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Commentary on "In the Shadow of His Wings"

COLLEEN TINKER

 

Day 4: Tuesday, May 10, 2011 - Blessed Is He Whose Sin Is Covered. . .

 

Overview

This lesson examines David’s suffering prior to his repentance of his sin with Bathsheba and discusses that when he finally confessed and repented, God covered it. The final paragraph makes this statement: “God does not overlook sin. But sin is covered, meaning its guilt is no longer to be imputed,or brought against, the sinner when it is repented of…”

The lesson asks the question, “Before the righteousness of Christ can cover sin, what must be done to it?” The thought question at the end of the lesson asks, “How readily do you acknowledge before God your own sin and wrongdoing? If you do not, are you deceiving God or only yourself in the end?”

 

Observations

This lesson rightly makes the point that David suffered tangibly in physical ways until he repented of his heinous sin. He finally said,

I acknowledged my sin to you, and I did not cover my iniquity; I said, “I will confess my transgressions to the Lord,” and you forgave the iniquity of my sin. Selah.”

The lesson ends with a paragraph explaining that God cannot forgive sin until we truly repent. Once we repent of sins, God imputes Christ’s righteousness to the repentant sinner.

This explanation is only partially correct. From an Adventist perspective, this explanation fits the Great Controversy model that says Jesus will not apply His blood to any sin that has not been specifically confessed. Thus, from an Adventist perspective, people will ultimately be saved or lost depending upon how successfully they remember and confess their sins. If they should fail to repent of certain sins, God cannot forgive those sins. Thus, unconfessed sins stand between an individual and his hope of eternal life.

The Bible teaches, however, that Jesus died for the sins of the world (1 John 2:2; 11:50-51; 1 John 4:14; 1 Tim. 4:10). We are not saved or lost on the basis of sin; rather, we are saved or lost on the basis of our response to the Sin Bearer.

When the Philippian jailor asked Paul and Silas how he could be saved,they replied,

“Believe in the Lord Jesus, and you will be saved, you and your household” (Acts 16:31).

When Peter was preaching in Jerusalem on the Day of Pentecost, the convicted Jews who heard him asked,

“Brethren, what shall we do?” (Acts 2:37).

Peter’s response was simple,

“Repent, and each of you be baptized in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins; and you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit” (Acts 2:38).

Acts 3:19 records Peter’s second appeal to his fellow Jews shortly after Pentecost just after he and John healed the lame man in the temple court:

“Therefore repent and return, so that your sins may be wiped away, in order that times of refreshing may come from the presence of the Lord.”

Saving faith, or “belief”, as Paul and Silas put it to the Philippian jailor, is the miracle of trusting Jesus with our SIN—both our unavoidable sinful nature which taints every single act we do with death, and our specific sinful acts that flow out of our sinful nature which is dead in sin (Eph. 2:1-2). By nature we are “children of wrath” (Eph 2:3), born into the “domain of darkness” (Col 1:13).

It is not repentance for every specific sin which God requires for our salvation; it is repentance for who we are apart from Him.

Because God sent Jesus to be the “propitiation in His blood through faith” (Rom 3:25) for all sin, we are not saved or lost on the basis of our sin. We are saved or lost on the basis of our relationship to Jesus.

In Matthew 7:15-23 Jesus tells the one thing that determines between the saved and the lost. Both categories of people will say the same things: they prophesied, cast out demons in Jesus’ name, and performed miracles, but those things have nothing to do with their salvation. Jesus said those who are lost are lost on this basis: “I never knew you.”

Knowing Jesus is not intellectual knowledge. Jesus explained what it means to know Him when He spoke to Nicodemus:

“Truy, truly, I say to you, unless one is born again he cannot see the kingdom of God…unless one is born of water and the Spirit he cannot enter into the kingdom of God. That which is born of the flesh is flesh, and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit” (Jn. 3:3-7).

 

Repentance and the new birth

When we realize that the Lord Jesus became a man and that all the fulness of deity dwelt in Him bodily (Col 2:9), yet He became sin for us so we might become the righteousness of God (2 Cor. 5:21), we realize that the only thing standing between us and eternal life is our willingness to repent of who we are—or not to repent.

