Calvary Road Baptist Church

“THE FORGIVENESS OF SINS”

Ephesians 1.7; Colossians 1.14 

Billy is three years old. He thinks he is a big boy who needs no help from his momma. He is thoughtless to remember that his momma cooks his meals, launders his clothes, keeps an eye out to make sure older boys do not bully him too much on the playground, ensures that his vaccinations are up to date and that he sleeps in a clean, warm bed at night after taking a bath and brushing his teeth. Billy’s need for his mother is profound, yet to him, it is a need that is mostly unperceived.

Do you have unperceived needs, needs that you are unaware of but could not live without them being met? Most people in our country give little thought to their next meal, but in some countries, there is no assurance of a next meal. Reminds me of the British sailors who suffered from scurvy until a doctor discovered the benefit of citrus fruits in 1747.[1] They needed vitamin C, yet their need was unperceived and their health was poor on long journeys.

In even more countries, some children have never had a drink of clean water. You need clean water. You need fresh air. You need shelter. You need a certain amount of sunlight. You need a diet of varied food. You need a certain amount of exercise.

Mostly, these are usually unperceived needs, constituent ingredients in a healthy lifestyle that most people in advanced countries pay very little attention to. However, remove one from your life, and you will begin to notice the degradation in short order, causing your life’s quality and comfort level to suffer noticeably.

Have I convinced you that unperceived needs exist? Allow me to name another one of many. How about the protection citizens hope we will be provided by our various levels of local, state, and federal government, law enforcement, and the military? Though we often complain about the quality of service our different levels of government provide for us, consider what it is like in some countries.

There are places where bands of marauders roam from house to house, breaking in and doing whatever they please without fear of local police. I am not referring to Chicago. There are places where forces from other countries attack and kidnap people to enslave them and ransom them back to their loved ones for money. For the most part, that kind of thing does not happen in our country because we have a level of protection that is missing from many countries. That protection is an unperceived need that is not met for Uyghurs in China or Christians in Iran.

Here is one more. What about headaches? Do you ever get headaches? Most people who get headaches will take aspirin or other pain reliever and a glass of water to get rid of the headache. However, do you realize that most headaches are caused by dehydration and are cured, not by the aspirin you take, but by the glass of water you drink with the aspirin? Thus, frequently, water is needed by people with a headache who honestly think that what they need is aspirin.

Would you consider the likelihood that other unperceived needs exist? When someone has non-Hodgkin’s Lymphoma, they frequently have no idea what they have. Our late brother and Church member Daved (sic) Magnifico had non-Hodgkin’s Lymphoma for a year before it was diagnosed, and he learned that he needed a bone marrow transplant to save his life.

He could not find a match quickly enough and died too young. What if you have something developing in your body at this very moment? Would you not, then, have an unperceived need, a desperate need you were entirely unaware of that, if unmet, would seal your fate?

I want to raise the issue of your need for forgiveness, a requirement that most people usually receive unperceived. Of course, many people have been taught that they need to seek and obtain forgiveness from the person they have wronged when they offend or harm someone. However, most people, even after wronging someone has little interest in securing forgiveness and only want to avoid unpleasant consequences. You can usually tell because such a person typically, if they say anything, says something like, “I am very sorry,” rather than asking, “I wronged you in this way. Will you forgive me?”

However, it is not the forgiveness of some other person that I set before you as an all too often unperceived need, but the forgiveness of God. Recognizing that you need not feel the need for forgiveness for it to be a genuine need, just as there are other needs you are not always aware of, consider God’s forgiveness under two headings: 

First, YOUR NEED FOR GOD’S FORGIVENESS OF SINS 

The notion of forgiveness first appears in God’s Word in Genesis 50.17, shortly after Jacob’s death, when his ten oldest sons were overcome with fear for having sold their now powerful brother Joseph into slavery when he was a young lad. The brothers reminded Joseph that their father urged them to seek his forgiveness for what they had done to him when they betrayed him. Thus, the implication is that their father, Jacob, knew his sons needed their younger brother’s forgiveness, perhaps before they realized their need.

Why they delayed in seeking Joseph’s forgiveness, we are not told. Yet, after their father died, they quickly sought his forgiveness, so their very powerful brother would not seek vengeance against them after their father’s passing. Thus, they needed Joseph’s forgiveness from the moment they betrayed him, yet they seemed not to comprehend their need for forgiveness until their lives might be in danger should they not quickly obtain Joseph’s forgiveness.

