If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.
He is faithful
God’s forgiveness rests in two attributes of God – His faithfulness and His justice. God will always act according to His character.
God is true to His promises. He is always consistent with His character. God is never unfaithful to His Word. He never breaks His Word. God faithfully forgives us because of Christ’s death for us. He does nothing unfair.
Je 31:34, “…For I will forgive their iniquity, and their sin I will remember no more.”
Heb 10:23, “Let us hold fast the confession of our hope without wavering, for He who promised is faithful.”
He 11:11, “By faith Sarah herself also received strength to conceive seed, and she bore a child when she was past the age, because she judged Him faithful who had promised.”
and just
God does nothing contrary to His character. He is always just and true to Himself. God’s justice is His moral self-consistency. He always acts in uprightness in keeping with His own character.
God does not cleanse us because of love, mercy, or kindness but is always based on the finished work of Christ on the cross. God’s forgiveness is always consistent with His justice because Jesus took the penalty for our sin. We can depend on God’s righteousness to forgive us if we confess our sin.
Ro 3:25-26, 25 “…whom God set forth as a propitiation by His blood, through faith, to demonstrate His righteousness, because in His forbearance God had passed over the sins that were previously committed, 26 to demonstrate at the present time His righteousness, that He might be just and the justifier of the one who has faith in Jesus.”
PRINCIPLE:
God must always be true to Himself.
APPLICATION:
It would be an insufferable contradiction if God were forced to violate His own righteousness to forgive our unrighteousness. The same attribute of justice that demands sin’s punishment guarantees our forgiveness.
God is faithful to Himself, His Son, and His Word. He is just and right in everything He does. He always operates on the level. God will not make you crawl and cower before Him to receive His forgiveness. He does not require righteousness from us to receive forgiveness; all He requires is the death of Christ on the cross.
Christianity is not operation bootstraps. God does not ask for our blood but the blood of Christ.
