Word of Salvation – Vol. 46 No.36 – September 2001
Forgiveness of Sins
Sermon by Rev MP Geluk
on Lord’s Day 21 (Q&A 56 Heid Cat)
Scripture Reading: Psalm 32
Suggested Hymns: BoW 186; 384, 419; 32
Beloved in the Lord.
The subject of forgiveness of sins is very close to the heart of every Christian believer. When our conscience accuses us of wrongs done, then the Spirit of God doesn’t leave us alone until we bow before God in prayer to confess those wrongs and ask for forgiveness. In fact, prayer does not go well when there is unconfessed sin lurking in our hearts. It must be dealt with. We might even pretend all is well between God and us, between us and another, while all along there is a need to face up to one’s sin and confess it to God. And if there is another person involved, then also to that person. And until that takes place the relationship is not as it should be. And we ourselves remain spiritually unhealthy until forgiveness has restored us to God again. We can, therefore, identify with David who finally admitted to God his unconfessed sin, “When I kept silent, my bones wasted away through my groaning all day long. For day and night your hand was heavy upon me; my strength was sapped as in the heat of summer.” (Ps.32:3,4).
We are in spiritual danger when we continue to block out God’s call to humble ourselves and confess our sin. If we do not repent by the end of the day in which we sinned, it will be easier not to repent by the end of the second day, easier still on the third. When weeks, months and years go by without us admitting to our guilt, then it will be increasingly difficult to soften our hardened heart. We can go through all the rituals of worship, of appearing to be Christian, take part in the sacraments, but with a hardened heart we have become indifferent and insensitive to the things of God.
By contrast, we experience relief when we surrender to God and confess to Him everything. We admit to God what He has known all along. Like David we say, “Against you, you only, have / sinned and done what is evil in your sight.” (Ps.51:4). Then how wonderful to know the blessing of forgiveness, knowing that the God of all grace has heard us and has forgiven us our sin for Christ’s sake. Knowing that once again the bond between God and us is strong; that we can go forward again with our hand in God’s; that He is our Father and we the children He loves. Then our prayers to God are no longer just words. They have again become a worshipful response to His Word to us.
Yes, forgiveness of sin: without it the Christian cannot live and the church will be dead. And so it’s a privilege to bring you the gospel of forgiveness of sins.
1. Forgiveness of Sins is A Matter of Faith
We say with the article in the Apostles’ Creed that we believe in the forgiveness of sins. But there are times we may not feel forgiven when the weight of our sin and guilt is a heavy burden on us. Here you are as a child of God bowing before your Maker, deeply aware of your sin and the circumstances in which you sinned. Convicted by the Spirit and the Word, you come to utter the words, like the tax collector long before you, “God, have mercy upon me, a sinner.” You’re ashamed of what you’ve done against others and even more over against God who is so pure and holy and has shown you so much love and kindness. It’s so unreasonable to sin against God who is always good. It’s so wicked. And in your mind is the thought, what if God were to punish you for your sin? What if in the court of heaven God would say that He is tired of all your sinning and will now punish you for it? It would be entirely just. You deserve it. You committed the sin. You did it. And if God were to be just with you, then you know it would be the end of you. The wages of sin is death. You would be cut off from God. And if that were to happen, then at the end of your earthly life only the blackness of hell will await you. But we don’t really want that. Nobody wants that. So we pray, “Lord, be merciful to me.”
Deep in our heart we believe that God will be merciful. Knowing that God will show His mercy is what drove us to Him in the first place. No one would come to God if all they knew of Him were only His justice. Why come to your Maker only to hear a sentence of death pronounced over you? But we remember that God is also “…compassionate and gracious, slow to anger, abounding in love” (Ps.103:8). That knowledge about God is what made us come to Him, to humble ourselves and confess our sin.
But from where did we get the idea that God might just show His love to us and not His justice? From the Bible, of course – God’s own Word. It’s full of the Saviour, Jesus Christ. Even our young children already know that God has sent Jesus His Son to save us from our sins. When you get older you understand a little more how God punished our sin in Christ. We know why there had to be the cross and the resurrection. And so we believe that because of Christ’s suffering and death for sinners, God is willing to show us His mercy and forgiveness, for His judgment on our sin has fallen on our dear Saviour, Jesus Christ.
Yes, God forgives us because Christ actually suffered the penalty due to us. He died the death we deserved. Thus when God forgives our sins, we are free. Free to go on with God, free to live with Him. It’s the gospel of Christ that allows us to believe in the forgiveness of sins. Because of what Christ has done, God is saying many wonderful things to us. Like Him no longer holding my sins against me, or my sinful nature. Our merciful, forgiving, compassionate God has granted us Christ’s righteousness. And He has freed us forever from judgment!
When we again call to mind all this grace from God, then the Christian’s joy and thankfulness becomes so understandable. We sing with joy those stirring psalms where the believer throws himself on the grace and mercy of God and believes God’s forgiveness is real because of the Saviour God has sent. We’re thankful for those New Testament passages spelling out so crystal clear the method and manner of God’s forgiveness through Christ. And we sing the hymns based on those passages with hearts full of wonder to God who is so rich in grace and mercy.
