Home ? Featured Stories ? Distinguishing between remission and forgiveness of sins (Part 3) ?With Chris Bapuohyele
In what has come to be known as the Lord?s Prayer, Yeshua taught his disciples to ask and to receive Elohim?s forgiveness of sin by confession. Yeshua, through His Word, also pronounced people?s sins forgiven before he sacrificed himself, much to the chagrin of his enemy critics.
There are many references in the Bible to support these assertions. However, a few of them are listed here for readers to discover for themselves and study. These are Matthew 6:14-15 and 9:2; Mark 2:5 and 11:25; Luke 5:20-24, 7:47-48, 11:4, and 17:4; and 23:34.
We have to fathom the depth of the Savior?s love for sinners by what he did for us. He went a step further, beyond pronouncing sins forgiven, so that people could be healed of any infirmities in their physical bodies.
Before he walked to Calvary, He gave us another dose of power against the sickness affecting our mortal bodies. He bared his back and took thirty-nine lashes of the cruel, multi-stringed Roman-Jewish whip.
By doing this Yeshua took our place to receive Elohim?s punishment due to us for our sins, which He did not take part to commit. He did this so we would not have to suffer the consequences of our sins?notably, sickness and disease (Deuteronomy 28:15-65). Through those lashes, he took our sickness away and brought healing.
We must believe and accept that he took our sickness away by doing this, because it was foretold by Isaiah the prophet that he would (Isaiah 53:4-5). It was also confirmed in the New Covenant document of our rights, privileges, status, etc., and in fact, of all what we have become in Yeshua, by Peter, an apostle, that this prophecy of Isaiah had become real, in his suffering and scourging as a prelude to the actual sacrifice of himself at Calvary (First Peter 2:24).
So whenever we picture the bruised body of our loving Savior as he walked to Golgotha, the place of the skull, and the wretchedness of that bloodied body as it hung on the cross, discerning the meaning and power behind that horrible sight of our Savior, we can claim instant healing from God for our mortal bodies.
When you understand that the Savior took all this suffering upon himself, for your sake, so you will not have to go through it, sickness can no longer have any power over your mortal body. And we can receive all these blessings before the greater and more glorious ones of salvation, adoption, son-ship, impartation of the divine nature, ordination as royal priests, etc., that come to us in his death, burial, and resurrection.
The Israelite who was bitten by a snake in the wilderness journey looked at the bronze serpent that Moses hung on a pole just once and got healed instantly (Numbers 21:8-9). That was the shadow of our healing, coming through our discernment of the bruised body of our Savior as it hung on the cross.
We are blessed by the truths of Elohim that we know and accept by faith. We are likewise doomed by what we do not know or by our ignorance of Elohim?s truths and our faithlessness. How true Hosea 4:6 then becomes for many of us: ?My people are destroyed for lack of knowledge.? Forgiveness of sin for the healing of the physical body is what Jesus made available for mankind before he sacrificed himself on the cross.
We can therefore say that Jesus did not necessarily go to the cross to bring about forgiveness of sin to man from Elohim. The question then is this: what did Yeshua accomplish when he went to the cross for man?
As far as the solution to the sin problem of man and his salvation were concerned, Yeshua went to the cross to take away the sin of the world. He went to the cross to break the power of sin over the lives of men by dealing with sin at its roots. Yeshua went to the cross to perform the needed spiritual surgical operation to remove the cancer of sin from our human spirits to enable us stop sinning.
The crucifixion was the ransom price Yeshua paid to rescue man from the tyranny of the devil and to send him (man) back to Elohim. He could not do this anywhere else but at Calvary. In other words, the Savior?s pronouncement of peoples? sins as being forgiven, before he went to Calvary, could not bring about any of these blessings to them.
Yeshua went to the cross to pay the price for our redemption. This payment of the price for sin makes it possible for every sinner to enter the state of remission of sin by faith and understanding of what one must do.
It is when one enters the state of remission of sin that one can be born again, gain entry into the Kingdom of Elohim, receive deliverance from the power and dominion of sin, and obtain the divine nature of Elohim imputed to his spirit.
