Unmerited Favor (17 page)

When you compare 1 John with the greetings found in 2 John and 3 John, you can see that John greets believers directly in the other two letters. In 2 John, he writes, “...To the elect lady and her children, whom I love in truth...Grace, mercy, and peace will be with you from God ...,”
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and in 3 John, he writes, “ ...To the beloved Gaius, whom I love in truth: Beloved, I pray that you may prosper in all things and be in health, just as your soul prospers.”
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In stark contrast, there are no greetings to believers in 1 John 1. Why is that? It is because John was not writing to believers in that chapter. He was addressing the Gnostics who had infiltrated the early church. Gnostics are heretics who do not believe in the existence of sin. That is why John wrote:

If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us. If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. If we say that we have not sinned, we make Him a liar, and His word is not in us.

—1 John 1:8–10

John used the editorial “we” in his writing, but we know that this does not mean that he did not believe in the existence of sin. This passage was clearly written to the unbelieving Gnostics to encourage them to stop their denial of sin, acknowledge the truth that sin exists and acknowledge that
they
have sinned. It was written to bring them to the realization that “
all
have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.”
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Essentially, John was preaching the gospel to the Gnostics and telling them that if they confessed their sins, God would be faithful and just to forgive them their sins and cleanse them from all unrighteousness. That is why at the beginning of 1 John, John said,“...that which we have seen and heard we declare to you,
that you also may have fellowship with us
; and truly our fellowship is with the Father and with His Son Jesus Christ.”
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John was clearly preaching to non-believers (in this case, the Gnostics) about Jesus and His finished work, and inviting them to fellowship in Christ with the other believers in the early church.

In that very instance when you prayed the prayer of salvation, all the sins that you would commit for your entire life were  forgiven once and for all, and all God’s blessings, His favor, His health and His success became yours!

With this context in mind, it becomes clear that
1 John 1:9 was not written to believers
. The verse is a reference to the prayer that a sinner prays to accept Jesus as his personal Lord and Savior. You may know this as the “prayer of salvation” or “the sinner’s prayer.” If you are a believer today, it means that you have already prayed that prayer. Now, let me ask you this: How often do you have to pray the prayer of salvation? Only once! You are “born again” only once! You cannot be born again and again.

In the same way, how often do you have to confess your sins for Jesus to forgive you and cleanse you from all unrighteousness? Only once! In that very instance when you prayed the prayer of salvation,
all
the sins that you would commit for your entire life were forgiven once and for all. You received the full redemptive work of Jesus on the cross into your life, and all His blessings, His favor, His health and His success became yours! Let me say this plainly: You do not need to confess your sins again and again to be forgiven. You
are already
forgiven! Today, you can be honest with your Father about your mistakes and failures, knowing that He loves you and has already forgiven you. You don’t confess your sins to Him in order to be forgiven.

While chapter 1 of 1 John was written to the Gnostics, John directs his attention to believers when it comes to chapter 2. It becomes immediately clear that he is talking to believers once the chapter begins because he writes, “My
little children
, these things I write to you, so that you may not sin. And
if anyone sins, we have an Advocate with the Father
, Jesus Christ the righteous. And He Himself is the propitiation for our sins, and not for ours only but also for the whole world.”
¹¹

Right after John addresses the believers, he states clearly that if any one of us sins, we have an Advocate with the Father! Notice that there is no mention of confession of sins at all. Hey, this is the same John who wrote 1 John 1:9, which has been wrongly used to teach believers that they have to confess all their sins and to keep short accounts with the Lord to have fellowship with Him. No, when we as believers fail today, our Advocate fights for us. Our Advocate shows any accuser His nailed-pierced hands as a receipt for the payment that He made for our sins at the cross. Whenever we fail today, there is no power in confessing our sins, but there is power in confessing our righteousness in Christ, our identity in Christ and our unmerited favor in Christ!

Instead of being sin-conscious, become righteousness-conscious and receive the power of God to step out of that sin that seems to  have a grip on you. Receive the power and wisdom of God to turn around any failure in your life.

Furthermore, in verse 12 of the same chapter, John states, “I write to you, little children, because your sins are forgiven you for His name’s sake.” Here, John takes it for granted your forgiveness of sins without confessions. It would be a strange double-talk for John to write 1 John 1:9 and 1 John 2:12
both
to believers.

Beloved, instead of being sin-conscious, become righteousness-conscious, and receive the power of God to step out of that sin that seems to have a grip on you. Receive the power and wisdom of God to turn around any failure in your life. Sin-consciousness will make you depressed and keep you in a cycle of sin even when the unmerited favor of God is on your side. Every time you search your heart for sin and failings, guess what? You
will
find something! Instead of looking at your own failures, turn away from yourself and look at Jesus. Look at His heart of love and His forgiveness toward you. When you know that you do not deserve His grace (unmerited favor), and yet receive it, how can you help but be transformed? How can you help but want to worship Him?

