I’ve received a number of questions about a recent series of online articles disputing the idea that Jesus died for all our sins, past, present, and future on the cross. The articles make the claim that the Bible teaches no such thing. So let’s find out. Does the Bible teach that all the sins of our life were forgiven at the cross or doesn’t it?

Colossians 2:13-14 reads as follows, When you were dead in your sins and in the uncircumcision of your sinful nature, God made you alive with Christ. He forgave us all our sins, having canceled the written code, with its regulations, that was against us and that stood opposed to us; he took it away, nailing it to the cross.

The Greek word translated all in this passage is pas.  It means each, every, any, all, the whole, all things, everything.  This would seem to support the claim that all sins past present and future were forgiven at the cross.  It also supports Paul’s statement that at the moment of belief the Holy Spirit was sealed within us as a deposit guaranteeing our inheritance.

And you also were included in Christ when you heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation. Having believed, you were marked in him with a seal, the promised Holy Spirit, who is a deposit guaranteeing our inheritance until the redemption of those who are God’s possession—to the praise of his glory(Ephes. 1:13-14).

Taken literally, this means the Holy spirit is the down payment that guarantees the redemption of the acquired possession (us).  This guarantee went into effect when we first believed. (By the way, for those of you who only speak King James-ese, all translation interpretations on this site are from the Greek text that brought forth the King James Version.)

Now it is God who makes both us and you stand firm in Christ. He anointed us,set his seal of ownership on us, and put his Spirit in our hearts as a deposit, guaranteeing what is to come. (2 Cor. 1:21-22).

This tells us that God has established us as His and has placed His seal upon us as well.  A seal is meant to authenticate ownership, placing it beyond doubt. It’s similar to the brand a rancher places on his cattle.  1 Cor. 6:19 says we are no longer ours, we were bought with a price. The price was the life of His Son Jesus. The Holy Spirit is our guarantee that God, who acquired us, will also redeem us.

Hebrews 10:12-14 states that Jesus offered Himself as a once for all time sacrifice for sin that has made us perfect forever.

But when this priest had offered for all time one sacrifice for sins, he sat down at the right hand of God.  Since that time he waits for his enemies to be made his footstool, because by one sacrifice he has made perfect forever those who are being made holy.

Once for all time means it applies from the beginning of the Age of Man to the end and continuously throughout. That includes the entire life of every believer. In offering Himself as our sacrifice for sin He has made perfect forever we who are being made Holy. This is an expansion of the writer’s claim in Hebrews 7:25to the effect that because Jesus lives forever He is able to save us forever. (These verses  prove that all interpretations of Hebrews 6:4-6 and Hebrews 10:26-27that are used to deny eternal security are incorrect on their face.  The same author, writing under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, could not contradict himself so radically).

Notice the sacrifice made us perfect forever, even though we’re still in the process of being made Holy.  That’s a job that won’t be finished until the rapture/resurrection.

Being made perfect forever is what Paul meant when he said, Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has gone, the new has come! (2 Cor. 5:17).  The verbs here are in the past perfect tense.  That means  from God’s perspective this is all over and done.  Paul said that by accepting the Lord’s death as payment for all our sins we’ve become as righteous as God is (2 Cor. 5:21).

These statements are all consistent.  Individually and collectively they clearly show that all the sins of our life are forgiven from the moment we first believe. And there’s not a single verse in the New Testament that contradicts, modifies, or retracts these promises.  After all, how could God guarantee our salvation from the moment of belief unless all the sins of our life were paid for and forgiven at the cross?

But We Still Sin!
So how can we reconcile this with the undeniable fact that we still sin? Remember, in His Sermon on the Mount Jesus explained that sin begins with a thought, whether action follows or not.  Anger is as much a sin as murder, lust is as much a sin as adultery.  He could also have said coveting is as much a sin as theft, and so on. The writer of Hebrews told us that continuing to work to earn or keep our salvation is equivalent to breaking the commandment to keep the Sabbath (Hebrews 4). And James said whoever keeps the whole Law and yet stumbles at just one point is guilty of breaking all of it (James 2:10).  It’s only by using the blood of Jesus to wash away all the sins of our life that God could make good on His promise to guarantee our inheritance.  Here’s how He does it.

Because we’ve been born again, God chooses to see us as the perfect being we will be after the rapture /resurrection.  He can do this because He’s outside of time.  Remember, eternity is not just a lot of time.  Eternity is the absence of time altogether and God inhabits eternity (Isaiah 57:15).  Remember God telling Adam that in the day he ate from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil he would die? (Genesis 2:17)  When Adam and Eve disobeyed, they didn’t die then and there. But although they lived for several hundred more years, they were changed from immortal to mortal on that day.  Their eventual death became a certainty and God who is outside time saw it at the moment they sinned.