2. The Believer is to Live on by the Grace of God’s Forgiveness
Why am I making this point? Well, there will come times in the Christian’s life that the sins of the past will rise up again like a wave of the sea about to go over the top of you. Maybe it was something that you saw, or said, or what you read. All of a sudden you’re reminded of what you did in years gone by. We may meet the person against whom the sin was committed and all the painful memories come flooding back. The guilt is there again, the remorse, the self-accusation that you’re really nothing more than a rotten sinner.
It’s possible that this happens in the church where we and the other person or persons have been members for years. It’s what the apostle Paul would have felt when he met up with Christians whom he had persecuted when still a Pharisee. Or worse, Christians whose relatives had died in prison as a result of his fanatical zeal in trying to destroy the church. Maybe Paul the Christian was thinking of his un-Christian past when he wrote to Timothy that he was the worst of sinners (1Tim.1:16). But not only the sins of the past before we were Christian, but also past sins we committed as Christians. We already knew Christ, professed our Christian faith regularly, were committed members of the church, participated in the Lord’s Suppers, and then we did things totally against our Christian character. Perhaps it was a terrible argument with things said that should never have been said, or even thought. Maybe it was drunkenness. Or theft. A sexual sin. Or maybe nothing obvious but just a secret sin that only you and no one else know about.
What do we do when our conscience accuses us again of past sins? When others carelessly remind us? Or deliberately accuse us again of past wrongs? How do you cope as a Christian when you can’t deny these accusations coming from either yourself or others? For it’s true. It’s part of your history. In Micah’s prophecy there are those wonderful words about God having cast all our iniquities into the depths of the sea (7:19) but for ourselves sometimes even the depth of the sea seems not deep enough to prevent sins from rising again to the surface of our consciousness.
Well, the only thing to do is to keep on believing in the forgiveness of sins. It’s right here that the child of God has to realise that he or she has to live by faith in the grace of God. You give yourself over to God who says of Himself that He pardons sins and forgives transgression; who does not stay angry forever but delights to show mercy; who will again have compassion on us and will tread our sins underfoot; yes, who hurls all our iniquities into the depths of the sea (Micah 7:18,19).
We must again and again look to the cross of Christ where all our sins, past, present and future, were paid for and done away with. God has wiped the slate clean. Christ is the perfect Saviour. No matter what your conscience says or what others accuse you of, repeat to yourself the words of the hymn:
“My sin, not in part, but the whole,
is nailed to the cross, and I bear it no more:
praise the Lord, praise the Lord, O my soul.” (BoW 426)
Yes, believe Christ has fully paid for all your sins and live on in God’s grace. Do not live on with the hurt of your conscience and painful memory. But it can be so difficult to stop that sinful nature of ours from doing the same sins we have asked forgiveness for dozens of times. Screaming at the kids, not wanting to be civil to those with whom you’ve quarrelled, looking again at things that only feed your lust, drinking too much. Yes, sins that we are addicted to. Sins we can’t seem to break away from.
The Bible teaches so clearly that our old self has died with Christ, was buried with Him, and our new self is Christ’s resurrected life in us. So why that wearisome struggle against our sinful nature all our life? Is that struggle always to go on? Is there no end to it? Is that old nature of sin in us then not dead and buried after all?
And then you have those books from well-meaning Christians who write about victorious living as though it is as easy as tying your shoe laces. All it needs, they say, is just seven steps, or follow this routine, or hear this wonderful testimony. All it needs is to give our lives to Christ, or decide to stand next to God. It’s all so Arminian. Why, every time we repented from the heart and prayed for forgiveness we surrendered ourselves to God. Yes, useless books really, when they come with solutions that start with what man has to do towards God.
It’s God who comes to us in His grace. It’s God who through His Word reminds us again of His commandments. We just have to learn to live by the grace of God; consider ourselves dead to sin and alive in Christ. The Spirit of God in us drives us on to do those things that God commands – things that glorify Him. And we take delight in that, for that is the new nature Christ gave us. Every child of God, notwithstanding of sin, also loves righteousness and purity. In our struggles we still hunger and thirst for them. It’s God working in us still with His Spirit. If you never love the things God loves, then you’re not a Christian. But longing to be pure and holy is already an indication that God is working in us. That He is faithful to His work in us.
But then comes the urge to sin again, to recklessly abandon yourself to swearing, to lust, to be nasty, to be spiteful, yes, whatever in your heart you know you should not do. Now will God not grow tired of you? Will He not throw you out and be rid of you? But God’s grace is wider than our sins and deeper than our wanderings. The Lord is more faithful to us than we to Him. God is not going to let go those for whom Christ died. Those whom He has saved are not going to be abandoned. To do that would be to deny Himself. But God cannot deny Himself.
Oh yes, He wants us to fight the good fight of faith and not give in to sin. He commands us to put down that sinful urge. Kill it again and again. For sin is not our master, therefore let it not be our master. Christ is our Lord, therefore let Him be our Lord. Remember no temptation will come to you but those that are common to man. “And God is faithful, He will not let you be tempted beyond what you can bear. But when you are tempted, He will also provide a way out so that you can stand up under it.” (1Cor.10:13).
