Classic Christianity – Book of John Part 62 (08-21-19)
Synopsis
Jesus is speaking to the Jews and is speaking about a very important truth concerning himself. Jesus came to speak truth into our hearts so that we might believe and be saved. But the work of the Spirit is so vital for men to be saved. No one can understand the meaning of the word of God apart from the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit reveals truth to men.
The seed of truth is planted in the hearts of men, men who are born dead, dead to understanding the things of God. But if the seed falls on humble souls, they accept that what Jesus says is true. They realize that what they are doing is not working. They come to realize they are dead and are looking for the meaning to life. When they hear truth about the life in Christ, they readily believe the truth when they hear it.
We are God’s servants, sewing the seed of God’s word, but God causes the growth through His word. They accept His offer of eternal life, having repented of trusting in whatever else they were trusting in to have life, and receive the very life of Christ, the Holy Spirit sealed in them the moment they believe.
In order to be born again, having the Spirit of God living in you, a person must know more than an intellectual assent to facts. Many a religious person has heard or known that Jesus died, was buried and rose again. But without the Holy Spirit to explain why Jesus did such things or that Jesus is even God, then just knowing those facts concerning Jesus produced no change in them. Bob George testified that he was raised in a Presbyterian church and knew those things about Jesus but he was not born again until 36 years of age.
Many times people will hold so tightly to something as true from what they have heard men say. People will often accept as true from what their particular religious affiliation has taught them. But that is not where truth comes from. Truth comes from the very words of Christ. He was the only one who came from heaven to explain truth to men, who are all born in darkness.
Often times, people do not check out what the word of God means. We will believe because of what someone told us but never go to the source to see if what someone says is true. That is why our understanding of scripture is so shallow. It is like being nine miles wide and a quarter inch deep. Our faith is based on what some man has told us instead of going into the word of God and letting God speak to us.
If you have my faith, you have a pitiful faith. It is not because my faith is pitiful but you do not have yours. You do not go to your denomination to say “What do you believe?” You do not go to People to People to say, “What do you believe?” What we believe is not the issue. The issue is what is truth. The way you will learn whether you believed the truth or not is not by listening to us. By the grace of God, if we are listening to God and depending upon God to reveal the meaning of the word of God to you, and are therefore preaching that, we are fortunate.
You do not stop there. You must go on to getting into the word of God on your own, asking God to reveal the meaning of the word of God to you personally. If you are indwelt by the Spirit, allowing God to reveal the meaning of the word of God to you, and if I am indwelt by the Spirit, allowing the Spirit of God to reveal the meaning of the word of God to me, then we will be in harmony with one another. That is where harmony is supposed to come from. That is where unity is to come from, by a mutual understanding that can only come through a dependency on the Spirit of God to do so.
Many times people are raised in some sort of religious upbringing but they are not hearing a clear message of what salvation is or even what repentance unto salvation means. Often times, sins are emphasized more than anything else. But sins is not our real problem. Yes, sin is the cause of death, but sin is not the real problem. We were all born spiritually dead because of the lie in the garden of Eden, where sin entered the world, and through the sin of one man, Adam, all died. So death is our real problem, and the only solution to death is life.
Satan destroyed what God had created when Adam believed a lie. When Adam sinned, the Spirit left Adam so Adam was dead to what left him, and that was the Spirit of God. Since that time all men were born in the nature of Adam, without the Spirit of God, and so are born spiritually dead, without the life of God in them. That is what causes men to ask, what is missing in life? It is like having a hole in your heart. That hole must be filled with the Spirit of God. If man is to die in that state of spiritual death, he will forever be separated from God. That is what is called spiritual death, dead in their ability to grasp the things of God.
So death is the real problem of man. Man is born without hope and without God in the world. God so loved the world that He sent His Son to restore mankind back to the original design in creation, to have a vital living relationship with man he created. But sin separated God from man, and sin requires a penalty, for God is holy. The penalty for sin is death. The penalty is too great a price for man to pay, and man could never pay that price to satisfy the wrath of God against all sin.
