About this sermon
In Christ, believers have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of their trespasses, according to the riches of God’s grace. Every spiritual blessing, from regeneration and justification to adoption, sanctification, and glory, flows to them through Christ’s substitutionary sacrifice on the cross. Christians need the gospel as much as unbelievers do, and the Lord’s Supper keeps it before them. God forgave every sin of his people in Christ, so they must extend that same forgiveness to those who sin against them.
Sermon transcript
This evening, my sermon text is Ephesians 1, verse 7. That’ll be the special focus of my sermon this evening, but I’m going to kind of give the fuller context as verse 7 is in the midst of a divinely inspired run-on sentence. Paul was famous for those. So I’m gonna read verses 1 through 14, but again, our main focus will be on verse 7. So friends, let us hear God’s holy word. Paul, an apostle of Christ Jesus by the will of God, to the saints who are at Ephesus and who are faithful in Christ Jesus, grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places in Christ, just as he chose us in him before the foundation of the world, that we would be holy and blameless before him.
In love He predestined us to adoption as sons through Jesus Christ to Himself, according to the kind intention of His will, to the praise of the glory of His grace, which He freely bestowed on us in the Beloved. In Him we have redemption through His blood, the forgiveness of our trespasses according to the riches of His grace, which He lavished on us in all wisdom and insight, He made known to us the mystery of his will, according to his kind intention which he purposed in him, with a view to an administration suitable to the fullness of the times, that is, the summing up of all things in Christ, things in the heavens and things on the earth. In him also we have obtained an inheritance, having been predestined according to his purpose, who works all things after the counsel of his will, to the end that we who were the first to hope in Christ would be to the praise of his glory.
In him you also, after listening to the message of truth, the gospel of your salvation, having also believed, you were sealed in him with the Holy Spirit of promise, who is given as a pledge of our inheritance with a view to the redemption of God’s own possession, to the praise of His glory. And again, verse 7, my sermon text, in Him we have redemption through His blood, the forgiveness of our trespasses, according to the riches of His grace. Would you join me in prayer? Our Lord and Father in heaven, we pray that by your spirit you would open our minds and our hearts to behold wondrous things from your word, and we ask that you would grant me, your unworthy servant, the grace to declare your word with clarity and power, with the assistance of your spirit, to the edification of your people and the salvation of the lost.
We ask these things in Jesus’ name, amen. Congregation, you may be seated. titled my sermon this evening is, I Believe in the Forgiveness of Sins. And there’s four key words you can be listening for this evening, forgiveness, redemption, grace, and sin. Well, dear ones, this evening we recited, as we often do when we celebrate the Lord’s Supper, we recited the Apostles’ Creed. And in the Apostles’ Creed, one of the articles of the faith that we Christians confess is, I believe in the forgiveness of sins. I believe in the forgiveness of sins. If you profess to trust in Jesus Christ as your very own Lord and Savior, then no doubt you also would heartily confess to believe that God mercifully forgives your sins because of Jesus and what he did for you on the cross of Calvary.
All of us who claim the name Christian would no doubt confess, I believe in the forgiveness of sins. But friends, sadly, we often live our lives as if we don’t really believe in God’s gracious gift of the forgiveness of our sins. We often live our lives as if we were still on a treadmill of works righteousness or religious performance. We tend to live our lives, even as Christians, as if we were still, in a sense, under the covenant of works rather than the covenant of grace. And you say, well, Pastor, what are you talking about? What’s the evidence of that? Well, let me ask you this. Let me give a few examples of how we often as Christians even fall short of walking the talk when it comes to our confession to believe in the forgiveness of sins.
Have you ever had a situation where you continue to feel plagued by guilt over past sins, sins that you’ve already repented of, sins that you’ve already forsaken? That’s an example of not walking the talk when it comes to believing in the forgiveness of your sins in Christ. Do you ever find yourself falling into a legalistic approach to God, saying, yes, I believe I’m justified by grace alone, through faith alone, in Christ alone, but I’m really worried that if I mess up, God is just gonna squash me? Do you ever find yourself on the horizontal plane, unwilling to be generous and forgiving towards others as God has been generous and forgiving towards you? Do you ever find yourself tending to believe the worst about others and their motivations? instead of following what it says in 1 Corinthians, that love believes all things.
