Alas! that it should be possible to speak of such. Many a young convert, in the first flush of the joy of salvation, imagines that he is never going to sin again, and the first time he does he is often plunged into the depths of despair.
He finds that there is an evil nature within, unchanged, incapable of anything but evil, and although he may by God’s grace and help be able to refrain from following out the desires of the flesh, they are there to his horror and surprise. Often he learns more of what sin is after conversion than before.
He finds that before conversion there was no conflict—after conversion there is, and often it is so strenuous that he may begin to wonder if he is saved after all.
But the fact that there is conflict shows that along with the presence of old desires there are new desires—the old desires are of the flesh, always vile and evil—the new desires are of the new divine nature God gives to all His own—hence there is conflict.
An illustration may help. An infidel judge in America drove out into the country to do some duck shooting, taking with him Sambo his coloured coachman, who was a true but unintelligent Christian.
As they drove along the judge said, “Sambo, how can you explain this? Here am I—I don’t believe in God or Christ or the Bible or heaven or hell, and I am left in peace. Here you are, a Christian, and you are always groaning and complaining of your badness and how the devil tempts you. Are you better off than I am? Explain this, Sambo.”
Sambo scratched his woolly pate, but could frame no answer to the judge’s question.
At length the duck haunts were reached. The judge killed and wounded some ducks, and Sambo ran off with the intention of picking up the dead ducks. The judge shouted out, “Sambo, leave the dead ducks alone. Go after the wounded ones, make sure of them—the dead ones will wait.”
Sambo obeyed instructions, and coming back said, “Master, I can answer your question now. You are the dead duck. The devil leaves you alone for he can get you at any time; but I am the wounded, duck, and he goes after me.”
The moral is easily learned from the fore-going illustration. Conflict marks the born-again soul. In one sense, instead of leading the young convert to despair, it ought to really encourage him, it is the proof of a new nature, or else there would be no distress when the old nature’s desires urge one to sin.
After the first happy flush of conversion we often go through a trying period in learning that the flesh is the flesh still, and that the flesh is still in us, unchanged and unchangeable. But we also learn there is a new nature, which gives us desires after God and truth and holiness.
How then is sin dealt with? Are all our sins forgiven up to the moment of conversion, and sins after conversion to be forgiven as they arise? This is the idea that very many Christians have.
I once heard a prominent Christian worker tell a crowd of young men that their sins were all forgiven when they were converted, and that the blood of Jesus kept cleansing them day by day as Christians. He quoted in proof of his statement the verse, “The blood of Jesus Christ, His Son, cleanses us from all sin.” He laid great emphasis on the word “cleanses.”
But that form of the verb is much used in the apostle John’s writings. “Cleanses” in that verse does not mean a continuous action, but describes what is characteristic. For instance we have the verse, “He that believes on the Son has eternal life.” Now there is a moment when a person believes on the Son, and that moment becomes the possessor of eternal life, according to this verse. The believing is not an oft-repeated act, but it is characteristic of the believer—he believes. I might hold up a bottle of deadly poison before a class of students, and say, “This poison kills.” It is not killing at that moment. It is safe in the bottle. But to kill is its characteristic feature.
Now the character of the blood is to cleanse from ALL sin. The moment it is efficacious in your case and mine it cleanses from ALL sin. We have past, present and future. In one sense God has no past, present and future with Him. His very name as Jehovah means I AM. Our future is present before Him. So we can take up the very language of Scripture, “Who His own self bare our sins in His own body on the tree” (1 Peter 2:24), and yet not one of your sins or mine were committed when the Saviour died on the cross. And if God looked into the future thus and Christ bore the countless sins of multitudes unborn, we may ask. How many of our sins did He bear? If He only bore our sins up to conversion, it would avail nothing, for if we sin after conversion and Christ had not atoned for all our sins, He will not die again, and we should in that case be assuredly lost for ever.
No, thank God, “The blood of Jesus Christ, His Son, cleanses us from ALL sin” (1 John 1:7). “I write to you, little children, because your sins ARE FORGIVEN you for His name’s sake” (1 John 2:12).
