I FOUGHT THE LAW AND THE LAW WON

What was it that was so compelling about this idea? In chapter five I discussed our innate longing to be connected to God. But for me, and I suspect many Christians, the nagging issue is, “How can I be made for relationship with God if I am a sinner?” After all, it is true that we have all “sinned and fallen short of God’s glory” (Romans 3:23 CEV) and “the wages of sin is death” (Romans 6:23). How then can a person who sins ever dream of being in relationship with a holy God?

The good news that God had forgiven me—once and for all—was not only freeing, but also created the possibility that I could actually have a relationship with God. Not because of anything I had done, but because of what God, in Christ, has done for me. The good news is that Jesus provides us a way back to a fully transcendent relationship with God. Unfortunately this good news is sometimes hard for us to accept as personally true.

As I explained previously, I was haunted by the gap between who I was and who I wanted to be. I assumed God was constantly disappointed in me. I resonated with what James said in his epistle, “For whoever keeps the whole law but fails in one point has become accountable for all of it” (James 2:10). In my intense battle to keep the law, the law had always won. I lived with a great deal of self-accusation for not being perfect. In fact, someone once told me that I was “the most scrupulous person” he had ever met—and it was not a compliment!

I think this is why the finality of the cross was so freeing and life-giving to me. It was as if the pressure was off: Jesus had done for me what I could never do. This is exactly what Paul meant when he wrote, “But when the fullness of time had come, God sent his Son, born of a woman, born under the law, in order to redeem those who were under the law, so that we might receive adoption as children” (Galatians 4:4-5, italics added). Jesus had redeemed me from the law. Redemption is a price paid to set a slave free—I was no longer a slave to the law, which meant I was no longer a slave to shame and guilt.

The problem is not with the law. That is “holy and just and good” (Romans 7:12). The problem is with us. The law was given as a means to walk in God’s ways, but the Israelites failed to keep the law, as we all do. They worshiped other gods, made graven images, committed adultery, coveted, and lied. The sacrificial system was the means of atoning for the sins of the people. If they sinned, an animal—a bull, a goat, a bird—could be sacrificed to provide forgiveness for the sin: “Under the law almost everything is purified with blood, and without the shedding of blood there is no forgiveness of sins” (Hebrews 9:22). Again, there is no forgiveness without the shedding of blood; sins were not forgiven by confession, but by blood. If you read through Leviticus 16 you can see how this worked.

Of course, there were not enough bulls, goats, and birds to atone for all the sins of all the people all of the time. So they were given the annual Day of Atonement. On that day the people would fast, and the priest would enter the holy of holies and sacrifice a perfect bull for the whole nation. Two goats would be sacrificed as well: one slain at the altar, the other sent away as the scapegoat. The priest took the scapegoat and placed his hands on its head, transferring all of the sins of the people onto the goat, who would then be paraded through the city and driven out into the wilderness, symbolically removing everyone’s sins.

And then the people celebrated—their sins were all atoned for! But the bad news was that the next day they would sin again and those sins would add up, day after day, month after month, until the next year when the bull and the goats would take away their sins. This system was God’s gift to the people to atone for their sins. But the word atone means to “cover up”; it does not mean to “take away.” So when John the Baptist says of Jesus, “Here is the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world!” (John 1:29, italics added), he is signaling something new.

The sacrificial system was only a shadow of the good things God had planned. This is stated clearly in Hebrews:

The law and the sacrificial system were not the true form or the deeper reality, only the shadows. This system could never make perfect those who desired to approach God. The blood of the bulls and goats was only a shadow of the reality of the blood of the Lamb.

The same is true of the law itself. The law was always outside of us, always judging, never helping. The law, also, was only a shadow. God’s true desire was to write the law on our hearts, so that it would not be outside of us judging us, but inside of us truly encouraging us. And it was prophesied by Jeremiah:

This prophecy became a reality in the cross and in the resurrection of Jesus. The author of Hebrews repeats this prophecy from Jeremiah, saying that this new covenant is now established by Jesus—no longer will the law be our judge (Hebrews 10). It will now be written in our hearts as God’s act of love, because the law, rightly understood, is “sweeter . . . than honey” (Psalm 19:10).

This actually upholds the law in its original intention. Paul, no doubt, heard people object by asking, “What then of the law?” when he taught that the cross was final. He writes, “Do we then overthrow the law by this faith? By no means! On the contrary, we uphold the law” (Romans 3:31). Imagine it this way: Let’s say you try to instill right and wrong into a child. To make sure they know right from wrong, you put a copy of the Ten Commandments into their coat pocket. When they are away from you, they are tempted to break the commandments that are written on the paper—they want to keep the commandments, but they fail. Now imagine those same commandments are written “on their heart,” meaning they truly embrace them. Now, when they are faced with temptation, they say no because it is the deep desire of their heart.