Love believes the best until there’s good reason to believe less than the best of others. You ever find yourself harboring bitterness, strife, and resentment in your heart toward fellow believers? You ever find yourself spreading gossip and a bad report about others? And the list could go on and on and on. Friends, yes, we believe in the forgiveness of sins and thank God that even when we are inconsistent in living out the implications of our belief that our sins are forgiven in Christ, thank God that God is still merciful to us and willing to continue forgiving us for His grace to us in Christ is super abounding, super abundant. But friends, brothers and sisters in Christ, let us realize that believing in and professing faith in the article of the truth that we believe in the forgiveness of sins carries many practical implications, both in terms of our relationship vertically with our Heavenly Father and also our relationship horizontally with others.
And so let’s dive into our text for this Lord’s Day evening and consider what we have to learn here as Paul writes in this opening doxology. And in terms of the context of our passage for this evening, the context is Paul’s opening doxology where he praises God for all of the spiritual blessings that we believers have received in Christ. In this letter, this epistle to the Ephesians, and this epistle was very likely meant to be a circular letter, read not only to the Ephesian church, but read to various churches in that region. And as Paul, in this opening doxology, he gives us the big picture, and he praises God for all of the many, many spiritual blessings that we have received in Christ. And one of those wonderful blessings is the forgiveness of our trespasses.
In fact, the forgiveness of our trespasses is just one of the many, many blessings that are mentioned here in this opening doxology. But for those of us who know ourselves to be hell-deserving sinners, it is one of the most precious blessings that we have in Christ, the blessing of the forgiveness of our sins. And so again, Our text for this evening is verse seven. In him, in union with Christ, we, we believers, we have what? Redemption through his blood. That’s talking about the substitutionary atoning sacrifice of the Lord Jesus Christ. We have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of our trespasses according to the riches of his grace. There’s so much to unpack even in this brief verse. But as we seek to unpack this passage, first of all, beloved, let us consider what we learn in this passage about the forgiveness of sins.
It always helps when we’re considering or studying any subject, it always helps to define our terms. So let’s talk about forgiveness. What is the definition of forgiveness? Well, the Greek term for forgiveness is a term that indicates, as Dr. Skevington Wood puts it, a loosing someone from what binds him. Forgiveness indicates loosing someone from what binds him. In this passage, Paul has in mind particular sins or trespasses, plural, peroptima in the Greek, in the sense of deviations from the right path. God, in forgiving us for our trespasses, for our deviations, He looses us from them. He forgives us. He does not hold them against us anymore. But these various sins, plural, or deviations, are simply the fruits of a sinful heart. They are the fruits of a sin nature. Though Paul in verse 7 here is focusing in particular on our trespasses, plural, our sins of thought, word, and deed. the things that we do in breaking God’s holy commandments, the things that we neglect to do in not following his laws and so forth.
These trespasses that we are guilty of every day are rooted and grounded in a heart of sin. And the implication, and while Paul is not focusing on that in particular, we could look to many other passages of scripture, including in Paul’s writings, where he recognizes that our sins arise out of a heart of sin, a sinful nature. So the implication, friends, is that when God forgives us sinners through Christ, he forgives us not only for our sinful acts, he not only forgives us for our trespasses, plural, praise God he forgives us for those, but he also forgives us for the sinful condition of our hearts, that condition which gives rise to those sinful acts. Another way, and perhaps you’ve heard this saying before, but I think it’s helpful to chew on this, As the saying goes, we’re not sinners because we sin, we sin because we’re sinners.