Hebrews 10 is very emphatic. “By the which will we are sanctified through the offering of the body of Jesus Christ ONCE FOR ALL” (v. 10). “By one offering He has PERFECTED FOR EVER them that are sanctified” (v. 14). “Their sins and iniquities will I remember NO MORE (v. 11). And as if to emphasize this it adds, “Now where remission of these is, there is no more offering for sin” (v. 18).
No, the sins of the believer are ever looked at in Scripture as forgiven once and for ever in their totality. They are gone and gone for ever from the sight of God.
But is God then indifferent as to the believer’s sins? We know that He is not. His holy government comes in on our behalf. The apostle Peter tells us, “The time is come that judgment must begin at the house of God: and if it first begin at us, what shall the end be of them that obey not the gospel of God? And if the righteous scarcely be saved, where shall the ungodly and the sinner appear?” (1 Peter 4:17-18)
The fact is, God takes special reckoning of the lives of His saints.
It is as if, when we are converted, God takes the book of our responsible lives as sinners, giving us the forgiveness of all our sins, letting us know the blessedness of “the man to whom the Lord will not impute sin” (Rom. 4:8), and that righteousness without works is imputed, and closes the book ONCE AND FOR EVER, never to be re-opened.
But if God, as it were, closes the book of reckoning between Himself and the sinner, He opens another book of reckoning between the Father and His child.
There is no fear of penal punishment for the believer, there may be parental punishment. The believer is never to come into judgment in its eternal aspect. He has eternal life and will never perish. These are the assuring words of the Lord Himself.
But we have the exhortation, “Furthermore we have had fathers of our flesh which corrected us, and we gave them reverence: shall we not much rather be in subjection to the Father of spirits, and live?” (Heb.12:9). And we are told in the same chapter, “Whom the Lord loves He chasteneth, and scourges every son whom He receives” (v. 6)
And to show that the punishment or discipline is just because we are for ever saved, we read, “When we are judged, we are chastened of the Lord, that we should not be condemned with the world” (1 Cor. 11:32).
But what is the course the believer should pursue if he is in the sad case of having sinned? Self-judgment is the first step—“if we would judge ourselves, we should not be judged” (1 Cor. 11:31). Confession to God our Father is the next step. Examine carefully 1 John 1:5-2:2. The ground of our being in the light, and having fellowship is that “the blood of Jesus Christ, His Son, cleanses us from all sin.” Yet it goes on to say, “If we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us,” and then “if we confess our sins [as believers] He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins, and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.”
We do not come to God as sinners, but to the Father as sinning saints. We come in the knowledge that the sin has been for ever atoned for at the cross, and this should lead to a sense of grace and a deeper repentance, for have we not sinned as those who belong to Christ, whose bodies are the temple of the Holy Ghost—sinned against the light and in the knowledge of what sin cost Christ on the cross?
It is like a spot of ink on a white dress, whereas the sinner’s sin is like a spot of ink on a black dress.
So much so is this the case that there is “a sin … to death” (1 John 5:16), and also we read of the many “weak and sickly among you and many sleep” (1 Cor. 11:30).
But when self-judgment takes place and confession is made, then there comes assuredly parental forgiveness and that on the ground of the whole question being settled once and for ever on the cross.
“My children, these things write I to you,” wrote the apostle John, “that ye sin not,” and, as if horrified at the prospect, and reluctant to speak of a believer sinning, he adds, “and if any man sin [not any believer, though he is a believer] we [believers] have an Advocate with the Father,” showing the relationship existing and that it is the Father we go to, and adding that the Advocate (the same word as the “Comforter” in John’s gospel) is “Jesus Christ the righteous.”
What encouragement for the believer when broken-hearted, he can come in self-judgment and confession and get forgiveness—parental forgiveness—and communion and happiness are restored. We know how these things work in the family circle, which serves as an illustration of these divine things. May we all be very sensitive as to sin in our lives as Christians.