As you’re coming to church, imagine someone on the street comes up and says, “We’re doing an on-the-street survey for a TV show, and I’ll give you 30 seconds to answer: What is the greatest need you have? Or what is the most precious thing you should possess?”
Many will have different answers based on their situation. If you’re sick, you may think, “My greatest need is to be healed of this illness.” If you’re poor and in debt, your greatest need is money. If you’re unemployed, you may think, “My greatest need is to get a good job to provide for my needs.” If you have a job, your great need is a promotion. If you’re single, you may think, “My greatest need is for a good partner.” If you’re already married, “My greatest need is for my wife or husband to help us live harmoniously.” If you have a rebellious child, your greatest need is for the child to be set right.
While all of these are important needs, none of them are your greatest need. These are just symptoms of a deeper need. If you ask any truly wise people, like all saints, all prophets, all kings who have lived, and great men like Paul, they will answer, not in 30 seconds, but in 1 second: The greatest thing a person needs is forgiveness of his sins. The greatest wealth a person can possess is forgiveness of sins. In the Gospels, we read that they brought a man paralyzed from neck to toe; nothing worked. Everyone thought his great need was someone to care for his daily needs, or to provide some financial help, or to simply heal him. You know what Jesus saw as the greatest need for this pathetic man? The first thing he said was, “Son, your sins are forgiven.” How did Jesus decide that was his great need?
You know, if you go to the doctor, we don’t say, “I have a pain in my chest, so it is a heart attack; give me an aspirin.” The doctor will say, “Why did you come to me? You decided you have a heart attack and you think you know the medicine.” Most of us are like this, and we go to Jesus not to tell him our deep problems, but we tell him what we think our problem is and how he should resolve it. Most of the time, what we think and feel is not our great need. Just as in the paralyzed man’s case, Dr. Jesus knows that today the greatest need of everyone in this room is the forgiveness of sins. If you receive it, believe it, and experience it, it has the power to cure most of the symptoms of financial, health, marriage, and children problems. Good health, adequate money, and a happy family are good blessings in this life, but without the sweet sense of your sins being forgiven, your conscience mixes bitterness into everything good in this life, and when you leave this world without God’s forgiveness, these blessings actually become big curses. So, your greatest need is to know that God has forgiven your sins and that you are reconciled to the holy Judge of the universe.
Both the Old and New Testaments set this as the crown of all blessings. In Psalm 32, David says, “Blessed is the man whose sins are forgiven.” In the great Psalm 103, before talking about health or wealth, he puts forgiveness of sins at the top. In the New Testament, when the Lord Jesus Christ gave the great commission to preach the gospel, he set forgiveness of sins as the central blessing of the gospel. Until your eyes are opened to see that forgiveness of sins is your greatest possession, you have not understood the gospel properly. The grasp of this blessing is what transformed many into great saints of God. What was it that brought light and peace and life to the soul of the great German Reformer Martin Luther, who was wallowing in his own guilt, doubts, and fears? It was the power of conscience that felt the forgiveness of sins through faith that made him stand like a lion, even before big monarchs and great religious leaders of the world, and go forth rejoicing and achieving wonders and changing history. This is a great blessing exclusively experienced by sinners like you and me. Whatever joy angels in heaven may have, they will never have this joy of forgiveness.
So this great worship of Paul in Ephesians 1:1-14, he brings us next to meditate on the blessing of forgiveness of sins. After talking about God’s great election plan, Paul shows us how the Son accomplishes the Father’s eternal plan through redemption. So verse 7 says, “In Him we have redemption through His blood, the forgiveness of sins, according to the riches of His grace.”
We saw the meaning of redemption, the conditions, and the price of redemption. Now, the central blessing of redemption is the forgiveness of sins. Let us understand this blessing in four parts: the need for forgiveness, the nature of forgiveness, the basis of forgiveness, and the measure of forgiveness.
The Need for Forgiveness
To appreciate the forgiveness of sins, one must feel the need for forgiveness of sins. This is where all true salvation starts, so it’s important to feel that need. But the enemy of our souls has done everything to confuse people and works overtime to ensure people in their lifespan never realize their greatest need is the forgiveness of sins. It’s easy in the outside world: to suppress the truth in unrighteousness with false religions, gods, rituals, worldly pleasures, and a busy life. He has taught them to deny sin and suppress the voice of conscience and guilt. I saw a guy with ear-tattoos and earphones with loud music, wearing a tie and a shirt—it was “screw guilt.” “Do whatever you want, don’t feel guilty.” So, by keeping them busy and suppressing their conscience, they don’t realize the need for forgiveness.
