All Charges Against You Were Dropped at the Cross

“And I will cleanse them from all their iniquity, whereby they have sinned against Me.” (Jeremiah 33:8).

We all have a past, some of us have a darker past than others, and it’s one of the devil’s favorite tactics to remind us of our past to tie our shoes together so we won’t put our faith into action. He wants us to feel weak and too sinful, and therefore unfit for any use in God’s service. But Jesus obliterated our past at the cross. All curses were put upon Him. “Christ hath redeemed us from the curse of the law, being made a curse for us.” (Galatians 3:13). 

His blood shed at the cross offers full redemption, and forgiveness of all of our sins. “To the praise of the glory of His grace, by which He made us accepted in the Beloved. In Him we have redemption through His blood, the forgiveness of sins, according to the riches of His grace.” (Ephesians 1:6,7). King David prophesied that all of our sins would be covered and taken altogether away. (Psalms 85:2)

This is probably one of the biggest weaknesses in Christians: people do not realize that they have been made anew. We are no longer the old man of the past. Christ paid off our jail sentence. “Therefore If any man be in Christ he is a new creature: old things are passed away; behold, all things are become new.” (2 Corinthians 5:17). It’s hard to comprehend that we can be forgiven of so much and that in fact we are made anew into our redemptive nature. Our sins have been removed, as far as the East is from the West (Psalm 103:12). Our old nature, our sinful, contaminated, and ill-programmed nature is no more; it is dead. However, we are made alive, anew, through Christ’s sacrifice. “And you, being dead in your sins and the uncircumcision of your flesh, had He quickened (made alive again) together with Him, having forgiven you all trespasses.” (Colossians 2:13).

And, if that wasn’t enough, even when we do fall, God has made provision for us to be forgiven and redeemed, even now. John said, “If any man sins, we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous.” (1 John 2:1). In other words, not only Jesus paid the price for us in order to bring us back into full fellowship with the Father as sons, but if we should fall and sin, we can get instant forgiveness and redemption through Jesus who stands for us at the right hand of the Father and keeps pleading forgiveness, if we are willing to repent and confess our sins. (1 John 1:9).

It is God’s mercy that made provision for us to come back into full fellowship with Him. He said, “I will be merciful to their own righteousness, and their sins and their iniquity will I remember no more.“ (Hebrews 8:12). God wants an ongoing relationship with us. He knows our weak frame, yet He doesn’t want our failures, our sins and our shortcomings to distance us from Him. He said, “Come now, let us reason together: though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be as white as snow; though they be like crimson, they shall be as wool.” (Isaiah 1:18). This accentuates the whole purpose of Christ’s sacrifice, that we may be in full relationship with the Father, so that we may again be empowered by His identity. (Gen 1:7). He said, “I, even I, am He that bloated out thy transgressions from my own sake, and will not remember thy sins.” (Isaiah 43:25). 

Wow. Think of it… The whole purpose of God in offering His own Son as a sacrifice on the cross was to give every man and woman in the entire world the same opportunity to come back into the full godly image wherein He had created Adam, and so that we could return in full fellowship with Him, as Adam was. How cool is that? And He’s given us His Spirit to abide in us and to empower us as Christ was. —No wonder the devil is always reminding us of our past and our sinful nature. He is so trying to wipe out our memory from what God has done through our salvation. David said, “Blessed is he whose transgression is forgiven, whose sin is covered. Blessed is the man onto whom the Lord imputed not iniquity, in whose Spirit there is no guile.” (Psalms 32:1,2).   

That’s why humility is so important in Christianity. To realize that in our frail human nature, we are still weak. Isaiah prophesied an awesome promise to help straighten out our back whenever we fall. It says, “Let the wicked forsake his way, and the unrighteous man his thoughts: and let him return unto the Lord, and He will have mercy upon him; and to our God, for He will abundantly pardon.” (Isaiah 55:7). That is true, not only for our salvation, but in our ongoing relationship with the Father. We must repent and confess as soon as we fall that we may return into full fellowship with the Father.

God’s mercy offers us His forgiveness. However, forgiveness in God’s Word is two-fold. While God forgives us, He also expects us to forgive others. The same as Christ has forgiven us, we also must forgive others. (Colossians 3:13). In fact, Jesus underscores forgiveness as a very important condition in prayer, so that our relationship and fellowship with the Father would not be stained by our unforgiveness. He said, “And when you stand praying, forgive, if you have ought against any; that your Father also, which is in heaven, may forgive you your trespasses.” (Mark 11:25). 

That’s why forgiveness is so important in Christianity. It’s baked into the contract of the New Testament. Jesus said, “For if you forgive others their trespasses, your heavenly Father will also forgive you, but if you do not forgive others their trespasses, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses.” (Matthew 6:14-15). 

There is an old saying that goes like this: “Cleanliness is not part of Godliness, but it is Godliness.” Well, that stands true even more with forgiveness. It is not part of Godliness, forgiveness is Godliness. It is baked into Christianity. We are both forgiven and we forgive others. (Luke 6:37)