The Accomplishments of Christ’s Death: Cancellation of Sin; Forgiveness, Colossians 2:12-14

We have gone through the Gospel of Matthew and have come towards the end, which is really one of the largest section in Matthew and it focuses on the death of Christ. We have gone through His agony and get Gethsemane, the struggle there, His arrest, the six trials that He experienced, and then starting with the conclusion of those trials we have been walking our way step-by-step through what will be approximately 33 different stages of the crucifixion, from the conclusion of the trial to the sealing of the tomb.

I paused after the 25th stage to talk about what Jesus accomplished on the cross; not by His physical death, but by His spiritual death. For some people that's a new concept because often these are not distinguished, but spiritual death means separation from God. When Adam and Eve were created they had perfect fellowship, perfect harmony with God. The instant they sinned something happen. God had warned them that the instant they sinned they would certainly die. They died. They didn't die physically. That didn't happen for over 900 years, but they died spiritually. We know that because when God came, as was His daily habit, to walk with them in the garden they heard the sound of God in the garden and the Scripture says they were afraid, and they ran and hid. That had never happened before. That's a consequence of their disobedience. They are now spiritually dead they are separated from God. He is no longer the manifestation of love, but fear. This then shows that they died spiritually.

The physical death and all the other horrible things that we experience in life, and the corruption of living in a fallen world, are the consequences of the spiritual death of Adam and Eve, image bearers of God in this creation. They were to be representatives of God. We are all still in the image of God but it's a corrupt image because of sin.

When Christ goes to the cross He has to pay the legal penalty for sin. The legal penalty for sin was spiritual death, not physical; that's a consequence. So between 12 noon and 3 pm Jesus Christ is on the cross, and God shrouds the area in deep darkness so that no one can watch what happens. At the end Jesus recited Psalm 22, "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?" During those three hours God the Father is separated from the Son, not in terms of His being—the Trinity can never be broken—but, legally because Christ has been made sin for us. Second Corinthians 5:21, "He who knew no sin was made sin for us".

He is legally separated from the Father but at the end, to make sure we understand what happened, John in his Gospel says, "When it was [TETELESTAI] finished". This word to TETELESTAI is an important word. It's in the perfect tense in Greek, which means it's talking about something that's already been finished in the past. So Jesus is no longer working on that which provides salvation, it has been completed.

The second thing we noted about that is it's a financial word, a word that was put at the bottom of a bill when the bill was paid. TETELESTAI meant paid in full. That is, there was a financial legal transaction on the cross where our debt was paid. I'm using that specific terminology because that's the background for our passages morning in Colossians 2:12-14. The debt was paid, not potentially but actually. That debt is actually paid so that sin, as we will see, is no longer the issue; the issue is faith in Christ.

At the conclusion, not only does John say, "When it was TETELESTAI", Jesus said, "TETELESTAI". Whenever the Holy Spirit repeats anything that closely with the same verbiage all of our antennae ought to be wagging around and wiggling because something important is going on that the Holy Spirit wants us to pay attention to. Twice He makes it clear that what Christ did on the cross has been completed, and He hasn't died physically yet. Then He gave up His spirit; then He died physically.

What we are looking at is what He accomplished for our salvation. We are taking a little interlude from our study and were looking at these five things. First of all, that what He did on the cross was substitutionary. He died in our place; He died as our substitute. Second, it was to accomplish redemption. That means He paid a price. Third, it canceled something. That's what TETELESTAI is all about; it's paid in full, therefore the debt is canceled. Fourth, it provided forgiveness. And fifth, it provided satisfaction to God's character; to His justice and His righteousness.

We looked at what the Bible teaches about substitutionary atonement and saw that this is emphasized in passages such as 2 Corinthians 5:21, that He made Him who knew no sin to be sin for us. The language there in the Greek uses a preposition indicating substitution. He died in our place. That's the transaction.

The Old Testament pictures this through the sacrificial system where an individual is going to put his hand on the head of the burnt offering—as in Leviticus 1:4—and recites his sins, so that his sins are transferred to the animal that is to be sacrificed. And on that basis he makes atonement, a word there that means to be cleansed, purified from sin. That's the picture that we have, this picture of substitution.

The Old Testament gives us visual images and object lessons of the doctrines that are explicated in the New Testament. Here we have this picture of the sacrifice of substitution through the placing on the hand on the sacrificial lamb.