We’re not sinners because we sin, we sin because we are sinners. We have a sin nature. And in forgiving our trespasses, by implication, God also forgives the sin nature that those trespasses arise from. Well, how can God do this? How can God, the infinitely holy, righteous, just God, forgive us As the late Dr. R.C. Sproul liked to point out, every sin that we commit is an act of cosmic treason. Even our so-called, quote, little sins are acts of committing treason against the creator of the cosmos, the Lord God omnipotent. How could the infinitely holy and just God forgive us wretched rebel sinners? Well, we learn in this verse that God is able to forgive us because of the blood of Jesus. God forgives us on the basis of Christ’s redeeming work on the cross. And so it says in verse seven, in Him, in union with Christ, in spiritual and saving union with the Lord Jesus Christ, we have, not we might have, but we have redemption through His blood, the forgiveness of our trespasses.
By the way, this statement here in verse 7 does not mean that the forgiveness of our sins exhausts the meaning of our redemption in Christ, or that our justification before God consists only in the pardon of our sins. If you read the This is why I read the passage in its larger context, because there are many other spiritual blessings that we have received in Christ that Paul focuses on. The Father has chosen us in him from before the foundation of the world. We’ve been predestined unto adoption as sons. His grace has been lavished upon us. We have been sealed by the Spirit unto the day of redemption and so forth. All of these are wonderful blessings. that come from our redemption in Christ. But the focus here, friends, is on the fact that Christ has redeemed us.
And that is the ground for the forgiveness of our sins. Friends, every spiritual blessing that we receive flows to us through the cross of Calvary. Christ’s atoning sacrifice on the cross, his substitutionary penal sacrifice on the cross is the ground and basis for our regeneration, for our conversion, that is our faith and repentance, for our justification, for our adoption, our sanctification, and ultimately our glorification. And so believer, never ever take your eyes off of the Lord Jesus Christ and his cross work for us sinners. That is where our forgiveness comes from. That is where our hope is fixed. Never get beyond being awed by the saving grace of God displayed at the cross of Christ. Be warned about getting bored with the gospel message of Jesus and his cross and resurrection. Now certainly, as the author of Hebrews tells us, we need to move on to maturity.
We need to not lay again the foundation, the elemental teachings, and so forth. But that doesn’t mean that we get beyond the gospel. The gospel’s for Christians too. I know I like to say that. But I think we need to remind ourselves of this. The Gospel isn’t just for unbelievers, that they might be saved. Certainly, God wants us to get, as the Church, to get the Gospel to unbelievers so that they might hear the glad tidings of great joy and that the Spirit might effectually call them to faith and repentance. Certainly, we believe that. But as Christians, we need the gospel too. That’s why Jesus gave us the Lord’s Supper. What is the Lord’s Supper? But a reminder of the gospel and a communion with Christ, a living communion with the living Christ in the gospel.
We are reminded in the Lord’s Supper as believers that Jesus loves us. As Jesus says to us through the words of institution, this is my body given for you. This is my blood shed for you. Not in a corporal or carnal way, of course. We don’t adhere to transubstantiation or anything like that. But Jesus is present. This isn’t just us doing a mental exercise, remembering, oh yeah, Jesus died for my sins. No. That’s part of what it is, but we, but Jesus comes to us by his word, and he comes to us through the words of institution. He reminds us, my child, this is my body. My body was broken for you. My blood was shed for you. Trust in me. That’s the implication of what is being communicated to us in the holy sacrament. of the Lord’s Supper.
And let us never get bored with the glad tidings of great joy. The old, old story of Jesus and his love will be a story, the true story, the real story that we will be celebrating throughout all eternity in our worship of our great and sovereign God. So God forgives us on the basis of Christ’s redeeming work on the cross. We learn also that our redemption and the forgiveness of sins that it secures for us is according to the riches of God’s grace. As it says in verse seven, according to the riches of his grace. In him we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of our trespasses, according to the riches of God’s grace. Hone in on that word riches. God’s grace is rich. It is a treasure. It is so precious. It’s well illustrated by the following story that I’d like to share with you.
