What Does Jesus Do With Sin?
Jared C. Wilson Blog | May 22, 2012
-- John 1:29
John the Baptist commands a beholding of the sin-taking-away Lamb. What do we see in this beholding? How exactly does Jesus take away our sin?
Here are 6 things Jesus does with sin:
1. He Condemns It.
Jesus puts a curse on sin. He marks its forehead.
Romans 8:3 - "For God has done what the law, weakened by the flesh, could not do. By sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh and for sin, he condemned sin in the flesh."
Jesus says to sin in no uncertain terms, "Sin, you're going to die."
2. He Carries It.
Like the true and better scapegoat, Jesus becomes our sin-bearer.
1 Peter 2:24 - "He himself bore our sins in his body on the tree, that we might die to sin and live to righteousness. By his wounds you have been healed."
2 Corinthians 5:21 - "For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God."
3. He Cancels It.
He closes out the account. (Even better, he opens a new one, where we're always in the black, having been credited with his perfect righteousness.)
1 Corinthians 13:4-5 - "Love is patient and kind; love does not envy or boast; it is not arrogant 5 or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful"
That word resentful is more directly "to count up wrongdoing," which is why some translations of this text say that "Love keeps no record of wrongs."
Colossians 2:13-14 - "And you, who were dead in your trespasses and the uncircumcision of your flesh, God made alive together with him, having forgiven us all our trespasses, by canceling the record of debt that stood against us with its legal demands. This he set aside, nailing it to the cross."
That last proclamation leads us into this great truth:
4. He Crucifies It
1 Peter 3:18 - "For Christ also suffered once for sins, the righteous for the unrighteous, that he might bring us to God, being put to death in the flesh but made alive in the spirit."
At the cross, Jesus dies and takes our sin with him. Only the sin stays dead.
5. He Casts It Away
Jesus takes the corpse and chucks it into the void.
Micah 7:19 - "He will again have compassion on us; he will tread our iniquities underfoot. You will cast all our sins into the depths of the sea."
Psalm 103:12 - "as far as the east is from the west, so far does he remove our transgressions from us."
6. He Chooses to Un-remember It.
Jesus is omniscient. He is not forgetful. But he wills to un-remember our sin.
Jeremiah 31:34 - "And no longer shall each one teach his neighbor and each his brother, saying, 'Know the LORD,' for they shall all know me, from the least of them to the greatest, declares the LORD. For I will forgive their iniquity, and I will remember their sin no more."
Hebrews 8:12 - "For I will be merciful toward their iniquities, and I will remember their sins no more."
Hebrews 10:17 - "I will remember their sins and their lawless deeds no more."
Astonishing. We bring our sin to him, repentant and in faithful confession, and he says, "What're you talking about?"
This is how Jesus forgives sin: He condemns it, carries it, cancels it, kills it, casts it, and clean forgets it. If we'll confess it.
1 John 1:9 - "If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness."
Comments:
May 31, 2012 at 10:08 AM
This was great.....until the end when you stuck in the 1John1:9 reference: ) There is no longer any 'If we...' required. It's all "finished". Thanks for everything else though before the last two sentences : )
May 31, 2012 at 07:59 AM
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May 26, 2012 at 01:42 PM
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June 28, 2012 at 08:19 AM
I'm sorry Jared. My intentions were gracious and meant to be an encouragement. sorry they were taken wrong.
June 26, 2012 at 09:38 AM
I’m definitely praying for you that, like me, you will come to rest in the proclamation
My2Cents, someday perhaps I will be as wise as you and arrive at your level of higher enlightenment, but then, I'd go around misunderstanding people's blog posts. I don't believe I have unforgiven sin. I believe the work of Christ is finished. You must not be too familiar with my writing if you think I deny that. But that's okay. All I am saying is that if we will be faithful to confess our sin, Christ will be faithful to forgive it (which is exactly what John writes), and that if we repent and believe, we will be saved.
June 26, 2012 at 09:31 AM
Jared,
Thanks for replying. I understand where you are coming from, I wondered about that too before I learned the full truth about this issue, I was just believing what I was always taught every Sunday (keep confessing, keep short accounts with God, etc.). 1 John 1:9 just became a Christian bar of soap for me, and really it became a ‘license to sin’, which is usually what those who preach complete grace gets accused of. I used to be confused on this and was always trying to make sure I confessed any little sin and didn’t want to miss any, because then it would not be forgiven, right? All it did was put me under condemnation, which I knew was not from God (Rom 8:1-2)
Anyway, I’m definitely praying for you that, like me, you will come to rest in the proclamation which Jesus Christ cried out as He was dying for ALL your sins when He said, “It is finished!”. Either we walk in that truth daily, or we keep telling Him it’s not finished by confessing and asking for more forgiveness. There is no more sacrifice and no more blood to be shed for your sins; He did it once, for all. When you do sin; just admit it, learn and grow from it, and move on (or “press on”, as Paul puts it), knowing it was already forgiven and punished at the cross. It is incredibly freeing to walk as the totally accepted, loved, forgiven sons of the Father that He intended us to be!
Besides, if you still believe you have unforgiven sins, then you also have unpunished sins. He either forgave, punished and took away all your sins, or He didn’t. Confessing and asking for more forgiveness is sending Him back to the cross again, and again. You wouldn’t keep asking your wife every day to marry you again; you’re already married, it’s a ‘finished’ act. So why would you keep asking God to forgive you when that is also a ‘finished’ act? The goal now should be to get to a place in our believing to where we completely rest in the finality of what He did at the cross, or we will never truly experience the reality of the joyful freedom of walking in the victory He offers through the resurrection.
You might be still wondering though, “why then does it say, ‘if we confess our sins...’”, in 1John1:9? Feel free to direct email me and I would be honored to talk more and pray together about it if you want to. For now, focus and meditate on the truths of His finished forgiveness for you: Eph 4:32, Col 2:13, Col 3:13, 2Cor 5:19, Rom 6:10, Heb 7:27, Heb 9:26, 1Pet 3:18...and lots more!
This will stir up an unhindered, consistent joy in your life...and your church will notice too.
Praying for you!
Jared C. Wilson
May 31, 2012 at 10:13 AM
My 2Cents, you will have to take that up with the Holy Spirit. He's the one who inspired John to write that.