I need to continuously remind us that there are three things that are problems that every human being has. The first is that there's this judicial penalty that has been assigned to us because of Adam's original sin. We are under the legal penalty of spiritual death. To be able to spend time with God, to have fellowship with God, that legal penalty has to be paid. It could not be paid by any of the animal sacrifices in the Old Testament. The second problem is as a result of that legal penalty every human being until the end of the millennial kingdom is born spiritually dead. That's an experiential problem. The first is a legal problem. The third problem is that were born with a lack of righteousness. We do good deeds; we have morality, but we do not measure up to the perfect righteousness of Christ.

What happens in God's solution is that the judicial penalty is paid for at the cross. That is substitutionary redemption. Christ dies in our place; He pays the bill for us. That's what Christ did on the cross. We can't add anything to it, its paid in full. But that doesn't change the fact that we are born spiritually dead and we don't have righteousness, so we have that problem. By believing in Christ we get new life. That's what John chapter three is all about: that by believing in Christ we get eternal life. "He who believes on him is not condemned", John 3:18 says, "but he who believes not is condemned already"— because of his nasty sins. Is that it says? No, because the sin is paid for—"because he has not believed in the name of the only begotten Son of God". It is that belief that gives us new life.

But it also does something else that solves the third problem, which is the lack of righteousness, and at the instant we believe in Christ, Christ's righteousness is imputed to us. "He who knew no sin was made sin for us …" Why? "… that the righteousness of God might be found in us". So when we trust in Christ He solves those two experiential problems of spiritual death and unrighteousness. That is substitution.

The second thing we looked at was what the Bible teaches about redemption. The key verse here is first Peter 1:18, 19, "Knowing that you were not redeemed with corruptible things like silver or gold, from your aimless conduct received by tradition from your fathers, but with the precious blood of Christ, as of a lamb without blemish and spot". What happens in that first illustration? We have a lamb. The picture there is placing a hand on the lamb. That's the picture of substitution. The death of the Lamb is the picture of redemption. That's the payment of a price. So substitution: Christ takes our place: redemption; He pays the price for us. The key word is payment of a price. This is the same thing that was seen in the Old Testament, pictured in the Exodus, that God redeemed Israel from slavery in Egypt. Christ redeemed us from slavery to sin.

The sixth point was that redemption is the basis for the cancellation of our sins. The word used sometimes in the Old Testament and in the New Testament, in the old King James, and sometimes in our theology is expiation; not a user-friendly word today, but understand that what it means, that a debt is canceled. That's our passage today, Colossians 2:13, 14 where we will look at the third and fourth accomplishments of Christ on the cross: the cancellation of the debt, which brings forgiveness of sin.

People get all confused and really don't understand forgiveness. They don't understand forgiveness in terms of this first category: that God can forgive us and cancel the debt without saving us. They get all confused. They love the cancel the death, and that means world to get saved, right? No, because you have to believe in Christ to have the spiritual death problem solved, and to have the lack of righteousness problem solved. That comes through faith alone.

There's a forgiveness that is legal, toward God. There are three other kinds of forgiveness in the Bible. We have a lot of problem with forgiveness because we think we really have to hold people's feet to the fire. That's not our job, that's God's job, and God understands the issues a whole lot better than we do. What we are looking at now is what the Bible teaches about the cancellation of sin, and forgiveness.

This passage we are looking at in Colossians chapter 2, specifically versus 13 and 14, is I think one of the most significant and important passages that I've run across to help us understand that transaction on the cross. It's a long section. Actually it begins in verse 12 and Paul, as his common style, is complicated. He piles phrase upon phrase.

A famous Anglican Greek scholar who wrote under his initials CFD Moule wrote quite a bit on the New Testament. He was known by his friends as Charley. His full name was Charles Francis Digby Moule. He was born to missionary parents in Shanghai and he wrote a number of commentaries. He was given various awards by the British Empire. He was made a Commander of the British Empire, which is an order of chivalry for the military and civilians. He was also made a fellow of the British Academy. He was an Anglican priest and a theologian, and he has great insights into the Greek text. He wrote concerning the section from Colossians 2:4-3;4 that "this section contains one of the most important of St. Paul's descriptions of what is achieved by the death of Christ, and one of his most emphatic reiterations of the theme of the incorporations of believers that should be in Christ".

The key verse or understanding for understanding this cancellation and forgiveness, that ties it together with what we studied last time as redemption, is in Colossians 1:14 and the parallel in Ephesians 1:7. Colossians 1:14, "in whom we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of sins". And in Ephesians, Paul wrote it this way: "in him we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of sins, according to the riches of his grace".