Okay, what about Christianity? The central message of Christianity is forgiveness of sins, right? Oh, he is deceiving millions today within Christianity. One way is that he has used these cursed prosperity Pentecostal churches to do the greatest harm to the gospel by emphasizing healing and prosperity as the big blessings of the gospel, making this central blessing of the gospel nothing. Second, he has used traditional religious churches to boost self-righteousness and never allow them to see their depraved heart and need for forgiveness through religious acts of fasting, lent penance, festivals, tithing, faithful church attendance, and some good works. Third, he has invented a modern Christian God who is very loving and tolerant of sin, not perfectly just and holy.
So the result is that people mention forgiveness of sins, but just as a nominal confession. The problem is many don’t believe or realize how real sin is. It is mostly fiction or a myth for them. They haven’t felt its bitterness. How can a person who does not believe in the existence of sin believe in the forgiveness of it? Those who have never felt that they are sinful can never know the joy of forgiveness.
Most of us are affected by that. That is why when I talk about the forgiveness of sins, some of you will fall asleep, but you see Paul here so thrilled, jumping about this concept of forgiveness of sins that makes him bless God. Why does the concept of forgiveness get all the joy bells ringing in his heart and for some of you it puts you to sleep? Why? Because the apostle understood the need, nature, basis, and measure of forgiveness. Only when the depth of the sickness is understood is the value of the remedy grasped. If the Holy Spirit illuminates our minds and our hearts, then we will be so thrilled and bless God like Paul.
So how does one realize the need for the forgiveness of sins? When a person takes two facts seriously: 1. Who is God, and what does sin do to God? 2. Who is man, and what has sin done to man?
First, who is God? Yes, he is loving. He is your creator, who formed you in your mother’s womb, and from the day you were born, he has cared for you. You did not dissolve or die in your mother’s womb because he protected you. You should have died when your baby got that fever or infection; it was He who healed you. He protected and gave you life, breath, and all things. You owe everything to him. He is closer to you than anyone in the world. We live and move and have our being in him. We have breath for another minute because he gives that breath to us. All the food we eat, every tasty food, every good feeling we felt, our possessions, jobs, and relationships; every day with no pain, every moment of good health, smile, and laughter, God gave you that. He knows everything about you; he always watches you. He knows when you get up, sit down, and sleep. Even before a word proceeds from your mouth, he knows it all. He surrounds you with unlimited love, so much so that he numbers the very hairs on your head. Each of you knows in your conscience that he is a good God.
But he is a God of burning holiness. All the heavens praise him not once, but thrice: “Holy, Holy, Holy.” He gave his law as a reflection of his nature, and the breaking of his law is the breaking of his heart. Oh, if we could grasp what sin does to this good God! This is what our sinful hearts refuse to realize. Our sin shames, mocks, and utterly insults all his perfect attributes. So this God never takes any disobedience of his law lightly. He sees each of your hearts now like a glass. You can hide from people, but he sees your heart now. He discerns every angry thought you had this morning, every lustful and covetous thought and feeling you had last week. He sees how carelessly you have come to worship him with no prepared heart, how your minds are wandering in prayer and singing. He records every thought, word, and deed that was displeasing to him, and this God will one day judge you and punish you for all your sins of thought, word, and deed.
What does sin do to God? The greatest insult any creature can do to God is sinning against him. It is like slapping the loving God who formed us in our mother’s womb, kicking the breasts that feed us our whole lives, spitting on that God’s face, and throwing dirt on his face. Stephen Charnock wrote, “When we sin, we do, as it were, spit in the face of God’s authority and trample underfoot his love.” Sin dares and shames every attribute: “Oh, he is omniscient and omnipresent? Let him know, let him be here; I don’t care. Omnipotent? Let him see what he can do.” Thomas Watson wrote, “Sin is the dare of God’s justice, the rape of his mercy, the jeer of his patience, the slight of his power, and the contempt of his love.” That is what sin does to God; it is so abhorrent and obnoxious to him, he cannot even bear to see it.
Who is man? If God is holy, holy, holy, only holy, man is a sinner, a sinner, a sinner, only a sinner. Originally, man is a creature of God, created in his image, created perfectly and righteously. Whether you like it or not, you are his perfect creatures, and you are accountable to him. God will judge us righteously based on the standard with which he created us. But what has sin done to man? Two kinds of effects: effects of original sin and actual sins.
First, from original sin: We fell in Adam, born as his children. Sin is our birth defect or infection; it infects our entire personality from birth. There is no vaccination. From head to toe, the Bible uses the picture of a whole body with leprosy. The infection intensifies as we grow; that is why our small angel kids soon become like little demons. It infects the way we think, feel, and do things. We cannot think, feel, or do anything without a mixture of sin. From the cradle to the graveyard, it infects us. It is a lifelong plague. Apparently, we all look nice, but like the Greek beautiful character Hydra, with long hair, when she gets angry, each of her hairs will become a snake and bite everyone around her. Sin has made us like that. A person looks normal, but oh, they have many serpents running in their mind and heart.
