You and I believe in the Lord Jesus Christ because we are sinners. When we believe in Christ, we offer our lives to HIM as a living sacrifice. We are then saved, forgiven, and declared righteous and holy.
When we believe in Christ, we are forgiven of all our sins – the past, present, and the future.
Wait!
Does this mean that the sins I am going to commit (in the future) would be forgiven?
Yes, God would forgive the sins that you and I would be committing in the future, said the late Rev. Billy Graham:1
One of the Bible’s greatest truths is that Christ died to take away all our sins–not just part of them, but all of them: past, present, and future.
This is why you shouldn’t fear that you will lose your salvation every time you commit a sin. If that were the case, you and I would lose our salvation every day–because we sin every day. Even if our actions are pure, our thoughts often are not. And even if our actions and thoughts are pure, we still sin because of the good things we should be doing but fail to do.
Never forget: Your salvation does not depend on you and how good you are.
It depends solely on Christ and what He has already done for you through His death on the cross. The Bible says that Christ “appeared once for all at the end of the ages to do away with sin by the sacrifice of himself” (Hebrews 9:26).
Does that mean it doesn’t matter whether or not you sin? No, of course not. Sin is serious; it is an offense to God, and it breaks our fellowship with Him. Sin also compromises our witness for Christ. The Bible is clear: “Be holy, because I am holy” (1 Peter 1:16).
But you cannot live the Christian life in your own strength. You need God’s help–which is why He has given His Holy Spirit to you. When you sin, confess it immediately, and then seek the Holy Spirit’s help each day to live as you should.
We are saved by the grace of God through our faith in Christ. The inherent beauty of the gospel of Christ is that we do not fear to lose our salvation as and when we commit sins. (This, however, does not offer us a license to sin.)
Dr. Michael Brown’s explanation will enable us to understand this better:2
…it is true that God doesn’t save in installments, meaning that the moment He says, “I forgive you,” you become a child of God and you pass from death to life, from the kingdom of Satan to the kingdom of God, from condemned to not guilty, from wicked to righteous, from lost to saved, from having a debt of sins bigger than Mt. Everest to being totally and absolutely forgiven – all in a moment of time. That is grace in action. That is the power of the blood of Jesus. It is a free gift, and it is yours forever.
That also means that if you sin tomorrow and get upset with a coworker, you do not become unsaved and go back to death, back to the kingdom of Satan, back to being condemned, back to being wicked and lost. Instead, as a child of God who is still in the “forgiven” column – meaning, God looks as you as His beloved child, a former guilty sinner whom He has pronounced forgiven – you now need to apply the blood of Jesus to your life and receive fresh cleansing. But you do not do this as a lost sinner being saved. Rather, you do it as a child of God who is in the “saved-righteous-holy-forgiven” column, freshly applying that source of forgiveness, the blood of Jesus, to your life again.
…God deals with us as His children, which means that we don’t get saved one moment, lost the next moment (the moment we commit a sin), and then “resaved” the moment we ask for forgiveness. This kind of spiritual schizophrenia is not only totally unbiblical but it is totally maddening. Who can possibly live like this?
So, it is crucial that we find a place of security in the Lord, remembering that we are saved by grace, not by works, by God’s goodness, not by our goodness. It’s also crucial to understand that when God forgives, He forgets – meaning, He doesn’t keep a record of wrongs against us – and that when we are forgiven, we are really forgiven. And it’s crucial to understand that Jesus paid the price for every sin we will ever commit, and when we come to Him in sincerity, asking Him to wash us clean, He will do it without hesitation. The price has already been paid.
This means that if God isn’t bringing up our past we shouldn’t bring it up either, and if He says we are forgiven, we really are forgiven. We must receive it, no matter what we’ve done and no matter how far we’ve fallen: “I am God’s child and I am forgiven!”
… So, we can rest assured that, as far as our salvation is concerned, we have been forgiven of our sins, and God remembers them no more. How mind-boggling is that? And as far as our ongoing relationship with God, forgiveness is applied whenever we need it and ask for it.
The grace of God that forgives us of all our sins does not offer us a license to sin. Dr. Brown refers to Pastor Joseph Prince’s words, “"If you hear of any 'grace' teaching that tells you it is all right to sin, to live without any regard for the Lord, and that there are no consequences to sin, my advice to you is to flee from that teaching. You have just been exposed to counterfeit grace. Genuine grace teaches that believers in Christ are called to live holy, blameless, and above reproach. It teaches that sin always produces destructive consequences and that it is only through the power of the gospel of Jesus Christ that one can be set free from the dominion of sin."”3
When we are caught in sinful habits, our relationship with God is disrupted (cf. Psalm 15). But when we confess our sins and repent to God, HE forgives us and our relationship with HIM is restored. Believers who are caught in sin(s) will truly desire to be delivered and grow in holiness.
A true believer will hate his sins. He/she will pray eagerly for deliverance from sins so to grow in holiness. This is the hallmark of a serious or a sincere Christian.
Endnotes:
1https://billygraham.org/answer/does-god-forgive-the-sins-we-will-commit-in-the-future-or-just-those-from-our-past/
2https://askdrbrown.org/library/future-sins-forgiven-advance-fundamental-error-hyper-grace
3https://www.christianpost.com/news/hyper-grace-setting-the-record-straight-with-pastor-joseph-prince.html
Websites last accessed on 24th January 2019.
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