Both of those passages are talking about what we as believers have, but there is a forgiveness that precedes that positional forgiveness that we have in Christ. But it's connected to forgiveness. All of these different facets of what Christ did on the cross are interconnected and interdependent, so that redemption is the payment of the price. You go to a restaurant, you get the bill, you pay the bill. That's redemption. The canceling of the debt, which flows from that, is the expiation, and that cancellation or eradication is also described as forgiveness, the forgiveness of the debt. This ties substitution and redemption now to cancellation, an economic term.

Paul begins this verse by saying, "And you, being dead in your trespasses and the un-circumcision of your flesh, he has made alive together with him, having forgiven you all trespasses".

Notice something. In English we have these words that end with "ing". Grammatically, that can be a participle or it can be a gerund. This is a participle; you know that from the Greek says. But what does that mean, "being dead?" What is the action? Or "having forgiven"? This is translated, according to Dr. Robert Thomas, who taught hermeneutics and Greek for many years at the Masters Seminary, this is translated with the same level of ambiguity that you have in the original Greek. For Thomas that's a good thing, because Thomas thinks that these translations that try to be more specific and override the ambiguity, are making and interpretation, and is not the role of the translator to make an interpretation, it's the role of the pastor in the pulpit to make the interpretation and to explain the ambiguity. All languages have ambiguities and that's just the nature of the language, but if you look at the whole context you can figure out what it actually means.

If you were look at the Greek grammar it is talking about the condition that we are in at the time that we are saved. And by looking at the context, by looking at parallel passages such as Ephesians 2:1, we can see that this first phrase is important. It's that "being dead". It's a participle in the Greek and it is talking about your existence and what is your existence at the time. The main verb here is going to be. He's made alive. This is adverbial. It tells you something about what's going on in connection to the main verb, so it's talking about your condition at the time that you are made alive. As a present participle the action of that participle, "being dead", is seen as being at the same time as the action of the main verb. So at the time you are made alive you are spiritually dead. That's all that it's saying. It's temporal though. It should be translated, "when you were dead in your trespasses and sins", "at the time that you were dead in your trespasses and sins". Although it could be concessive—that's the ambiguity here, they can have slightly different nuances—"though you were dead in your trespasses and sins". It is still saying the same thing; that basically you are spiritually dead and you are incapable of having spiritual life, a relationship with God. We were dead but not physically; we were dead spiritually, we were separated from God.

This is the same thing that is said in Ephesians 2:5, "even though we were dead in our transgressions, God made us alive together with Christ." This is the main verb to be given life. That's what Jesus said He came to give life, that salvation. John 10:10, and to give it abundantly. That is the spiritual life; that is the result of spiritual growth.

Ephesians2:5, 6 "even when we were dead in our transgressions, made us alive together with Christ (by grace you have been saved), and raised us up with Him, and seated us with Him in the heavenly {places} in Christ Jesus" It is just that remarkable what we have in Christ. Paul has developed that fully in Ephesians but it is developed as a parallel in Colossians 2:13.

He has made us alive together with him, having forgiven you all transgressions, all trespasses. So what is the relationship between forgiveness and being made alive? What most of us read when we read through this is that we are spiritually dead, we believe in Jesus, were made alive in Him, and then forgiven of sins. If you think that you are wrong because that's not what the grammar in the Greek indicates that all. The grammar in the Greek tells us even more about God's grace and what happens at the cross.

Colossians 2:13 says that we were made alive together with him, "having forgiven you". But that translation doesn't tell you about when that forgiveness occurred. The word there that is used is the word CHARIZOMAI, from the work CHARIS, the word for grace in Greek. So it's talking about a gracious action, and it often means forgiveness. In some passages it refers to the forgiveness of a financial debt. That's the imagery of even APHIEMI, which is the other Greek word for forgiveness. It's an adverbial participle, so you have to go through about 10 different types to see which makes sense. And what makes sense here is that it's causal. It is because He had forgiven us of trespasses, and that makes sense because what we have here is an aorist tense. I know this gets into the weeds grammatically, but this is so important because the main verb is an aorist, and when you have an aorist participle that means the action of the participle. That is, the forgiveness comes before the action of the main verb, which is to be made alive. Isn't that interesting? That is saying just grammatically you are forgiven before you are made alive. Now we are going to have to ask: When did that happen? Did that happen just a few minutes before as a some kind of hyper Calvinist thing, that God just zaps us because we are elect, and then makes us alive, and before that He had already done everything? No, that's not what's going on here at all.