These bitter snakes show their faces primarily in a person’s relationship with the good God. The greatest evil of sin is not what it does to me and the people around me, but what it does to God, who is our creator, provider, and loving Father. He is the most attractive being in the universe, the source of all beauty. All of heaven is eternally mesmerized and charmed by him. This infected creature… You can talk about anything useless and unrelated, and they are very interested, and their heart loves the subject, but as soon as you talk to them about God, they get bored, yawning. They hate the subject. If they come to church by force, they cannot bear to talk for long and get impatient after some time. Why? This sin has infected a person’s mind and makes them hate to think about the most mesmerizing, wonderful being in the universe. A person’s heart has feelings for everything—emotions, gratitude, even to their pet dogs—but never feels for their creator. The carnal mind is enmity against God. You see how we treat God! This is the infection of original sin!
Think of the effects of sin in a person’s life: Life is filled with miseries. Internally, sin fills a person’s conscience with guilt and shame. Have you experienced the terrors of conscience? That is a sample of hell on earth. It removes peace and adds bitterness to every good thing in life. It has killed a person spiritually; we are dead in sins, made slaves to Satan to fulfill his lusts. Sin has destroyed a person’s family, filling it with marital conflicts and disobedient children. It puts a curse of pressure and sweat on a person’s job. It curses a person’s body, and it becomes old, sick, and finally dies.
Think about actual sins: with a mind and heart hating God, everything a person thinks, feels, speaks, and does is against God. A person’s heart is full of pride, always murmuring, “that is not there, this is not right,” trampling God’s law, mocking at the thunder-bolts of threatened wrath. “Who is the Lord? Why should I fear him? What can he do for me?” Not only does a person rob God of due worship and obedience, but they dishonor God and break all his 10 commands. Every disobedience to a command is sin.
Think: In terms of its quantity, who can count their own sins? If God opens the book, all sins committed against his law—every thought, word, and act—are recorded. Sins of commission are so many. Every lust, anger, and covetousness in the heart are recorded as sins. Disobedience to parents, insulting them by making them tell you 10 times to do something, are all sins. What about sins of omission? Failing to keep his law. Every second we did not love God with all our heart, we have sinned. Every day you didn’t pray, read the Bible, or worship God, every time you ate and didn’t glorify God, that is sin. Can you think of how many sins there are in total? Count all the sands, not just on the shore but even on the ocean’s bed, of all the oceans; the multitude of our sins will outnumber them.
Not only are they uncountable, but each sin is so great. If the greatest command is to love God with all your heart, the greatest sin is not loving God with all our heart. These are sins committed against the great God, so they are great sins. Oh, sinners, may the Holy Spirit open our eyes to carefully view the debt of your sin! Mountains and mountains are accumulating. Justice cries every day for the punishment of every sin. The wrath of God is storing up wrath to be poured on the sinner.
A life beginning with a cry, filled with miseries, dissatisfaction, and disappointments in between, ends with a cry. Think of the millions of graveyards and cemeteries with billions upon billions of tombs. What was it that killed all these people and dug all these graves? The Bible states, “the wages of sin is death.” Does the punishment of sin end with death? Oh, then we could say, “let us face it.”
How can I describe the eternal punishment of sin? All the pain we go through in this life is like a mosquito bite for a little time. All the pain in this life is only a small dripping from a big dam of God’s wrath. One day the dam will break and wrath will be poured on bodies and souls. When you see a big tsunami on YouTube, oh, how scary it is. We are so little before tall, vast waves. How will it be when the tsunami of God’s wrath, stored for all sins, comes over us? It is an ocean of eternity, with no shore, no bottom. Scripture abounds in warnings—in plain language—to create awe, make us shudder and get goosebumps, but their terrors are all faithfulness and truth. Who can gaze with a firm eye on the pictures of the Apocalypse! Unquenchable fire, weeping and gnashing, outer darkness, eternal torment with fire and sulfur, the bottomless pit—all this without intermission and for all eternity!