Becoming born again is the exact opposite.  We didn’t actually become immortal on that day but  our immortality was made certain, and from that time on God saw us as immortal beings. He inspired Paul to write, Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has gone, the new has come!  (2 Cor. 5:17). Although to us we’re still much the same, to God we became a new creation on the day we accepted the Lord’s death as payment for our sins. He now sees us as being as righteous as He is (2 Cor. 5:21).  This righteousness comes through faith in Jesus Christ to all who believe (Romans 3:22).

Paul explained how God is able to do this in Romans 7:18-20.  I know that nothing good lives in me, that is, in my sinful nature. For I have the desire to do what is good, but I cannot carry it out.  For what I do is not the good I want to do; no, the evil I do not want to do—this I keep on doing.  Now if I do what I do not want to do, it is no longer I who do it, but it is sin living in me that does it.

For a born again believer, God has separated the sin from the sinner.  God sees our sins as a holdover from the old us and does not consider them to be part of the new us.

What Should Be Our Response To This?
Does this mean we’re free to sin all we want? Are the legalists correct in saying that if God didn’t threaten us with the loss of our salvation we would all become the worst kind of depraved sinners? Millions of born again believers whose lives are radically different stand as evidence to the contrary. We all still sin from time to time but the direction and focus of our lives is not the same as it once was, and we can testify to the fact that we’ve been changed.  Although Paul said everything is permissible, he also said not everything is beneficial or constructive.  Therefore we no longer seek our own good but the good of others (1 Cor. 10:23-24) in the hope of winning the prize for which God has called us heavenward in Christ Jesus (Phil 3:14). Paul was not talking about his salvation, which he already had, but rewards he hoped to receive at the Bema Seat judgment (1 Cor. 3:10-15) after the rapture.

This is why the loss of our salvation is never threatened.  Our belief in our eventual immortality matches what God has already seen for us, and in the meantime we strive to heed Paul’s advice to live up to what we have already attained (Phil 3:16).  This is our spiritual act of worship (Romans 12:1) in gratitude for what we’ve been freely and irrevocably given.

But what about those true believers who don’t respond with gratitude and who don’t seem to have changed, living pretty much the way they did before they were saved? Is the gift rescinded? The promise broken? The guarantee revoked? I haven’t found a single verse that threatens them in this way.  How could there be when all the sins of their life are paid for, including the sin of ingratitude.

What I’ve found is that for the most part, these ungrateful souls live defeated lives here and forfeit rewards in the hereafter.  These are the ones Paul said will still be saved but only as one escaping through the flames (1 Cor. 3:15).

Here on Earth they have union with out fellowship, never experiencing any intimacy with God.  As a result their Christian walk consists of movement without progress, battles without victories, and service   without success. They’re on the right side of pardon but the wrong side of power, having justification without sanctification.

Jesus described them in the parable of the sower and the seed, saying they’re like the seed that fell among thorns. It germinates and grows but because it’s choked by the thorns, it never matures to bear fruit.   Because these believers are too concerned with the ways of the world, they never mature as Christians and never produce anything of value to the Kingdom (Matt. 13:22).  At the Bema Seat they’ll stand before the Lord with nothing to show for the incredible gift they were given because they will fave failed to implement the wonderful plan He had for their lives.

The New Testament is crammed with admonitions and encouragement to allow the Holy Spirit to change the focus of our lives from the things of this world to the things of the next one, from the things we can see, which are temporary, to the things we cannot, which are eternal (2 Cor. 4:18), to be made new in the attitudes of our mind (Ephesians 4:23) no longer conforming to the patterns of this world (Romans 12:2).  In short, to live up to what we’ve already attained (Phil. 3:16).

Some believers who fail to heed these admonitions will find themselves having escaped judgment simply because on a single day in their otherwise unremarkable life they made a decision that changed everything.  For some it will be the only smart decision they ever made, but they will have made it in faith, which is all that matters (Ephesians 2:8-9) because having made it, all the sins of their miserable existence were forgiven and they became a child of God (John 1:12-13), adopted into His forever family (Gal. 4:4-5).

When the time comes, those who failed to make that decision would gladly trade the riches of the world to change places with them.  But as indescribably generous as the gift they received on that day is, it was only the first installment on the life they could have had. Whether out of ignorance or rebellion they turned down the rest, refusing to allow the Holy Spirit to guide them into it, until finally the still small voice within them could no longer be heard.