The word has three meanings: to give freely or graciously, so it's always emphasizing the grace aspect of what's happening, in this case, the grace aspect of forgiveness. It means to cancel a sum of money or a debt that is owed. That's in Luke 7:42, so it's that idea of canceling a debt, and the debt of course, is the penalty of sin. And third, it means to forgive or pardon an action.

So when we look at this in its totality it means because he had already forgiven. It reads like this: "When you were dead in your trespasses and the un-circumcision of your flesh (as a spiritually dead unbeliever) He has made you alive together with him because he had already forgiven you of your sin."

That's the thrust of total forgiveness. How did that happen? That's what the rest of the next verse is going to tell us. It's emphasizing this idea cause, or maybe time, "after he had", but I think it's cause, that makes more sense. So what we see here is that Scripture has four categories of forgiveness and this is the first category. It's a forgiveness that is directed toward God where the justice of God cancels the debt of sin. It's for all mankind, without distinction, without exception. Every human being has that canceled; the legal penalty was paid by Christ.

Now when we think about these categories of forgiveness that's the first category, and I call it forensic forgiveness because it has to do with the justice of God. If you watch CSI or NCIS or any of those of crime dramas they're always talking about forensic science, and everything, it has to do with science that is related to justice in the courtroom. That's what this is related to. God's justice is going to cancel that sin. That relates to that fifth work of the cross, which is satisfaction or propitiation.

The second area of forgiveness is what happens experientially at the moment we trust in Christ. But that can happen to us experientially only because at the cross, the debts paid.

Just give you a preview, if you read into the rest of the statement that comes up in verse 14 the last line reads "and he has taken it out of the way, having nailed it to the cross". When did He nail it to the cross? He was on the cross in AD 33. So this is forgiveness that we are talking about can't be something that happens experientially when we believe because this certificate of debt was nailed to the cross when Christ died. That's when He eradicated that debt. Isn't that glorious? Every single human being has had that legal penalty canceled at the cross, so they don't have to do something for it.

So many people who when they evangelize say, you've got to deal with all your sins. No, you don't! Jesus already did it. I don't want to hear about your sins. I don't want you to go get involved in a huge pity party and try to demonstrate your remorse over all the sins that you have so much fun committing before, and be a hypocrite. It's over with; they are paid for. It's not about your sins. It's not about you, it's about Jesus; it's about what Christ did on the cross.

Now the instant we believe in Jesus then we are forgiven positionally; were placed in Christ. So those two verses, Colossians 1:14 and Ephesians 1:7 tell us we are forgiven positionally in Christ; we are in Him. So we always have that status now of being forgiven in Him. But when we sin we are no longer walking in the light as He is in the light, we are walking in darkness experientially; we are walking the sin nature. So we are to confess our sin, and we realize forgiveness. Let me give you an illustration. You are born into a wonderful family, your parents love you; they provide you with everything that you could possibly imagine. But there are times when that harmony you have in his wonderful family is broken because you do something stupid. You are disobedient to your parents, whatever it might be, and all of a sudden you know it's just not the way it was. And so something happens. Sometimes you are punished, but sometimes you just have to admit that you were wrong. Then once that happens, that report, that harmony, is restored and recovered.

When you sin, positionally are forgiven because your folks love you. They are just waiting for you to say, I'm sorry; I sinned. Now when we confess sin. that doesn't mean we apologize for it because God knows that when you get arrogant and all of a sudden you realize how arrogant you've, been maybe when you're 12 or 13 you just feel terrible about it. But God doesn't care how you feel because you come and say, Oh I'm never going do that again and I just feel so bad, please don't punish me. God says, Well you've already done this 8932 times, you're going to do it another 59,732 times before you die, so I'm not impressed with your protestations that you'll never do it again. It's paid for. It's not the issue. I want to just to admit that you sinned, and what it is, and I'll instantly forgive you and cleanse you of all unrighteousness. Not just the one sin you just committed, but all the other ones that either you don't want to admit yet are sins, or that you forgot about, or you don't know they're sins. I'm going cleanse you from those too. That's great! And that's not a license to sin; that is the freedom to recover so you can keep growing.

