Authors: Joseph Prince
Do you remember the woman who brought an alabaster flask of fragrant oil and anointed Jesus’ feet? Jesus said to Simon, a Pharisee, “I entered your house; you gave Me no water for My feet, but she has washed My feet with her tears and wiped them with the hair of her head…Therefore I say to you, her sins, which are many, are forgiven, for she loved much.
But to whom little is forgiven, the same loves little
.”
1
The more you realize that you have been forgiven much, actually, of
all
your sins, the more you will love the Lord Jesus. Forgiveness does not lead to a lifestyle of sin. It leads to a life of glorifying the Lord Jesus. What do you think the woman’s response would have been after she had departed from Jesus? Would she have desired to continue living a life of sin, or would she, knowing that she has been forgiven much by God’s grace, be strengthened to live a life that honored and glorified Jesus?
Come on, folks! All of us, including the author of this book, have been forgiven much. All of us have broken the Ten Commandments many times over. If we have not done so in action, then we have done so in our hearts and minds. Jesus said that if you are angry with your brother without a cause, you have committed murder, and if you look at a woman in lust, you have committed adultery with her in your heart
2
. So all of us have been forgiven much and there is no reason for us not to love Him much. The only reason people don’t love Him much is that they
don’t understand just how much they have been forgiven
.
They are just like Simon the Pharisee, who was confident in his self-righteousness.
The Secret To Godliness
Many preachers are telling believers that they have to exhibit more Christian character, more self-control, more godliness and more brotherly kindness. My friend, I totally agree that all these qualities are good and necessary, but the question is, how do we develop them? How should we preachers help believers to exhibit more Christian character? When asked for the solution, most people would say, “Discipline! We need to focus more on the Ten Commandments and develop discipline, and then self-control, godliness and brotherly kindness will come.” While all that sounds very good (to the flesh), that is
not
what the Word of God says, and I for one, want to go by what it says:
2 Peter 1:5–9
5
… add to your faith virtue, to virtue knowledge,
6
to knowledge self-control, to self-control perseverance, to perseverance godliness,
7
to godliness brotherly kindness, and to brotherly kindness love.
8
For if these things are yours and abound, you will be neither barren nor unfruitful in the knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ.
9
For
he who lacks these things
is short sighted, even to blindness, and
has forgotten that he was cleansed from his old sins
.
It is clear that if a person lacks good Christian qualities like self-control, godliness and brotherly kindness, it is not because he lacks discipline, but because he has forgotten the main clause of the new covenant. He has forgotten that the blood of Jesus has purchased for him the forgiveness of all his sins. Beloved, if you remind yourself daily that you have been cleansed from all your sins, you will exhibit more and more of these Christian qualities. Your heart will overflow with self-control, godliness, perseverance, brotherly kindness and love. Pray like this every day and enjoy your forgiveness:
Dear Father, I thank You for the cross of Jesus. I thank You that today, because of Jesus’ blood, I have been forgiven of all my sins, past, present and future. Today, You are merciful to my unrighteousness, and all my sins and lawless deeds, You will remember no more. You see me as completely righteous, not because of what I have done, but because of Jesus. I am greatly blessed, highly favored and deeply loved by You. Amen.
The secret behind every godly man and woman is their belief in the truth that they have been forgiven.
My friend, the secret behind every godly man and woman is their belief in the truth that they have been forgiven. Their godliness stems from a revelation of their forgiveness. They are believers who believe and honor God’s Word. When God says that He is merciful and that He has forgiven all their sins, they take Him at His Word. All day long, they are forgiveness-conscious. Even when they say the wrong thing, do the wrong thing or have a wrong thought, they continue to be forgiveness-conscious. They see the blood of Jesus continually washing them. They see God in His mercy and grace. Because of their forgiveness-consciousness, they experience victory over sin.
How Are You Forgiven Of Your Sins?
“Pastor Prince, are you saying that we don’t have to confess our sins?”
