Why The Good News Is So Good!

1. Christ’s death paid in full the penalty of sin, once and for all. With His blood He signed for the pardon of the entire human race. God does not count against the world its sins because God placed all sins (believers’ and unbelievers’ sins in the past, present and future) upon Christ and counted them against Him (see Hebrews 10:10,12; 2 Corinthians 5:19).

2. We do not come home in order that God may forgive and justify us but He has forgiven us all so that we can run back home to Him and experience His salvation (see Isaiah 44:22).

3. God revealed His unconditional love by signing for our pardon and accomplished our reconciliation and justification even before we knew about Him, repented of our sins and believed in Him (see Romans 5:8).

4. Our acts of faith, repentance, or confession, do not cause God to forgive or justify us. These acts change us, not God. Coming home to Him simply allows us to experience who He already is: eternally loving and unconditionally forgiving! Faith and repentance are not conditions to the fact of God’s forgiveness but only to our experience of forgiveness.

Can we choose to forgive people who’ve deeply hurt us even when they don’t apologize or make amends? Does our offender have to be penitent before we can choose to forgive freely in our hearts? Do we teach our people to demand repentance or confession from their offenders before they forgive? There are countless stories of people who willingly forgave their impenitent offenders. Sinful human beings will seem to be more merciful than God if we come across teaching that God forgives us only when we repent and believe in Him, that He requires repentance and confession before He signs for our pardon.

Note: I John 1:9 “If we confess our sins He is faithful and just to forgive our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.” God doesn’t become faithful and just when we confess. He is and always was. Confession is for our sake as in James 1:5, “Confess your sins…that you may be healed.”

5. Every person born into this world is born fully forgiven and legally justified. The question isn’t whether or not people have been forgiven but whether they have come home to God or have stayed away from Him in willful unbelief thereby failing to experience God’s salvation (see Romans 5:18).

Note: Romans 5:16,18 (NEB) The judicial action, following the one offence, issued in a verdict of condemnation, but the act of grace, following upon so many misdeeds, issued in a verdict of acquittal… The issue of one just act is acquittal and life for all men.”

6. Many people will still be eternally lost but the reason is not that they were not forgiven by God or counted like they never sinned at all (justified) but because they tragically chose to willfully reject a loving God who has already forgiven them. Those who would experience hell are fully pardoned sinners but have refused to come home to God in persistent unbelief.

John 3:18 “There is no judgment awaiting those who trust him. But those who do not trust him have already been judged for not believing in the only Son of God” (see John 3:18).

In sharing the Good News then, we don’t want to see ourselves as believers who are forgiven while nonbelievers aren’t. Instead, we want to see nonbelievers as those who are as fully forgiven and justified because of the cross. They have “Pardoned!” stamped on their certificate as much as we have on ours for the whole world shares one certificate of pardon and it is stamped with and signed for with the blood of Christ.

The avowed atheist, the Satan worshiper, the impenitent terrorist, and the worldly businessperson are as fully pardoned as John the Beloved, the Apostle Paul, or the most sincere believer. The unbeliever doesn’t need God to sign for his pardon because He already has and that even before the foundation of the world. What the unbeliever needs is to discover a forever loving God who has fully pardoned and justified him in order that he may run home and forever stay with Him.

Growing up we’ve heard either A or B:

A. Obey God’s commandments, shape up, live a moral life, THEN God signs for your pardon!

B. No, no, no! It’s not obedience. Just come home to God and believe in His love. It’s not by works; it’s by faith! When you have faith, THEN God signs for your pardon!

Many preachers pound the pulpit and shout, “No matter how dark your life may have been, no matter how great yours sins are — just come home to Him, believe, have faith — He WILL surely forgive you!

But I believe there’s a letter C and it goes:

C. IT IS FINISHED! God has signed for your pardon long before you knew Him, believed and obeyed Him. Run home, not in order to be forgiven, but in order to experience His unconditional acceptance, pardon, and love!

It is finished!

by : Richard David Tamayo