But I think the worst thing in hell, you know what it is? Just as the best thing in heaven is to see God’s face, the worst thing in hell will be to see the face of an angry God. Edwards wrote “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God.” The picture is all sinners, ripe for harvest, full of juice and fattened. God with his almighty power will tread them in anger. Oh, I am a finite creature, how can I bear infinite wrath? That is why you have to bear it eternally, forever and ever. Oh, why does God punish poor finite worms of time for sins done in a short life for all eternity? Because sin is not measured by who committed it, but against whom it was committed. Those sins are committed against the eternal God, so they deserve eternal punishment. Every sin is spitting, insulting every attribute of God, and throwing dirt on his face. We are sinners who have committed not one sin, but innumerable sins, not only for one day or one year, but for years, all our lifespan. The way God punishes us for eternity for our sins, scripture says he will glorify his justice and wrath. The whole universe will shudder in awe, saying, “Oh, how just and wrathful God is.” Oh, do you see the need for the forgiveness of sins as the greatest need?
Brothers, I hope you can see that if this is what sin does to God and does to man, then can you begin to see how glorious it is? The awful, majestic king of the universe says, after suffering all this infinite insult to all his attributes from our birth in innumerable ways. Thomas Brooks wrote, “Doth not every sin crucify the Lord afresh, and put him to an open shame? Doth it not pierce him to the heart more deeply than the soldier’s spear?” We slapped his face, kicked him, insulted all his attributes, and dragged him so low by our sins, yet He himself says, “I will forgive all your sins and remember them no more.” Oh, that is bliss.
One writer says the reason the forgiveness of sins filled the first-century church, the reformers, the Puritans, and saints of the past with so much joy, and today it is such a dry topic, is primarily in the way we see God and how they saw God. In our attempts to make God more accommodating to the world, we have shown him as a God of love with whom everybody can get along. We have robbed the foundation of the sense of the sweetness of forgiveness. It’s only when we see him as the God of burning holiness, with inflexible justice, the high and the lofty one, who is of purer eyes to behold iniquity, before whom sinless seraphim veil their faces and feet and cry, “Holy, holy,” when I see that God who charges his angels with folly, in whose sight the heavens are not clean, who eternally punishes sin; with one eye we see that and with another eye we see that God takes the sins of the likes of me and says, “I will forgive not one or two, but all.” That fills the heart with wonder, joy, and songs, and constrains the heart to a life of obedience. It makes them lifelong bondslaves of God.
The Nature of Forgiveness
See what made Paul burst into praise is not only the need, but the nature of God’s forgiveness. When we think of how we have treated God, who is not only creator and provider but the majestic king of the universe, we see that the heavens behold the depravity of mankind, created to worship and enjoy God, but now for them God is a boring thing. The worship of the Most High is a hated, irksome thing. Serving him is the most useless and intolerable burden. We have shown so much ingratitude, contempt, and insult to the infinite majesty of God. We have kicked him, spit on him, and thrown dirt on him. No angel can forgive us. If we get an idea of what we have done to God, we ourselves will not forgive one sin.
We all should justly expect God to pour out his wrath on these abhorrent worms. Who are we? And who is God? Can a poor worm of dust venture to scorn Jehovah, to insult him, and trample his law and divine attributes under feet? The whole holy universe rises and says, “Condemn them without mercy! Let the earth open immediately and swallow them in hell! Sweep them away with a plague!” There is no excuse for them. While we expected plagues from God:
Here is the most amazing gospel good news of heaven. Instead of wrath, see our text verse says, “according to the riches of His grace.” Ephesians 7 says, “In Him we have redemption through His blood, the forgiveness of sins.” Isaiah 43:25 says, “I, even I, am He that blots out your transgressions for My own sake, and will not remember your sins.”
What exquisite pathos, what melting tenderness, what marvelous grace! “I, even I,” who has been so horribly insulted and shamed, just thinking of what you did makes me shed tears of blood; but I will forgive. How godlike, how unlike what man expected. Can a person behold what their sin has done to God, the greatest harm to God, and realize that God comes with such rich grace to forgive them? Can an eye behold and not overflow with tears? Can a heart hear and not melt? How glorious it is! The majestic king of the universe, who suffered all this infinite insult from our birth, says, “I will forgive all that and remember them no more.”
This is the melting grace of God. This is what melts a hardened, ungrateful sinner’s heart. Such is our God, such is our gospel. Can we marvel that it triumphs and wins souls! Thus the Gospel is the proclamation of free, complete forgiveness, and thus it goes forth, conquering and to conquer. God forgives sinners. This is the most wonderful and amazing news if you understand that.
He says, “I will remember your sins no more.” He’s not like so many of us who, when we forgive, all we do is temporarily suspend our hate or animosity. But you let that person offend us a little more, and we remind them of all the things they did in the past 20 years. Not so with God. He says, “When I forgive, I forget.” Almighty God says, and I say it reverently, “I’ll have no lapse of memory with reference to your sins. I will remember no more.” So that if you’ve received divine forgiveness and you come into the presence of God and say, “but oh God, what about this or that?” In the imagery of scripture, God says, “I am sorry, I don’t remember anything you are saying; their sins will I remember no more. No more.”