God is also perfectly loving. So God sent His Son into the world not to condemn the world, but to save it. The world was condemned already. Instead, God sent His own Son, Jesus, to take upon the sins of the entire world to satisfy the just requirements of the law that man could never satisfy. In so doing, God could, and did, take away the sins of the entire world, the sins all the way back from Adam all the way into eternity. The sacrifice of Jesus is an eternal sacrifice, for Jesus is God in the flesh, and the only sacrifice, the sacrifice of a perfect man, one without sin of his own, that would suffice. Only God in the flesh could meet the requirement.
Now Jesus died on the cross in preparation for what man needed, and that is new life. But new life could not be offered until sin was taken away. But now that sin is taken away, all that is needed for man to have life is to accept the gift of life that is in Christ Jesus. Man is not saved by the death of Christ but by the resurrected life of Christ. Salvation is not getting your sins forgiven. Salvation is receiving new life, God’s life.
If man does not recognize his state of spiritual death, then what value or meaning would the cross be for him? Jesus not only shed his blood, but was raised from the dead, so man could be set free from the law of sin and death. So what is needed for man to be born again? Man must repent and believe the offer of new life in Christ Jesus.
If man just sees the work that Christ did as a life insurance policy and has no understanding of why Jesus rose from the dead, then he did not come to Christ to receive new life. He wanted to keep his old life and just wanted to escape hell. There was no change in heart or mind. He came to continue in sin, not considering at all the price Jesus paid or that Jesus wants to communicate with him in a real personal relationship in truth and grace. Did he really want Christ or did he just want what the good and temporal things he could get from Christ? Does he just want to continue in his own selfish depraved ways, and remain in darkness? It is like saying to God, “Thank you for the miracle and the bread from the two small fish, but I am wanting my own life right now”. Biblical repentance necessitates a change in attitude toward sin, death and God. The only life available to man is the resurrected life in Christ Jesus.
Jesus came to explain truth to men concerning himself. He said he is the Light of the world, that he came so men may no longer walk in darkness. He said he is the way, the truth and the life. He said he is the resurrection and the life. He said that no once comes to the Father except through him. There are many things Jesus said. But who understood and believed what he said? Do you? I pray you do.
John 11:24-26
24 Martha said to Him, “I know that he will rise again in the resurrection on the last day.” 25 Jesus said to her, “I am the resurrection and the life; he who believes in Me will live even if he dies, 26 and everyone who lives and believes in Me will never die. Do you believe this?”
The issue is, as Jesus said, “What did you do with my words that I spoke to you? I came to give you life.” You do not have to be a rocket scientist to figure out that if Jesus came to give me life then I must be dead. He is not coming to give me what I already have. I must not have life. Yet if all we are doing is telling people how sinful they are, then let us respond back to how sinful they are. The response to that is, “I am sinful, what about you? Let us talk about you. Let us talk about this scale you have established for yourself. Do not tell me how sinful I am. I will follow you home and ask your wife to see how well you are doing.” All that falls flat. That does not communicate. If someone tells me how sinful I am, then I will turn around and tell him how sinful he is. But if someone tells me I am dead, that is a different problem.
The only sin that will be attributable to man is the sin of unbelief in Jesus. No one will go to hell because of his sins. If a man thinks he can earn his way to heaven, then Jesus died on the cross in vain. A man who is dead is likened to a corpse. Salvation is not about how good or bad you are but how dead you are. Salvation is not about where you park your car on Sunday or Saturday morning, your religious affiliation. Salvation is about how dead you are. Man will go to hell because of his refusal to accept the offer of eternal life in Christ Jesus, having failed to repent of trusting in any thing else other than Jesus to save him from a certain death, a spiritual death, an eternal separation from God, where this a fearful expectation of judgment and of raging fire. A person is lost forever because he sins against the knowledge of the truth on how to be saved that Jesus had spoken about.