Every baby is going to use that for license for sin, you know that. It is just like, now nobody knows this but you and me. But when you are eight or nine years old and your parents thought well, you're grown up you can stay home by yourself for little while, and while they were gone you raided the cookie jar, whatever you did, whatever you thought you could get away, with that if your parents were there, you wouldn't get away with. That's because a characteristic of immaturity is to use freedom for a license. We all do that but we grow through it, hopefully. And as you mature, you begin to realize that freedom is an opportunity to excel, it's not the license to fail. So we have experiential forgiveness when we confess sin.

Fourth, there's relational forgiveness. We are to forgive one another as God for Christ's sake has forgiven us. That's the pattern, so those are the four areas of forgiveness.

Now back to the words for forgiveness. There are these two basic words that are used in the New Testament. The first one is APHIEMI, or the noun form APHESIS, which means to let go, to cancel something, to remit. You've heard that the in the King James it would translate "repent for the remission of sins"—same word, just "repent for the forgiveness of sins". Forgiveness is a more user-friendly word today. But it means that to cancel to remit, to leave, to forgive. The noun has the same range of meanings—to release, to pardon, to cancel, to give forgiveness; and it emphasizes the act of forgiveness.

The second word is CHARIZOMAI, which means basically to show favor or kindness because the act of forgiving is an act of grace, an act of kindness. It's to be gracious to somebody, to cancel out a debt, which means it's over and done with. It emphasizes that attitude of forgiveness, that it is gracious. It's may be undeserved, unmerited; you know that dirty so and so still doesn't deserve it; he is going to do it again. That's when Jesus answered Peter when Peter said: Well, how many times do I forgive this lousy person, 7 times? Jesus said, 70×7. In other words, you never stop forgiving them, just as He ever stops forgiving you.

I don't want to show of hands, but how many people have been angry more than 490 times in their life? How many have lied more than 490 times [That's 70×7] in their life? How many have committed who knows how many mental attitude sins over 490 times? God still forgives you, doesn't He? That's what the idiom means.

Matthew 26, 28, Jesus is establishing the Lord's Table. He says of the cup, "For this is my blood of the new covenant, which is shed for many for the forgiveness (or remission) of sin." That's that word. Hebrews 9:22 says, "according to the law almost all things are purified with blood, and without the shedding of blood (that is, without death. The shedding of blood is an idiomatic phrase for death) there is no remission of sin."

In Luke 7:42 when the woman washed Jesus' feet and Simon the Pharisee's Pharisee objected, Jesus gave a parable about forgiveness of a large monetary debt to teach forgiveness. He uses this word. It's the cancellation of debt both words, CHARIZOMAI, and APHIEMI are used to refer to cancellation of the debt. So when we correct that translation we see this important phrase, "because He had already forgiven us". He made us alive together with Him because He already forgave us from all our transgressions.

And in verse 14: by or when. It's another participle, you have to figure out what the main meaning is. Its temporal, I think, when He canceled out the certificate of debt. That's when He did the forgiving, when He canceled the certificate of debt. And we know when He did that because the last phrase is going to tell us it happened at the cross. So this phrase to cancel is really interesting. It means to wipe out something, to blot it out, to erase it, to eradicated, to remove it as if it never existed before. And that's God's grace. He removes our sin from us as far as the east is from the west. It's totally over with. He's not going to bring it back up and say man you're doing this again. You know, why don't you just quit? And that's how we are: Lord I'm going to beat myself up just a little bit more. And that's what we do because people don't really believe God forgives them, and the whole point is, God forgives you, it's final, it's over with, its eradicated. Get over it. It's not about you it's about Him.

In the Old Testament the comparable word is this word maha, which means to wipe or wipe out something. For example, in Psalm 51:9 when David is confessing his sin of adultery with Bathsheba, his sin of conspiracy to have her husband Uriah the Hittite murdered, and his conspiracy to cover it all up, he has praise to God. He says, "hide your face from my sins". That's a picturesque word for saying, close your eyes; forget it; it's over with. I confess that—which he has already done in the passage. He says, "and blot out, wipe out, all my iniquities." And in Isaiah 43:25 this word is used. God is speaking: "I, even I, am he who blots out your transgressions for my own sake and I will not remember your sins".

