When we become connected to God through Christ, God does a lot more than simply forgive us. He remakes us in our deepest being, and he comes to live inside us. In fact, he told his people in the Old Testament that under his new arrangement with humanity through Christ, he would do seven things:
- He would forgive us completely
- He would cleanse us completely
- He would give us a heart transplant
- He would put his desires in the depths of our heart
- He would come live in us
- He would cause us to walk in his ways
- He would give us true intimacy with him
Do you notice who is going to do these things? God says he will! And when we become connected to God, he does them, just as he says.
These promises, these realities, become the basis for how we live this life with God. So let’s go through them, one by one, to make sure we understand the miracle God has performed in us. Once we do, this will become evident: the first four things God does make the fifth possible. And the fifth makes the other two possible. In other words, the key to the whole thing is this: God himself comes to live in us. But before he could do that, he had to accomplish the first four.
So first, God says that under his new arrangement with us, he would forgive us completely:
“I will forgive their wrongdoing, and their sin I will no longer remember.” (Jeremiah 31:34)
Wow. God won’t even remember our sins anymore. That’s a lot of forgiveness.
God knew we would need that much forgiveness. All of us have broken God’s moral law. The penalty for that is death—separation from God. The penalty had to be paid. But God didn’t want us to pay it; he loved us far too much for that. So he chose to pay the penalty himself. That’s what Jesus did on the cross. God the Son, God in human form, paid the penalty for us.
If we’ve placed our faith in Jesus, all of our sins—past, present, and future—are already forgiven.
If we’ve placed our faith in Jesus, all of our sins—past, present, and future—are already forgiven. Jesus put away the sin issue between us and God. It’s completely removed. That’s what “their sin I will no longer remember” means. As the Apostle Paul says, God no longer takes our sins into account. As his children, God treats us according to His love, not according to our sins.
Do you see how freeing this is? We’ve all done plenty of things we knew were wrong. We feel bad about things we’ve done. We wonder, can God really forgive me? We wonder, how can I stop feeling bad about what I’ve done?
Jesus’s death on the cross is the answer. There, God provided 100% forgiveness. We don’t have to live in guilt anymore. We don’t have to keep condemning ourselves. God has wiped the slate clean.
But what about that really bad sin? we think. God doesn’t remember it. Paul himself was a murderer. He killed Christians. But he met Jesus, and after that he knew that God no longer took his sins into account. He said, “I forget what lies behind, and reach forward to what lies ahead.”
When Jesus died on the cross, our sins were forgiven. That job was done. “It is finished,” Jesus said. It doesn’t ever have to be repeated. We are completely forgiven! We don’t ever have to do anything to “activate” our forgiveness. Jesus already activated it.
The sin issue between you and God is done. You don’t ever have to be focused on how you’ve fallen short. You don’t ever have to wallow in self-condemnation. Because of Jesus, God doesn’t condemn you for anything. Why should you?
Jesus came to deliver us from focusing on sin at all. He has something much better for us to focus on.
Unfortunately, forgiveness is often where the message of God’s new arrangement with humanity stops. But forgiveness is just stage one in God’s new arrangement with us. There’s a whole lot more to come.
Biblical Truth
The penalty for sin is death:
“For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.” (Romans 6:23, ESV)
God chose to pay the penalty for sin himself and offer forgiveness as a free gift:
“For everyone has sinned; we all fall short of God’s glorious standard. Yet God, in his grace, freely makes us right in his sight. He did this through Christ Jesus when he freed us from the penalty for our sins. For God presented Jesus as the sacrifice for sin. People are made right with God when they believe that Jesus sacrificed his life, shedding his blood.” (Romans 3:23-25a, NLT)
All we can do is receive the gift:
“For God so loved the world, that He gave His only Son, so that everyone who believes in Him will not perish, but have eternal life.’” (John 3:16)
All of our sins are forgiven:
“When you were dead in your transgressions and the uncircumcision of your flesh, He made you alive together with Him, having forgiven us all our transgressions …” (Colossians 2:13)
Christ has put away the sin issue between us and God:
“… but now once at the consummation of the ages [Christ] has been manifested to put away sin by the sacrifice of Himself.” (Hebrews 9:26b)
God doesn’t treat us according to our sins:
“‘Blessed are those whose lawless deeds have been forgiven, and whose sins have been covered. Blessed is the man whose sin the Lord will not take into account.'” (Romans 4:7-8)
There’s never any condemnation for our sins: “Therefore there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.” (Romans 8:1)
Paul was a murderer:
“‘I persecuted this Way to the death, binding and putting both men and women into prisons …” (Acts 22:4)
Paul forgot what lay behind and moved ahead:
“Brethren, I do not regard myself as having laid hold of it yet; but one thing I do: forgetting what lies behind and reaching forward to what lies ahead …” (Philippians 3:13)
