Sermon on Lord’s Day 21 Q&A 56⤒🔗

56. Q. What do you believe concerning the forgiveness of sins?
A. I believe that God, because of Christ's satisfaction, will no more remember my sins,[1] nor my sinful nature, against which I have to struggle all my life,[2] but He will graciously grant me the righteousness of Christ, that I may never come into condemnation.[3]
[1] Ps. 103:3, 4, 10, 12; Mic. 7:18, 19; II Cor. 5:18-21; I John 1:7; 2:2. [2] Rom. 7:21-25. [3] John 3:17, 18; 5:24; Rom. 8:1, 2.

Scripture Reading: II Corinthians 5:9-6:2; Isaiah 43:22-28

Singing: (Psalms and Hymns are from the "Book of Praise" Anglo Genevan Psalter)
Psalm 143:1,4
Psalm 51:4,5
Psalm 103:1,3,4
Psalm 32:1,2,3
Psalm 103:1-12

Beloved Congregation of the Lord Jesus Christ!

The ascended Christ through His Holy Spirit pours out heavenly gifts upon His people. We considered two weeks ago His gift of the church, and last week His gift of the communion of saints. Today we come to His gift of the forgiveness of sins.

This third gift of which we make confession in our Catechism brings us to the heart of Christ’s redeeming work on the cross. It’s a gift that determines the way the Lord God treats us in this life, a gift that’s critical too as we consider what will happen when the Lord returns on the last day. For this gracious gift means that the Lord does not bring us into condemnation – neither in this life nor in the life to come. At the same time this gift too does not come without responsibility on our part; as with His gift of the church and of the communion of saints, so too the labor of Christ in relation to the forgiveness of sins implies a responsibility for the Christian.

I summarize the sermon with this theme:

For Christ’s sake God does not deal with us according to our sins

1. The work of Christ
2. The responsibility of the Christian

The work of Christ←⤒🔗

As we seek to learn today, brothers and sisters, what the Lord tells us about the forgiveness of sins, we shall do well to consider briefly first what sin is, and what God’s response to sin might be. An awareness of sin and God’s response will make us marvel the more at the gospel of forgiveness.

Simply put, sin is rebellion against God, is disobeying God’s holy command for whatever reason. God’s response to sin is anger, and that’s deadly for the sinner. In Lord’s Day 4 we echo Scripture on the point; God, we say, "is terribly displeased with our original sin as well as our actual sins. Therefore He will punish them by a just judgment both now and eternally." And that’s an awful judgment; the thought of God’s wrath prompts people to call on mountains to fall on them and hills to cover them.

It’s in the face of God’s terrible response to sin that we make confession today of the forgiveness of sins. That already tells us that with this topic of forgiveness of sins we’re touching a most precious teaching of the church. After all, none of us wants that eternal wrath of God to settle on us; instead, all of us want to escape that wrath.

That being said, we need to consider what forgiveness of sins is. What does the term ‘forgiveness’ mean? The word translated in the New Testament with the English word ‘forgiveness’ describes the notion of release, of discharge, of exemption. A release is given to slaves, and the point is that the slaves are set free. A discharge is given by the bank, and the point is that you don’t have to pay what you owe. An exemption is granted from military service, and the point is that you don’t have to spend time in the army. In relation to sin: when I sin I end up in a slavery, for my sins become a burden over my head that attracts the eternal wrath of God. Forgiveness of sins is that God releases me from the burden caused by my sins. Forgiveness of sins is that God discharges me from what I owe to Him. Forgiveness of sins is that God grants me an exemption from the wrath that I deserve. In simple language, forgiveness of sins is that God does not deal with me according to my sins.

Given that the Lord is so emphatic on the rightness of His holy anger against sin, this notion of release, of discharge, of exemption is so profoundly rich. That’s why I want to run you, brothers and sisters, through a string of Scripture texts to prove the point. David says in Ps 103 that the Lord "forgives all your iniquity" (vs 3). David describes this forgiveness with the following words:

He has not dealt with us according to our sins,
Nor punished us according to our transgressions vs 10

That’s a definition of forgiveness of sins to which we’ll need to return. Meanwhile, David also explains how come God doesn’t deal with us according to our sins. He says:

As far as the east is from the west,
So far has He removed our transgressions from usvs 12

In today’s modern world, east is not all that far removed from the west; a few hour’s flying and we’re in eastern Australia, and a few hour’s more travel and we’re on the far side of the globe. But in Israel’s culture what was removed from you and brought as far west as you could go was functionally irretrievable; it just took too long to get it back. That’s the point; God does not deal with David according to David’s sins, but takes those sins away so that they play no role at all in God’s dealings with David. Which is in turn to say that it’s not David’s sin that determines how the Lord deals with David, but it’s instead God’s mercy and compassion that determines what the Lord gives David. Vs 11:

For as the heavens are high above the earth,
So great is His mercy to those who fear Him.

