“And forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors” (Matthew 6:12), and read this, “...Forgive, and you will be forgiven” (Luke 6:37). Now this makes sense to a Christian who is the Moses (Law) kind of gospel. This is much relevant to a Christian who is legalistic and a Christian who has not received the revelation of God’s grace and favour. In truth, what our Lord said to these people was good for them in order to prepare them for the transition which was about to happen. Jesus was talking here to people who were still under the law, people who were still going to the cross for their sins to be forgiven.
This principle is no longer applicable today; you don’t forgive the other person because you want the Lord to forgive you. Hey...! I know it is Christ who said it, but hey it doesn’t make sense even now as I’m reading it for this covenant of grace. But for the law people, it does make sense. This time when Jesus was preaching this, it was still in the Old Covenant/Testament, so the veil which is the law was in still in place. However, the manner with which we forgive today has changed, we don’t forgive to be forgiven but we forgive because we have been forgiven.
My dear reader, don’t be legalistic to think and believe that you will do something first before God can do something for you. In grace we forgive in this manner, “Therefore, as the elect of God, holy and beloved, put on tender mercies, kindness, humility, meekness, longsuffering; bearing with one another, and forgiving one another, if anyone has a complaint against another; even as Christ forgave you, so you also must do” (Colossians 3:12-13). Hey...! The motive has changed, in grace we forgive because we have been freely forgiven.
The law only wanted people to focus on themselves more than they could focus on God. Therefore, that caused them to fail to walk upright. Just for you to know that when you are in grace you are holy and you are holy by accident. Grace gives you the kind of holiness that is not forced because forced holiness is transient whereas the grace holiness is eternal. I know that many people will not understand holiness in this manner. What is holiness? Many people will conclude that holiness means being infallible in character and being meticulous in behaviour before the Lord; but hey holiness means uncommonness.
When we think about the opposite of holiness, we promptly think of sin. It is not sin that makes us not to be holy but being common. The bible says, “Do not be unequally yoked together with unbelievers. For what fellowship has righteousness with lawlessness? And what communion has light with darkness?” (2 Corinthians 6:14). This is the example of unholiness, being unequally yoked with unbelievers. This means the lesser and the greater bearing the same burden which they were not supposed to.
Believers, who are holy, are able to give the light to unbelievers not to cry with them and share the same problems and wait for the unknown together. That is not holiness. If you are a believer of Christ, the faith of Christ is imparted in you and through His faith you are able to use it to command and rebuke any foul spirit in your life. And guess what? The foul spirits submit to you because it is as if Christ is the one commanding them. As I mentioned, it is not about you but about Christ who came and died for you on the cross. My dear reader, focus on Christ not on your self-effort works.
So I want to bring this to your attention that the faith that we have, it’s not ours but belongs to Jesus, let us see, “Knowing that a man is not justified by the works of the law, but by the faith of Jesus Christ, even we have believed in Jesus Christ, that we might be justified by the faith of Christ, and not by the works of the law: for by the works of the law shall no flesh be justified” (Galatians 2:16 -KJV). This is clear that we are not justified by the works of the law. If we were to be justified by the works of the law (flesh), no man would be justified.
When you say ‘I have faith in God’, it is the kind of faith that you just happened to have because you listened or heard the word, but Christ imparted it to you while you were hearing by the word of God. When this happens, you will by no means go back and forth in Him; He will keep you in His presence. Look, my friend, this does not imply that you can sin because Jesus cannot rid you. I want to show you something that you probably saw but maybe the Holy Spirit has not revealed it to you. Let us read below:
“Moreover the law entered that the offense might abound. But where sin abounded, grace abounded much more, so that as sin reigned in death, even so grace might reign through righteousness to eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord” (Romans 5:20-21). This is the implication that where sin increases, we preachers of grace introduce Jesus to those people. When we introduce Jesus, people are gifted with the gift of grace. So in this new covenant, we receive forgiveness as gift. No one buys the gift except the giver; therefore Jesus is the One who bought our forgiveness through His blood.
My dear reader, do not buy this forgiveness by making all night prayers or fastings; this forgiveness has been given to you as a gift, just accept it. Don’t work for something that has been given to you for free. So Paul also says, “What shall we say then? Shall we continue in sin that grace may abound? Certainly not! How shall we who died to sin live any longer in it?” (Romans 6:1-2). It is as if Paul knew that this question would pop-up, so then he instantly answered it. Paul’s answer is not a negation or prohibition but impossibility.
This statement contradicts this idea that one who sins has to continuously ask for forgiveness each time they sin. This is for those who have been forgiven by the blood of Jesus that they cannot live in sin any longer. For instance, if you could go to the cemetery on the grave of someone who is dead, would you ask them if they are dying? No. Because you know they are dead and they can no longer come back to this life. Hey people, we died with Christ to sin and we are unable to dwell in it. It is not I who say it but the bible itself.
