If We Sin Again Does Jesus Forgive if We Repent

Does God Forgive Sins You Continue to Repeat?

• Borrowed Light
• 2021 22 Nov

Last Sunday the pastor preached on gossip. It found its mark and a wave of deep conviction washed over you. You realized the depth of your trouble and worked to put things into your life to grow in this area. You promised that you lot'd never gossip once again. Your morning devotion was on the same topic. Helpful and convicting. But and so, over java with friends, you notice yourself engaging in the very sin that you had sworn off just a few hours prior. Will God forgive you? Does God forgive sins you lot continue to repeat over and over and once again?

Information technology is articulate from Scripture that though we have a multitude of sins, and fifty-fifty if nosotros continue returning to the same sin, we are washed through the claret of Jesus. This is the nature of salvation. You cannot out sin God's mercy. Believing that you could somehow echo a sin too many times that God would withhold forgiveness is a misunderstanding of how God's forgiveness actually works.

How Does God's Forgiveness Work?

In Jeremiah 31, quoted in Hebrews 8, we read that function of the new covenant is that God will "forgive our wickedness" and "will remember our sins no more than". Think nigh what this means for a moment. For God to exercise this is non pointing to a momentary lapse of memory. It means that God is intentionally refusing to continue a tape of our wrongs. He is throwing away the ledger.

What is forgiveness? I appreciate the definition given by Paul Tripp and Timothy Lane. Using Matthew 18 as a guide the authors explicate forgiveness thus:

The metaphor of debt cancellation clearly defines the nature of forgiveness…when you forgive someone, yous cancel a debt. But, more specifically, you brand a conscious selection to absorb the cost yourself. You choose not to make the offender pay for the offense. (Tripp and Lane, Relationships, 95)

If the debt has been paid, then the debt has been paid. If you lot become yourself back into debt information technology does not hateful that the prior debt is now tacked onto your new debt. When we read in 1 John i:nine that Jesus is "faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse u.s. from all unrighteousness" he means information technology. This is not a promise with an asterisk. When nosotros confess our sin Jesus cleanses. Menstruum.

It's also important to understand the nature of salvation and our marriage with Christ. The language of debt can be helpful—but there is a style in which information technology tin be prone to misunderstanding. We can retrieve that the nature of sin and conservancy is that each time we sin we go ourselves back into debt. (I even spoke that way previously in order to illustrate a point). And with each flake of debt, we imagine that nosotros lose our status.

Imagine that each sin is akin to $5 worth of debt. (In reality, it is infinitely more because information technology is an offense against an infinite God, merely hang with me). With each sin, we tally up a total. Then upon confession and repentance, our business relationship goes back to nix. Jesus absorbs the debt for that twenty-four hour period and then we are able to continue the next day with our debts paid. This analogy isn't entirely wrong—merely it fails to take into business relationship the nature of our union with Christ.

Forgiveness isn't only near debt cancellation. At that place is a relational component besides. I, quite sadly, sin against my wife. Only my sin against her does not sever our union. When I apologize and ask for forgiveness in that location is relational healing and reconciliation, but nosotros do not need to program a new wedding. It is the same way in our union with Christ. When we are united to Christ, nosotros are united to him forever. Which means we are connected to all the blessings of Christ and it means that His record is forever ours. This analogy is close to what gave John Bunyan such peace. Bunyan was afraid that he had failed to properly apologize. He was overtaken by his fear that he had committed the unpardonable sin and that he had trampled upon grace far too many times.

Ane twenty-four hours every bit I was passing into the field . . . this sentence fell upon my soul. Thy righteousness is in heaven. And methought, withal, I saw with the eyes of my soul Jesus Christ at God's right manus; there, I say, was my righteousness; so that wherever I was, or whatever I was doing, God could not say of me, he lacks my righteousness, for that was just [in front of] him. I also saw, moreover, that it was not my proficient frame of heart that fabricated my righteousness improve, nor yet my bad frame that made my righteousness worse, for my righteousness was Jesus Christ himself, "The same yesterday, today, and forever." . . .At present did my chains fall off my legs indeed. I was loosed from my afflictions and irons; my temptations too fled away; and then that from that time those dreadful scriptures of God [e.g., Hebrews 12:16-17] left off to problem me; now went I also domicile rejoicing for the grace and love of God.