And I quote, one night a condemned conspirator on the life of the premier of Ceylon sat alone in his cell waiting for dawn and his own execution. Suddenly he roused himself from apparently somber despair to ask that a certain Christian missionary he named be summoned to his cell as quickly as possible. When the astonished missionary arrived, knowing that the condemned man had been a Buddhist monk all his adult life, he was even more surprised to hear the man ask that he might be baptized immediately in the Christian faith. Assured that the man knew and understood the basic implications of his request, the missionary finally asked why he wanted to be baptized at that moment. The man replied with patent conviction that since he must die, he, quote, wished to die in a faith by which he could come freely to God, unrestrained by personal unworthiness and confident that he could entreat forgiveness simply out of love and mercy.
Beloved, it is God’s amazing grace that allows us to come freely unto God as a loving Heavenly Father, unrestrained by personal unworthiness and confident that God forgives us simply out of His love and mercy and grounded upon and based upon the redeeming work of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. Dear listener, do you believe that you may come to God freely, unrestrained by your personal unworthiness? Before my conversion, I was converted, and so far as I understand the Lord’s working in my own heart, I was converted as a teenager. I was 15 years old, but I grew up in a religious family, so I knew God’s law. I knew I was a lawbreaker, and I had heard the gospel, but I thought, you know, I need to make myself better. God’s not gonna accept me the way I am.
I have to improve myself, and I would often set myself out on a program of moral improvement. even punishing myself in a sense. I remember one time I did something bad and I felt so bad about it that I went out into the front yard and I was running back and forth to the point of exhaustion as a way of doing penance, basically. I did not realize that, no, that’s not the way it works. You don’t clean yourself up and make yourself presentable to God, you come to Him with all your filth and sin, and you come trusting that He, by His grace, will not only forgive you, but will begin to transform you and change you. He’s the one who cleans us up, away with this preparationism, this idea, well, you can’t come to God until you are fully ready and fully able, no.
Now we come to God as we are. God justifies the ungodly. He doesn’t keep us ungodly. Once we come to Him, He changes us. He sanctifies us. He works in us. But He forgives us freely. By grace alone, through faith alone, apart from works of the law. So come to him, he will receive you. Trust in Jesus and Jesus alone and he will forgive all of your sins by his grace and his grace alone. And so we’ve seen the teaching of our passage for this evening, but I kind of want to step back for a few minutes, and I want us to consider scripture as a whole. And don’t worry, this isn’t going to be long. We’re just going to look at some select passages. But next, I want us to consider what the scriptures teach about the complete and comprehensive nature of God’s forgiveness.
It isn’t just that God forgives us in dribs and drabs. God’s forgiveness of our sins is complete, it’s comprehensive, and it is secure. For example, let’s turn, I know I started our service this evening with Psalm 103, and I want to read Psalm 103, verse 12. It says in that verse, as far as the east is from the west, so far has he removed our transgressions from us. How far is the East from the West? Can’t get farther, can you? The point is, He has removed our transgressions from us. He’s removed them completely as far as the East is from the West. That is complete and comprehensive forgiveness. Or consider what the prophet Isaiah says in Isaiah chapter 38, verse 17. Isaiah 38. Verse 17, we read these words. Let’s make sure I have the right passage.
Isaiah 38, 17. Lo, for my own welfare I had great bitterness. It was you who has kept my soul from the pit of nothingness, for you have cast all my sins behind your back. Here we have a picture that God takes our sin and He casts it behind His back. In other words, it’s behind. It’s water under the bridge. It’s no longer an issue with your loving Heavenly Father. As you confess and forsake your sin, resting in God’s forgiving mercy in Christ, He forgives you and He casts it behind His back. Or consider Jeremiah 31, verse 34. Jeremiah 31, verse 34. We read these words. This is in the passage about the promise of the new covenant. They will not teach again each man his neighbor, and each man his brother, saying, know the Lord, for they will all know me.
From the least of them to the greatest of them, declares the Lord. For I will do what? I will forgive their iniquity and their sin. I will remember no more. Now, when God says, I will remember their sin no more, that doesn’t mean that God suffers from a self-inflicted cosmic amnesia. It means that God chooses not to dredge up the sins of our past and use it against us. When he forgives us, he knows all our past sins. He doesn’t forget it in the sense that he’s not aware of it, but he doesn’t use it against us because Jesus dealt with our sin on the cross once and for all and forever. The final passage from the Old Testament that illustrates God’s amazing forgiving grace to us, Micah 7 verse 19, Micah chapter 7 verse 19. says this, he will again have compassion on us.
