Grace Revolution: Experience the Power to Live Above Defeat (29 page)

For almost twenty years now, I have been preaching the gospel of grace and teaching believers around the world to confess their righteousness in Christ. If you have been following my ministry, you know that one of my favorite verses is Romans 5:17: “Much more those who receive abundance of grace and of the gift of righteousness will reign in life through the One, Jesus Christ.”

Unfortunately, there are people who mock what the Word of God says, thinking that it is too simplistic. Essentially, they make light of receiving and they see receiving as weak and insubstantial. They think, “Is that all a Christian does? Just receive God’s grace?” Their focus is on doing, on duty, on what is man’s responsibility. My dear reader, don’t ever underestimate the power of receiving. Man’s greatest doing—his greatest duty and greatest responsibility—is to humble himself to receive from the Lord Jesus!

Look at what Mary did—she sat at our Lord’s feet and just pulled, drew, and received from her Savior. But Martha came along and complained to Jesus, saying, “Lord, do You not care that my sister has left me to serve alone? Therefore tell her to help me” (Luke 10:40). What was Martha consumed with? Duty, responsibility, serving, and doing!

I believe that the Martha-type of believers we have today, who are constantly complaining against believers like Mary, are precious, beloved, and deeply sincere. But they can be so committed to their duties that they forget the person it’s all about. Martha was zealous about serving the Lord, but she ended up being hopping mad with her sister, and even chided the Lord. Mary looked beyond the exterior and saw a fullness in the Lord to draw from. Martha, on the other hand, saw Him in the natural, as needing her ministry. Which sister do you think made the Lord feel like God? Whom was the Lord more pleased with?

Can you see how Martha completely missed the point of all her
service? Martha was like a horse wearing leather blinkers—she was utterly consumed by her duty and missed the divine deity, the Lord Jesus Himself, Who was sitting right in her living room! And listen to our Lord’s response (I believe that He said this tenderly and with a loving smile): “Martha, Martha, thou art careful and troubled about many things: But
one thing is needful
: and Mary hath chosen that good part, which shall not be taken away from her” (Luke 10:41–42
KJV
, emphasis mine). I believe that when Martha heard that, she had a revelation immediately. Instead of buzzing around and fuming at the Lord and her sister, she put down her pots and pans, removed her apron, and sat with her sister to receive from the Lord. Never underestimate the power of receiving from our Lord.

The more you receive the abundance of grace and gift of righteousness, the more you will reign, the more you will perform, the more you will be responsible, the more you will glorify the Lord, and the more you will fulfill your call, duty, and destiny. Because Mary did the one thing needful and focused on receiving from the Lord, she ended up performing the right service for Him. We read in John 12:1–8 that she anointed the Lord with costly fragrant oil for His burial. All the other women who wanted to anoint Him for His burial were too late on resurrection morning (see Luke 24:1–3). Mary was able to do the right thing at the right time because she kept her heart centered on receiving from the Lord. So keep receiving from Jesus. Every day receive His Word, His grace, and His gift of righteousness. And keep confessing your righteousness in Him—it will result in your doing the right thing at the right time.

But Pastor Prince, how can I confess righteousness when I know that my life is not perfect? Shouldn’t I be confessing my sins?

That’s a great question. First let me make it absolutely clear that I have no problem with confessing sins. I practice the confession of sins because when you know you are
already
loved and forgiven by your Father in heaven, you can stand in the throne room of His grace with boldness and talk to Him openly about your failings.

A businessman who knows that all his debts have been paid has no problem opening up his ledger and seeing all the red that once marked his debts. Why? Because those debts are no longer on his conscience. Those debts don’t frighten him anymore. In the same way, when you know that you have the forgiveness of sins and that the payment of our Lord Jesus’ blood has perfectly washed you clean, you can openly confess your sins. You can talk to your Father about your failings and mistakes with no sin debt on your conscience. Instead of running away and avoiding Him when you have failed, having full assurance in your heart of your forgiveness and righteousness in Christ brings you closer to Him.

The problem starts when people think they have to confess
all
their sins
in order to be forgiven
. This is an impossible standard to live by. How many people can successfully confess all their sins every day? The answer is none, because no one can. And what man cannot do, God did with the precious blood of His beloved only Son. Again, please understand that I am not against your confessing your sins and having honest conversations with God about your failings and mistakes. But if you are confessing your sins
in order to be forgiven
, you are putting yourself on a never-ending treadmill.

As long as you are still in this world, there will always be some sin and temptation in your life, whether in thought or deed. Thinking that you have to confess your sins in order to be forgiven will, in fact, cause you to be sin-conscious. This sin-consciousness will make you more susceptible to temptations—“Might as well go all the way”—because you are constantly feeling like a dirty sinner. But if you are forgiveness-conscious and Christ-conscious, you will live like the confident, righteous, and victorious believer that you already are in Christ. The question is one of identity. The first leads to a life of defeat, the second to a life of victory.

Let me now deal with a teaching that attempts to segment God’s forgiveness. This teaching argues that there is a difference between “judicial forgiveness” and “parental forgiveness.” Judicial forgiveness refers to God’s forgiveness of all our sins because of the penalty that Jesus paid on our behalf on the cross. On the other hand, while all our sins are forgiven
judicially
, we are out of fellowship with God when we commit a sin—until we confess that sin to receive
parental
forgiveness. The end result of believing this teaching is similar to what I have described earlier.

If you go by this teaching, you will always feel you are lacking in parental forgiveness, simply because there will always be sins (in
thought or deed) you have not confessed. And if you live by this doctrine, you can’t conveniently pick and choose which sins you need or want to confess (see
chapter 5
). The bottom line is that you won’t have full assurance of your forgiveness in Christ. You will always be sin-conscious and doubt your forgiveness, and both your conscience and the devil will exploit this.

