Welcome to Reign of Grace. This
program is brought to you by Reign of Grace Media Ministries,
an outreach ministry of Eager Avenue Grace Church in Albany,
Georgia. It is our pleasure and privilege
to present to you the gospel message of the sovereign grace
and glory of God in the person and work of the Lord Jesus Christ. We pray that today's program
will be a blessing to you. Thank you for listening and now
for today's program. Welcome to our program today.
I'm glad you could join us. And if you'd like to read, follow
along in your Bibles, I'll be preaching beginning with the
book of Colossians chapter three and verse 12. And I'm picking
up where I left off last week on two messages concerning this
subject, godly love and forgiveness. Last week I did part one and
I mainly talked about godly love and brought in forgiveness. And
today I'm gonna talk about forgiveness. This is part two. So if you didn't
hear last week's, order that message or go to our website
and listen to it. It's Godly Love and Forgiveness,
part one. And this is part two. And I'm
gonna go back and read Colossians chapter three. This was my text
for last week's message. And I want you to look at this.
In Colossians chapter three, and verse 12. And this is the
Apostle Paul writing by inspiration of the Holy Spirit. And he's
encouraging the Colossian believers to be kind and loving and forgiving
of one another. And he tells them in verse 12,
put on therefore as the elect of God. I explained that last
week, but putting on means to embrace it, to believe to enact
it, put it on, as the elect of God, holy and beloved, those
who are separated, loved of God, the elect of God, that's a believer,
whom God chose before the foundation of the world, put on bowels of
mercy, that's compassion. That's a New Testament way of
talking about compassion. kindness, humbleness of mind,
humility before God and before me. And understand now, just
like the love that I talked about last week that nobody has by
nature, true humility is something nobody has by nature. Because
man by nature seeks ways of salvation from God based upon his works. And that's pride. We're not humble
before God until he brings us to bow to his way of salvation,
based upon the works of Christ, the work of Christ, the blood
of Christ, the righteousness of Christ. When God brings me
by the Spirit in the new birth, convicting me of my sin, I'm
a sinner, and here's what he convicts me of, that I have nothing,
absolutely nothing, to recommend me unto God. Whatever, if God
gives me any blessing or benefit of salvation, I don't deserve
it and I don't earn it. It's totally up to His sovereign
mercy based on the merits of the obedience unto death of Christ.
His blood, His righteousness alone. That's humility, and that's
what Paul's talking about. We have humility before God and
before men. He says meekness, that's willing
submission to God's will, to God's way, to God's word. And
then put on long-suffering, that means putting up with a lot,
and how do we do that? Verse 13, forbearing one another
and forgiving one another. If any man have a quarrel against
any, he says, even as Christ forgave you, so also do ye. How am I to forgive people? How am I to forgive a brother
or sister in Christ? Unconditionally. And I made the
point last week, there are conditions, but hold on to that thought.
And he says in verse 14, and above all these things, put on
charity, which is the bond You might say the glue of perfectness,
of completeness, that brings it to completion. And so this
is godly love and forgiveness. And forgiveness of our sins,
if we want to enjoy and be assured of the forgiveness of our sins
from God, then we must look to Christ. And as I said, he said,
even as Christ forgave you, so also do ye, talking about that
forgiveness. The Bible teaches us in 1 John
4 and verse 10, it says, herein is love, not that we love God,
but that he loved us and gave his son to be the propitiation
for our sins. And that is the basis of our
love to one another as far as believers. And that's what he's
talking about. Last week I brought out how there are different kinds
of love. And what he's talking about here is this godly love,
this charity, is between brethren in the faith. That's that love
of God, that love that is concerned first and foremost for the glory
of God. It's that love of Christ, that
love to Christ and His truth. Do you love the Word of God?
You cannot love God and not love the Word of God because the Word
of God identifies and distinguishes the true God from idols. And
as I made this point, that man by nature does not love God.
Understand this, man by nature loves his idea of God. But his
idea of God naturally is an idol. It's a God likened to himself.
God said, you thought I was one such as yourself, and you were
wrong. God is high above us. And so God saves us. God saves
his people, loves his people, his elect, not everybody without
exception, he forgives, Okay, based upon one condition that
Christ fulfilled on the cross by his obedience unto death.
