Over the years of my ministry, I have known many people who claimed that they were saved and forgiven but they did not live that way. They were good people. They wanted to please God. They wanted to be spiritually happy and assured of the fact that they were saved. These people can remember when the Lord spoke to them and saved them by faith. Singing the great hymns which spoke of God, Jesus and the Holy Spirit, was no problem to them. They sang loud and long of God’s greatness and love for us. But, inside they were living a life of doubt and spiritual agony, wondering at every turn in life if they were ever saved at all. My heart went out to them as I tried to show them what God’s Word said about the issue of true salvation.
When the Lord saves someone, it is an unforgettable event. The Lord cannot reach down from heaven, touch His child on the head and in their heart, and then they not know it. They will remember it. It is an astounding and supernatural event. But then something happens. The world, flesh and the devil move in and seek to disrupt the life of a person by bringing doubt and the temptation to sin with them. They seek to destroy the joy of the Lord with doubt which asks the person if they were really saved at all. Satan knows that he cannot get a person unsaved once that transaction with the Lord has taken place, but he also knows that he can destroy a person’s effectiveness and keep them unhappy and unproductive by bringing sin into their lives. He will bring temptations and say to them….”If you were really saved you wouldn’t have those thoughts.” He also says, “how do you know you are really saved.” He is very disruptive. We should also understand that he does this to everyone. No one is exempt.
A major tool of satan’s is to make people remember their sins that were committed years before salvation. In doing so, he makes them think that because they can remember a sin that it is still current in their life. If they have confessed that sin before the Lord after they were saved, they are no longer guilty of it. It is over and forgiven if the confession was real. God says that it is forgotten. It is as if it never happened. It’s gone! So, satan makes people feel guilty for something that no longer exists as far as God is concerned. He also makes them feel that if they can remember it, they must also still be guilty of the sin. That is not so either. When God forgives, he deals with your guilt. You are no longer guilty of something God has forgiven and forgotten. Just because one can remember a sin does not mean they are still guilty of it. God can do something we cannot do as pertaining to all of this. He can forget anything He desires to forget and He has said that confessed sin is forgiven and forgotten. We think that because we can still remember some sin that we are still guilty of it. Not so! Satan may say: “Ahah….you remember when you did so and so”, and suddenly guilt falls on a person. He makes us remember when we sinned against God and brings back the “feeling” of guilt. The “feeling” of guilt is not guilt itself but we treat it that way and therefor our relationship to God is hindered and that’s what satan wants. He wants to keep us from being a productive, happy, joy-filled Christian and he is highly successful at his game.
God designed the method of getting sin forgiven and it involves the shed blood of Jesus. That is God’s way. When a Christian sins, he knows it immediately. That’s one way of knowing that one’s salvation is genuine; immediate knowledge of sin.
He also knows that, in order to stay in good graces with God, that he must immediately confess that sin. When he does confess it, the blood of Jesus shed on the cross for us, covers that sin and it is no longer against us. God can do something else we can’t do….He chooses not to see through the blood of Jesus which is covering our confessed sin. That is a very important part of the salvation process. God, by His very nature, cannot tolerate one iota of sin in His presence. Light and darkness cannot coexist and sin and God cannot coexist either. So, He designed the system of forgiveness so that when the blood of Jesus covers a person and their sin, He cannot see it or recognize it so that person can come into His presence without violating His holiness.
Our problem is that we let satan fool us and rob us of our joy and effectiveness by keeping us under the “feeling” of guilt when we are not guilty. Remember this: If God is satisfied with the blood of Jesus shed on the cross then why should we not be satisfied with it. If God is satisfied with our honest and heartfelt confession of sin, why should we not be satisfied with it. If God demands perfection in us to come before Him, then we, of necessity must be covered by the blood of Jesus, the only thing that God chooses not to see through and therefore He is not violated by it.
But, it’s a two-way street. God gives us forgiveness through Jesus, but we have to accept it for us to be productive and happy as a Christian. If satan keeps making us feel guilty and we live as if we are, then we will never be a blessing to the Kingdom of God. Remember, don’t let satan continue to rob you of the glory of forgiveness that God has for you. It’s a fact that we all live on that two-way street. The problem is that too many people are driving on the wrong side of that street. We don’t have to so let’s don’t do that. Learn how to really live the Christian life of forgiveness by operating properly on that Two-Way Street.
God forgives and you must accept that forgiveness and live in it.