So are you forgiven or are you not? Which is it? The Bible isn’t uncertain with something as critical as your forgiveness of sins, but deals with it with great clarity. Where do we see this? In Acts 13:38–39, the apostle Paul clearly declares, “Through this Man is preached to you the forgiveness of sins; and by Him everyone who believes is justified from all things from which you could not be justified by the law of Moses.”

Can the forgiveness of sins be made any clearer? The apostle Paul preached the forgiveness of sins with no apology, no qualifications, and no distinction between judicial and parental forgiveness. So be careful of these man-made distinctions that are not in God’s Word. Forgiveness is forgiveness; there are no subdivisions. You are either forgiven or you are not, and how much you enjoy your forgiveness depends on what you believe about our Lord Jesus and what He has done on the cross.

Scripture is crystal-clear regarding our complete forgiveness in Christ. Yet there are some who feel the need to whisper to Apostle Paul, “Be careful, Paul, you can’t preach forgiveness like this—you need to qualify what you are saying. There is no telling who is listening to you and how they will live.” To these critics of the ministry of our Lord Jesus Christ and the power of His forgiveness, Paul lovingly but firmly gives the warning in the next two verses, saying, “Beware therefore, lest what has been spoken in the prophets come upon you: ‘Behold, you despisers, marvel and perish! For I work a work in your
days, a work which you will by no means believe, though one were to declare it to you’” (Acts 13:40–41).

The prophets already foresaw that there would be despisers of the gospel of grace—those who would hear it, but dismiss it as being “too good to be true.” Paul warned and reminded those who heard him not to be numbered among those despisers.

When the disciples of our Lord began preaching the gospel of grace in the book of Acts, the high priest and other temple leaders were furious. They brought the disciples in for further questioning (after they had been supernaturally led out of prison) and heard what they had to say. The religious leaders got even angrier after that and plotted to kill them. At this meeting in Acts 5, a Pharisee named Gamaliel, a teacher of the law held in respect by all the people, stood up.

Gamaliel was a leading authority on Jewish laws. He was so revered that even the apostle Paul, when defending himself and presenting his credentials later in another meeting (in Acts 22), mentioned Gamaliel. Paul said of Gamaliel, “As his student, I was carefully trained in our Jewish laws and customs. I became very zealous to honor God in everything I did, just like all of you today” (Acts 22:3
NLT
).

Now, although Gamaliel didn’t have an understanding of the gospel of grace, he stood up and spoke with great wisdom at the earlier meeting, saying, “Men of Israel, take heed to yourselves what you intend to do regarding these men…. I say to you, keep away from these men and let them alone; for if this plan or this work is of men, it will come to nothing; but if it is of God, you cannot overthrow it—lest you even be found to fight against God” (Acts 5:35, 38–39).

I have a lot of respect for Gamaliel’s wisdom. He did not have a revelation of the person of Jesus, the gospel of grace, and forgiveness of sins through Christ, but he was also not going to be found standing in the way of or fighting against what God might have been doing. He advised the other religious leaders to let time test the disciples’ ministry and to let their ministry be validated by its fruit and by God Himself, even if the leaders themselves did not fully understand it.

If you are still confused and wondering about the concept of “parental forgiveness,” let me share with you what the Bible says. In fact, you need look no further than Jesus’ parable of the prodigal son. When the father saw his son coming toward home from afar, what did the father do? Did the father shout to him, “First confess your sins, my son, then you’ll be welcomed home”? Remember, the son had insulted his father when he demanded his inheritance, left home, and then promptly squandered all his inheritance on riotous living. Eventually, when he couldn’t possibly sink any lower, he decided to return to his father’s house.

This story is really about a father forgiving his son, and I want you to pay attention to what Jesus says because He is talking about His own heavenly Father here. The father saw the son from afar and did this: he pulled up his long robes and started running toward his son. Notice that the father ran to his son before the son confessed any sin. The father then met his son and embraced him. Again, which happened first? Did the son confess his sins first, or did the father embrace him first? The father’s embrace came first! That’s not all. After the father had embraced his son, he kissed him. The son, who
had had to work in a pigpen just before his return, probably smelled like a pig—the pits for a Jew. Yet the father rained kisses on his son. Did you notice that up to this point, there is no record of the son’s making a single confession of sin?

The prodigal son does eventually say, “Father, I’ve sinned against heaven and in your sight” (Luke 15:21), but that is after the father ran to him, embraced him, and kissed him. So we know it is not the son’s confession that produced the hugs and kisses of the father. Now answer this question: is this parental or judicial forgiveness? Remember, the father here is a picture of our heavenly Father. So Jesus’ parable is showing us clearly what real, biblical, parental forgiveness is and looks like. This is what the Father wants us to understand about His forgiveness. There is no
judicial
, as opposed to
parental
, forgiveness with God. You are simply and really forgiven because of His Son.

Let me point you to another verse that the Lord gave me, to give you full assurance of your forgiveness:

Notice how 1 John 2:12 opens up with, “I write to you,
little children
” (emphasis mine). “Little children” denotes the “parental” aspect of the forgiveness that God gives. So what does God the Father
want us to understand about “parental forgiveness”? That our sins are forgiven because of Jesus. And as mentioned in chapter 4, the original Greek word for “are forgiven” is in the Greek perfect tense, which means this forgiveness is a definite action completed in the past with its effect continuing into the present.

The Word of God makes this clear in no uncertain terms: you have been and you continue to be forgiven. Amen! Because of this, in your darkest moments, and even when you have failed, you can say with boldness and confidence, “I
am
the righteousness of God in Christ. I
have
forgiveness of sins, and God loves me and is for me. It is well with my soul!”