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About Jesus - Steve (Stephen) Sweetman Forgiven
Sin If you are a Christian,
I believe all of your past, present and future sins have been forgiven,
deleted from God's records. I
struggled for the first eighteen years of my life over this issue, never
being confident if my sin was really forgiven, as Colossians 2:13 says it
was. "When you were dead
in your sins and in the uncircumcision of your flesh, God made you alive
with Christ. He forgave us all
our sins," The Greek word
"pas" translated as "all" in "He forgave us all
our sins" suggests every last sin, past, present and future has been
forgiven. When the knowledge
of this became real in my life, I experienced a resurrection of sorts.
The Greek participles "were dead" and "made you
alive" suggest my very nature had passed from a deathly existence to
a lively one. Spiritually
alive is who I now am. Awareness
of these two realities will assist us in being effective and mature
Christians. Without such
awareness Christian growth is next to impossible. When saying what I've
just wrote, people often tell me that this thinking gives us permission to
sin, but it doesn't. Read
Romans 6:1 and 2. "What shall we say,
then? Shall we go on sinning
so that grace may increase? By
no means! We are those who
have died to sin; how can we live in it any longer?" Note the word
"died." Remember, we
have been resurrected from death to life.
We no longer live in a continuous state of sinfulness, but we still
commit sin, which by the way has already been forgiven.
When we willingly sin, we take advantage of God's grace which I
think is worse than the overt sin just committed. People also ask if God
still sees our sins since He has forgiven them.
He does see them. It is
why Jesus is our lawyer who defends us before God.
1 John 2:1 reads: "My dear children,
I write this to you so that you will not sin. But
if anybody does sin, we have an advocate [lawyer] with the Father—Jesus
Christ, the Righteous One."
It's also why God
disciplines us. Read
Revelation 3:19. "Those
whom I love I rebuke and discipline. So be earnest and repent." God still sees a sin we
commit even though it has been deleted from His records.
He certainly saw the sin of those in the seven churches of
Revelation 2 and 3. Sin may be forgiven, but
sin still has consequences as we also see in those seven churches of
Revelation 2 and 3. Sin
hinders our communion with Jesus, destroys our witness, messes up our
lives, can lead to eventual loss of faith, and, may cause Jesus to remove
Himself from parts of His church as seen in Revelation 2 and 3.
Those confusing
uncertain first eighteen years of my life, not knowing my stance before
God came to an abrupt end in February, 1970.
My three second prayer, while all alone on my knees by my bed
transformed my life for ever. Why
it happened that particular evening, I don't know.
There were no tears, no emotions, no joy and no overwhelming sense
of God's presence. There was,
however, a noticeable freedom from those irritating feelings of
condemnation as I woke the next day. Paul
was correct. "There is no
condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus" (Romans 12:1).
Finally, I knew my righteous standing before God was secure.
It's been that way ever since.
Thank you Jesus.
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