The nature of forgiveness is expressed in many beautiful pictures in the Bible. The word forgiveness means sending our sins far away. In the Old Testament, on the Day of Atonement, Yom Kippur, two goats were used by the high priest. The blood of one goat was sprinkled on the altar. The other goat? The priest went up to that goat, put his hands on that goat’s head, and as it were, he laid all the people’s sins on the head of that goat. That goat was then taken out and sent into the wilderness, where it could never find its way back again. It symbolized the taking of sin and sending it away, where it would never, ever be seen again. Beloved, that is exactly the word used here for forgiveness. It is the Greek word aphíēmi, which means to send away, never to return. Our sins, then, have been sent away, never to return. Isn’t that incredible?
Another shade of forgiveness means loosing or letting someone go from what binds them. The language nuance indicates individual acts of sin, not sin in general. Paul wants us to know that our specific, shameful, embarrassing sins that loom up in our memories to condemn us are all forgiven through the blood of Jesus Christ. Psalm 103:12 says, “As far as the east is from the west, so far has he removed our transgressions from us.” Where do east and west meet? Nowhere. Unlike north and south, which eventually meet at the poles, east and west are perpetually moving away from each other as you circle the globe. This infinite separation symbolizes the absolute and limitless nature of God’s removal of sin. Forever removed from one another.
Isaiah 38:17 says, “Behold; For You have cast all my sins behind Your back.” When something’s behind your back, you don’t see it, right? “I will take all your sins, every one I know and I see, all those recorded. Every one of those sins that cries to me, ‘Damn that sinner! Judge him! Push him to hell!’ I’ll cast them behind my back so that I see them no more.” That’s divine forgiveness.
Micah 7:18 says, “Who is a God like You, Pardoning iniquity and passing over the transgression?” “Will anyone forgive like you?” Just like all other attributes, even your forgiveness is infinite. Verse 9 says, “You will cast all our sins into the depths of the sea.” And so the nature of God’s forgiveness is a complete forgiveness and it is an irreversible forgiveness. God is forgetting our sins, putting them behind his back, putting them as far as the east is from the west. “I will cast them into the depths of the sea.”
Oh, this melts my heart; it makes me rise up with Paul and say, “Blessed be God, who granted in Christ redemption and forgiveness of sins.” That’s something to get excited about. To Paul, if you mention forgiveness, he is ready to jump out of his skin and dance in joy. Not only the need and nature.
The Basis of Forgiveness
How can God forgive these sins, so innumerable and so great? Although he is gracious and loving, God is just. Grace cannot trample upon righteousness; holiness cannot be ignored. How can a just God be a forgiving God without dishonor to his character? This is the greatest theological question. If God is just, he should punish sin; he cannot be forgiving. If he is forgiving, he should forgive at the expense of his justice. How can God be just and forgiving without dishonor to his character? The cross of Christ is the answer. Nothing else but the cross of Christ can answer that question. See, our text says, “In Him, we have forgiveness of sins.” What is the basis of forgiveness? What do you see between redemption and forgiveness? The blood of Christ.
Because in the cross of Christ, God, as a just God, imputing our sins on his Son, brings down the rod of his justice and wrath upon his son as he made him to be sin, who knew no sin for us. And the Father’s justice is fully satisfied in the crushing of his son, so that because the Lord Jesus paid the penalty of sin, God can now be just and the justifier of sinners. So that is the basis of that forgiveness.
This is again a great wonder of God’s grace. The only way God can forgive such great sins and so many sins is through the infinite value of the blood. The death of Christ is so infinite because it was the death of an infinite person. Behold the grace of God in the basis of our forgiveness. Instead of crushing us, he not only forgives such wretches, but oh, he had to buy that forgiveness with such the greatest price, even for great Jehovah. He has never paid this price and will never pay this price through all eternity.
Forgiveness thus comes not only most graciously, but most righteously. No holy requirement is relaxed. God is inflexibly and unchangeably just, while He freely justifies the ungodly. Thus, all obstacles are removed. The gates are wide open. Heaven is opened for every sinner now who truly repents and believes. God has made it ready by this great work through his son. This news is pronounced as good news to all nations in all generations. Forgiveness can enter every heart, blotting out all sins and bringing back the sons of faith to the bosom of a reconciled Father.