A second text that needs our attention is Micah 7. Here we meet the same thought, but with different imagery. The prophet is moved by the Lord to say this:

Who is a God like You,
Pardoning iniquity
And passing over the transgression of the remnant of His heritage?
He does not retain His anger forever,
Because He delights in mercy.
He will again have compassion on us,
And will subdue our iniquities.
You will cast all our sins
Into the depths of the sea vss 18f

What sinks into the depths of the sea in our day is not necessarily gone; think of the Russian nuclear submarine that sank last year in the Barents Sea, or think of the Titanic lying in some 3500 meters of water in the Atlantic. But Israel didn’t have the technology we have. What was cast into the Dead Sea or the Mediterranean Sea was gone and could play no role anymore in your life. So it is, says Micah, with sin. Such is God’s incomparable compassion that He disposes of our sins into the depths of the sea, and the point is that these sins no longer play any role in the way in which God deals with the forgiven sinner.

I draw your attention to a third text. The Holy Spirit says this through the prophet Isaiah:

I, even I, am He who blots out your transgressions for My own sake;
And I will not remember your sins vs 25

The imagery is that of ink. You’re writing down a record of this or that with your feather pen, and you end up with a spill of ink on your page. You can soak up the puddle with a blotter, but the effect is that a mark remains on your page, a mark that makes it impossible to read what you’d written. That’s the image of Is 43; the Lord spills ink on the page listing our sins so that the list can’t be read. The net result is again that the Lord does not hold those sins against His people; He promises to deal with Israel without regard to their sins and the penalty His people deserve.

I can give you more images from the Bible to illustrate what forgiveness of sins really is. But enough has been said to demonstrate that the practical consequence of forgiveness is –as David said in Ps 103- that God does not deal with us according to our sins. That is forgiveness: in the relation between God and His people, God does not deal with His own according to what we deserve. Though He is terribly displeased with our sins, and promises to punish them in this life and in the life to come, forgiveness means that the punishment does not happen, that God’s conduct towards us is determined not by our sins but instead by His mercy in Jesus Christ.

Here, of course, is the blessed fruit of the Savior’s work on the cross. You recall from the Old Testament that when the people of Israel confessed their sins before the Lord and made a sacrifice for those sins, the sinner had to lay his hand on the head of the animal – and the point was that sin was transferred from the sinner to the animal, with as result that the sinner was released from his sins, was discharged from the burden of those sins, was granted an exemption from serving the penalty these sins deserve. In the final analysis those sins were transferred to Jesus Christ; "the Lord has laid on Him the iniquity of us all" so that "He was wounded for our transgressions" and we get to go free (Is 53:5f). Because of His work on the cross, the wrath of God on our sins is taken away, and we are reconciled to God again to that there is peace between God and sinners. As Paul says to the Corinthians: God "has reconciled us to Himself through Jesus Christ…. That is, God was in Christ reconciling the world to Himself, not imputing their trespasses to them" (II Cor 5:18f). Reconciliation: there is now peace with God! No longer does His curse rest on us on account of our sins! It’s the glorious words of Rom 8: "there is therefore now no condemnation to those who are in Christ Jesus!" That’s why we confess in Article 23 of the Belgic Confession:

We believe that our blessedness lies in the forgiveness of our sins for Jesus Christ’s sake and that therein our righteousness before God consists….

What a glorious concept this is, beloved! It’s the eternal wrath of God we deserve, a wrath so terrible that we’d call on mountains to fall on us to hide us away from that wrath. But instead of that wrath we receive blessedness, receive God’s favor, His pleasure! Listen again to the rich words of Article 23:

This is sufficient to cover all our iniquities and to give us confidence in drawing near to God, freeing our conscience of fear, terror, and dread, so that we do not follow the example of our first father, Adam, who trembling tried to hide and covered himself with fig leaves. For indeed, if we had to appear before God, relying - be it ever so little - on ourselves or some other creature, (woe be to us!) we would be consumed. Therefore everyone must say with David, ‘O LORD, enter not into judgment with Thy servant, for no man living is righteous before Thee’ Ps 143:2

See there, beloved, the glorious work of Christ! Shall we be afraid of God? Shall we cringe at the thought of His displeasure at our sins? Thank God: no, no! With deep gratitude I may confess with Lord’s Day 21 that "God, because of Christ’s satisfaction, will no more remember my sins…, but will graciously grant me the righteousness of Christ, that I may never come into condemnation." I need not be afraid of God, not in this life nor in the life to come.