Many do not understand what repentance is. There comes a point in time where there is a total change of heart and mind. It is what is called repentance. That term repentance is used loosely. A prevalent usage of the term is saying, “Oh, I used to smoke and now I don’t.“ Well, you can start again. Or saying, “I used to cuss and now I don’t.“ Well, I can make you cuss by cutting you off the freeway. So biblical repentance unto salvation is not saying, “I used to do this and now I don’t.“ Those sinful behaviors can all start again. This word repentance unto salvation is a total change of heart and mind.
A person hears that Jesus died for them and he says, “Oh, yes. I believe that”. But then he adds an additional requirement on himself to get his sins forgiven, such as those future ones, or to make himself acceptable to God. One person, a Catholic replies, “That is great, but I am going back to my confession booth”. Another person, a Jew, says, “That is true but I am going back to the day of atonement.” Then another person, a Protestant says, “That is true but you must keep short accounts with God. You must confess your sins to God to get them erased.” If you have a “but” in this, then you have not repented of your unbelief. There are no “but”s when it comes to Jesus. A Jew says, “I believe Jesus died but I am going back to the day of atonement. I am going back to slaying a bull and a goat. I am adamant about that. Don’t tell me not to do that.”. Then he never repented. Whether a Catholic, a Protestant or a Jew, and you have inserted a “but”, you have never repented of your unbelief.
Consider all that was written in the epistles, as in the book of Hebrews or Galatians. What has Jesus spoken about Himself from our study in the book of John? Have you understood? Ask the Holy Spirit to reveal truth to you concerning eternal life, and what has been written so that you may know you have eternal life? What has God spoken? What truth does the Spirit want to reveal to you? Do you accept that as truth and put your faith in the finished work of Christ Jesus alone? Check out the word of God for truth. Many passages of scripture are pasted in here in the Transcript section for your benefit.
Transcript
Let us turn to John 12. We have talked about the different things Jesus has done. They did not understand. We talked about the reason they have not understood. The reason they did not understand is because they did not yet have the Holy Spirit living in them. We realize that until such time that the Holy Spirit takes residence in our hearts, we really have no ability to understand the meaning of the word of God. We can certainly understand what it says. A computer does that. But to understand what it means, we need the Holy Spirit of God.
1 Corinthians 2:9-10
9 However, as it is written: “What no eye has seen, what no ear has heard, and what no human mind has conceived” – the things God has prepared for those who love him – 10 these are the things God has revealed to us by his Spirit
In order for us to know the meaning of the word of God, an understanding of what did God mean, we need the Holy Spirit. If He says something, He means something. But you cannot understand the meaning of the word of God apart from the Holy Spirit of God revealing it to you. There were many things that Jesus was talking about while here on this earth prior to the cross. Even though they understood what he was saying, there was certainly not a total understanding of meaning until such time of the day of Pentecost, where they were indwelt with the Holy Spirit of God, and could therefore understand the meaning.
Acts 2:1-4
1 When the day of Pentecost came, they were all together in one place. 2 Suddenly a sound like the blowing of a violent wind came from heaven and filled the whole house where they were sitting. 3 They saw what seemed to be tongues of fire that separated and came to rest on each of them. 4 All of them were filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other tongues as the Spirit enabled them.
Today we do not have to wait for a subsequent event of salvation. We do not have to wait for a day of Pentecost after we had been saved. At the very moment that you were born again of the Spirit of God, you were indwelt by the Holy Spirit at that moment, and have every thing you need for understanding the word of God.
Ephesians 1:12-14
12 in order that we, who were the first to put our hope in Christ, might be for the praise of his glory. 13 And you also were included in Christ when you heard the message of truth, the gospel of your salvation. When you believed, you were marked in him with a seal, the promised Holy Spirit, 14 who is a deposit guaranteeing our inheritance until the redemption of those who are God’s possession – to the praise of his glory.