Paul can rejoice and bless God for the basis of forgiveness, because he doesn’t have to doubt forgiveness. If God forgives simply by an emotion of pity, without any other basis, how do I know that sometime in the future God may not change or have second thoughts and say, “Wait a minute, I forgave Saul of Tarsus that time, pitying him, but angels are reminding me I am a holy and just God. Tomorrow the devil also may question my justice. So the only way to correct this is to drag Paul and cast him into hell.” Ah, but Paul understood that his forgiveness was rooted in something far more solid than the vague pity of God. “I am forgiven today because the Father poured out his judgment upon the Son, and having once punished my sins in the substitute, Paul knew that through all eternity, Almighty God could never punish me for my sins because those sins were removed forever irreversibly on the basis of the work that Jesus Christ accomplished on his behalf.” So, blessed be God! For the forgiveness of sins.
The Measure of Forgiveness
Oh, we can preach a sermon on this, it’s such a wonderful thing to praise God for. So verse 7 says, “In Him we have redemption through His blood, the forgiveness of sins, according to the riches of His grace.”
The measure of his forgiveness is “according to the riches of his grace.” Paul does not say, “out of the riches of His grace,” but “according to the riches of His grace.” If you go to a multi-millionaire and ask for a donation and he gives you $100, he has given “out of” his riches. But if he hands you a blank check and says, “Fill in what you need,” he has given “according to” his riches. The amount has to be equal to his riches. So the measure of our forgiveness is not out of, but according to the overflowing abundance. The measure of divine forgiveness is the infinite ocean of God’s grace. If you know the height, depth, and width of that measure, then you can wonder whether or not you’ve exhausted his forgiving grace.
“According to his riches” says at least four things about his forgiveness:
- Forgiveness of sins is an undoubted fullness. Forgiveness of sins is not half-forgiven, but altogether absolved, for all big and small sins, covering all my sins of commission, omission, past, present, and future.
- Forgiveness of sins is an irreversible certainty. Once God forgives, he never condemns. If he did, that forgiveness would not be according to the riches of his grace. That is why “there is now no condemnation to them that are in Christ Jesus.”
- Forgiveness of sins is unlimited forgiveness here. You and I help someone, and show generosity, and you have to check how much is there in your pocket, but God’s riches are infinite and unlimited. So if forgiveness of sins is according to his riches of his grace, it is unlimited.
- Forgiveness of sins is unfailing renewal. The next verse says that “he lavished on us.” The word is like ocean waves. They just keep coming and coming and coming. They never stop. God’s forgiveness is like that. He has decided to show extravagant, lavish, undeserved favor of God in forgiving all of your sins for all your life.
“Oh, then can we keep sinning?” As Paul says, “can we go on sinning so grace may abound?” Never. A true born-again child of God will never abuse this grace. When you know that the Beloved Redeemer shed His own blood to secure your forgiveness, it binds your heart in love to Him. It makes you hate your sin and strive against it all the more.
Oh, see, I have not told you about the sweetest word in the phrase. It is not according to his justice, sovereignty, or even love, mercy, or goodness, but according to grace. Oh, what a sweet word that makes the phrase so richer! Sweetest word; it’s all grace, infinite grace. All given freely, to the undeserving, for nothing. I am tired of explaining this verse; no more description makes sense.
Simply said: the measure of God’s forgiveness is as rich as He is, as much grace as he has, that is how much he will forgive. Oh, the splendor of God’s riches! Real pardon for real sin, an abiding pardon, an everlasting pardon, a pardon which restores all our loss and adds a charm which unfallen spirits cannot know.
Do you see why Paul got all excited? Need for forgiveness, nature of forgiveness, basis of forgiveness, and measure of forgiveness.
Application
Forgiveness of sins demands the greatest gratitude to the Lord Jesus Christ. What infinite gratitude we should have for the forgiveness of sins? In the same epistle, Paul will describe our condition as sinners. Think of the descriptions: “dead in trespasses and sins”; walking “according to the course of this world, according to the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that works in the children of disobedience”; guided “by the lust of the flesh, the desires of the mind and are by nature the children of wrath.” We walk “in the vanity of our minds,” having our understanding darkened, alienated from the life of God by the blindness of our hearts. Having lost all feeling, we give ourselves over to lewdness, to work all uncleanness with greediness. We have no hope, are without God, and are slaves to sin and Satan, cursed by the law. In that state, we are helpless.
I explained the horrors of a guilty conscience in a class once. Shakespeare said, “My conscience hath a thousand several tongues, / And every tongue brings in its several tale, / And every tale condemns me.”