Remember also what the apostle Paul said about all this. In his inner being he delighted in God’s law. But he was saddened when he discovered a tendency in himself to also do wrong things he did not want to do. He said what most of us feel when we struggle against our sinful nature, “What a wretched man I am! Who will rescue me from this body of death?” He immediately provided the answer which we must not overlook. It’s this: “Thanks be to God, through Jesus Christ our Lord!” (Rom.7:24,25). Yes, in your struggles against your sinful nature, whenever it drags you down, look to Christ. God has never yet abandoned any of His struggling children, for Christ has died for all their sins. Any admonishment and discipline the Father may give you is done out of love for you, to reform you, to bring you back, to not let satan have you, for you belong to Christ.
The believer is to live on by the grace of God’s forgiveness also when our present age tells us that sin is an old-fashioned thing. We often hear from those who shape modern thought that there are only mistakes, not sins. And the mistakes we make are because of the circumstances we’re in, a legacy of the way we we’re brought up. But don’t be fooled. God always holds us responsible for the sins we do. And when so many others around us drink too much, gossip a lot, gamble, or whatever wrong in the eyes of God they do a lot of, it does not make you and I less guilty when we join them and do the same sins. Why justify our actions by saying, “well, everybody’s doing it”, when we can receive cleansing and pardon from our Lord whose standards for living we have broken but which will remain the best we’ll ever have! Yes, live by the grace of God’s forgiveness and not by the approval of others who go by what seems good in their own eyes.
3. The Church is Also to Live by this Grace of God’s Forgiveness.
By the grace of God members of Christ’s church do a lot of good to each other and it sure helps the communion of saints. A helping hand is given, a word of encouragement, a sharing of sorrows and joys, a trying to understand, loving reminders of what God is to all of His children in Christ, and so on. But at the heart of church life is God’s forgiveness of our sins. As God has forgiven us our sins so also are we to forgive one another. In fact, it is even stronger than that. In the Lord’s prayer it says, “Forgive us our sins, as we also have forgiven those who sins against us.” God’s forgiveness of our sins is not there if we have not the willingness to forgive others. When we can’t forgive, or only do it half-heartedly and still hold grudges, then how can we go to God to ask Him to forgive us our sins?
So as we rub shoulders with members in the same congregation, or with other believers elsewhere, then let us be as gracious to them as God is to us. When we notice others sinning, then let us not ruin them further by gossiping about them but quietly resolve to include them in our prayers. When others sin against you, then again in your pain or hurt, resolve to remember them before God, that He bring them to repentance and not treat them as their sins deserve but in His grace restore them to a right relationship with Himself and then with us. It’s what Jesus prayed for whilst on the cross.
Nothing effects the Christian fellowship amongst us more as the way we deal with sin and sinners in our midst. If we do it wrong, then we lose one another and the Spirit is grieved. If we do right, like God treats us in Jesus, then the angels in heaven rejoice and we also.
Remember also that we cannot see in fellow Christians what God sees. We might only see the sinful behaviour, we might only hear the wicked word, and we might only notice the rebellious attitude. But what we may not know or see is the same sinner on his or her knees before God, humble, broken-hearted, contrite in spirit, wrestling with that awful sinful nature of theirs, and saying to God, “Lord, be merciful to me, a sinner.” After all, others do not always know or have seen that you have been on your knees saying the same words to God for your sins.
We must treat fellow Christians in the hope that God is also working with them, to have them break with their sins. Our fellow Christians also hear the Word preached to them. They also have a Bible, which we hope they read for themselves, and they also know the way to God through prayer. The Lord works on them too, calling them to faith and repentance. So pray humbly that God’s Word may bear fruit in their life, as much as that is to happen in your own life.
In conclusion let me tell you about a son who, late in the evening, argued about something with his father in an unreasonable and disrespectful manner. There was some yelling. The father also became impatient and lost his cool. It became impossible to talk. The son stormed out the room and slammed the door. The father felt bad that he didn’t handle the situation as well as he could have. He wished he could be a better father. He thought about what to do. He didn’t want to go to bed with pain in his heart. He decided to go to his son and apologise and hoped that his son might do the same.
He knocked on the door of his son’s bedroom and heard a muffled “yes”. Entering the room he saw his son sitting on the bed, head in his hands, tears dripping through. The sight immediately softened the father’s heart. He knew God’s Spirit was at work. With himself in the lounge and with his son in his room. Oh, the grace of God! He sat next to his son, put his arm on his shoulder and said nothing. After a while his son blurted out, “Dad, why can’t I control my temper, why am I so short-fused? I often pray for forgiveness and for the Lord to help me.”
There was no need for any further talk. They prayed. The father, on behalf of himself and his son, confessed their faults before God and asked for strength to live God’s way. Both were humbled by God’s gracious love and forgiveness in Christ. Each could now sleep with God’s peace in their hearts, even though the next day, the battle against sin and satan would be there again. But in the grace of God’s forgiveness they could go on. By the grace of God’s forgiveness all Christians can go on.
Amen.