Bunyan came to realize that his union with Christ meant that his righteousness was firmly fixed in Christ. The same is true of our forgiveness. We ever stand up forgiven because we stand up in Christ. This is why God continues to forgive the sins we go on to echo. He forgives the repeating sins in the same style he forgives the past and the initial sins, through the shed blood of Jesus Christ.

Photograph Credit: ©iStock/Getty Images Plus/arkira

What Does it Mean to Truly Repent of Your Sins?

One caveat that I see frequently in a discussion such equally this is that the person must "truly apologize." I detect that language both helpful and elusive. It is elusive because "true repentance" is often woefully undefined. Does it hateful that I am really deeply sincere in wanting to change? Does information technology hateful that if I'm truly repentant so I will change? Such questions betray a simplistic view of humanity and our ongoing boxing with sin. All the same, this statement does have some truth.

These are 2 different questions:

• Does God forgive sins yous continue to repeat?

• Does God forgive sins yous deliberately go along to repeat?

Information technology would be beyond the scope of this commodity to reply that first question, only it is enough for at present to note the difference betwixt the 2. There is a dissimilar biblical answer to both of them as well. And that little departure too helps us run across the difference between "truly repenting" and not. To truly repent means to change your mind about a particular affair. It may non yet mean that your beliefs catches up with your new stance. But your view of that thing has inverse.

Let's get dorsum to our earlier illustration of gossip. Imagine that before that sermon series yous were uninformed and non securely convicted about the sin of gossip. Only when the Spirit opened your eyes to this sin, you had changed your mind about things. You now agreed with God in regards to gossip and yous disagreed with yourself. Previously, you lot would have gossiped and written it off equally "non that large of a bargain". You might have heard it was wrong, but y'all did not yet have truthful repentance. But and then the Spirit did a work in your heart and now you have repented. Now when yous engage in the sin of gossip you answer differently. You detest the sin—you lot agree with God that y'all're guilty—and you run to God for forgiveness. And nosotros know that nosotros are met with grace and forgiveness.

If y'all deliberately sin, then it means that you do not even so hold with God most the odiousness of that particular sin. This means that repentance has non really taken place. And that is a different article.

Does God Forgive Sins Y'all Continue to Repeat?

Information technology can be discouraging to keep battling the same types of sins over and over over again. It can feel as if nosotros are not making progress in our walk with Christ. And information technology can make us question whether or non God will get sick of us, or get tired of having to forgive us for the same affair over and over again. But be reminded of the nature of your relationship. What matters more than anything is your union with Christ. And a weak religion can lay concur of a strong Christ. He is merciful and abounding in steadfast honey. Though grieved by sin, He delights to forgive. I've establish these words from Spurgeon to exist helpful:

"The bridge of grace volition bear your weight, brother. Thousands of big sinners have gone across that bridge, yea, tens of thousands have gone over it. Some have been the master of sinners and some accept come at the very last of their days but the curvation has never yielded beneath their weight. I will get with them trusting to the same back up. Information technology will bear me over equally it has for them."

That span will bear your weight…no matter how many times you walk beyond information technology. His mercy his always greater than our sin.

Photograph Credit: ©Getty Images/Sinenkiy

Mike Leake is husband to Nikki and begetter to Isaiah and Hannah. He is also the lead pastor at Calvary of Neosho, MO. Mike is the author of Torn to Heal and his writing home is http://mikeleake.cyberspace

granthamexciation1974.blogspot.com

Source: https://www.crosswalk.com/faith/spiritual-life/does-god-forgive-sins-you-continue-to-repeat.html

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