Salvation is not only the forgiveness of sins; salvation involves a change of heart. When we experience the abundant life of Jesus, sin becomes “slop,” to use Dallas Willard’s fitting term—it becomes garbage. When we have been set free from the guilt of sin, we are also set free from the power of sin. Salvation is about being caught up in a new way of living, of life with Jesus in his unshakable kingdom, being rescued from the kingdom of darkness and transferred into the kingdom of God’s beloved Son (Colossians 1:13).

Jesus, then, is “the end of the law so that there may be righteousness for everyone who believes” (Romans 10:4). Jesus is the end in the sense that the law is no longer our judge, and Jesus is the end in the sense that the law has been completed by the work of Jesus on the cross. The very last words of Jesus on the cross are, “It is finished” (John 19:30). The Greek word for finished is tetelestai, which means “paid in full.” It was the word people stamped on an unpaid bill once it had been paid. Tetelestai means the debt of our sin has been paid in full; nothing more needs to be paid. This is why the apostles said, “All the prophets testify about him that everyone who believes in him receives forgiveness of sins through his name” (Acts 10:43).

Jesus didn’t cover up sin, like the bulls and goats did, he took away sin. In fact, thanks to Jesus the sacrificial system was no longer the means to forgiveness, and the bulls and goats rejoiced! But many Christians, including myself, have replaced bulls and goats with confession. I would never have thought about getting my “sin account” with God settled by sacrificing an animal, but I was fully comfortable with the idea of viewing my heartfelt confession as a replacement for the goats. But since “it is finished” I no longer need to confess in order to get forgiven, in the same way I do not need a high priest to put an animal on the altar for my sins.

FALSE NARRATIVE: YOU ARE FORGIVEN ONLY
FOR THE SINS YOU CONFESS

The idea that we must confess our sins in order to be forgiven is a deeply entrenched narrative. So much so that when I have taught the finality of the cross (and I have done so for years), I have received incredible pushback. After a lot of study, I concluded that this narrative is based on one, and only one, verse in the New Testament. It is this: “If we confess our sins, he who is faithful and just will forgive us our sins and cleanse us from all unrighteousness” (1 John 1:9). There is not another verse in the New Testament that equates sins being forgiven on the basis of confession. This entrenched narrative is largely due to Christianity’s roots in Judaism and the Old Testament, where, as we saw, there is no forgiveness of sins without the shedding of blood.

And yet, this single verse is responsible for Christians believing that the forgiveness of our sins is dependent on our confession. When I teach on the finality of the cross, invariably someone quotes 1 John 1:9. But here is the truth about this verse—it only makes sense in light of the verse that precedes it. First John 1:8 reads, “If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us.” There were people in the early Christian community who taught that they no longer sinned, that they were enlightened and transformed and could say, “I have no sin.” John is essentially responding with this: The truth is not in these people. But if we confess our sins, meaning, if we acknowledge we are sinners, God is faithful to forgive us our sins.

And note how many of our sins: all of them. Simply saying, “I am a sinner,” simply admitting that we have sin, enables God to “cleanse us from all unrighteousness.” Not some unrighteousness, but all unrighteousness. When you read 1 John 1:9 in the proper context, it actually supports the finality of the cross. So what then of confession —is confession of no value? What is confession for?

Confession is of great value; it is for healing, not forgiveness. James 5:16 reads, “Therefore confess your sins to one another, and pray for one another, so that you may be healed.” We confess in order to be healed—confession is the road to healing. In confession, whether to God or to a person, we bring our sins to the light and in doing so the power of sin is broken.

Ironically, after I understood and embraced the finality of the cross, I confessed more, and more often. But I have never asked God to forgive me again. That would be an insult to Jesus and his finished work. I confess my sins not to get God to forgive me, but to talk with God about why I sinned, what triggered me to sin when I knew better. I no longer ask God to forgive my sins—God has already done that sufficiently. I now ask God to help me not to sin.

TRUE NARRATIVE: GOD NO LONGER DEALS WITH YOU ON THE BASIS OF YOUR SINS

After a year of study, I came to believe that this teaching about the finality of the cross was biblical. But did church tradition support this teaching? Did the great theologians and spiritual writers of the past hold to this view? I decided to ask the question to my mentor, Dallas Willard. First I wanted to see if Dallas himself believed in the finality of the cross, and second to see if he knew of other famous Christian leaders who believed it. I explained how I had listened to the AM radio preacher, gone to the retreat, and studied the Bible, and had come to the conclusion that Jesus died for all of our sins, once and for all.