We must repent of more than our sins—acts we are aware are our sins. We must actually repent of being intrinsically and hopelessly sinful—dead in sin. Our spirits are born separated from God and dead. We are not just at a distance from God; our sinful nature with our spirits separated from the life of God render us completely unable to please God no matter how much we pray, discipline ourselves, or do good works. Every act we perform is sinful because we are sinners—spiritually dead with no hope of fixing that problem.

Our repentance means we admit we are hopeless. We accept the gift of Jesus’ blood shed as payment for our sin, and we place our trust in Him, believing He is our Substitute: our Substitute who lived a sinless life; our Substitute who died our death so we can live with the power of His life.

When we repent and believe in the substitutionary sacrifice of Jesus on our account, at that moment we are born again and indwelt by the Holy Spirit (Eph. 1:13-14). His Spirit brings our spirits to life, even though we are still in mortal bodies that are dying (Rom. 8:10). Yet this life is God’s own life—it is eternal, and our spirits are now eternally alive. This spiritual life gives us the ability, finally, to choose how to respond to temptation.

Because we have been born again, we can choose to submit to God’s will revealed in His word; we can choose to let go of our right to be respected, treated politely, and honored and instead submit to Him and allow His will to rule in any given situation.

We are saved based on knowing Jesus, not on “sins”. As born again believers, we will still sin, but 1 John1:9 was written to believers who are born again—not to people who are hoping to be saved:

If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. If we say we have not sinned, we make him a liar, and his word is not in us.

As John says in the quote above, we who have God’s word “in us” by means of the indwelling Author of the word, the Holy Spirit, will sin. Again, sin is not the marker of those who are lost. Rather, the indwelling Spirit is the marker of the saved.

At the same time, the born again must confess their sins to the Lord Jesus because if we do not, we squelch our relationship and our ability to function in freedom and love toward God. As David said in Psalm 32, our bones dry up and we grow faint and weak if we harbor sin that we refuse to acknowledge.

Ultimately, we lose rewards if we refuse to confess our sins (1 Cor. 3:10-15). If we have truly repented of who we are and received Jesus’ blood on our account, we are born again, and we cannot be unborn. Our sins will stunt us and may even make us “troublesome” in the body of Christ, but they do not undo our new birth. Concurrently, the indwelling Holy Spirit does not ignore our penchant for sins. He convicts us, and He finishes what He begins in us (Phil. 1:6). When we are His, it is God who keeps us for Jesus Christ (Jude 2)!

Finally, our sin—past, present, and future—is covered when we place our faith in the Lord Jesus and are born again. Our lives are hidden with Him in God (Col 3:3), and all our sin is covered. When the Father looks at us, He sees Jesus, because we are hidden in Him. He credits Jesus’ own righteousness to our account, and our sins do not remove us from this secure position.

If we have not been born again, it makes no sense even to talk about confessing sins and avoiding them. Instead, we have to deal with the Lord Jesus and take seriously what He has actually done on our behalf. If we want to be saved from ourselves and be saved, we have to be willing to give up control of our own lives and receive His life in us. We must receive His blood shed for us.

Once we do this, then we can confess our sins and grow in intimacy with Him.

The issue is not our sin. Jesus took care of that. The issue in our salvation is the Lord Jesus, the Sin Bearer. Do we know Him? Are we born of the Spirit? Are we forgiven? Are we counted righteous?

If not, bow before Him now and give up your knowledge and status and beliefs in exchange for Jesus, for who He really is as revealed in Scripture. It is only His name by which we can be saved.

 

Summary

  1. Sins are not the issue of whether or not we are saved or lost.
  2. We are saved or lost on the basis of what we do with the Sin Bearer.
  3. We must be born again of the Spirit in order to be saved.
  4. Once we are saved, we will still sin, but we confess in order to stay intimate with the Lord Jesus and to grow.
  5. Born again people can choose to be in denial about sin; they can choose not to repent, but they will grow distant and snuff out the power of their new life. They will not, however, cause the Holy Spirit to leave and make them “unborn”.
  6. The Holy Spirit changes us and convicts us of sin and completes what Jesus begins in us.
  7. Knowing Jesus is the only way to be saved.

 

GO TO DAY 5

 

Copyright 2011 BibleStudiesForAdventists.com. All rights reserved. Revised May 9, 2011. This website is published by Life Assurance Ministries, Glendale, Arizona, USA, the publisher of Proclamation! Magazine. Contact email: BibleStudiesForAdventists@gmail.com.

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