My child, I am a God of love. I give you unmerited favor. When you placed your faith in Me, I redeemed you. You are Mine now. There is no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus and death no longer has its hold on you. You will live on for eternity with Me. Live in My grace today. Live a life of love, grace and forgiveness.
The issue of forgiveness of sin—past, present and future—has been resolved in God’s mind. It’s a done deal! Freedom from sin was never meant merely to be applied to our initial salvation experience, but as an enduring guarantee of intimate relationship with God.
But this doesn’t mean that the inevitable struggle between the appetites of self and the requirements of God’s law are not going to be an ongoing battle for us. To be sure, this conflict is precisely why being freed from slavery to sin is so crucially important as we go about living our new life in God. Yet given our human condition in this world of sin, it’s not too surprising to find this truth so routinely misunderstood.
It’s really sad that so many have been duped by the enemy into believing that we must somehow earn our own way now that we’ve been saved. Think back to the desperately sinful circumstances you were in when He reached down and pulled you out of that pit. Having been so amazingly forgiven and cleansed from that muck, how could we think that He would now abandon us just because we continue to struggle with sin in various areas of our life?(Romans 5:8-10)
Rules can be changed in order to reach an equitable judgment for the parties involved. We’ve all heard it said, “They’ve reached an equitable solution to the problem.” This means that even though the judgment may not be considered entirely fair, it is satisfactory to both sides.
Now there’s no question that freely receiving forgiveness for our sins through God’s grace is equitable for us, but how could it be just and equitable for Him? Well, the most obvious answer to that question is “because He said so”—that is, God’s mercy eclipses what otherwise would be reasonable and expected. There’s no question that forgiveness of our sin is a gift of God’s mercy, freely held out to us through the promise of the gospel. But there’s something more to the justice of God than merely “because I said so.” There’s an answer to that–next time!
The fact of the matter is that God has provided the remedy for all our sin—past, present and future.(Psalm 103:10&14) But even so, it’s obvious in Scripture that He intends for us to be holy, and thus commands us not to sin. How is it, then, that He could willingly overlook the sin which so easily flows from our nature? The answer, of course, is that by grace He forgives our sins, which is indeed absolutely true.
Fortunately, Jesus revealed the full extent of the gospel to Paul, not only that his curiosity might be satisfied but that both his generation and those to follow might also reach a deeper understanding of Christ’s provision. This is vitally important, because a complete awareness both of our human condition and how we now relate to our Creator is the key to walking in the total freedom God always meant for us to experience.
We know from Scripture that God forgives our sin through Christ Jesus as a free gift. Yet even more important to understand is that this free gift of forgiveness and righteousness is rooted in the fact that He has caused us to die to sin altogether.(1 Peter 2:24) But just exactly what does dying to sin mean? I don’t feel very dead to sin!