He will tread our iniquities underfoot. Yes, you will cast all their sins into the depths of the sea. Notice the imagery that the scripture uses of God’s forgiving grace to us. He removes our transgressions from us as far as the east is from the west. He casts our sins behind his back. And He tramples our sin underfoot. He casts our sin into the depths of the sea. As the article on forgiveness in the New Bible Dictionary puts it, when He forgives, men’s sins are dealt with thoroughly. God sees them no more. So believer, rejoice in the fact that God has totally, completely, thoroughly forgiven you your sins. This is not a sin-free card. This is not an excuse for you to go and say, oh, God’s forgiven me. Well, I can just go on sinning.
No. Read Romans chapter 6. How can we who’ve died to sin in union with Christ still live in them? But knowing that our sins are forgiven, that is the chief motivator to holiness in our lives. We are not motivated, brothers and sisters, by a terror of God’s wrath and judgment, for we are no longer under the covenant of works. But we are motivated by gratitude for God’s gift of forgiveness and salvation to us in Christ. May this precious truth motivate you to greater obedience and holiness out of gratitude for your heavenly Father’s love for you in the Lord Jesus Christ. And finally, O church, let us as a church take to heart how God’s forgiveness of our sins should lead us to be forgiving toward others who sin against us. C.S. Lewis once said, everyone says forgiveness is a lovely idea until they have something to forgive, right?
We can talk the good talk when it comes to forgiveness. But if someone has sinned against you, and we’ve all sinned against others and have been sinned against by others in one way or another, we need to remember that God’s forgiveness of us in Christ ought to motivate us to be forgiving towards others. And I leave our time this evening with some considerations, again, from Paul’s letter to the Ephesians. In Ephesians 4, verses 1 through 6, we read these words. Paul writes, therefore I, the prisoner of the Lord, implore you to walk in a manner worthy of the calling with which you’ve been called, with all humility and gentleness, with patience, showing tolerance for one another in love, being diligent to preserve the unity of the spirit and the bond of peace, There is one body and one spirit, just as also you were called in one hope of your calling, one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of all, who is over all and through all and in all.
And then skip down to verses 30 through 32. Paul writes, do not grieve the Holy Spirit of God. He’s speaking to the church corporate here in particular. Do not grieve the Holy Spirit of God by whom you were sealed for the day of redemption. Let all bitterness and wrath and anger and clamor and slander be put away from you along with all malice. Be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving each other, just as God in Christ has forgiven you. Again, remember what we pray in the Lord’s Prayer. Forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors. May the God who graciously forgave us all of our sins and in our justification, that includes past, present, and future sins. All of our sins have been legally forgiven in Christ, who died for all of them. But we experience his daily fatherly forgiveness as we continue to forgive our sins, as the Spirit continues to convict us and we continue to repent of and forsake our sins.
We experience his tender mercies every day. His mercies are new. Every morning, his covenant faithfulness to us is great. Having experienced the forgiving, amazing forgiving grace of God, let us extend that forgiveness to others who have sinned against us. Amen. Let us pray. Our Lord and Father in heaven, sovereign and eternal God, we do again thank you for how merciful and forgiving you have been toward us. For we are a wayward people. All we like sheep have gone astray. We have turned everyone to his own way. But you, O gracious Lord and Father, have laid on Christ, the suffering servant, the iniquity of us all. And so, Lord, as you have so graciously forgiven us, grant unto us a forgiving spirit towards others. For love covers a multitude of sin, and give us grace, O Lord, to extend to others the forgiveness that we ourselves have received.
And now, Lord, as we prepare to partake of the Holy Supper this evening, we pray that your spirit would deepen our faith and strengthen our hope as we partake together. We ask these things in Jesus’ name, amen.
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