The moment you invited Jesus into your heart as your Lord and Savior, all your sins were forgiven. Your past sins, your present sins, and your future sins. The Word of God tells us, “In Him we have redemption through His blood, the forgiveness of sins, according to the riches of His grace” (Eph. 1:7). Once you are born again, you are in Christ. You do not have to try to get forgiveness. You have the forgiveness of sins, and this forgiveness of sins that you have is not according to what you have done, but according to the riches of God’s grace—His unmerited, unearned, and undeserved favor!
The Bible tells us that “the wages of sin is death” (Rom. 6:23). In other words, the punishment for sin is death. It also tells us that “without the shedding of blood there is no forgiveness” (Heb. 9:22 NIV). Blood is thus necessary for the forgiveness of sins. That is why, under the old covenant of law, sin was covered temporarily through the blood of sacrificial animals.
Christ, came down from heaven to earth and sacrificed Himself at the cross. His perfect, sinless blood provided forgiveness for all our sins. You and I cannot pay for our own sins, so He did it for us. Now whosoever believes in Him will never die but will receive the gift of eternal life. Hallelujah!
Notice how David describes the blessedness of a man whose sins are forgiven:
“Blessed are those whose lawless deeds are forgiven, and whose sins are covered; blessed is the man to whom the Lord shall not impute sin.”
—Romans 4:7–8
Now read it in the New Living Translation:
“Oh, what joy for those whose disobedience is forgiven, whose sins are put out of sight. Yes, what joy for those whose record the Lord has cleared of sin.”
Oh, what joy and what a blessing it is to receive the forgiveness of sins! Conversely, when believers start to question if they are truly forgiven, it leads to all kinds of insecurities, fears, and destructive bondages. Fear and insecurity cannot exist in a healthy relationship with God. In a marriage relationship, if a wife never feels secure in her husband’s love for her, she will never draw strength from or find joy in her marriage. Instead of thriving, that marriage will disintegrate over time. Similarly, our heavenly Father does not want us to live trapped in perpetual insecurity because we are never sure of our forgiveness.
The apostle Paul tells believers who have been born again in Christ that God the Father “has delivered us from the power of darkness and conveyed us into the kingdom of the Son of His love, in whom we have redemption through His blood, the forgiveness of sins” (Col. 1:13–14). Notice that there has been a change of location. You used to be under the power of darkness. But the moment you believed in Jesus, you were moved and placed under the blood of Jesus, where there is perpetual forgiveness of sins.
To understand the total forgiveness of sins, we have to understand the value of the person Who sacrificed Himself on the cross for us. He alone, because He was sinless, could pay for all the sins of every man. When our Lord Jesus died at Calvary, He took all of humanity’s sins with one sacrifice of Himself at the cross. He took the judgment, punishment, and condemnation for all sins upon Himself. That’s the value of the one Man, Jesus. He is an overpayment for all our sins.
Joseph Prince, Grace Revolution—Experience the Power to Live Above Defeat (New York: FaithWords, 2015), 50–52.