So how are we to forgive one another? Unconditionally. But
there are conditions for forgiveness. And Christ, but they're not on
me, not on you, they're on Christ. Over in 1 John chapter one, there's
a verse that some people misread, misuse. 1 John chapter one and
verse nine. It says, if we confess our sins,
He, that is God, is faithful and just to forgive us our sins
and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. And so people, they read that
if passage, if we confess our sins. And there's a problem there
because people read these if passages and you say, well, see,
there's the condition. The condition of my being forgiven
is that I must confess my sins. That is not what this is teaching.
In fact, up before this verse, he'd already talked about how
the cleansing of sin, the forgiveness of sin was only by the blood
of Christ. There's the condition. But this
is not a conditional if. Now, mark this down. In the Bible,
there are conditional ifs. If you do this, God will do that
as a result, okay? And then there are evidential
ifs. In other words, if you do this,
that gives evidence of. Now, do you understand that?
You say, well, that's too complicated. Well, it better not be. Because
how do I know the difference, for example, is if something
is a conditional if or an evidential if? Well, the covenant, the gospel,
determines what it is. Under the law, the law of God
given to Israel, that was a conditional covenant. where God constantly
told them, if you do this, if you obey my law, I will bless
you, and that was temporal blessings. And you know what? That's conditional.
But here's the point of that whole covenant. Israel failed.
They failed to meet the conditions. And that gives us a testimony
of man by nature. If God were to condition salvation
on me, say, if you do this, God as a result will do this, I'd
fail. So would you. And if you don't
believe that, it's because the Holy Spirit has not convicted
you of your sin. He hadn't shown you yourself.
We're sinners. And sinners can only be saved
by grace. And grace cannot be conditioned
on that sinner. It's conditioned on Christ. The
Bible says in Romans 5.21, as sin reigned unto death, even
so might grace reign through righteousness unto eternal life
by Jesus Christ our Lord. And so, if this is conditional,
I can tell you right now, none of us will be forgiven. But it's
not conditional. It's evidential. And that's what
he's saying here in 1 John 1.9. If we confess our sins, That's
an evidence that God has been faithful and just to forgive
us our sins. It's kind of like when a baby
is born. The first thing you wanna see
that evidences that baby's life is you wanna see that baby breathing
on its own. Now the baby breathing on its
own is not a condition the baby must meet in order to obtain
life. The baby breathing on its own
is an evidence that life has already been there. Life was
in the womb. No use arguing when life begins. Begins in the womb, when God
creates it. And the evidence of that life
is when that baby is born. Actually, there's evidence even
before that. The heartbeat, the movement, all of that. But when
the baby comes forth from the womb, the evidence of life within
that child is it breathes. And the breathing didn't cause
life. It wasn't a condition that the baby had to meet to gain
life. It's an evidence. And here's a sinner confessing
his or her sins before God. Truly confessing now. Not just
saying, not just repeating a line from a pamphlet, oh, I'm a sinner. Yeah, well, I'm a sinner. And
here's what kind of sinner I am. God, Lord, if thou, Lord, shouldest
mark iniquities, who would stand? That's the kind of sinner I am.
If God were to charge me with my sin, if he were to impute
sin to me, I would not stand. If he were to record one sin
that I've committed, and I've committed more than one, a bunch
of them, if he were to record them in his law books and hold
them against me at judgment, I would be damned forever. But
thank God because of what Christ did, All right? God is faithful
and just to forgive me, and He will not charge me with my sin.
I quote it all the time. Who shall lay anything to the
charge of God's elect? Who can condemn us? It's Christ
that died. It's God that justifies. It's
Christ that died. God does not impute sin to His
people. You know what He imputes to them,
what He charges to them? The righteousness of Christ.
Christ who was made sin for us, Christ who knew no sin, that
we might be made the righteousness of God in Him. I have righteousness. I have a perfect righteousness.
But that's not anything I did. It's not anything I contributed
to. It's all Christ. And so if we
confess our sins, God is faithful and just to forgive us our sins.