I sometimes wonder if the loss some will suffer at the Bema Seat (1 Cor. 3:15) will appear as endless warehouses of unclaimed blessing or if the tears the Lord wipes from their eyes will be tears of regret upon learning what they could have done through Him had they responded to the Holy Spirit’s prompting.  Only time will tell. But at least, it will all be in the past, because Rev. 21:4 goes on to say that from then on there will be no more death or mourning or crying or pain for the old order of things will have passed away. All their sins were forgiven from the day they first believed.

Now Abel kept flocks, and Cain worked the soil. In the course of time Cain brought some of the fruits of the soil as an offering to the LORD. But Abel brought fat portions from some of the firstborn of his flock. The LORD looked with favor on Abel and his offering, but on Cain and his offering he did not look with favor. So Cain was very angry, and his face was downcast.

Then the LORD said to Cain, “Why are you angry? Why is your face downcast? If you do what is right, will you not be accepted? But if you do not do what is right, sin is crouching at your door; it desires to have you, but you must master it.” (Genesis 4:2-7)

From the Scriptures it appears that Cain knew how to bring an acceptable offering to the Lord. This is one of the clues that leads me to believe the Lord introduced a form of what would become the Levitical System right after the fall. There had to be a way for His earliest children to set aside their sins until the Redeemer He had promised to send (Gen. 3:15) came to solve the sin problem permanently. But although he knew what was right, Cain hadn’t done it and the Lord warned him that if he didn’t change there would be serious consequences. He didn’t and there were.

One of the tools used by theologians to help understand the Lord’s Word is called “The Principle Of First Mention”. It holds that the first time an important matter is mentioned in the Bible, the context in which it appears often contains information vital to our understanding of His Word in general, not just to the specific instance. The lesson fromGenesis 4 is if we want to accepted by God, we should do the right thing.  In the Old Testament doing the right thing was bringing the prescribed offering for sin.  In the New, it’s believing in the one He sent (John 6:28-29).

Cain’s experience shows us that the Lord doesn’t condemn us for failing to do what is right without first teaching us what is right. It bears repeating that Cain knew what was right, but didn’t do it. Therefore he was acting with volition, consciously choosing a different way than the Lord had shown him.

I don’t think this is something that’s unique to Cain. There are several specific New Testament references to people who know what is right but don’t do it. I’m not talking about the sins we all commit, where we purposely do something that we know is displeasing to God. I’m talking about major disobedience that carries huge consequences.   Jude called this following the Way of Cain. (Jude 1:11)  In this study we’ll look at some folks who knew what was right but followed the way of Cain, and show that the consequences of their behavior has affected all of society.

Knowing What’s Right Vs. Doing What’s Right

The wrath of God is being revealed from heaven against all the godlessness and wickedness of men who suppress the truth by their wickedness, since what may be known about God is plain to them, because God has made it plain to them. (Romans 1:18-19).

This passage in Romans is not about people who never heard the truth about God and in ignorance came up with some alternate explanation for who we are and how we got here. This is about men who knew the truth and suppressed it. They knew what was right because God made it plain to them. But they not only didn’t do what was right, they tried to hide it so that others wouldn’t discover it. They compounded the Way of Cain and ruined our world.

For since the creation of the world God’s invisible qualities—his eternal power and divine nature—have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that men are without excuse.

For although they knew God, they neither glorified him as God nor gave thanks to him, but their thinking became futile and their foolish hearts were darkened. Although they claimed to be wise, they became fools and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images made to look like mortal man and birds and animals and reptiles. (Romans 1:20-23)

God has made His presence known to man, and eliminated all our excuses. These men knew God but rejected Him, and when they did four things began to happen, all of them bad.

First, their thinking became futile and their foolish hearts were darkened. That means they lost the ability to reason where the things of God are concerned. Remember Psalm 14:1,The fool has said in his heart, “There is no God.” And in 1 Cor. 1:14 Paul wrote, The man without the Spirit does not accept the things that come from the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness to him, and he cannot understand them, because they are spiritually discerned. A foolish person lacks the ability to reason and relies on wishful thinking. And second, they stopped worshiping the Creator in favor of the Creation.

These men held themselves out to be wise, learned men, who had come up with a superior alternative to what they call the fables and fiction of the Bible. Some called themselves scientists, although by definition science requires observation, and they’ve never observed their theory in action. What they were able to observe is that left alone, all things proceed from order into chaos, or devolve, and yet their theory requires things to go the opposite direction, evolving from chaos into order, without any outside assistance. Their’s is a natural law that violates natural law.