Someone might come up and say that Christians still pray for forgiveness as the bible stated that we should confess our sins and God will forgive us. I want to address this cautiously because I don’t want to be perceived as someone contradicting the word of God. Let us read the following, “If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all” (1 John 1:9). This does not imply that we believers should confess our sins each time we sin so that we may be forgiven.
In fact, this was not written to believers but to some Hebrew Christians who were to become the believers of Christ. If we pay attention to this book of 1 John, the phrase, my little children only appears from the chapter 2. This shows that from chapter 2 the addressee is different from the one in chapter 1. However, I am not saying that we must do away with the confession of sins. Look, we can still confess our sins to our beloved Saviour Jesus Christ but not for Him to forgive us but because we are already been forgiven.
When we sin today, we say, “Thank You Lord because I know You have already forgiven me of this sin”, and walk away from it. We confess our sins because we are loved and we love our Lord and Saviour Jesus. I believe that married couples will agree with me that because they love each other, when one errs to the other it is necessary and essential to confess their mistakes and faults. Our sins have been forgiven past, present and future. When Jesus died 2000 years ago, your sins were future because you were not yet born but they were forgiven.
Then one may say, the book of James encourages us to confess our sins. Yes, that is true but not to God but to one another. Let us see what it says, “Confess your faults one to another, and pray one for another, that ye may be healed. The effectual fervent prayer of a righteous man availeth much” (James 5:16 -KJV). But before this let us see what James said so that you may understand the whole context of the confession of sins here in this chapter. This is what he wrote, “And the prayer of faith shall save the sick, and the Lord shall raise him up; and if he have committed sins, they shall be forgiven him” (James 5:15 - KJV).
It is the prayer of faith for the healing of the sickness that makes the sins to be forgiven, and as the sins are forgiven, we can as well confess our errors or mistakes to one another that we may be healed. Pay attention to this, in the verse 15, he stated that the healing is of the sickness, but the second healing it is never stated. I submit to you that this healing is for our souls. So we confess these faults to the ones whom we hurt and whom lied to or cheated upon. When we come to God and realise that we have been freely forgiven, we are able to confess our faults to one another, and that frees us and we become healed spiritually.
The works of our Lord Jesus Christ was to make us to be forgiveness-conscious rather than being sin-conscious. The bible actually says, “For the law, having a shadow of the good things to come, and not the very image of the things, can never with these same sacrifices, which they continually year by year, make those who approach perfect. For then would they not have ceased to be offered? For the worshippers, once purified, would have had no more consciousness of sins” (Hebrews 10:1-2). Hey people, Jesus came that worshippers may have clean consciousness.
The bible says that once worshippers are purified, they should have no more consciousness of sin. This is the idea, right? But they had consciousness of sin after offering those sacrifices because those sacrifices were only shadows. Today, we do not have the shadow but the substance which is our Lord Jesus. We should not have the consciousness of sin because He took our judgement and condemnation upon Himself. God imputed all of our sins upon Him for David to say this, “Blessed is the man to whom the Lord does not impute iniquity...” (Psalm 32:2).
When man sinned against the Lord in the Garden of Eden, the Lord had to find the ground on which men could find his way back to Him. The only way back was through the innocent blood and that blood would only be the blood of His Son Jesus Christ. When He died on the cross, all our iniquities were imputed on Him, now for God to impute the sins of believers which were purged on His Son would be double jeopardy. If you accepted Jesus Christ as Lord and Saviour in your life, all your sins are forgiven and crucified on the cross on the body Jesus Christ.
The bible says, “God, who at various times and in various ways spoke in time past to the fathers by the prophets, has in these last days spoken to us by His Son, whom He has appointed heir of all things, through whom also He made the worlds; who being the brightness of His glory and the express image of His person, and uploading all things by the word of His power, when He had by Himself purged our sins, sat down at the right hand of the Majesty on high, having become so much better than the angels, as He has by inheritance obtained a more excellent name than they” (Hebrews 1:1-4).
Jesus did not become atonement on the cross, but He purged our sins. The word atonement in English is translated as to make amends to restore a damaged relationship. In theology it means, the reconciliation of God and mankind through the death of Jesus. In Hebrew the word atonement is kâphar and this word in English means to cover. When John the Baptist saw Jesus, He said, “...Behold! The Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world” (John 1:29). Jesus did not atone for our sins but He took them away. The blood of bulls and rams atoned for the sins of the Israelites then, which is why the sacrifices were to be done yearly. Hey, now we do not have to sacrifice, the only sacrifice we do is to accept Jesus in our lives as the Lord and Saviour.
Stay in health through His love and grace
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