So what do we do: We remember them again, and we go over it again and again, because it's just a denial of God's grace. And then we have to confess that as a sin. It's like young people used to chain-smoke, just like one cigarette off of another cigarette. You just keep going and it gets worse and worse and worse as you go along. That's what they do with chain sinning. Oh Lord, I'm so sorry, and then 15 minutes later you remember, you are embarrassed, and you just confess it again because you don't believe He actually for gave you the first time. The problem is you don't believe God, and you don't want to forgive yourself. What people have to do is learn to forgive themselves.

This is a major problem in our culture. We have a lot of people, maybe some of you, who grew up in circumstances where there was physical abuse, where there was sexual abuse, where who knows what. Maybe it happen later in life, and you blame yourself. A typical problem of victims is they blame themselves and try to take ownership for whatever happened to them.

But God says, Hey, you didn't do anything to cause that happen to you, and no matter what part you may have played in it, once you confess it, it's over with and you're cleansed and forgiven. And now you have to believe and live as if you're cleansed and forgiven, because you are, and you just put that behind you, and God has put that behind you.

Peter uses the Greek phrase here in Acts 3:19, "Repent, therefore, and be converted, that your sins may be blotted out". It's is forgiveness, it's wiping it out. In the Greek it's the same word there that use in Colossians 2:14 that word EXALEIPHO, a word for anointing. Anointing is when you take oil and you rub it on something. You can anoint a wound; you can anoint your head. You rub something. EX means "out of", so it is to rub it out so it's no longer there.

This word is used in Revelation: that when we are in heaven, that there will be no more sorrow no more tears, no more pain for the old things are "wiped out"—same word. That gives the visual picture of just rubbing it out and removing it.

Colossians 2:14 tells us that this happened when He canceled the certificate of debt, which is like a hand written document. It's an indictment against someone, against the criminal. "… that was consistent of decrees [ordinances in KJV]. This is the word DOGMA. We get that in the English with a slightly different sense, but it's a written document or proposition or legal document that in the legal type of context would be the formal indictment of somebody—which is your sin. That is what we see here. The certificate of debt is the sin for which we are condemned. It's a written decree against us in opposition to us, and in this context it's referring to the Gentiles.

He canceled this debt out, and then it says, "and He has taken it out of the way". This is the word AIRO, the same word used of Jesus rising from the dead. It is removed, it's carried away, and so that that debt is not only blotted out, it is removed and taken completely out of the way. In the Greek it's in the perfect tense, meaning it's completed action before you were made alive together with Christ, sometime in the distant past when it was nailed to the cross, it was eradicated and it was taken out of the way. That's what that perfect tense means. It's something that happened in the past and was completed in the past; not when you believed, but when Christ did it. It's the objective payment of the price on the cross and it happened when He nailed it to the cross.

So what's the conclusion? First of all, sin is not the issue at salvation. Because the sin is paid for, canceled, eradicated, taken out of the way, nailed to the cross. The individual sin is not the issue, the issue is something else; it's belief in Christ.

This does not mean that sin or the sin penalty, and the reality of a person's spiritual death, is ignored. So when you're talking to somebody it's not that you never mention sin, but you don't make an issue out of their sin. But a person has to realize that because of sin they are spiritually dead. Because of sin they are under the condemnation of death; they're not going to have eternal life. But you are not making an issue out of their sin and making them feel guilty about it.

The focal point is grace. God has eradicated the sin. Are you willing to accept that gift? Are you willing to believe in Christ? That's the issue.

Over 96 times in the Gospel of John, John uses the word "believe"; he doesn't ever say invite Jesus into your heart. He never says invite Jesus into your life. He says believe, again and again and again. Why are they condemned? Because they did not believe in the name of the only begotten Son of God. He didn't say because they did not sincerely believe, because if you believe something it is sincere. You may believe it for five seconds and then not believe it anymore, but you believed for those five seconds and that seals the deal, because once you are saved you are always saved. That's it. It's grace. It's not about you; it's all about Jesus.

The point of application beyond the gospel is that Jesus paid it all on the cross, then He solved our greatest problem, and therefore He is capable, He is sufficient, to solve any other problems you have in life. That's it. That's the sufficiency of the cross, the sufficiency of grace and sufficiency of the Word.

If Jesus could solve your greatest problem, then there's no problem you face in life He can't solve. It may impact you more personally, profoundly experientially. At some point you may feel a lot worse about it. But Jesus is still omnipotent. He still solved your greatest problem, which is spiritual death and separation from God. And if you can trust Him to do that than he ought to trust Him for all the other stuff that you're not willing to trust Him for, because He is able to solve any problem. God plus one is a majority.

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