REMISSION AND FORGIVENESS OF SIN AND THE NEW CREATION!

 EVERYDAY IN THE WORD!

WEDNESDAY FEBRUARY 22, 2023.

SUBJECT: REMISSION AND FORGIVENESS OF SIN AND THE NEW CREATION!

Memory verse:  "If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness." (First John 1 vs 9.) 

READ: Hebrews 10 vs 16 - 18:

10:16: “This is the covenant that I will make with them after those days, says the LORD: I will put My laws into their hearts, and in their minds I will write them,”

10:17: Then He adds, “Their sins  and their lawless deeds I will remember no more.”

10:18: Now where there is remission of these, there is no longer an offering for sin.

INTIMATION:

It is noteworthy that it was God's Nature that was not available to man in creation. Man was created in God's image and after His likeness, but God's Nature wasn't given then to man. The absence of God's nature in man enabled Satan to influence him, led him to sin, and became his ruler. God, in realization of this, recreated man and gave him His Nature, that now Satan has no dominion over him again. This is the fallout of Christ's finished work of redemption wrought by God Himself. 

In the passage we read today, God, in His infinite mercy, planned to take away (remit) our sins, that is, it is blotted out completely as if it never existed, and that He remembers them no more. He wrought this in Christ finished work as a propitiation for our sins. The work was finished, and accepted when He sat down at the Right Hand of the Father on high. We could see that the new creation is brought into being by the Life and Nature of God, and this new creation is awaiting every unsaved man. 

It is very important that we understand the difference between forgiveness and the remission of sins. A man receives remission of sins when he is Born Again (Spiritual rebirth). This is consequent upon your accepting the finished work for us on the cross, and  confessing Christ as your Lord and Savior. Subsequently, you may receive forgiveness of sins after you are Born Again as often as you sin, and confesses your sin to Christ, "If we confess our sins, He is faithful and righteous to forgive us our sins, and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness." (First John 1 vs 9.)

When we come to Christ by confessing Him as our Lord and Savior, God forgives all the sins we have committed or will ever commit, confess, and seek forgiveness, and we don't need to fear that God will reject us if we don't keep our state perfectly clean. Once we confess Christ, our relationship with God is secure. Our continuing in confessing our sins is to ensure we enjoy maximum fellowship and joy with Him.

True confession also involves a commitment not to continue in sin. We wouldn't be genuinely confessing our sins to God if we planned to commit them again and just wanted temporary forgiveness. We should also pray for strength to defeat temptation the next time we face it. The Holy Spirit will begin to give you the enablement to overcome the temptation. It may be a gradual process.

It is therefore, necessary we appreciate Ephesians 2 vs 8 - 9 that says: "For by grace we have been saved through faith; and that not of yourselves, it is a gift from God, and not of works lest any man should glory." The new creation does not come through our repentance or the surrendering of ourselves or the confession of our sins, but it comes by grace, pure and simple. All we do is to accept it. It is ours, a gift based upon legal grounds.

Then what is grace? It is the unmerited favor of God. It is God's love for us unveiled in our redemption. It is the hungry heart of God assuming man's sins; assuming the responsibility of man's creation, acting as though He were guilty of every sin that man committed. No works that man could do would have any value. Why? Because every man was spiritually dead and the good things that he would do to redeem himself would be the works of a spiritually dead man.

But God comes in the person of His Son, and that Son becomes sin on our behalf, assumes all that man had ever done and ever was, and meets the claims of justice, satisfies the need of fallen man. Then He sits down at the Right Hand of the Father, and sends the Holy Spirit Who convicts men through the Word, and recreates them. It is this great event of God, now on legal grounds, that imparts man God’s Own Nature and make him a new creation. Only God can do this; imparting His Nature, and Eternal life on man. Natural man is without God. He is without hope, and is in the world, and is Satan-ruled. 

Prayer: Abba Father, I will ever be grateful for the finished work of Christ in redeeming me, and the privilege of sonship given to me by You my Lord. May my recreated spirit ever thirst for You, in all wisdom and prudence, in Jesus’ Name I have prayed, Amen.

PRAISE THE LORD!