And, beloved, let the wording be fixed in your minds: we receive this wealth "because of Christ’s satisfaction." His work on the cross is the sole cause of us receiving this immeasurable wealth. Which is to say that we do not receive this blessedness because of anything we do! Not a single work of yours, beloved, earns you this wonderful gift – and that includes your work of repentance. It is grace, fully grace alone, to people who themselves do not seek God. I will come back to this point, the Lord willing, in our second point on the responsibility of the Christian. But first there’s another element of forgiveness that needs our attention.

One hears from time to time that forgiveness means that God forgets our sins. Our Lord’s Day even seems to foster that thought, for it says that "God … will no more remember my sins." "No more remember": we understand that to mean that God forgets. But that conclusion is wrong. I mention two reasons for saying this.

In the first place, that phrase from the Catechism that "God … will no more remember my sins" is language borrowed from the Bible. I quoted already from Is 43:

I, even I, am He who blots out your transgressions for My own sake;
And I will not remember your sins vs 25

In our Lord’s Day we simply echo Isaiah’s prophecy. But does Isaiah mean that God forgets Israel’s sins? That can’t be because just two verses later the Lord reminds Israel of the sins of the fathers (vs 27); He’s not forgotten them. The point here is: what is meant by the word ‘remember’?

I mentioned it this morning already. Gen 7 ends with the statement that the waters of the flood were on the earth for 150 days. Gen 8 begins with these words, "Then the Lord remembered Noah." Is the point that God clean forgot about Noah for 150 days, and something jogged His memory 150 days later? Of course not; imagine if our God developed a temporary amnesia while He promised to look after us always! No, when the text says that "the Lord remembered Noah," the point is that now God set to work to do something to deliver Noah. As the same verse also says, "And God made a wind to pass over the earth, and the waters subsided." It’s as we heard this morning from Dt 8: to remember involves that you do something.

That’s the point in Isaiah when the prophet says that God will no remember sins, and that’s equally the point in our Lord’s Day. That God no more remembers our sins means that His actions towards His people are not determined by His people’s sins; His actions towards those sinners are instead determined by His compassion in Jesus Christ.

There’s a second reason for saying God does not forget sins. Consider the following string of texts.

• Jesus says to the Pharisees in Mt 12 that "for every idle word men may speak, they will give account of it in the day of judgment. For by your words you will be justified, and by your words you will be condemned" (vs 36; cf Luke 12:2f)).

• In his first letter to the Corinthians Paul writes, "Therefore judge nothing before the time, until the Lord comes, who will both bring to light the hidden things of darkness and reveal the counsels of the hearts. Then each one’s praise will come from God" (I Cor 4:5).
• In the passage we read from II Cor 5, Paul says, "We must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ, that each one may receive the things done in the body, according to what he has done, whether good or bad" (vs 10).

All three texts, brothers and sisters, tell us about the Day of Judgment, how it is that every thought of our mind, every word our mouths have spoken, every deed we’ve ever done, will be laid out before us. In the words of Rev 20:

And I saw the dead, small and great, standing before God, and books were opened. And another book was opened, which is the Book of Life. And the dead were judged according to their works, by the things which were written in the books Rev 20:12

You cannot get around it, beloved: data as these imply that there is in heaven a record of our every thought, every word, every deed. How we have to imagine this record I do not know. But it is obvious that the Lord God does not forget our sins as if there exists with Him no memory of our evil thoughts, words or deeds. That memory there most certainly is! Let no one tell you that forgiveness of sins means that God forgets those sins. He doesn’t!

But the thing is that the Lord’s actions toward us are not determined by His knowledge of our transgressions. For all practical intents and purposes those sins are blotted out, removed as far as east from west extends, cast into the depths of the sea. So it will be at the trial on the last day that even while there is present a record of my sins - and Satan will no doubt seek to draw God’s attention to that record in order to compel God to condemn me! (Zech 3:1ff)- yet God will not act toward me on the basis of that record. Instead, for Christ’s sake He will declare me not guilty, innocent. So, in the words of our Lord’s Day, I will not come into condemnation. That is, I will not find myself in the hell I deserve on account of my sins! You see, God will not deal with us according to our sins, nor punish us according to our transgressions – as David described forgiveness in Ps 103.

