Written by R. Fowler White |
Wednesday, July 27, 2022
Evidently, in our day, too many don’t share God’s view of sin. Instead, they insist that they’re good by nature and can earn God’s acceptance, having no need to seek from Him the forgiveness of sins. The truth is, however, that we sinners have a debt to God that we cannot pay. As such, our only hope is in God Himself, who graciously credits the full payment of debt to all who receive and rest on Christ alone. Wrapped in the robe of righteousness that He provides, we exult in our God, confessing as one, I believe … in the forgiveness of sins.

As we come to Article 10 of the Apostles’ Creed—I believe … in the forgiveness of sins, we’re still in what we take to be the third section of the Creed, where the focus is on the person and work of God the Holy Spirit. It might strike us as odd that the forgiveness of sins is placed in this section. After all, in the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus assumes that we will make our requests for pardon to our Heavenly Father (Matt 6:12). Meanwhile, the Apostle Paul tells us that it was Christ the Son who purchased forgiveness for us in His cross work (Eph 1:7). Nonetheless, we also remember that the Spirit’s ministry is to prove the world of sinners wrong about sin, righteousness, and judgment (John 16:7-11). In God’s application of salvation to sinners, we can say that the Spirit makes the first move necessary for us to receive forgiveness. So, what is it that we confess when we declare, I believe in … the forgiveness of sins?
To unpack this article we’ll start with this question: do we share God’s view of sin? In Scripture, of course, God talks about sin and condemns it as failure to conform to His nature and moral law in our actions, attitudes, affections, and nature. In briefer terms, sin is failure to be or do as God requires. Sin is also described as a debt. In the Lord’s Prayer, the forgiveness of sins is the forgiveness of debts. We should know why our sins are debts. It’s because we owe God obedience; that is, we have a debt of obedience to Him, particularly when we disobey. Our disobedience, in truth, expresses hatred of and indifference to God and His requirements, quite the opposite of what we owe Him. Recognizing the reality of personal sin, then, is affirming that we aren’t what God requires us to be, and we don’t do what He requires us to do. In fact, we can’t be or do good as He requires (Eph 2:1-3; Rom 3:23; 5:18-19). Yet, as recently as 2020, almost two-thirds of people surveyed believe that most people are good by nature. Friends, if this survey is accurate, deception about human nature is rampant. The Apostle John is clear: If we say that we have no sin, we are deceiving ourselves and the truth is not in us. … If we say that we have not sinned, we make God a liar and His word is not in us (1 John 1:8, 10). The Apostle Paul is blunt: none is righteous, no, not one; … no one does good, not even one (Rom 3:10, 12). The point? Only by affirming God’s view of sin can we also rightly affirm the forgiveness of sins as we confess it in the Creed’s tenth article.
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The coming Messiah is repeatedly identified as the almighty God and eternal father, the wisdom of God, righteous, highly exalted, yet to be born of a lowly virgin. These prophetic verses can only be speaking of one person, Israel’s coming Redeemer, Jesus Christ, who is the God of Abraham (cf. John 8:58).

Like Jews and Muslims, Christians are monotheists. But unlike Jews and Muslims, Christians are also Trinitarians. We believe that the one God is triune, and is revealed as three distinct persons: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. When it comes to the Son (Jesus Christ), the Bible everywhere affirms that Jesus is true and eternal God, uncreated, without beginning or end.
Given Jesus’s central place in Christian theology and his importance in the history of Western Civilization, non-Christian religions often attempt to co-opt Jesus and make him one of their own. But this is not easy to do since the doctrine of the deity of Jesus Christ differentiates Christianity from all other religions. If Jesus is true and eternal God as taught in Scripture, then the Christian doctrine of God is unique among world religions. The irony is that while virtually all religions honor Jesus as a prophet or teacher, nevertheless they all reject (implicitly or explicitly) the key points the New Testament makes about Jesus–that he is the second person of the Trinity, and that he is the eternal Son, and he possesses the same divine attributes as the Father and the Holy Spirit. Jesus is God in human flesh, something Jesus personally believed and proclaimed about himself (and a matter to which we will return in a subsequent essay in this series when we discuss Christ’s incarnation).
That the doctrine of the deity of Jesus Christ is not the invention of the early church as often claimed, can be seen by merely scanning the pages of Holy Scripture, with its substantial teaching regarding the deity of Jesus in both testaments. One of the most powerful lines of evidence for the deity of Jesus are those texts in the Old Testament, such as the well-known messianic prophecy in Isaiah 7:14 written hundreds of years before Jesus’ birth. “Therefore the Lord himself will give you a sign: The virgin will be with child and will give birth to a son, and will call him Immanuel.” The Messiah will be miraculously conceived, and given the title “God with us.”
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It’s hard to give a defense for the faith that is within you if you can’t give up the things of the world in order to follow Christ. We show the world how we love Jesus a lot more by how we act and prioritize our life than what we say to them in words. If we do not value the things of God then as the example of the Northern Kingdom shows us the Lord will take them away from us, and then where will we be? Our idols can never give what we lose in not having the fulness of Christ in our being and in our soul.

Jet lag is a thing, but I seem to be handling it well and without much trouble. I was a little bit on the struggle bus yesterday for morning and evening worship along with Sabbath School. However, the Spirit was faithful to give me strength and lead me through it all. It helped that we had a luncheon that fueled me with all the great food I may have missed while in Namibia. Bethany folks can cook like no one’s business and the fact that I was honored to receive so many cards and well-wishes for pastor’s appreciation it made it easy to serve. I am truly a blessed man.
Of the many lessons I learned while at the International Conference of Reformed Churches is that the world is at the same time a lot smaller than I once thought and also a lot bigger at the same time. What I mean by that is when I had the opportunity to speak to folks in the local churches in Windhoek they spoke of similar issues (materialism, globalism, busyness, etc…) that our church back in Clover deals with. There truly is nothing new under the sun. Yet, on the other hand the stories I heard from brothers in India, Indonesia, and Northern Ireland reminded me that while we have issues in the United States they pale in comparison to what our brothers and sisters face in Europe, Africa, and Asia. We are truly privileged to experience what little persecution we undergo in North America. That is not to downplay the real troubles we have on the horizon, but we are not quite in the same ballpark as some of our other brothers. In our prayer and worship help today I want to talk a little bit about what we can learn from how they are handling these troubles for when the piper comes calling on our shores.
As I sat and conversated with brothers from South Sudan as an example a thing that one of the men chuckled in jest as he said it was that they have no chaff in their churches. What he meant by that was that in a cultural situation where being named a follower of Christ has fatal consequences in some cases no one is going to pretend to be a believer. He wasn’t communicating that his local congregation was made up of only the elect, but that serious believers made up the totality of the membership.
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