2 Peter 1:3
3 According as his divine power has given unto us all things that pertain unto life and godliness, through the knowledge of him that has called us to glory and virtue
Prior to that time, to the early disciples, that although they were with Jesus, walked and talked with Jesus, they still did not possess eternal understanding until such time they were indwelt with the Holy Spirit.
John 12:44
44 Then Jesus cried out, “Whoever believes in me does not believe in me only, but in the one who sent me.
Jesus cried out these words. He wanted people to understand this truth, the extreme importance of what he is about to say. A lot of people say I believe in God. But Jesus said, “No, if you believed in God you would believe in me”. In one place Jesus said, “If you believe in Moses, you would believe in me, for he wrote about me. But you refuse to come to me to have life”. In another place we read in scripture, “let Moses tell us about God but I do not want to listen to anyone else”.
That is so true of many people today. We will believe because of what someone told us but never go the source to see if what someone says is true. That is why our understanding of scripture is so shallow. It is like being nine miles wide and a quarter inch deep. Our faith is based on what some man has told us instead of going into the word of God and letting God speak to us.
If you have my faith, you have a pitiful faith. It is not because my faith is pitiful but you do not have yours. You do not go to your denomination to say “What do you believe?” You do not go to People to People to say, “What do you believe?” What we believe is not the issue. The issue is what is truth. The way you will learn whether you believed the truth or not is not by listening to us. By the grace of God, if we are listening to God and depending upon God to reveal the meaning of the word of God to you, and are therefore preaching that, we are fortunate.
But you do not stop there. You must go on to getting into the word of God on your own, asking God to reveal the meaning of the word of God to you personally. If you are indwelt by the Spirit, allowing God to reveal the meaning of the word of God to you, and if I am indwelt by the Spirit, allowing the Spirit of God to reveal the meaning of the word of God to me, then we will be in harmony with one another. That is where harmony is supposed to come from. That is where unity is to come from, by a mutual understanding that can only come through a dependency on the Spirit of God to do so.
John 12:44-45
“Whoever believes in me does not believe in me only, but in the one who sent me.
45The one who looks at me is seeing the one who sent me.
Jesus is saying, “when a man believes in me, he does not believe in me, he is also going to believe in the one who sent me. When he looks at me he sees the one who sent me”. Did not Jesus say, “I and Father are one”. Did he not say, “He who has seen me has seen the Father”. Here he says, “Anyone who looks at me has seen the one who sent me”. Is he trying to say there is not a Father or not a Holy Spirit? No. He is saying there is no difference. All the Father is, I too is all the Father is. That is the Trinity, the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit, three in one, distinct but all in total harmony with one another.
Jesus is saying, “A person who denies me is denying the Father. A person who accepts me is accepting the Father.” The same is true of you and me. When you and I get rejected by man, then they are not rejecting us. They are rejecting the Jesus who lives in us when our rejection is because we are proclaiming the truth of the gospel to people. So they are not rejecting us. We do not have to feel bad about it. We are just messenger boys. The final rejection is the rejection of Christ Jesus.
John 12:46
46 I have come into the world as a light, so that no one who believes in me should stay in darkness.”
All people are born into this world in spiritual darkness. We can have nice looking churches in darkness. All you have to do is turn on some artificial light. What he is saying to us is that I ahv e come into hte world so you do not have to stay in darkness.
Colossians 1:13-14
13 For he has rescued us from the dominion of darkness and brought us into the kingdom of the Son he loves, 14 in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins.
Every place you see light and darkness it always represents lost and saved.
1 John 1:5-7
5 This then is the message which we have heard of him, and declare unto you, that God is light, and in him is no darkness at all.6 If we say that we have fellowship with him, and walk in darkness, we lie, and do not live out the truth:
7 But if we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship one with another, and the blood of Jesus Christ his Son cleanses us from all sin.
The blood of Jesus continually keeps on cleansing you of every sin imaginable. If you are in the light can you ever get into darkness? Never. You have been transferred from darkness into light. So if you are in the light and you cannot get into darkness, where are you going to have to do your sinning? In the light. That is why it not fun. You have to do it in the light. When you are lost, you are sinning in the dark. That is where you belong. When you are saved, you are in a different arena altogether. You are in the light as God is in the light. He does not want us to stay in darkness.