So now that is unconditional forgiveness towards God's people. Now that's the way that we're
to forgive one another. That's the way I'm, if you're
an unbeliever, you're not, if you're an unbeliever, you are
not my brother or sister in Christ, but I'm still to forgive you
unconditionally. I'm to love my enemies. That's
what the Bible says. But if you're a believer and
you're my brother or sister in Christ, Oh, how I'm to forgive
you. Even as Christ has forgiven me,
unconditionally. And let me take you to a couple
of passages of scripture that I think puts it in perspective
for us. Turn to, if you want to look at it in your Bibles,
this is Matthew chapter 18. Matthew chapter 18, and look
at verse 21. And this is where the apostle
Peter came to the Lord, it says in verse 21, then came Peter
to him, to Christ, and he said, Lord, how oft shall my brother
sin against me and I forgive him? And then Peter said, till
seven times? Is seven times enough? Is seven
times the limit? And look at Christ's answer to
him in verse 22. Jesus saith unto him, I say not
unto thee until seven times, but until 70 times seven. Well, is he saying literally
77 times is the limit? No. He's telling Peter and the
apostles, the rest of the disciples, that there is no limit to how
we are to forgive our brothers and sisters in Christ. If my
brother sins against me, how many times am I to forgive? If
he sins against me seven times, 70 times, how many times am I
to forgive him? Infinitely. Infinitely. There's no limit to it. There's
no limit to it. And we're gonna look at Luke
17 just in a minute. But you know what, and Christ
gives us some more information there as Luke records it. And
basically, Peter hearing that, and the disciples hearing that,
he says over in Luke 17, Lord, increase our faith. And what
he's saying there is that, man, I can't do that but by the Spirit
of God. You know how by nature, the flesh, we hold grudges, we
want vengeance. Our first, we have to fight the
warfare of the flesh and the spirit in this matter, don't
we? If we're believers. We have sinful flesh to deal
with that wants vengeance, that wants to get back at people,
that justifies our hatred and our bad feelings. No, no, he
said fight that. He says you've been given a gift
by the grace of God, and that's forgiveness. And here's the thing
about it. Peter asked, he said, how oft
shall my brother sin against me and I forgive him? Well, think
about this. How oft shall I sin against God
and he forgive me? I sin against God every day.
And if you're honest, you'd say the same thing. But there is
no limitation to God's forgiveness of me because he loves me and
sent his son to die for my sins. And he doesn't charge me with
those sins. And there's no limitation to his mercy. There's no limitation
to his grace and his love towards his people. Now those who go
through life in unbelief and die in unbelief, God does have
a matter against them. He does charge them with their
sins. Why? Because they don't have Christ.
They don't have a Redeemer. They don't have a Savior. They
don't have a mediator. They don't have a righteousness
that answers the demands of God's justice. But if you're in Christ,
you're washed in his blood, you're clothed in his righteousness,
and there's no limitation to his mercy and his forgiveness
of your sins. And it's all based upon what
Christ accomplished in his obedience unto death as the surety, the
substitute, and the redeemer of his people. How many times
has God forgiven me? I can't count them. So how many
times am I to forgive my brother or sister in Christ who sinned
against me? There's no limitation. And it's
to be unconditional forgiveness. Unconditional forgiveness. But
now let's go over to Luke chapter 17. And let me read you this. And some scholars say, well,
this was another time that Peter asked this question. or the disciples
ask it. Some say that Luke just gives
more information because, however, the Spirit revealed it to him.
But in Luke 17 and verse three, now I want you to notice something
here. There's something a little different here, but it's the
same issue and the same basic way of forgiveness, unconditional.
And he says in Luke 17 three, take heed to yourselves If thy
brother trespass against thee, rebuke him. And if he repent,
forgive him. And verse four, he says, and
if he trespass against thee seven times in a day, a lot, and seven
times in a day, turn again to thee, saying, I repent, thou
shalt forgive him, and the apostles said unto the Lord, increase
our faith. Now you remember back in our
text, Colossians chapter three, he talked about be long-suffering. How much are we to put up with?
We're to put up with a lot. How much does the Lord put up
with from us? He puts up with a lot. But here, listen to what the
Lord said in the book of Luke. He said, if thy brother trespass
against thee, rebuke him. Now does that mean, is this opposed
to what he said back in Matthew 18, just forgiving? No. We're still not forgiving. But
that unconditional forgiveness, now think about it, that unconditional
forgiveness does not ignore or alleviate the problem itself. If your brother or sister trespasses
against you, it's still a trespass. It's still a sin. Now, I'm to
forgive him unconditionally. But there's still a problem there.
