Now there’s an appealing doctrine: FORGIVEN! The true God of glory is merciful beyond human comprehension. Forgiven! Decades of sins wiped out! Decades of bad choices obliterated from the mind of one’s Creator! Forgiven! God avows, “Though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be as white as snow; though they be red like crimson, they shall be as wool!” (See Isaiah 1:18). Now there is a comforting doctrine that is true, that has the support of scripture in abundance. A tongue that once uttered a thousand lies now speaks the truth. The hand that once stole now gives. The formerly thoughtless is now considerate. The touch of the Master’s hand makes all the difference and the indwelling of the Holy Spirit produces a new creation – a newly begotten child of God, and the resemblance to the heavenly Father becomes ever more unmistakable with the passage of time.
But, as with every truth of God, Satan enters the picture quickly and perverts and distorts even this doctrine of the forgiveness of the sinner, Forgiven the sins of our past, Satan introduces THE LIE that our future sins are pre-forgiven, also, that the believer can no longer be charged with sin though he should sin a thousand times more! (See Romans 3:25). Lifting out of its’ context the cry, “Blessed is the man to whom the Lord will not impute sin,” Satan says, “See there! God blesses the believer by forgiving all his future sins as well as the sins of his past!” (See Romans 4:8). But Romans 4:8 is actually a quote from Psalm 32:1-2 where King David speaks of how God graciously forgave his PAST sins regarding the killing of Uriah the Hittite following his adulterous union with Uriah’s wife Bathsheba. How blessed David was that God did not impute these sins against him and slay David himself!
To teach that one’s future sins are pre-forgiven is about as diabolical as a doctrine can be. To teach that lie as being the truth of scripture one must deliberately overlook and/or ignore a plethora of plain, clear, easy-to-understand scripture texts! Read Revelation 2 and 3 and notice how God sees and condemns the various sins of the church congregations mentioned in those chapters over and over again demanding that they repent and warning the congregation in Sardis some are in danger of having their names blotted out of the book of life! (See Revelation 3:5). Peter warns that “after they have escaped the pollutions of the world through the knowledge of the Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, they are again entangled therein, and overcome, the latter end is worse with them than the beginning” (See 2 Peter 2:20). Only the redeemed have escaped the pollutions of the world. If entangled once more in those pollutions, they not only face the judgment of the Lord, but also incur once more the second death. This could not happen if their future sins had already been forgiven!!! And what is most horrible of all is that this devil’s LIE is taught from the pulpits of “Christian” assemblies far and wide and is accepted as truth by thousands of various and sundry congregations. God help you to understand is my prayer.
Christ’s Aged Servant (Galatians 1:10-12),
Donald Wiley