John 12:47
47 “If anyone hears my words but does not keep them, I do not judge that person. For I did not come to judge the world, but to save the world.”
Jesus did not come into the world to judge the world but to bring salvation. Christ did not come into the world to judge us. Jesus is saying, “As for the person who hears what I am saying and does not keep the word, I do not judge him. For I did not come to judge the world but to save the world. The only way I am going to save the world, is as I speak to the world what truth is, and they receive it, they will be saved. To those who I speak the word of God to and they do not receive it, they remain lost.”
John 12:48
48 There is a judge for the one who rejects me and does not accept my words; the very words I have spoken will condemn them at the last day.
But he also says there is a judge, for the one who rejects me, Jesus, and does not accept my word. “I do not judge”, Jesus says, “but God judges. And God’s judgment is this”:
1 John 5:11-12
11 And this is the testimony: God has given us eternal life, and this life is in his Son. 12Whoever has the Son has life; whoever does not have the Son of God does not have life.
John 3:36
36 Whoever believes in the Son has eternal life, but whoever rejects the Son will not see life, for God’s wrath remains on them.
This is God’s judgment upon those who refuse to believe in the name of the Son of God. So God sent Jesus to speak truth to men so they may know they have eternal life and that life is in His Son. He who has the Son has life. He who does not have the Son does not have life for life is in the Son.
1 John 5:13
13 I write these things to you who believe in the name of the Son of God so that you may know that you have eternal life.
John 12:48-49
48 There is a judge for the one who rejects me and does not accept my words; the very words I have spoken will condemn them at the last day.
49 For I did not speak on my own, but the Father who sent me commanded me to say all that I have spoken.
That is the voice of the Father, the testimony of the Father, concerning His son Christ Jesus. So we have a judge. God’s judgment is in accordance to whether man will accept the provision that God gave to you in His Son.
All men are dead. That is a problem. Spiritual death is a problem. That is why we bounce prayers off the ceiling. That is why we go toward religion instead of relationship because we are dead. That is a problem.
If you ever looked at a corpse, they got a problem. You go to a corpse you have got a problem. You can tickle their feet and they do not respond. You can talk to them but they cannot talk to you. Dead is dead. There is a problem with death.
God is saying, “In order to save my creation and bring my creation back to where Adam was before the fall and to give them life eternal, we have got to do something to save our humanity for Satan has messed it up. Satan caused spiritual death through deception. We have got to make a plan to give them life. And they did that plan.” The apsotle Paul explains this plan when writing to the church in Galatia.
Galatians 3:16-22
16 Now, God gave some promises to Abraham and his Child. And notice that it doesn’t say the promises were to his children, as it would if all his sons – all the Jews – were being spoken of, but to his Child – and that, of course, means Christ. 17 Here’s what I am trying to say: God’s promise to save through faith – and God wrote this promise down and signed it – could not be canceled or changed four hundred and thirty years later when God gave the Ten Commandments. 18 If obeying those laws could save us, then it is obvious that this would be a different way of gaining God’s favor than Abraham’s way, for he simply accepted God’s promise.19 Well then, why were the laws given? They were added after the promise was given, to show men how guilty they are of breaking God’s laws. But this system of law was to last only until the coming of Christ, the Child to whom God’s promise was made. (And there is this further difference. God gave his laws to angels to give to Moses, who then gave them to the people; 20 but when God gave his promise to Abraham, he did it by himself alone, without angels or Moses as go-betweens.)
21-22 Well then, are God’s laws and God’s promises against each other? Of course not! If we could be saved by his laws, then God would not have had to give us a different way to get out of the grip of sin – for the Scriptures insist we are all its prisoners. The only way out is through faith in Jesus Christ; the way of escape is open to all who believe him.