If his brothers eventually recognized their need for Joseph’s forgiveness for their sins against him, do you suppose those who sin against God need His forgiveness? After all, sinning against the holy God is a much more severe offense than sinning against another human being. This realization might have spurred David to pen Psalm 25.18, where he wrote this prayer: 

“Look upon mine affliction and my pain; and forgive all my sins.” 

There can be no doubt that the Savior recognized our need for the forgiveness of sins. When asked to teach His disciples to pray, He included the request for God’s forgiveness in His model prayer. Notice, in Matthew 6.12, that sins require forgiveness and leave the sinner in debt to the ones sinned against: 

“And forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors.” 

Thus, when you sin against someone, including God, your sin leaves you with a debt of obligation to make it right. Therefore, sin should not be thought of as something that goes away when you ignore it for a long enough time. Let bygones be bygones. No, sin is a debt, an obligation, that must be somehow paid to whom it is owed. As well, the Lord Jesus Christ showed the need for forgiveness of sins by Himself forgiving sins in Mark 2.5, where He 

“said unto the sick of the palsy, Son, thy sins be forgiven thee.” 

Of course, this provoked the outrage of His enemies, who asked, 

“Why doth this man thus speak blasphemies? who can forgive sins but God only?”[1] 

We know the answer to that question. No one can forgive sins but God only. However, Jesus Christ is God manifest in the flesh. Forgiving sins is well within His prerogative.

The question, of course, is why do sins need forgiveness? There are two ways I would like to address that question:

First, sins need forgiving because sins are crimes that need to be pardoned, defilements that need to be cleansed, debts that need to be paid, trespasses that need to be remedied, offenses that need to be reconciled, violations that need to be punished, missing the marks that need to be corrected, distortions that need to be straightened, affronts that need to be addressed, and betrayals that need to be set right. Thus, sins are like open spiritual sores that do not heal of themselves because they cannot heal of themselves. They must be treated.

Looked at from God’s perspective, and considering God’s attributes, we must not forget that God is holy, God is love, and God is truth. However, sins are unholy strikes against God’s holiness, unloving assaults on His love, and despicable lies in the face of His truth. If God is just and righteous (which He is), how can sins not be punished? To be sure, God is long-suffering so that sins are not usually immediately punished. However, God’s nature demands that sins eventually be punished unless they are forgiven. God’s immediate punishment for sins is Hell, where a person whose sins are not forgiven goes the moment he dies.[2] God’s eventual punishment for sins is eternal torment in the lake of fire, where those whose sins are not forgiven when they die are cast after the Great White Throne judgment to suffer eternal torment.[3]

Are your sins forgiven? Are your sins forgiven because you discount their importance? Are your sins forgiven because you say they are forgiven? Are your sins forgiven because you claim they are forgiven? Can your sins be forgiven apart from God’s forgiveness?

Having established the need for God’s forgiveness, we now turn to ... 

THE NATURE OF GOD’S FORGIVENESS OF YOUR SINS 

What is misunderstood by many people in our day, and what has been misunderstood in the Muslim world since the time of Mohammed, is the requirement for all sins to be punished for forgiveness to be granted. Error in this regard is sometimes owing to the complete omission of God from any consideration of forgiveness or the distortion of God’s nature concerning His forgiveness. Because God is righteous and just, that which is wrong must be dealt with, that which is criminal must be punished, and that which is defiled must be purged and cleansed.

Thus, the notion that sins can be dismissed rather than forgiven flies in the face of God’s nature. The Muslim’s view that Allah can arbitrarily choose to dismiss the sins of some and not others (calling it forgiveness) shows that the Islamic concept of the Creator’s nature is immature, undeveloped, erroneous, and distorted in that it places His mercy at odds with His righteousness. That said, I am not persuaded Islam’s Allah is the God of the Bible.

Because our merciful God is holy and righteous, sins must be punished. For God to be true to Himself, sins must be punished. Therefore, for any sinner to be forgiven, there must be a recipe for the sinner’s sins to be punished even while the sinner is forgiven, for God’s mercy to be displayed without expense to His righteousness. Do not think this is semantics or wordplay. Romans 12.19 clearly shows that God reserves to Himself the right to vengeance for sins committed against both Him and His people: 

“Dearly beloved, avenge not yourselves, but rather give place unto wrath: for it is written, Vengeance is mine; I will repay, saith the Lord.” 