On the receipt of remission of sins, however, one automatically enjoys forgiveness of sin. This is because when you have your sins paid for, you must, as a matter of cause, have them forgiven. Forgiveness of sin can be found within remission of sin or in payment for sin. However, remission of sin cannot be found in forgiveness of sin.
For anybody who can rightly divide the Word of Truth, he is able to see forgiveness of sin within remission of sin but not vice versa. What this means is that you possibly could receive forgiveness of sin and still not become born again by that act of forgiveness from Elohim.
You cannot receive remission of sin or become born again, however, and not be forgiven of your sins. In much the same way, you could receive healing from Elohim for your bodily infirmities and yet not be born again. But you cannot be born again, or become a new creature in a new birth, have the Holy Spirit of Elohim who raised Yeshua from death dwell within you (John 3:5, Second Corinthians 5:17, and Romans 8:11), and not be healed of your bodily infirmities.
Therefore, we have to understand what remission of sin is and how mankind can obtain it, according to the doctrine of the Bible, if we are to enter Elohim?s salvation in Yeshua.
It is only when we understand what remission of sin is, and obey Elohim?s instruction as to how to receive it through baptism into Yeshua, that the power and wisdom of Elohim are unleashed towards us, bringing to our inner beings the born again experience.
While we seek to understand what remission of sin is and how we can obtain it, we have to accept that Elohim did not simply ordain our entry into His Kingdom by forgiveness of sin. If Elohim had ordained man to enter His salvation simply through forgiveness of sin, He would have taught us how to do so. He would then have made it plain in His instructions to us to seek forgiveness of sin when we desire to enter His Kingdom.
Then it might have been appropriate to pray some Sinners? Prayer of confession and request forgiveness of sin to secure that entry into the Kingdom of Elohim. Even if a so-called Sinners? Prayer of confession of sin and request for entry could bring us into the salvation of Elohim, He would have had such a prayer made available to be said by all seeking salvation in the same words.
In fact, if by asking Elohim in prayer for salvation one could gain it, in much the same way as one obtained healing by asking the Savior for it, then Yeshua would have simply pronounced man saved, by forgiving his sins, just as He had on many occasions pronounced man?s sick and diseased body, healed, by forgiving of his sins. However, the cross did remain necessary even after Jesus forgave men?s sins on those many occasions before Calvary.
This is because Elohim ordained that the salvation of man was to be accessed through remission of sin. This fact is what Elohim sought to inform mankind about, when John the Baptist was thrust onto the spiritual scene of Israel.
I do not know how much clearer, and more forcefully, to teach the fact that man does not enter the born again experience simply by obtaining forgiveness of his sins from Elohim.
Whether man obtains forgiveness of sins from Elohim, by asking for it or by being pronounced forgiven by Yeshua himself, it does not, or better still, cannot, bring man into Elohim?s Kingdom, in the new birth.
If the receipt of the pronouncement of one?s sins has been forgiven could ever bring any sinner unto the new birth, then those who spat on, slapped, insulted, and nailed Yeshua to the cross would have also had the new birth since Yeshua asked the Father to forgive them their sins.
It seems to me these were the kind of sinners who had the most urgent need to be born again into Elohim?s Kingdom, and yet did not gain it by Yeshua? prayer for their forgiveness.
Forgiveness of sin alone does not, and cannot, bring the sinner into Elohim?s Kingdom or make him become born again. This truth of Elohim we must know and accept.
Anytime Yeshua pronounced people?s sins as forgiven or asked the Father to forgive people of their sins, He meant one of two things: either that the suffering people went through due to the consequences of their sins, be taken off them, or that all the evil consequences that were bound to come upon these sinners be stayed by Elohim?s mercies.
Yeshua never meant for sinners to become born again by these acts of forgiveness of sin. He never meant that people would be delivered from the power of committing sin, because in some of these cases He went to great lengths to warn them not to sin anymore, for a worse fate could befall them. Forgiveness of sin is, therefore, not what you should seek in your pursuit to become born again. (?the continuing part to this article is in Part Four: Soon to be published).
?????????????????????????????????-Chris Bapuohyele is a Bible-expositor and author of the book: ?BEWARE OF THIS FALSE DOCTRINE of reciting the Sinners? Prayer for salvation?. His email address is: [email protected]
