Totally Forgiven, Totally United, Totally Filled
by Ryan Rufus
Here are three truths that will ruin you forever, in a good way, that is! Once these are in your heart, your life will take on a persona of peace, security, stability and confidence like never before. You will live free from useless religious activities and find it easier to live in the sweet spot of a supernatural grace life.
Totally Forgiven
"When you were dead in your sins and in the uncircumcision of your sinful nature, God made you alive in Christ. He forgave us all our sins." (Col. 2:13 NIV)
Most Christians have no trouble believing that Jesus has forgiven them of all their past sins. Many, however, have great trouble believing that Jesus has already forgiven them of all the future sins as well. Because of this lack in revelation, they fell they have to continually confess and repent of their sins and be cleansed of them, and they feel far from God until they have done so. They get caught up in what the Bible calls "dead works" or "faithless works" because they do not have a revelation of total forgiveness.
The truth is, God doesn't forgive us our sins, He forgave us our sins! Forgiveness is past tense, not future tense. It is a completed work, not something we hope will happen one day, and is also not an ongoing process via installments. Our forgiveness is past tense, it happened 2000 years ago. When we came into Christ, we came into total and complete forgiveness of all the sins we have ever committed, and all the sins we will ever commit! The Cross looked ahead at every sin and dealt with it right there!
If the Cross only dealt with past sins, it would mean that only those who sinned before the crucifixion could be forgiven. Everyone born after Jesus would not be able to receive forgiveness and would be stuck with their sin! Their only hope would be for Jesus to be crucified again.
Similarly, if Jesus' crucifixion didn't atone for your future sin, then every time you sin, He would have to be crucified again in order for those newly committed sins to be atoned for. This is clearly impossible, as Christ can never die again! Nor is it necessary. The Bible is clear: He forgave us all our sins: past, present, and future!
The reason many can't accept this, is because they still have an Old Covenant mindset of having to offer a sacrifice to pay for their sin. When you don't see how the "once for all" sacrifice of Christ has completely dealt with all sin, from the start of time to the end of time, then you'll feel you need to continually offer something to pay for your sin and get rid of the guilt.
"Day after day every priest stands and performs his religious duties; again and again he offers the same sacrifices, which can never take away sins. But when this priest had offered for all time one sacrifice for sins, he sat down at the right hand of God, and since that time he waits for his enemies to be made his footstool. For by one sacrifice he has made perfect forever those who are being made holy." (Hebrews 10:11-14)
Did you notice, in there, one of the most powerful verses in the entire Bible? Here it is again, "But when this Priest had offered for all time one sacrifice for sins." This scripture is saying that Jesus offered one sacrifice of all sin, for all time! Not many sacrifices, but one sacrifice. Not some sins, but all sin. Not just time past, but for all time! That means past, present, and future sin! All sin was included and completely dealt with! I want to declare to you today that all of your future sins have already been forgiven, even before you have committed them!
Knowing this will seriously affect how you live your life and the relationship you enjoy with God. It will free you from a whole lot of lifeless rituals and release you into a new and living way of serving God and being fruitful.
"How much more shall the blood of Christ, who through the eternal Spirit offered himself without spot to God, purge your conscience for dead works to serve the living God?" (Hebrews 9:14)
Many Christians, when they sin, feel unrighteous, dirty, and guilty. They feel that have let God down and that God is no longer pleased with them. Their guilt then drives them to try and deal with their sin. So they pray and confess their sin. They repent and promise God that they will never do it again. Do you know that there is no Scripture under the New Covenant that commands born-again believers to confess their sins, repent of them, or even ask God to now forgive them? I know this challenges our modern-day sin conscious mindset and strikes fear into the hearts of some believers who think this will lead to a casting off of restraint. But to confess, repent and ask God for forgiveness of sins is a contradiction to the Gospel. Why? Because by one sacrifice He has dealt with all your sins for all time! And you need to go back and have a good look at all the scriptures that people use to try and get you confessing and repenting, in their proper context. You'll be surprised!
Under the New Covenant, we are not called to confess our sins, we are called to confess our righteousness in Jesus Christ!
Take your eyes off your sin and get your eyes onto Christ. The more you do that, the more you will overcome sin in your life! We are not even called to ask for forgiveness if and when we sin now! I know this confounds the traditional way in which we were discipled. You may have been taught in church that, as a Christian, after you sin, you have to confess your sin and ask for forgiveness. But let me ask you this: Have you found where the Bible teaches that in the New Covenant? You shouldn't always believe everything we preachers tell you! You should always find out for yourself and then base your life on the truth of the Word of God, not just on what someone else says.
The desire to want to say sorry to God and to ask for forgiveness is the result of a conscience that is more aware of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil than a consciousness of the finished work of Christ. A conscience that wants to get rid of guilt by practicing these dead work rituals is a conscience that needs to be washed by the blood of Jesus. You need to renew your conscience to grace.
Of course we'll feel guilt after sin. That's normal. Something would be seriously wrong if we didn't! But it's how we deal with that guilt that's important. Do we try to achieve righteousness and forgiveness, or do we rest in the finished work of Christ and confess our perfect righteousness and purity in Him?