Another reason sins must be punished is often overlooked in our day. It has to do with every human being’s conscience. Your conscience is that faculty God has given to you that acts judicially, accusing or excusing you of wrongdoing, that acts punitively, inflicting remorse and self-punishment for your wrongdoing, that anticipates future judgments and then acts by way of prediction, and acts socially in judging others.[4],[5]

Everyone has a conscience, even though many people’s consciences are no longer good and pure, but evil and seared as a result of defilement and sinning in the face of a convicted conscience. That being the case, you may have to think back to your childhood to remember the sense of relief and the lifting of a burden that accompanies forgiveness when you came clean after wronging someone, asked for forgiveness, and received your correction.

When you have been forgiven, part of that relief comes from your conscience. However, part of that sense of relief also comes from your conscience when there is a realization that your wrongdoing has been appropriately punished. This is because your conscience includes a personal sense of justice, and justice demands that wrongdoing be punished.

What a sense of relief washes over a misbehaving child who has been chastened by a loving mother or father, not only from the forgiveness that accompanies dealing with sin properly but also from the sense of satisfaction that comes to a conscience that is clean after sin has met justice in the form of a rod to the backside administered by wise and loving parents.

This brings us to our texts for today, Ephesians 1.7 and Colossians 1.14, where the Apostle Paul provides a setting in which the forgiveness of sins can be properly understood. Turn to those verses and read them with me: 

1.7 In whom we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of sins, according to the riches of his grace. 

1.14 In whom we have redemption through his blood, even the forgiveness of sins. 

May I point out the obvious, that Paul is writing to Christians to explain something they probably did not fully understand at the time of their conversion? Therefore, though the truths that I will explain are beneficial to understand, many people have not grasped these truths and their implications until after they came to know Christ as their Savior. However, these two verses will help you to recognize the basis for God’s forgiveness of a sinner’s sins.

Both verses begin, “In whom.” The context clearly shows that a relationship with Jesus Christ is referred to. The concept is a sphere of influence, Christ’s sphere of influence, that every believer in Jesus Christ occupies when we are miraculously joined with Christ by faith. This happens when a sinner comes to Christ, believes in Christ, and is born again.

Next, the two verses both read, “we have redemption.” Redemption is the present possession of all who know Jesus Christ. What is redemption? Redemption is a very large concept of which forgiveness is but a part. The Greek word ἀpolύtroosis originally meant to buy back a slave or captive by paying a ransom.[6] The Jewish people would remember the redemption of Israel from Egyptian bondage, and everyone else in Paul’s day would be familiar with the redemption of a slave. The picture is of a sinner enslaved by his own sinfulness being freed from that bondage to a life of liberty in Christ.

Both verses go on to read “through his blood.” The payment price for our redemption is the shed blood of Jesus Christ. The question is, payment to whom? Payment to God. Remember God’s insistence that vengeance be His? Remember my comment about sins needing remedies?

Crimes must be punished. Therefore, for the sinner to be forgiven, the sins must be dealt with, which is to say they must be punished. So the sinner would not be punished, Jesus took upon Himself the sins of the elect and suffered the punishment for our sins on the cross of Calvary, shedding His precious blood a substitutionary atonement for sins. 

Propitiation meaning Jesus Christ’s sacrifice satisfied God’s demand that sins be punished.

The next phrase in our two text verses is “the forgiveness of sins.” One of the consequences of Christ’s substitutionary sacrifice on the cross, one of the results of Jesus shedding His precious blood on our behalf (but a very important one, indeed), is that God graciously and mercifully forgives sins without in any way perverting justice. Sins have been punished in the person of Jesus Christ on the cross. Therefore, sinners are forgiven all their sins when they are joined to Christ by faith.

Finally, Ephesians 1.7 concludes, “according to the riches of his grace.” Thus, everything about the forgiveness of a sinner’s sins and the more comprehensive concept of redemption that includes so much more than forgiveness is the result of God’s grace.