And here is now the wonderful thing about it all: the recollection of all sins on the last day will point up the more the glory of our God! All sinners will be there, with all their sins. The ungodly need to give account of their evil thoughts and words and deeds, and they can’t – and therefore shall taste the severe judgment of God as they go to their eternal home in hell. And the world shall see that God is just in His sentence. The godly shall need to give account of their evil thoughts and words and deeds also, but Christ shall intervene (Zech 3:4) and remind the Father how He on the cross of Calvary paid for their sins so that sinners were reconciled to God. It will be clear to all that the children of God are no better than the unbelievers, and yet God is pleased to show mercy on them for Christ’s sake; how the mercy of God will be shown up so wonderfully!! And all of it together shall give cause for one and all to praise the Lord for both His justice and His mercy!

I move on now to our second point:

The responsibility of the Christian←⤒🔗

I said before that not a single work of ours in any way earns us this wonderful gift of forgiveness of sins – and that includes our work of repentance. Instead, God gives it to men freely, of grace, for Christ’s sake. That does not mean, though, that the Christian has no responsibility in the matter. Rather, it is here just as with any other of God’s gifts; it is for us to work along with Christ, to embrace in faith the gift God gives in Jesus Christ. I draw your attention here to II Cor 5.

The chapter is written to the "saints" of Corinth, sinners with whom God does not deal according to their sins. In fact, chap 5 begins with the assurance that "if our earthly house, this tent, is destroyed, we have a building from God, a house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens" (vs 1). The point is that God, because of Christ’s satisfaction, no more remembers the sins of these Corinthians, but will graciously grant them the righteousness of Christ so that they will never come into condemnation. That reality, though, doesn’t take away from the fact these Corinthians must also –like all men- appear before the judgment seat of Christ (vs 10). It’s the thought of this judgment seat, says Paul, that prompt him – vs 11- to "persuade men"; he would do what he can to encourage people to repent and believe.

But see: Paul doesn’t just try to convince the heathen of Corinth to repent and believe! Vs 20: "Now then, we are ambassadors for Christ, as though God were pleading through us: we implore you on Christ’s behalf, be reconciled to God." He’s urgent in repeating the point in 6:1: "We then, as workers together with Him also plead with you not to receive the grace of God in vain." Now there’s still opportunity to repent and believe, so take the opportunity!

We puzzle. Didn’t Paul say at the beginning of the chapter that these Corinthians had "a building from God, a house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens"? Why does Paul at the end of the same chapter call upon them to be reconciled to God?!

The point here is, beloved, that every gift of God must be embraced time and time again. That is true of God’s gift of forgiveness as well. The sinner sins every day; daily we "struggle" with our "sinful nature", daily we experience that we cannot do the will of God as we’d love (Rom 7). Shall we skip lightly over these sins in the conviction that the Lord will forgive? No, beloved, no! Day by day we need to be reconciled to God, day by day we need to embrace in faith the gospel of free grace, and that means that day by day we need to be repentant of our sins. If, as Paul says in II Cor 5, we have died with Christ, then we can’t just live in sin; on the contrary! To die with Christ and be raised with Him means not just that one fights against sin but also that one is sorry for sin. To be reconciled to God day by day involves that one fights against sin day by day, and is sorry for sin day by day.

So: there is no forgiveness for the sin of big-mouthing those in authority over you unless you acknowledge that sin as sin, are sorry before God for the sin you committed, and fight that sin earnestly. There is no forgiveness for the sin of gossip unless you acknowledge that gossip as sin, are sorry before God for the sin you committed, and fight that sin wholeheartedly. Concretely: it is imperative that each and every one of us – sinners as we all are- be sorry for our sins and come to God with a broken and contrite heart.

Does that mean that we earn forgiveness through our repenting? No, it doesn’t; forgiveness of sins is God’s gracious gift to unworthy sinners. But we have our responsibility here. Unless we repent of our sins in humility before God, we cannot claim to possess the gift God has prepared for us.

The gospel of forgiveness of our sins is so very, very rich. It’s a treasure from Christ which the Holy Spirit applies to the people of God. We delight greatly in the fact that God for Christ’s sake does not deal with us according to our sins, nor punish us according to our iniquities. We show our gratitude by carrying on resolutely in the struggle against our sinful nature, repenting of every sin, seeking again reconciliation with the God who gave us so much in Christ. Amen.