FAITHFUL AND JUST

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Hello everyone. This is Pastor Dean Thompson with a word of hope. Faithful and just to forgive. If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. John chapter one verse nine. Read this verse slowly. There is no clause in the Bible more carefully built for the wounded conscience. Confess. The Greek is homologo, literally, to say the same thing. To confess is to agree with God about what God already knows. It is not informing him, it is aligning ourselves with him. The aura of sin is not that God will discover it, but that we have called it what he calls. We have called what he calls darkness by some other name. Confession ends the disagreement. He is faithful, pistos, faithful to his covenant promises in Christ. The God who said, Your sins I will remember no more. Jeremiah 31 verse 34 fulfilled in Hebrews 8 verse 12 is not casual about his promises. If he has said it, he will do it. Pause now on the word that may surprise you. He is just to forgive. Dicos, not merely merciful, just. We expect to read that God is gracious to forgive, kind to forgive, generous to forgive. John writes that he is just to forgive. How can it be just to really to release a guilty sinner? Because of the cross at Calvary, Jesus paid in full the debt your sin had run off. The blood of Christ did not merely cover sin, it satisfied the holy justice of God against sin. The price has been paid to refuse you to receive you for to refuse your forgiveness. Now would know would be to demand the same payment twice, and God will not. He is too just for that. As John Stutt wrote, God is not just. Merciful is white of being just. He is merciful precisely because he is just. Since the demands of his justice have already been satisfied at the cross. The verbs in this verse are sweeping. He will forgive a few me to send away, to release, to remove. He will cleanse afarizzo to make ritually and morally pure, and the object is total all unrighteousness. Not most, not the manageable kind, all. Augustine, looking back at his own long road to Christ, marvelled. He loved us when he loved us when he first looked at us. He did not look at us because we had become lovely. We became lovely because he looked at us. End of quote. Whatever you carry today, take it to him in plain words. The sin you do not name still has Paul. The sin confessed has been transferred to his shoulders. He is faithful. He is just. He will forgive. He will cleanse. There is no sin so great that the cross has not already covered it for the one who comes. Grateful and just God. We confess. Forgive us, please. Cleanse us. Receive us. Through Christ we pay, we pray. And through Him we come. Amen. God bless you, brothers and sisters.