If I have to represent our spiritual state, it is much worse than that of the demon-possessed man, Legion, in the Gospels. He was dwelling among the tombs; always, night and day, he was in the mountains and in the tombs, crying out and cutting himself with stones. No one could bind him, not even with chains. That was our natural condition in sin. But one day, Jesus came to our gutter in the Gadarenes and healed us. Oh, what gratitude that man had! He didn’t want to immediately go see his wife or child, but begged Jesus to always let him follow him. For him, from then on, his whole world was Jesus. Jesus said, “Go home to your friends, and tell them what great things the Lord has done for you, and how He has had compassion on you.” And he departed and began to proclaim in the 10 cities of the Decapolis all that Jesus had done for him, and all marveled.
Brothers and sisters, Christ has shown a thousand times greater mercy to you and me. He just had to command those innumerable legions of demons to leave and go into swine, and the pigs all fell from a steep place and died in the sea. But he took the innumerable legion of sins from us and put them on himself, and he fell from the great height of being the Father’s beloved Son to be forsaken. He tasted our hell and died. Oh, how much more gratitude should well up in our hearts for him! In Him, we already have full remission of sins. The burden of sin is no longer on your back; it has all been lifted. All your sins are forgiven.
If we have any sense of our sins, doesn’t that cause us to fall down in shame, with the kind of gratitude the woman had when she took a perfume box and poured it on his head and wiped it with her hair, while we sit like Pharisees? How we should thank Christ, melt in gratitude, and weep at his feet with love. From now on, my world is Jesus. Nothing is more important. Shouldn’t we be like that man, telling everyone what Jesus has done for us? In the kingdom of God, the greatest workers have been men and women who have realized their pardon, like Paul, calling himself the chief of sinners. There are no better worshippers, no better givers, no better lovers, and no better singers than pardoned men and women.
Always Remember and Praise God for This Gift: Forgiveness of Sins
It is crucial for your Christian life that you understand and experience on a daily basis this liberating truth: that God forgives all of your sins through the blood of Jesus Christ. 2 Peter says one reason we don’t bear fruit is because we forget the forgiveness of our sins. This is so true. Yesterday, I thought bitter, angry thoughts, which is wrong, and then I went to pray before preparing my sermon. I asked God to forgive me, and there was a third voice that was reminding me of those thoughts again and again. “See, you are a Christian. Oh, you are a pastor and you are going to prepare a sermon.” It kept accusing me. I was not able to feel God’s presence, peace, or joy. The voice kept saying, “You’re guilty and you know it. Forget all of this nonsense of being saved by grace! You sinned.” For a long time, it kept accusing me. Whose voice was that? Satan’s.
The Holy Spirit helped me in my prayer to say, “You’re right, Satan, I did sin. But in Him I have redemption through His blood, the forgiveness of sins, according to the riches of His grace.” After I said that verse, the voice stopped in a split second. I don’t know where that voice went. It has not come back yet.
As a Church
Forgiveness of sins is the central blessing of the gospel. A good way to test a church or a pastor to see if he is preaching the true gospel is to see how central the forgiveness of sins is in his preaching. With thousands of voices telling the church that it should stop this old message of forgiveness, if it wants to get crowds, it should become modern, address people’s felt needs, talk about the prosperity gospel, contemporary issues, get involved in social works, and preach a social gospel. Otherwise, no one will come and listen in your church. May God help us to stand against this terrible pressure and preach only the true gospel. The central issue of the gospel is the proclamation of the forgiveness of sins through the blood of Jesus Christ, the Lamb of God. If we ever move from that, let us close our shop and close this building. Either bring a bulldozer and tear this building down or rent it and put up a sign for a social club, not deceive people into thinking this is a Christian church.
Unbelievers
For those who do not believe in the Lord: Do you have the greatest thing a person can possess in this life? Do you have the forgiveness of sins this morning? Have you seen your need for forgiveness, the nature of forgiveness, the basis of forgiveness, and the measure of forgiveness? If you have felt the horror of a guilty conscience, ask, it has a million tongues, and each has a million stories. If you have felt a terrified conscience that has the thunder of God’s coming wrath and guilt, oh, there is no sweeter, more joyful, or more peaceful sound than that phrase: forgiveness of sins. The very sound will fill you with joy. That sound comes to you today in the form of the gospel, in free grace and dying love, and a pardon bought with blood from heaven to you. Will you reject it and live on with a guilty conscience?
May I say to all of you, children, teenagers, parents, whoever you may be, the reality of who God is and what you are as a sinner does not change based on whether or not you agree or realize them. God is your creator, whether you acknowledge it or not. You have broken his law, and His wrath is coming on you, whether you agree or not.