Listen carefully: We don’t have to confess our sins
in order
to be forgiven. We confess our sins because
we are already forgiven
. When I say “confess our sins”, I’m talking about being open with God. I don’t go before Him begging for forgiveness. No, I talk to Him because I know that I have already been forgiven. I know that I can come to Him freely — He is my God, my Daddy God. Forgiveness is not dependent on what I do, but what Jesus has done. So confession in the new covenant is just being honest about your failures and your humanity. It is the result of being forgiven and not something you do in order to be forgiven.
Let me give you an illustration that will help you. When my little daughter Jessica makes a mistake, do I forgive her only when she comes to me and says, “I am sorry, Daddy”? No, of course not! As a loving father, I have already forgiven her. I don’t forgive her because of her confession or what she does. But when she says, “I am sorry, Daddy,” I can tell her that I love her and have already forgiven her. In the same way, our loving heavenly Father does not forgive us only after we have confessed our sins. Fellowship with Him is not broken because our forgiveness is not contingent on what we do. It is contingent on the finished work of Jesus. We do not confess our sins to be forgiven. We confess or speak openly to our gracious Father because we
have already been
forgiven.
My friend, understanding this difference determines whether you experience “heaven on earth” or “hell on earth”!
Let me explain what I mean. When I was growing up as a young believer, I was taught that unless I confessed all my sins, I would not be forgiven. I was even told that if someone dies without having confessed all his sins, he would end up in hell. Such teachings made the forgiveness of sins man’s responsibility, instead of something that was dependent on what Jesus’ blood had already accomplished. My friend, such teachings are based on man’s traditions and not the Scriptures.
Such teachings put me in severe bondage when I was a teenager. Again, I didn’t understand why it didn’t seem to bother other Christians. But it really bothered me. I was really sincere and wanted to always be “right with God” and not have any sin that was not forgiven. I did not want fellowship with God to be broken. So everywhere I went, I would confess my sins, and I mean EVERYWHERE!
I would be playing soccer with my friends and as the goalkeeper, I would yell at the defenders, “Hey, you, what do you think you are doing? Watch out for that striker… Hey
,
come on!” Sometimes, in the midst of the game, I would get angry and feel like scolding one of the players. I would catch myself and think, “I am a believer. How can I think such thoughts?” So right there and then, I would close my eyes and start confessing my sins, whispering my confession under my breath. The next thing I knew, the ball would streak past me and go right into the net. I was left wondering, “God, what happened? Here I am getting right with You and You allowed the opposing team to score?”
This “keeping short accounts with God” continued even when I was drafted into the military, which is mandatory for all male citizens in Singapore. One day, I overheard my bunk mates talking about me among themselves: “He’s really strange…” said one. Another replied, “Yeah, why does he do that? Have you seen him whisper under his breath as he’s running or doing something?” At that point, I realized that I wasn’t being a very good testimony for Jesus. All my military friends must have thought that Christians, to put it mildly, were a strange bunch. But I was in serious bondage. I really believed that I had to confess every bad thing that I thought I had done, all the time. Since all this happened during the time when I believed that it was possible for Christians to commit the unpardonable sin, I confessed as much as I could just to be “safe”. I took 1 John 1:9 to the limit and it nearly drove me insane. But what does 1 John 1:9 really say and to whom was it actually written?
1 John 1:9
9
If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.
People have taken this verse and built a whole doctrine around it when actually, chapter 1 of 1 John was written to the Gnostics, who were unbelievers. John was saying to these unbelievers that if they confessed their sins, God would be faithful and just to cleanse them from all unrighteousness.
We are not to live from confession to confession, but from faith to faith in Jesus Christ and His finished work.