In order to give life to the dead, the Trinity had to eternally deal with what caused spiritual death. What caused spiritual death? Sin.
Romans 6:23
23 For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord.
The cross is where God had to take away eternally, forever, the cause of spiritual death. That was a universal act of such a precious value that the blood of his Son, Jesus, was of such value that it could take away the sins of the entire world, going back to Adam and forward to eternity. That is the value of the blood of Christ Jesus.
Hebrews 10:1-10
12 Otherwise, would they not have stopped being offered? For the worshipers would have been cleansed once for all, and would no longer have felt guilty for their sins. 3 But those sacrifices are an annual reminder of sins. 4 It is impossible for the blood of bulls and goats to take away sins.5 Therefore, when Christ came into the world, he said:
“Sacrifice and offering you did not desire,
but a body you prepared for me;
6
with burnt offerings and sin offerings
you were not pleased.
7
Then I said, ‘Here I am – it is written about me in the scroll –
I have come to do your will, my God.’”[a]8 First he said, “Sacrifices and offerings, burnt offerings and sin offerings you did not desire, nor were you pleased with them” – though they were offered in accordance with the law. 9 Then he said, “Here I am, I have come to do your will.” He sets aside the first to establish the second. 10 And by that will, we have been made holy through the sacrifice of the body of Jesus Christ once for all.
It is not the blood of a bull and goat that can only cover sin until the next time, but the blood of God Himself, of such value that it could take away the sins of the world. Having done that, God is now in the position of offering you and me life eternal. Life comes from the resurrection. You do not get life by getting your sins forgiven. You get life by receiving life. The only life available to us is the life of Christ Jesus.
What is the problem of mankind? We can sit back and concentrate on the fact of how sinful we are. Is there anyone among us without sin? No. Is there anyone out there without sin? No. If you are without sin, cast the stone. If not, go home. There is not one of us without sin. We have this problem that we have all sinned, fallen short of the glory of God, and the consequence of that sin is death, and that has to be corrected. That was corrected by the death, burial, and resurrection of Christ Jesus.
We have a problem that is worse than our sins. There is a consequence that has to be dealt with. What we have done, many times, in the Christian world is we have become so sin oriented that all we ever do is point our boney fingers at how sinful you are, only to realize we have three pointing back at us. We have concentrated on how bad people are instead of how dead you are. The problem is not how bad you or how good you are.
The problem is how dead you are. You have dead people spiritually who act very religious. They act so holy as if ready to make their ascension at any time. You can also have saved people who act like the devil. That is not the issue. The issue is your behavior should be commiserate as to who you are as a child of God. But that is not the issue of salvation.
The issue of salvation is how dead you are. It is not how bad you stink. It is how dead you are. If you are dead, you are dead. If you are dead, you have a problem. The only solution to that problem is the resurrected life of Christ Jesus. It is not a religious issue. Why do we get into this religious issue? It is the most practical issue on the face of the earth. You have got a practical problem. You are dead and a dead person needs life. And Christ said he came that you might have life and have it abundantly.
Christ came to identify Himself as the only solution to man’s problem of death through His resurrected life. Now to those who reject that there is a judge and the judge is God. Jesus said he will not judge you. “I do not have to. My Father will”. There is a judge for the one who rejects Jesus and who does not accept His word.
John 12:48
48 He who rejects Me and does not receive My sayings, has one who judges him; the word I spoke is what will judge him at the last day.
These are a sampling of the sayings of Jesus.
John 10:10
10 The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy; I came that they may have life, and have it abundantly.
John 11:24-26
24 Martha said to Him, “I know that he will rise again in the resurrection on the last day.” 25 Jesus said to her, “I am the resurrection and the life; he who believes in Me will live even if he dies, 26 and everyone who lives and believes in Me will never die. Do you believe this?”
John 12:49-50
49 For I did not speak on my own, but the Father who sent me commanded me to say all that I have spoken. 50 I know that his command leads to eternal life. So whatever I say is just what the Father has told me to say.”
