Before or After?
Theme of the Week: What's Wrong with the World?
Steve McVey
Saturday, January 18, 2003
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Q. What if I sin after I become a believer?
A. We're quick to dismiss sins committed by a person before he became a Christian. Whether the sin was divorce or murder, the common response is, "Yes, but that was before he became a Christian." The reasoning is absolutely correct. The sins a person committed before he became a believer have been permanently and irrevocably removed by the cross. It's just like they never happened.
But we aren't so quick to forgive others or ourselves for the sins we've committed since becoming Christians. We've set up a double standard; the reason has to do with our concept of time. It's difficult for us to understand the totality of God's eternal forgiveness for our sins. As time-creatures, we experience events sequentially. However, God is not confined by the time continuum. Before you were born, God saw the timeline of your life. He knew everything you would ever think, do, or say, yet still chose to save you from your sin and make you His own.
If God has forgiven every sin I'll ever commit, then how does the Bible tell me to relate to sin?
Get over it! It's astounding to see the preoccupation that the church has with sin despite the fact that Jesus came "to put away sin by the sacrifice of himself" (Hebrews 9:26, KJV). What Jesus came to put away, many Christians enjoy discussing, studying, arguing over, participating in, and being obsessed with most of the time. If Jesus came to put it away, why do we keep trying to take it back out?
Steve McVey is the author of A Divine Invitation.
Adapted from A Divine Invitation (Harvest, 2002) by permission.
Copyright © 2003 by the author or Christianity Today International/Men of Integrity magazine.
Click here for reprint information on Men of Integrity.
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Dear Savior, being saved didn't inoculate me from sin. Help me to recognize and confess it, and experience Your cleansing.
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