For us believers, the moment we received Jesus, all our sins were forgiven. We are not to live from confession to confession, but from faith to faith in Jesus Christ and His finished work. You see, there are no two ways about it. If you believe that you have to confess your sins to be forgiven, then make sure that you confess everything! Make sure that you don’t just confess the “big sins” (“big” in your own estimation). Make sure that you also confess your sins every time you are worried, fearful or in doubt. The Bible says that “whatsoever is not of faith is sin”
3
. So don’t just confess what is convenient for you. Make sure that you confess
everything
.
If you really believe that you need to confess all your sins to be forgiven, do you know what you would be doing? You would be confessing your sins
ALL THE TIME
! How then can you have courage before God? How can you enjoy liberty as a child of God? I tried it and it is impossible!
Let’s not build a whole doctrine on one verse. If confession of sins is vital for your forgiveness, then Apostle Paul, who wrote two-thirds of the New Testament, has done us a great injustice because he did not mention it even once — not once — in any of his letters to the church. When there were people in the Corinthian church living in sin, he did not say, “Go and confess your sins.” Instead, he reminded them of their righteousness, saying, “Do you not know that your body
is
the temple of the Holy Spirit who is in you?”
4
Notice that in spite of their sins, Paul still considered them temples of the Holy Spirit and he reminded them of this truth.
The Waterfall Of Forgiveness
My friend, this is the assurance that you can have today: The day you received Christ, you confessed all your sins once and for all. You acknowledged that you were a sinner in need of a Savior, and He is faithful and just to cleanse you from all unrighteousness. All the unrighteousness of your entire life was cleansed at that point!
Entire doctrines have been built around 1 John 1:9, but John actually made it clear in the same chapter that when it comes to believers, people who “walk in the light”, the blood of Jesus Christ cleanses them from all sins:
1 John 1:7
7
But if we walk in the light as He is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and
the blood of Jesus Christ His Son cleanses us from all sin
.
Notice that for us, believers who “walk in the light”, it is
not our confessions
that cleanse us from all sin, but the
blood of Jesus
! Notice also that this verse says “walk
in
the light” and not “walk
according to
the light”. Walking in the light means walking in the realm of light which Christ’s death has already translated us into. Christians often misconstrue this to mean walking according to the light, thinking that darkness will decrease and light will increase if we try to stay in the light. But that is not what the verse is talking about! It’s talking about us
already being
translated out of the realm of darkness into the realm of light. One little word makes all the difference! When we understand this verse, we realize that even when we sin, we sin in the realm of light! So, if we sin in the light, we are cleansed in the light, and we are kept in the light. This idea of us going into darkness when we sin is not from the Bible.
The Bible is so rich and full of treasures! Did you know that even the word “cleanses” in 1 John 1:7 is really beautiful? In the Greek, the tense for the word “cleanse” denotes a present and continuous action, which means that from the moment you receive Christ, the blood of Jesus
keeps on cleansing
you
5
. It is as if you are under a waterfall of His forgiveness. Even when you fail, this waterfall never stops. It keeps on keeping on, cleansing you from ALL your sins and unrighteousness.
Knowing that you are forgiven of all your sins will give you the power to reign over every destructive habit and live a life of victory!
Beloved, confessing your sins all the time will only make you more sin-conscious. But knowing that you are under Jesus’ waterfall of forgiveness will keep you forgiveness-conscious. And knowing that you are forgiven of all your sins will give you the power to reign over every destructive habit and live a life of victory!
In 1 John 2:1, John addressed the believers as “My little children” (he never addressed the unbelievers whom he was writing to in chapter 1 as “My little children”) and went on to say, “These things I write to you, so that you may not sin. And if anyone sins, we have an Advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ.” Notice that John did not tell the believers, “If anyone sins, make sure that he confesses his sins.” No, his solution for a believer who sins is to point him to the finished work of Jesus. Jesus is our Advocate before God and it is because of His blood that we have forgiveness of all our sins. It is time to stop being robbed by traditional teachings and to start enjoying the waterfall of His forgiveness, which perpetually cleanses us. It never stops. It keeps on cleansing us. You know that negative thought that you had of me a few minutes ago? Well, that has been cleansed too!