Therefore God gave them over in the sinful desires of their hearts to sexual impurity for the degrading of their bodies with one another. They exchanged the truth of God for a lie, and worshiped and served created things rather than the Creator—who is forever praised. Amen. (Romans 1:24-25)

Third and fourth, many who accepted this alternative to Creation became sexually immoral and materialistic. If this had only happened to a few, we could have seen how different from the rest of us they had become. But since their theory effectively does away with God, it caught on among others who were seeking an alternative to Him, and after a relatively short period of time it worked its way into the educational systems of the world in the guise of science. In order to suppress the truth, scientists and educators made sure it was the only thing taught in our schools, and after a few generations no one even thought to question it. Even many of the leading theologians went along, seeing their theory as being more sophisticated and more intellectually appealing than God’s Word. Soon this theory that’s never been observed or proven became as fact.

Seeking to end their troublesome conflict with God’s Word for good, they got Him kicked out of the educational system altogether.  As they did, the standard of morality began to decline, and before long the age of materialism was upon us followed by the sexual revolution. Then pornography went public and became an accepted part of our entertainment. Soon, half of all marriages were ending in divorce. 50 million unborn children were put to death for the sake of convenience. (Anyone can look at an ultrasound and know intuitively that it depicts a human life. It took experts who know what is right but refuse to do it to convince us otherwise.) Children who were brought into the world were abandoned to the very schools that had played a major role in causing the problem.

Because of this, God gave them over to shameful lusts. Even their women exchanged natural relations for unnatural ones. In the same way the men also abandoned natural relations with women and were inflamed with lust for one another. Men committed indecent acts with other men, and received in themselves the due penalty for their perversion. (Romans 1:26-27)

When these men saw evidence of the cause and effect relationship that Paul had warned them about, they worked to suppress it as well. They called these judgments from God alternative lifestyles, as proper as any other choice, and began teaching our children to accept and even celebrate them. They passed laws against thinking of them in any other way, in some instances making it a crime for us to remind them of God’s word.

Furthermore, since they did not think it worthwhile to retain the knowledge of God, he gave them over to a depraved mind, to do what ought not to be done. They have become filled with every kind of wickedness, evil, greed and depravity. They are full of envy, murder, strife, deceit and malice. They are gossips, slanderers, God-haters, insolent, arrogant and boastful; they invent ways of doing evil; they disobey their parents; they are senseless, faithless, heartless, ruthless. Although they know God’s righteous decree that those who do such things deserve death, they not only continue to do these very things but also approve of those who practice them. (Romans 1:28-32)

It’ll All Be Over Soon

As a society we’ve acquired such depraved minds that we don’t even see what’s happening to us. We should know that we’re on the brink of destruction, but we keep getting worse and worse, applauding behavior that we would have condemned in disgust only a few years ago.

Since the first judgments haven’t turned mankind back to God, a final, much more serious one is coming. This one is so bad that the Lord will remove His Church from out of the midst of it to protect us from it’s effect. (1 Thes. 1:9-10) Jesus said that it would be so bad that not one living soul would survive it unless he puts an end to it at the appointed time. (Matt. 24:22)

Already we can see signs of it building among us. But as bad as things are now, this is nothing compared to the way the world will soon be. In Paul’s day the Greek Empire was in the last days of it’s decline, gasping under the weight of the same kind of decay that’s in evidence everywhere in our world today. And Paul already saw it coming upon the Roman Empire, although the worst of it was still several hundred years away at the time. In each of these world Empires people’s hearts had become so hardened and their minds so depraved that they couldn’t even figure out what was happening to them. It’s the same today, except it’s coming upon the world much more quickly this time.  Having failed to learn from its mistakes, the world of our time is doomed to repeat them.

And contrary to the prevailing view in the Charismatic and Emerging Church movements, the Bible mentions no great revival at the end of the age to right all our wrongs, heal all our diseases, and clean up our mess in time to hand it over to the Messiah, all bright and shiny. The reason people from those movements don’t want you studying Bible prophecy is that their version of the End Times, called Dominion Theology, can not be found there.

Contrary to what they preach, this is what God’s word tells us to expect. Jesus said that in the last days the believing Church would have little strength but would keep His word and not deny His name. He said He would come for us soon and to hold on until He does. (Rev. 3:8,11) On the other hand, He said, the apostate church would consider itself wealthy and in need of nothing, not realizing that they’re wretched, pitiful, poor, blind and naked. All the while He stands knocking at their door trying to get in. Unable to do so, He will spew them out of His mouth. (Rev. 3:16,17,20).

None of this had to happen, of course. It all started when a few men who knew what was right decided not to do it. And the rest, as they say, is history. It’s hard to believe that all of our society’s sexual immorality, its materialism and greed, the decay of its educational system, its disregard for the value of human life, and its celebration of alternative lifestyles, all stem from its decision to ignore what men know is right but refuse to do.  But that’s exactly what’s happened. For although they knew God, they neither glorified him as God nor gave thanks to him, worshiping and serving created things rather than our Creator. It’s the Way of Cain.