This is the kind of confession I make if I mess up: "God, I'm sorry. I did not want to do that. That's not part of my new creation nature. But I am not going to get all morbid and introspective or sorrowful and guilty! You don't want that. You want me to lift up my head and stay in the spirit, and to thank You for Your free gift of righteousness and total forgiveness. I fix my eyes and consciousness on Jesus, whose blood has washed away all my sin. Thank You that I am the righteousness of God in Christ Jesus. I believe it!"
God doesn't want guilt-ridden introspection that focuses on our sin. He wants us to continually focus on Him. For many years in my Christ life, I would always feel like I needed to ask God for forgiveness when I sinned. In fact, I did always ask God: "God, please forgive me. Please cleanse me." That was until I came into the revelation of total forgiveness! Once I came into the revelation of total forgiveness, do you know what started to happen? When I sinned and went to God to ask for forgiveness, I would hear the voice of the Father saying straight back to me, "Ryan, I already have! I did it two thousand years ago at the Cross. And you know all those sins you are going to commit in the future? I have already forgiven those too!"
Christians who are not secure in grace will immediately say: "Oh, come now, Ryan, be careful! If you say this stuff, Christians are going to go wild and sin even more!" They say this as though having to ask God for forgiveness after they've sinned is a deterrent that stops believers from sinning. But let me ask this: Which has the most potential to stop you from sinning: Knowing you are forgiven before you sin? Or, knowing you can get forgiveness after you sin? Neither! Christians will sin either way! Some people accuse grace as just a license to sin and think that if we were a bit under the law, then we wouldn't sin. They say this as though law is not a license to sin. Yet under the law, if you sinned, you could go and offer a sacrifice for that sin, and you'd be forgiven.
I don't know about you, but I'm born-again! I don't want to sin. My new nature, God's nature, wants to live for God. It wants to serve God! It is not even a sacrifice! The desire and passion of my spirit is to live one hundred percent for God! And if I could live just by my reborn spirit—my new creation nature—then I would live absolutely perfect for God and in His perfect will. The problem is that our body and our mind get in the way, and are tempted by sin because they haven't been made perfect yet. My mind and my body may get tempted to sin, but the real me, my spirit, doesn't want to sin. Sin is foreign to my new nature. This is why the Bible says we must offer our bodies as living sacrifices and renew our minds. This simply means learning how to surrender our mind and our body to our spirit, so that our spirit is in control and leads us. As we walk by our spirit, we will live out all the riches of God's nature that He put inside of our spirit at the point of salvation.
"…and to put on the new self, created after the likeness of God in true righteousness and holiness." (Eph. 4:24 ESV)
Your new nature has been created after the nature of God in perfect righteousness and perfect holiness. The Bible says that God has put His law in our hearts (Hebrews 8 & 10). That's not talking about the Ten Commandments. Goodness gracious, if God did that, it would just kill us! No, the law which God put on our hearts is His nature. It is His perfect nature.
No one has to say to God: "God, You shouldn't life. You shouldn't steal. You shouldn't commit adultery." Why? Because it's not in His nature. His nature is perfect! God cannot sin. And when we live by our new nature, we live by His desires, His perfect and holy nature. This is when sin becomes easy to overcome! Now, let us continue with our original point.
As a New Covenant, born-again believer, to go and ask God for forgiveness after you have sinned, is in fact, a sin! It is the sin of unbelief. You don't believe in the finished work of the Cross, and therefore you are trying to achieve what you don't realize you already have: Total forgiveness of all sin from the start of your life to the end of your life.
Preaching total forgiveness is not giving people a license to sin. I don't personally know of any grace preachers that are preaching a license to sin, not one! However, if you do sin (now, brace yourself…), don't start asking God for forgiveness. Don't start confessing that sin and repenting of that sin. Get your eyes on Jesus and keep your faith in Him! Keep walking in the spirit covenant, the grace covenant. Keep declaring your absolute forgiveness. Confess your righteousness and keep reminding yourself of the finished work of Christ!
"Father, thank You, that even this sin has been dealt with, and I am still perfectly righteous!"
Do you know that some Christians think that when you sin, you become unholy until you have confessed, repented, been forgiven and cleansed of that sin? Do you know that is absolute deception? Other than Scripture being abundantly clear about that, there is another proof that your purity and your relationship with God is not broken by sin: it's called the every-abiding presence of the Holy Spirit! If your sin made you unholy and unrighteous, then the Holy Spirit would have to leave you every time you sinned, until you received forgiveness and were "made holy" again. You would have to be re-baptized in the Holy Spirit. That is ridiculous! He never leaves! He is ever present! Why? Because you are ever righteous, ever holy, and eternally forgiven! Joy comes when we believe that!
The Gospel of Grace should make you happy, because it is good news! It is always good news! If someone turns the good news into bad news, don't listen to them! They are not preaching the good news. It is always good and should always make you happy and produce supernatural joy, peace and freedom in you.
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