Imagine the police go to a mall full of people and say there is a bomb inside the mall, and a clock is ticking, and in 30 minutes it will blow up, and the whole mall will collapse, and all will die. Some people may believe and leave. Some may say, “Oh, we always hear these rumors,” and keep shopping and even go into a movie. Their indifference will not change the facts of reality or diffuse the bomb. In 30 minutes, they will burn and suffer, and for a few seconds before death, they will realize how stupid they were to ignore the warning. In the same way, you may sit here this morning and say, “God is the holy creator, and I am a sinner, and he will judge me… that’s not for me, Pastor; oh, it is always religious talk. I am not going to take it seriously.” That is your freedom. But you will face the consequences of those realities and your indifference, not for a few seconds, but for all eternity.
Your greatest need is the forgiveness of sins, and our verse says that in all the universe, it is found in Him, in Christ Jesus alone. Paul adds, “according to the riches of His grace which He lavished on us,” to show that there are no sins too great for God to forgive through the blood of Christ.
“According to the riches of his grace.” This sound of the gospel has delivered many burdened, self-condemned souls from doubts. The measure of God’s forgiveness is not according to how big or small the sins we commit are, or how much we beat ourselves or mourn. Rather, the measure of God’s forgiveness is according to the riches of His grace. Who can tell the height, depth, and width of God’s grace? The forgiveness of sins is not based on the character of the sinner, no matter how big a sinner he is, but on the character of the offended but forgiving God. Forgiveness is not to be measured by what you are or what you have done, but by God and what He is. Since the measure of forgiveness lies in the riches of grace, it should encourage the big and chief of sinners to expect the forgiveness of sins. Is there not great encouragement to come to God and say, “Father, forgive me, for I have sinned”? Look into the face of God and see if He is not ready to forgive.
The only two conditions for the forgiveness of sins are to repent and believe. Turn from your sin with sorrow and hatred and believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, casting yourself upon him as your only hope of acceptance before God.
Blessings of Forgiveness
- When faith grasps this blessing, the soul is filled with unspeakable joy and blessing. In the midst of all the problems of life, peace that surpasses all knowledge enters a person’s heart. Nothing can disturb the peace of a person who fully knows that all their sins are forgiven, God is reconciled, and heaven is purchased, and glory is won! Can temporal mercies be named in comparison? All worldly blessings, multiplied and magnified to excess, are dim before this treasure.
- Negatively, it delivers us from every fear that terrifies human hearts: (1) the wrath of God, (2) the curse of the Law, (3) an accusing conscience, (4) the fear of death, and (5) the dreadfulness of eternity.
- Positively, it is the mother of all heavenly blessings. Everything needed for a close, affectionate relationship with God: regeneration, justification, adoption, sanctification, bright views of providence, assurance that everything is for my greatest good, alleviation in sickness. Forgiveness is a gentle bed, a downy couch for hours of declining health. It brings boldness and comfort in death. It is a great deliverance at the judgment bar and glory throughout eternity.
Many people know what Christ did for them on the cross, yet have no joy of forgiveness. The only problem is unbelief. You don’t believe what God is saying to you on the cross. The basis of forgiveness is nothing in you, but Jesus’s work. God says, “I’ve cast your sins behind my back, I have forgotten all sins,” but you say you don’t believe, and you keep doubting. It is a terrible sin of unbelief. Oh, let me urge some of you to stop doubting when there are no grounds for that doubt, when God has said in his Son and in his Word, “He that believes is forgiven.”
Let me quote from a touching story by Spurgeon. He says, “There’s a young girl in heaven now, once a member of this church. I went once with one of my beloved deacons to see her when she was very near her departure. She was in the last stage of consumption. Fair and sweetly beautiful she looked, and I think I never heard such syllables as those which fell from that girl’s lips. As a young girl, she had had disappointments and trials and troubles, but all these never became the occasion of complaint. She blessed God for them, for they had brought her nearer to the Savior.
And when we asked her whether she was not afraid of dying, “No,” she said, “The only thing I fear is this: I’m afraid of living, lest my patience should wear out. I have not said an impatient word to the Lord yet, sir, and I hope I shall not. It’s very painful to suffer all this at a young age, but it’s a thousand times better than the hell I deserved. I know that my Redeemer lives, and I’m waiting for the moment when he shall send his chariot of fire to take me up to him.”
I put the question to her, Spurgeon says, “Have you not any doubts?” “None, sir. Why should I? I clasp my arms around the neck of Christ.” “Have you not any fear about your sins?” “No, sir, they are all forgiven. I trust the Savior’s precious blood.” “Do you think you will be as brave as this when you actually come to die?” Her answer was, “Not if he leaves me, sir, but he will never leave me, for he has said, ‘I will never leave you nor forsake you.'” There is faith, dear brothers and sisters. May we all have it and receive the forgiveness of sins according to the riches of his grace. Have you any doubts? “No, sir. How can I when I cling to the neck of Christ?”
Grace Reformed Baptist Church, Bangalore 