John 14:6
6 Jesus answered, “I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.”
Jesus said, “I told you I came that you may have life and have it abundantly.” What did you do? You rejected it. I told you, “I am the way, the truth and the life”, and you said, “I would rather worship Buddha or Mohammad. I would rather be a Catholic” or you said, “I would rather be a Baptist. Just call me a Baptist but not Christian.” Okay, you are a lost Baptist. Whether you are lost or saved has nothing to do with where you park your car on Sunday or Saturday. Bob was raised Presbyterian and did not know the Lord until he was 36 years old. He knew about him but did not know Him.
The issue is, as Jesus said, “What did you do with my words that I spoke to you? I came to give you life.” You do not have to be a rocket scientist to figure out that if Jesus came to give me life then I must be dead. He is not coming to give me what I already have. I must not have life. Yet if all we are doing is telling people how sinful they are, then let us respond back to how sinful they are. The response to that is, “I am sinful, what about you? Let us talk about you. Let us talk about this scale you have established for yourself. Do not tell me how sinful I am. I will follow you home and ask your wife to see how well you are doing.” All that falls flat. That does not communicate. If someone tells me how sinful I am, then I will turn around and tell him how sinful he is. But if someone tells me I am dead, that is a different problem.
John 12:48
48 There is a judge for the one who rejects me and does not accept my words; the very words I have spoken will condemn them at the last day.
We are going to be judged by God with what we did with the information, the truth Jesus spoke to us. Jesus said, ”I am the way, the truth and the life” and “no man comes to the Father except through me”. Jesus said, “I am not judging it. My Father is judging it”. What did we do with those words? He will judge those who reject Jesus and do not accept the word He has spoken. That very word will condemn him on the last day. No man will ever go to hell because of his sins. Your sins have been put behind the back of God never to be seen again. Your sins were judged. The sins of the whole world were judged. They were judged at the cross. There was a verdict. Guilty. There was a punishment. Death. And Jesus took it all.
Romans 8:1
1 Therefore there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.
Why is there no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus?
Romans 8:2
2 For the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus has set you free from the law of sin and of death.
You have been set free from the law of sin and death by the life of Christ Jesus. No man will ever go to hell because of his sins. There is only one sin that could not be forgiven. The rejection of the words of Christ. That is what Jesus said. If you do not have the Spirit of life in you, then you are not set free from the law of sin and death and you remain dead in your sins. The law that demanded death for sin, and since you refused the provision of Christ, you are bound by that law and remain condemned.
John 16:9
9 The world’s sin is unbelief in me
The sins of the world was taken away at the cross but the sin of the rejection of the one who took away the sins of the world is the unpardonable sin. That is the blasphemy against the Holy Spirit who testifies that what Jesus said is true. The only sin attributable to man is the sin of unbelief. The only question God will ever ask is, “What did you do with My Son? Did you reject Him or did you accept Him?” I am not talking about an intellectual deal, as in just saying, “Oh, I accepted him”.
There comes a point in time where there is a total change of heart and mind. It is what is called repentance. That term repentance is used loosely. A prevalent usage of the term is saying, “Oh, I used to smoke and now I don’t.“ Well, you can start again. Or saying, “I used to cuss and now I don’t.“ Well, I can make you cuss by cutting you off the freeway. So biblical repentance unto salvation is not saying, “I used to do this and now I don’t.“ Those sinful behaviors can all start again. This word repentance unto salvation is a total change of heart and mind.
You were born into this world not a believer, but an unbeliever. There was a point in time you heard the knowledge of truth from God. You either accepted it or rejected it. If you accepted it, you had to repent of whatever you were believing at that moment in order to repent and believe that truth of God in His word.
That is precisely what is talked about in Hebrews 10:26-28.
Hebrews 10:26-28
26 If we deliberately keep on sinning after we have received the knowledge of the truth, no sacrifice for sins is left, 27 but only a fearful expectation of judgment and of raging fire that will consume the enemies of God. 28 Anyone who rejected the law of Moses died without mercy on the testimony of two or three witnesses.
