guilt], so that we serve in newness of the Spirit and not in oldness of the letter [the Law].
Because God remakes us as His children, His role in relationship to one whom He remakes into His child changes from Judge to Father. Formerly, His end role was to pronounce guilt, hand down the sentence, and execute justice. Now, His role is to train us; and by being trained, we can bring more honor to Him, earn rewards, enjoy fellowship with Him, and become more of a blessing to those we encounter. His end role will be to judge our performance and give rewards rather than to condemn.
On the other hand…
All this means that sin cannot condemn us, but it does not mean that sin does not hurt is. Sin still
- brings embarrassment to God’s name
- wastes rewards
- interferes with our fellowship with God
- interferes with our fellowship with others
- makes us a hindrance to others instead of a blessing
- weighs us down with guilt
Even though we have been forgiven by our Judge so that no penalty of condemnation remains, we still seek forgiveness from our Father because a penalty of lost joy and usefulness weighs us down.
Whereas the book of Romans focused on judicial forgiveness, the book of 1 John focuses on daily life.
- [I]f we walk in the Light… we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus His Son cleanses us from all sin…. If we confess our sins, He is faithful and righteous to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. (1 John 1:7–9, NASB)
This passage would seem self contradictory. “He forgives us of all sins, yet we need continued forgiveness?” This is resolved if you recognize the difference between forgiveness by our Judge and forgiveness by our Father.
Again, judicial forgiveness cleanses us from all our sins — past, present, and future. But within that state of forgiveness, we still need that cleansing of conscience and restoration of fellowship with our Father.
That’s why we should, even though our sins are forgiven, live in a continual state of repentance, confession, and attempted reform.
Copyright 2019, Richard Wheeler. Permission granted for personal or non-profit use. Please give credit where credit is due.
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