When You Don’t Feel Forgiven

I think I was around the age of seven when I first confessed my sins to the Lord and asked him to forgive me. This spiritual discipline has been a part of my life for as long as I can remember. But it has never been an easy one. Not because it is hard for me to confess my sins (after all, God knows them anyway) or because I don’t think I need forgiveness (I am desperately in need of forgiveness). No, it’s the feeling forgiven part that I struggle with. At times I find myself confessing the same sins again and again (even sins committed days and weeks ago) in the hope of finally feeling set free.

Earlier this year I began studying 1 John and the Lord was kind in a way that I hadn’t anticipated. The text I was studying was one that I had read and heard a thousand times but had never taken the verse word by word and studied it in depth: 

“If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.” (1 John 1:9)

. . . he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins . . .

But what does that even mean? What or who is God being faithful to?  Why is it an act of faithfulness on God’s part to forgive us our sin when we’ve confessed? 

First, he is being faithful to his word. There is no one on earth who is faithful to his word like our Father in heaven. I am a mother who strives daily to earn her children’s trust and keep her word and I fail regularly. God is not like that. When God promises to do something, he does it — every time. He cannot be unfaithful to his word and he has promised, “I will forgive if you confess your sins.”

But not only is God faithful to his promise, more than that, he is faithful to his Son Jesus and his finished work on the cross. Every time the Father forgives you he is saying, “My child, it is finished. It is finished. It is finished. It is completely finished. I am faithful to the finished work of my Son, you are forgiven.”  

But the verse doesn’t merely point to God’s faithfulness; it also highlights his justice. “He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins.” But that doesn’t make sense! Shouldn’t the verse say that he is faithful and merciful to forgive us our sins? Isn’t forgiveness an act of grace? 

Or think about it from the other direction. How can justice lead to forgiveness? After all, isn’t it God’s justice that demands that he punish sin? It would make sense if the verse said, “He is faithful and just to punish our sin.” Justice meets sin and we experience the holy wrath of God. But forgiveness? How is that possible?

The Finished Work

Again, it comes back to the finished work of Jesus. If it was just a matter of God and my sin, there’d be no hope. But Jesus gets between God’s justice and me. On the cross, God was faithful and just to punish sin. He doesn’t stop being a just God for one second. But, because Jesus absorbed God’s wrath (in the words of 1 John 2:2, he is “the propitiation for our sins”), he is now free to forgive me. More than that, he forgives me because he is faithful and just. It’s as though God is saying, “I am infinitely just and I am infinitely gracious. And I will satisfy my justice on Jesus so that I can be gracious to you.” Justice used to demand my condemnation; now it demands my pardon. Because of his justice, I am forgiven. If God did not forgive me when I confess my sins in the name of his Son, then he would be unjust. 

This incredible truth — that the faithfulness and justice of God leads to my forgiveness — moves the question past my feelings to the reality. And what a glorious reality it is!