Praying For Forgiveness

For some reason, I was thinking recently about the time I told my dear future wife that I had just gotten saved. It was a turning point in our long-distance relationship, the culmination of months of her witnessing to me, accentuated by a whirlwind romance, a heart-wrenching (but brief) breakup, and intense soul-searching.  I excitedly told her that I had asked Jesus to forgive me of my sins and to guide me in everything I do.  Instead of breaking into tears or saying how wonderful it was, she asked something that sent me for a loop, "Did He forgive you?"

Farrah had been taught that when you get saved, you know it right away.  But she was talking to a guy who had grown up practically an atheist and did not yet know verses like 1 John 1:9, "If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins, and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness."  This is one of God's many promises, that guarantees that He will hear and answer the sinner's prayer.

I do indeed have the assurance that I've been forgiven of my sins and that I am His child, but how and why is God "faithful and just" to forgive and cleanse us?  Do we have the power or the right to demand it of Him?  Whom is God being faithful to?  Were we being faithful to Him when we were in sin?  And how is He being "just" by letting us criminals walk away scot-free?

It is well-established in Holy Scripture that sin separates us from God.  There is nothing we can do to remedy the situation, apart from God. Going way back to Adam and Eve, God required regular sacrifices as payment for sin.  But the sacrifices were only a band-aid.  Holy divine blood was required for the once-for-all atonement and cleansing of God's people (Heb. 9 & 10).  "For if the blood of bulls and of goats, and the ashes of an heifer sprinkling the unclean, sanctifieth to the purifying of the flesh, how much more shall the blood of Christ, who through the eternal Spirit offered himself without spot to God, purge your conscience from dead works to serve the living God? And for this cause he is the mediator of the new testament, that by means of death, for the redemption of the transgressions that were under the first testament, they which are called might receive the promise of eternal inheritance" (Heb. 9:13-15).

In Ephesians 4:32, Paul entreats us to forgive one another, "even as God for Christ's sake hath forgiven you."  That's the key, isn't it?  God bought us back to Himself with His own blood.  That's why He forgives, cleanses, and inhabits a repentant heart.  "What? Know ye not that your body is the temple of the Holy Ghost which is in you, which ye have of God, and ye are not your own? For ye are bought with a price: therefore glorify God in your body, and in your spirit, which are God's" (1 Cor. 6:19-20).  For Him to do otherwise would be like Bill Gates spending all his wealth on a mansion and then never living in it.

So does this mean that we have an excuse (or at least a safety net) for sinning?  "God forbid. How shall we, that are dead to sin, live any longer therein?" (Rom. 6:2).  Heb. 10 makes it very clear that sin grieves the Holy Spirit and brings God's judgment upon us.  God not only calls upon us to be holy as He is, but He also transforms us into His holy image, through the Holy Spirit.  That process begins and continues with repentance and forgiveness.

Therefore, repent, trust that you have been forgiven, and "let patience have her perfect work, that ye may be perfect and entire, wanting nothing" (James 1:4).