GOD never forgives sin, He must judge it; then how can He forgive you your sins?
There is but one answer to this question: there was but the one way in which God could be just, and the justifier of poor guilty sinners who believe in Jesus, and that was through the Cross,—through the death and resurrection of the Lord Jesus.
It was at the Cross God judged sin, in making His own Son who knew no sin to be sin for us, that not only He might be able to forgive the sinner, but that we might be made the righteousness of God in Christ.
It is a blessed thing to see that God has thus a righteous ground to act on, in His dealings with poor sinners who believe in Jesus.
Now, have you any sins to be forgiven? Are you not guilty, by your own acts of disobedience and lawlessness? For sin is just doing your own will, and every one of us has a will which " is not subject to the law of God, neither indeed can be” (Rom. 8:7); and so it is certain that everyone has sinned, indeed it says so in Rom. 3:23, "All have sinned, and come short of the glory of God.” You may attempt to justify yourself, and say you have not sinned, but God knows you, and says you have sinned.
Guilty, lost sinner, how are you to have your sins forgiven? How can you be quite sure they are forgiven? Come with me to the Cross. Look at the One who hangs there between two thieves. Listen to His cry, “My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?” (Matt. 27:46.) Surely when Jesus, the eternal Son of God, the only perfect Man who ever lived, and who perfectly glorified God in all His ways and acts here, is thus forsaken of God, He may well ask why?
If God forsook you or me, we could not ask why He had done so, our consciences would soon tell us. But Jesus to be forsaken of God! we may well ask why it is so.
Can you answer His question? Can you tell why God has thus forsaken His Son Jesus? He had no sins of His own to be forsaken for, He could not sin; then whose sins was He bearing, that God thus hid His face from Him? Can you tell? Can you point to a needy guilty sinner, whose sins have thus brought Jesus to the Cross? Can you point to anyone who can say, “He was wounded for my transgressions, he was bruised for my iniquities, the chastisement of my peace was upon him, and with his stripes I am healed"? For in this way faith takes hold of the verse quoted (Isaiah 53:5), and applies it to oneself.
“Yes," you say,” it must have been my sins He died for, for I know no one more needy, or guilty, than I am myself. I need search no further to find whose sin it is, that has brought Him to the Cross. The Word says, He died for the ungodly,' for 'sinners,' for those `without strength' (Rom. 5.), and that is just my description.”
It is blessed thus to see that Jesus bore your sins in His own body on the tree (1 Peter 2:24); for now you know why He was forsaken of God, and now you see how God has punished Him in your stead, that He might forgive you all your sins, and never punish you for them.
Just look again at the Cross; there Jesus hangs, forsaken of God, because He is bearing your sins, because He has them all on Him.
Next He dies; His precious blood is shed, which cleanseth us from all sin, and He is laid in the grave; but the third day dawns, and the stone is rolled back to show that the grave is empty. God has raised Him from the dead, and now He has gone into Heaven, entered in “by his own blood “(Heb. 9:12). He might have gone in at any time, in virtue of His own perfectness, but he would have been alone (see John 12: 24), so He chose to enter in "by his own blood," that He might take us with Him; and He has done so, having obtained eternal redemption for us. For where are the sins now that were on Him on the Cross? Why, they must all be blotted out, or else He could not be in Heaven. “If Christ be not raised, your faith is vain; ye are yet in your sins" (1 Cor. 15:17). But Christ is raised, and so the believer has divinely-given certainty that his sins are gone forever. Read what God says in Heb. 10:11-17.
Well, you say, “But what about my daily sins? I sin every day, and I find my heart as bad as ever." That is because the flesh is not changed. In the sight of God you have no sins on you, but you have sin (the evil nature of the flesh) in you. This God has condemned in the Cross, “God sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh, and for sin condemned sin in the flesh" (Rom. 8:3). Note, it is sin, not sins, that is spoken of; sin is the nature, sins are the acts of that nature. God has thus made an end of us in the Cross. All we were in the flesh has come to an end judicially there, being judged, condemned, and crucified with Christ. He who is our life has died, and we are accounted before God to have died with Him. Hence we are no longer in the flesh, but our new place and standing before God is in Christ risen from the dead, where there is no condemnation (Romans 8:1). We are entitled to reckon ourselves “to be dead indeed unto sin, but alive unto God, through Jesus Christ our Lord." Thus we are free, that sin should no more reign in our mortal body to obey its lusts, but that we may yield ourselves unto God as those that are alive from the dead. (See Rom. 6:6-13.) But the sorrow is, that in doing this, we all fail daily.
Now, if I fail, if I sin, my standing before God is not altered in the slightest. It is in Christ, and hence it never changes. Another thing, I have been brought into the relationship of a child with God; so if I sin,—which I should not do (there is no excuse for doing it),—God deals with me as an erring child, and I come under the Father's discipline, till I judge myself and confess my sin, and communion is restored. And in His unspeakable grace, to bring about this restoration, or rather the self-judgment that leads to it, "we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous” (1 John 2:1). It does not say an advocate with God, but an advocate with the Father, bringing out that, although I have sinned, my relationship with God is unaltered. And note, it says, “if any man sin; "not," if any man confess." In other words, the advocacy of Christ, which is in effect the word brought home to my conscience to make me judge myself, is, when I sin, to bring me to confess it according to what 1 John 1:9 says, " If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins, and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness." Confession involves that I take the Father's side against myself, and unsparingly condemn myself for the careless unwatchful walk that led to my sinning; for not having lived to God in the first instance, then for having sinned in the second. See what Gal. 5:16 says, "Walk in the Spirit, and ye shall not fulfill the lust of the flesh." Thus the saint that is careful to walk in the Spirit—living to God in the common things of daily life—will find his happy liberty in doing the will of God in obedience, instead of fulfilling the lust of the flesh.
If Christ bore our sins on the Cross, they are all gone now, or else He could not be in heaven. If God made an end of us in the Cross, and condemned sin in the flesh there, He has given us a new place before Him in the risen Christ, and brought us into a new relationship with Himself, which we enjoy by the Holy Ghost given to dwell in us. The Holy Ghost in us is our power to live to God, according to this new place and relationship. Hence there is no excuse for us to sin. We should not sin, but if any man sin, blessed be His name, we have an Advocate with the Father.
Reader, are your sins forgiven? M.