In the passage, “If we deliberately keep on sinning after we have received the knowledge of the truth”, what are you sinning against? The knowledge of truth. If you keep on in your unbelief, sinning against that knowledge of truth, that only Jesus took away your sins, all you have to look forward to is the “fearful expectation of judgment and of raging fire”. The author of Hebrews states this quite clearly.
You say to someone, “Jesus took away your sins”. One person, a Catholic replies, “That is great, but I am going back to my confession booth”. Another person, a Jew, says, “That is true but I am going back to the day of atonement.” Then another person, a Protestant says, “That is true but you must keep short accounts with God. You must confess your sins to God to get them erased.” If you have a “but” in this, then you have not repented of your unbelief. There are no “but”s when it comes to Jesus. A Jew says, “I believe Jesus died but I am going back to the day of atonement. I am going back to slaying a bull and a goat. I am adamant about that. Don’t tell me not to do that.”. Then he never repented. Whether a Catholic, a Protestant or a Jew, and you have inserted a “but”, you have never repented of your unbelief.
If you think like that you have never changed your mind. You are still hanging on your way of forgiveness rather than his way. You are still hanging onto your way. A Protestant says, “I know Jesus took away my sins but I keep short accounts with God, brother. I do not let a sin go by that I have not confessed to God and got my forgiveness. I keep short accounts. I got all these marks on the blackboard and I got them all erased. I got them all erased, diligently.” How many of you have been in that mentality? The attitude is like saying, “I am holy as holy can get”. I do not know what happens when such a person gets Parkinson’s disease. Why? It would be like saying, “I have a good memory. I keep short accounts”. Those who say or think such things have never repented.
2 Corinthians 5:18-19
18 All this is from God, who reconciled us to himself through Christ and gave us the ministry of reconciliation: 19 that God was reconciling the world to himself in Christ, not counting people’s sins against them.
You never changed your mind that Jesus has done it all. There has never been a change of mind that Christ took away my sins and there are no more sins to forgive. If Jesus took away my sins, and took away the sins of the world, and God was in Christ reconciling the world unto himself not counting your sins against you, how many sins are attributable to you? None.
When Christ cries out from the cross, he did so after being hung on a cross, beaten as no man with blood shed, with a crown of thorns on his head, spikes through his wrists, and died so you and I can go free, and before he did, he cried out on the cross and said, “It is finished”. What do you think he meant when he said, “It is finished”? He means exactly what he said, “It is finished”. The blood he shed took away the sins of the entire world. That is why, in Hebrews, we read that there is no more sacrifice for sin. There is no sacrifical system by the Jews requiring the slaying of bulls and goats any more, and that just to cover sin. Why? Jesus sacrifice finished the work once and for all. If sins are completely taken away, what sense is there in continuing a system of sacrifice, having sins just covered, and that once year. That would be a mockery of what Jesus did, exposing his body to public shame all over again. The book of Hebrews explains all this in detail.
John 19:30
When he had received the drink, Jesus said, “It is finished.” With that, he bowed his head and gave up his spirit.
Hebrews 9:23-28
23 It was necessary, then, for the copies of the heavenly things to be purified with these sacrifices (bulls and goats), but the heavenly things themselves with better sacrifices than these. 24 For Christ did not enter a sanctuary made with human hands that was only a copy of the true one; he entered heaven itself, now to appear for us in God’s presence. 25 Nor did he enter heaven to offer himself again and again, the way the high priest enters the Most Holy Place every year with blood that is not his own. 26 Otherwise Christ would have had to suffer many times since the creation of the world. But he has appeared once for all at the culmination of the ages to do away with sin by the sacrifice of himself. 27 Just as people are destined to die once, and after that to face judgment, 28 so Christ was sacrificed once to take away the sins of many; and he will appear a second time, not to bear sin, but to bring salvation to those who are waiting for him.
