Third, forgiveness, when accepted, becomes an abiding state. Before elaborating, I must qualify it. When I speak of the sins committed by a Christian, I am not speaking about apostasy. There is a difference. Apostasy consists of turning from Christ. It says, "Lord, I don't want you." Rather, I am talking about the mistakes, the misdeeds that all Christians commit in their finiteness. Recognizing that fact, note the following: "Pardon and justification are one in the same thing. Through faith, the believer passes from the position as a rebel, a child of sin and Satan, to the position of a loyal subject of Jesus Christ, not because of an inherent goodness, but because Christ receives him as His child by adoption. The sinner receives the forgiveness of his sins, these sins are born by his Substitute and Surety. The Lord speaks to His heaven Father saying, 'This is My child. I reprieve from the condemnation of death, giving him my life-insurance policy - eternal life - because I have taken his place and have suffered for his sins. He is even My beloved son.' Thus man, pardoned, and clothed with the beautiful garments of Christ's righteousness, stands faultless before God. The sinner may err, but he is not cast off without mercy" (MS 21,1891).
When the sinner "receives the forgiveness of his sins," he enters a new state. It is a position, a standing - not something spasmodic, but lasting. Furthermore, we do not obtain it because of anything that we do or that we are. And yet, if one asked a person if he is a Christian, often the answer comes, "I try to be. I hope so. I'm working at it." What would you think if you asked me if I was married, and I replied, "I try to be. I hope so. I'm working on it"? We must understand that we are Christian not because of our characters or our deeds but solely in terms of Christ's character and what He has done for us. But, you wonder, "What about the sins I commit after becoming a Christian? Do they not destroy my standing?" Consider again the statement: "The sinner may err, but he is not cast off without mercy." What could be more plain? According to paul, "There is. . . no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus" (Romans 8:1). We stand forgiven, and it is an abiding state as long as we are in Christ.
"Well," you object, "perhaps, at least temporarily, we are no longer in Christ when we sin." Salvation is an either/or situation. It recognizes no halfway area. "We are decided, wholehearted Christians or none at all" (1T 126). And our Lord Himself stated, "He that is not with me is against me; and he that gathereth not with me scattereth abroad" (Matthew 12:30). Either we are Christians - in Christ - or we are not. There is no between. Some say that when we sin, we are no longer in Christ until we confess our sins, but the idea is foreign to Scripture. Let me present to you three of the illustrations that Scripture gives us of the abiding relationship between Christ and the believer.
The first appears in John 15. Christ is the vine, the believer is the branch. "This union with Christ, once formed, must be maintained. Christ said, "Abide in Me, and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit of itself, expect it abide in the vine; no more can ye, except ye abide in Me.' This is no casual touch, no off-and-on connection. The branch becomes a part of the living vine. The communication of life, strength, and fruitfulness from the root to the branches is inobstructed and constant" (DA 676). Yet in our thinking we often tear the branches from the vine and make the connection an off-and-on-again affair. Forgiveness, belonging, or acceptance is an abiding state to those who are in Christ. The Christian may err, but God does not cast him off, forsake him, or reject him. God accepts him even in the interim between his sin and his confession.
A second Bible illustration occurs in Romans 7.There Christ has married the believer. If we would have it the way we often assume, it would mean that every time Christ's follower makes a mistake, He divorces him. Then, after he confesses, Christ remarries him, and so on. Now I ask you, what kind of a marriage relationship would that be, and how would two people ever grow in companionship?
Romans 8 contains a third illustration. In it we find that God adopts the believer as His son or daughter. What would you think of a father who expelled his son every time he blundered, and not until he came on his knees and said,"I'm sorry," would he allow him back? How could the child ever have a meaningful relationship with his father? If it is inconsistent at the human level, how incongruous must it be at the divine? The idea that when we sin we suddenly become lost has no Biblical support. I think Satan instigated it, because if he can get us to believe it, he will have an easy time discouraging us.
But what about the interim between sin and confession? Sipose you do something selfish. Let us say, just for the sake of illustration, that it takes ten minutes before you willingly face what you have done and express sorrow for it. Now, let us suppose that at the end of five minutes you die in an accident. Must you be lost? If our misdeeds determine our salvation, yes. But if you understood the first chapter, that concept is not the gospel. The gospel, the Good News, is that salvation has it's basis in Christ, wholly and completely. What I do once, I accept Christ (and I'm not talking about becoming a better person), does not in itself determine my salvation. Then, what difference does it make what I do? As I stated in chapter 1, what I do affects me, my thinking, my outlook, my attitude toward Christ. I become whatI do. If I am not careful about my actions, if I am not constantly trying to expose myslef to the love of God where I can overcome my misdeeds, I will get to the place where I couldn't care less about Christ. When I reach that state, then I am lost. Why? Not because Christ has left me, but because I have deserted Him.
We must "by faith grasp the full and entire pardon. Here is where thousands are failing: They do not really believe that Jesus pardons them personally, individually. They fail to take God at His word . . . . Many who have all their lives walked under a cloud, would be filled with amazement as they view the channels overflowing with mercies instead of dark clouds heavy with wrath and denunciations. . . . But many fail to act upon this faith, and therefore God is dishonored. They go about as if under a weight of woe and condemnation, when they might have peace and comfort and hope and fullness of joy" (RH, September 21,1886).
A young lad walked up to a guard at the Washington Monument with his entire life's savings clutched in his hand. Securing the guards attention, he opened his hand and said, "I want to buy the Washington Monument." There in his hand lay twenty-five cents. The kindly guard had to explain that in the first place, some things are not for sale. In the second place, even if it were for sale, twenty-five cents wouldn't be enough to buy it. But the wonderful part about it was that the boy didn't need to purchase it. He, with the people of the United Sates, already owned it. That's the way it is with forgiveness. We come to Christ with our quarter's worth of confession. But forgiveness isn't for sale, and if it were, our twenty-five cents worth of confession wouldn't pay for it anyway. But the wonderful thing about it is that we don't have to buy it. We already own it! Because we are in Christ, , everything that is His becomes ours. We live and abide in a constant state of forgiveness and acceptance.
"Why confess if our sins are already forgiven?" you reply. "If they are all taken care of, let's forget about them." That is a logical conclusion. Why confess if God has already forgiven us? To keep our hearts open so that we may continue to receive God's forgiveness. Let's say I don't confess. What's going to happen to me? I will begin to take Christ for granted, will forget that when I do something wrong I haven't broken just a law, but I've broken a heart. And how long can I continue on such a course before I reject Christ?