Jesus did not have to do this. God had no obligation toward us. That He chose to save some is a testimony to His grace. This is established in Romans 3.24-26, where Paul explains a bit more fully: 

24 Being justified freely by his grace through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus:

25 Whom God hath set forth to be a propitiation through faith in his blood, to declare his righteousness for the remission of sins that are past, through the forbearance of God;

26 To declare, I say, at this time his righteousness: that he might be just, and the justifier of him which believeth in Jesus. 

After considering these two verses, it is easy to see why God does not, why God cannot simply forgive sins in the sense of just pretending sins were never committed. That is what some people envision by forgiveness. They pretend their sins were never committed. As I said, that is essentially the approach Islam’s concept of forgiveness is built upon. However, such an approach is an assault on truth and a repudiation of God’s holiness and righteousness to expect Him to forgive sinners without also punishing sins. After all, sins have been committed. Wrong has been done. Punishment is deserved. Thankfully, Jesus Christ, the eternal Son of the living God, became sin for us Who knew no sin, Second Corinthians 5.21. So you see, Jesus is indispensable for the forgiveness of sins.

I conclude with a point not so obvious. With the substitutionary sacrifice of Jesus Christ on the cross being the ground on which forgiveness is based, He shed His blood and sin was punished, there is also a basis for a conscience that is now clear and clean. This is why Peter declared in First Peter 3.21 that believer baptism is “the answer of a good conscience toward God.” The child of God knows that “My sins have been forgiven,” but they have also been punished. My conscience is, therefore, clear. Such is not the case with any lost person, no matter how he may feel. Thus, Jesus is also indispensable for a clear conscience. 

Unperceived needs. Unperceived needs are needs you do not realize you have, needs you do not recognize. Such needs are real, even when they are unrecognized.

Too often, a husband will not recognize the need to love his wife until she has had enough of his nonsense and threatens to divorce him. Only recently, I read that the single most likely factor contributing to a husband leaving his wife is not her unfaithfulness to him but her incessant nagging and criticism. Perhaps too late, she recognizes her husband’s unmet need for respect.

In like manner, one of your greatest spiritual needs is God’s forgiveness for your sins. Your sins are an offense to Him, a crime against Him, and outrage to His holiness. Your sins block your access to heaven.

Thankfully, God is long-suffering and usually does not immediately avenge Himself for our sins but gives sinners space to consider their sins and turn to Christ in faith for forgiveness. Typically, sinners are unaware of their need for forgiveness and are just as commonly unconcerned about the wrongness of their sins against God.

Thankfully, the Holy Spirit makes use of witnessing, preaching, and God’s Word, along with conscience to some degree, to convict sinners of their sins. In this way, sinners are shown their need of forgiveness and pointed to Jesus as the only Savior of sinful men’s souls, Who, being God, can forgive sins.

However, sins are not forgiven just because God is nice or Jesus is easygoing. Sins must be punished for sinners to be forgiven, and the only way sins can be punished while forgiving sinners is by Jesus Christ suffering our punishment for us, taking our sins on His own body to the cross to suffer God’s wrath poured out for sins.

Does the substitutionary sacrifice of Jesus Christ on the cross of Calvary do you any good whatsoever? Not unless you have turned from your sins and come to Christ. You bear the burden for your own sins unless you embrace the One Who died in your place on the cross. Only then will you experience the forgiveness of all your sins.

So, you see, there is a tremendous difference between the attitude that says, “Sorry,” for sins and the heartfelt contrition that seeks God’s forgiveness through faith in His Son, Jesus. One attitude is a simple desire to avoid the punishment deserved for wrongdoing. At the same time, the other springs from recognizing the actual sinfulness of sins, some appreciation of the holy and righteous nature of the One sinned against, and a recognition of personal guilt that fully deserves God’s punishment.

I close by commending you to Christ and the Word of His grace in the hope that you will come to Christ and experience the forgiveness of sins.

__________

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Limey

[2] Mark 2.7

[3] Luke 16.19-31

[4] Matthew 25.46; Revelation 20.11-15

[5] Romans 2.15; 14.4; First Corinthians 8.13

[6] Lewis Sperry Chafer, Systematic Theology, Vol. VII, (Dallas, TX: Dallas Seminary Press, 1948), page 92.

[7] Bauer, Danker, A Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament and other Early Christian Literature, (Chicago, IL: The University of Chicago Press, 2000), page 117.

 

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