You know, whenever there's a problem, or I have a problem, or somebody
has a problem with me, I try to do several things. I try,
number one, I try to examine myself and see, well, is there
any problem that I caused? Is it my fault? Do I have a part
in the problem that caused it? And if I did, I want to go and
tell the brother or sister, I'm sorry. And I want to pray for
God's forgiveness. But secondly, if I really find
that I didn't cause it, and it's not that I'm perfect or anything,
nothing like that, but it's truly that brother or sister's fault,
then I'm still to forgive them unconditionally. But in order
for fellowship between me and that brother or sister to be
restored, they have to be rebuked. You did wrong. I forgive you. You did wrong and you need to
say you're sorry. And that's what he's talking
about here. He's not talking about any conditions for forgiveness. We're to forgive each other unconditionally.
But he's talking about things that have to be done to restore
the joy of fellowship. And let me say one thing about
that. The fellowship that exists between brothers and sisters
in Christ, technically speaking, can never be broken. That's a
bond of union that God has set forth in Christ and it can never
be broken. But the joy and the warmth of
that fellowship can be broken. When a brother or sister does
me or you or anybody wrong. And so he says, and if you rebuke
him, and if he repent, forgive him. Now the forgiveness there
is talking about the restoration of fellowship. It's not conditional
forgiveness, again. We're to forgive others as Christ
forgave us. If he trespass against thee seven
times in a day, seven times in a day, turn again to thee, saying,
I repent, thou shalt forgive him. And the apostle said, Lord,
increase our faith. So going back to our text now,
Colossians chapter three, what is all this about? Well, it's
talking about seeking to be Christ-like. in the way that we treat a brother
or sister in Christ. With love and forgiveness, unconditional
love, unconditional forgiveness. And again, I stress now, this
is the kind of love that no sinner has by nature. This is the kind
of love that God imparts or sheds abroad. within the hearts of
his people when he convicts them of sin and of righteousness and
of judgment and brings them to Christ for all salvation. Seeing that God loves me and
forgives me unconditionally because Christ, in my stead, as my surety,
my substitute, my redeemer, fulfilled those conditions. And what were
those conditions? Well, he's faithful and just
to forgive us our sins. Over in the book of 1 John, that
I mentioned earlier, I mentioned it last week, and mentioned it
earlier in this message, in 1 John, when he talks about the forgiveness
of sins. Listen again, and we need to
stress this. He says in verse six of 1 John
one, If we say that we have fellowship with Him, with God, and walk
in darkness, that is, walk in a lie, a false gospel, we lie
and do not the truth. But if we walk in the light,
now this is an evidential if, 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, cleanseth us from all sin. Now what cleanses
me from all sin? The blood of Jesus Christ. Verse
eight, if we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves.
I'm a sinner, a sinner saved by grace, and the truth is not
in us if we confess our sins, evidencing that he's been faithful
to me and just to forgive me of my sins and to cleanse us
from all unrighteousness. God must be just to forgive us. But when it comes to our relationship
with one another, It's unconditional love, unconditional forgiveness,
no question about it. And we have to war against the
flesh. But the restoration, whenever
a brother or sister trespasses against us, does something harmful
to us, says something, we're to forgive them unconditionally.
But that doesn't deny the fact that we need to rebuke them. Tell them that was wrong, I was
hurt. by what you said or by what you did. And take inventory
of ourselves. Did I have a part in that? Did
I cause that? Did I hurt them? And if I hurt
them, they have no reason or cause in the Bible to come back
and hurt me with revenge. They're to forgive me. But if
I had any part in it, then I need to be rebuked and I need to ask
their forgiveness. But if they did, and if they
did it to me, they need to be rebuked and ask my forgiveness,
not as a condition for forgiveness. And I know he says, thou shalt
forgive him, but that's talking about a restoration of fellowship
here. One passage of scripture doesn't
deny the other. Unconditional forgiveness, unconditional
love between brethren. But that's because of the bond
of union. What are we? If we're brothers
and sisters in Christ, We are all sinners saved by the grace
of God. We sin against God daily. We
need His forgiveness daily. His forgiveness is not based
upon our confession or our feeling sorry. His forgiveness is based
upon the blood of Jesus Christ which cleanses us from all sin,
me and all my brethren. I have one righteousness before
Holy God, and that's the imputed righteousness of Christ. I have
no merit to plead before God. I can't say, God, forgive me
and receive me because I'm better than another. I need His unconditional
love and forgiveness. Hope you'll join us next week
for another message from God's Word. We are glad you could join us
for another edition of Reign of Grace. This program is brought
to you by Reign of Grace Media Ministries, an outreach ministry
of Eager Avenue Grace Church in Albany, Georgia. To receive
a copy of today's program or to learn more about Reign of
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today and may the Lord be with you.