“So, is this true? Is this biblically accurate?” I asked Dallas.

“Yes,” he answered.

Then he uttered a line so moving I had to scribble it down on a napkin, and I have never forgotten it. “It is a wonderful thing to know that God is no longer dealing with us on the basis of our sins,” Dallas said.

God is no longer dealing with us on the basis of our sins!

“So, you believe this?” I asked.

“Of course, and so did Luther and Calvin and Wesley,” Dallas said.

I would come to see that he was right.

Martin Luther built his reforming theology on the idea of the Latin term sola: sola fide (only by faith), sola gratia (only by grace), and solus Christus (only by Christ). Salvation is all the work of God, and not of ourselves.

John Calvin gave us the term wondrous exchange. When God became human in the person of Jesus, God took on our humanity. Jesus fully identified with our sinful state and felt the full assault of evil. Jesus is the bridge between us and God. In the words of theologian Thomas Torrance, Jesus took on every human form of suffering and alienation and “endured it with joy, refusing to let go of God for our sakes, and refusing to let go of us for God’s sake. Jesus presented us also before God, so that we are already accepted of God in him once and for all.”

And John Wesley had his heart strangely warmed by the finality of the cross on May 24, 1738. He went to Christian fellowship one evening, where he heard a man reading the preface to Luther’s Commentary on Romans, and later wrote in his journal, “While he [Luther] was describing the change which God works in the heart through faith in Christ, I felt my heart strangely warmed. I felt I did trust in Christ, Christ alone for salvation; and an assurance was given me that He had taken away my sins, even mine, and saved me from the law of sin and death.” Most Methodists mark this event as the beginning of the Methodist movement, a movement that would turn England upside down in the eighteenth century and the United States in the nineteenth. Luther, Calvin, and Wesley came to believe, as Dallas said so well, that God was no longer dealing with us on the basis of our sins, a teaching so profound it sparked movements that have changed the world.

A LICENSE TO SIN OR FREEDOM TO LOVE

One time, after preaching a sermon on the finality of the cross, a man came up to me afterward and said, “You are a dangerous preacher.” I really liked the sound of that: dangerous preacher. But seriously, I wanted to know what he meant.

He said, “If we are forgiven forever by the cross, we then have a license to sin.”

I said, “Well, that is true. We can sin if we choose to. But let me ask this, how are you doing without your license to sin? Is that working for you?”

He paused, and then got quiet, and finally confessed, “No, it is not working very well. I am struggling with sin all of the time. I assumed that I needed guilt to help me not sin.”

I said, “Guilt is not a good long-term motivator. The better motivator is love. I have come to believe that guilt only makes the problem worse. I feel so bad about my sin that I seem to want to sin more. But the finality of the cross has actually made me feel God’s love in a deep way, and I am less inclined to sin.”

He said it made sense, and I told him, “Your way isn’t working. Why not give this a try for a while? Test it against what the Bible teaches, and then give it a try.”

A year later he came to where I was preaching, but he had a new look on his face. He said he was living in the freedom of the finality of the cross, and his battles with sin were greatly diminished. The finality of the cross is not about giving us a license to sin all we want; it is about the freedom to let God love us and to love God in return.

If we fail to recognize that the issue of sin between us and God is over, it will be impossible to grow in our faith; it will stunt our spiritual growth. We will forever be working to “get right and stay right” with God. But if we truly believe in the finality of the cross, we can stop focusing on sin and start focusing on our life with God. I have come to believe that our spiritual formation is learning to give more and more areas of our life to Jesus by faith. Put simply, how can we trust Christ with our lives if we are unsure of his attitude toward us? When I embraced my complete forgiveness in Christ, a new energy came into my body and soul, and my desire for sin became less and less.

God forgave us all our trespasses, erasing the record that stood against us, nailing it to the cross (Colossians 2:13-14). Every time I hear the hymn “It Is Well with My Soul,” my heart soars during the third verse: “My sin—oh, the bliss of this glorious thought! / My sin—not in part but the whole, / Is nailed to His cross and I bear it no more; / Praise the Lord, praise the Lord, oh my soul.” Our sins, not in part but the whole—past, present, and future—have been nailed to the cross, and we bear them no more, forever.

In doing this for us, God made it possible for you and me to be made alive. This is what Bob George meant when he said, over and over, “Until you rest in the finality of the cross, you will never experience the reality of the resurrection.” The reality of the resurrection, being made alive by Christ, can only happen when the issue of our sin is over. Now we can live as new creations and sing and dance in the kingdom of God’s beloved Son.