Jesus wants you to have no more consciousness of your sins. Instead, He wants you to have a consciousness of your righteousness in Him. The more you are conscious of your righteous identity in Him, the more you are transformed by His unmerited favor, the more the desire to sin dissipates and the more you become a true worshiper. My friend, believers who know that their entire life of sins is forgiven by the blood of Jesus won’t want to run out there and sin like the devil. Instead, they become true worshipers of Jesus with hearts purified by His blood and having no more consciousness of sins!
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Would Complete Forgiveness Produce License To Sin?

Let’s look at Luke 7:36–50 to see what Jesus said about the forgiveness of sins. Simon, a Pharisee, had invited Jesus to his house. While Jesus was seated at the table in Simon’s house, a woman came to Him. She began to weep and she washed His feet with her tears. Then, she wiped His feet with her hair, kissed them and anointed them with fragrant oil.

When Simon saw this, he said to himself, “This Man, if He were a prophet, would know who and what manner of woman this is who is touching Him, for she is a sinner.” Even though Simon did not speak aloud, it is interesting that Jesus answered him by posing this question to him: “There was a certain creditor who had two debtors. One owed five hundred denarii, and the other fifty. And when they had nothing with which to repay, he
freely forgave them
both. Tell Me, therefore, which of them will love him more?” Simon answered, “I suppose the one whom he forgave more.” Jesus said to him, “You have rightly judged.”

Then, Jesus turned to the woman and said to Simon, “Do you see this woman? I entered your house; you gave Me no water for My feet, but she has washed My feet with her tears and wiped them with the hair of her head. You gave Me no kiss, but this woman has not ceased to kiss My feet since the time I came in. You did not anoint My head with oil, but this woman has anointed My feet with fragrant oil. Therefore I say to you, her sins, which are many, are forgiven, for she loved much. But to whom little is forgiven, the same loves little.”

You will only love Jesus much when you experience His lavish grace and unmerited favor in forgiving you of all your sins—past, present and future.

The woman loved Jesus
much
because she
knew
that she was forgiven
much
. In actuality, no one has been forgiven little. We have all been forgiven much. As for this woman, she knew it. So the most “dangerous” thing about this doctrine of complete forgiveness of sins is that you will fall in love with Jesus and end up effortlessly fulfilling the greatest commandment: “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind.”
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Hallelujah!

If you
think
that you have been forgiven little, then you will love little. But when you know the truth of how much you have been forgiven, you will love Jesus much! Knowing how much you have been forgiven is the secret to loving Jesus! In other words, you will only love Jesus much when you experience His lavish grace and unmerited favor in forgiving you of all your sins—past, present and future. But His grace is cheapened when you think that He has only forgiven you of your sins up to the time you got saved, and after that point, you have to depend on
your confession of sins
to be forgiven.

God’s forgiveness is not given in installments. Don’t go around thinking that when you confess a sin, He forgives you only for that sin. Then, the next time you sin, you need to confess your sin again for Him to forgive you again. Such is the kind of belief that cheapens His grace. And the result of this is that because you think that He has forgiven you little, you will end up loving Him little, and deprive yourself of running to Him and seeing Him help, deliver and prosper you.

Beloved, with one sacrifice on the cross, Jesus blotted out all the sins of your entire life! Don’t cheapen His unmerited favor with your own imperfect efforts to confess all your sins. Accord this gift that Jesus has given you the value that it deserves by fully receiving and experiencing His unmerited favor today!

Chapter 14: The Secret To Good Success

God does not simply want you to experience success in your life. He wants you to have
good success
. Is there such a thing as “bad success”? Yes there is and I am sure you have seen it yourself. There are people who are high achievers according to the world’s definition. Perhaps they are movers and shakers of the economy, famous celebrities who live in fabulous pads or sports stars who make millions of dollars a week hitting or kicking a ball around. However, for some of these people, what they have is only success in amassing wealth.

But, my friend, having financial success alone does not equate to good success. Good success is holistic and permeates every spectrum of your life. If you were to take a closer look at individuals who only have financial success, you would find that other areas of their lives are suffering. For instance, while they may have plenty of money, their lives could be scarred by one broken marriage after another. Beloved, being a public success but a private failure is not good success at all!

There are people who get promoted through the ranks so quickly and take on so many work responsibilities that they no longer have time to put their own kids to bed or read their little ones a bedtime story. They become victims of their own career success, and to hang on to the “success” they have created in the cutthroat corporate world, they allow their lives to zip past them. They may have earned more money than they will ever need, but they can’t enjoy their spouses and their children grow up without really knowing them.

Realize this: Even if you do win the rat race after scampering around all day, all you would have achieved is the status of number one rat! Is it really worth sacrificing your marriage and your children for that? Don’t just bury yourself in climbing the corporate ladder. Make sure your ladder is placed against the right building, and don’t wait till you reach the top before you realize that it’s not what you really want out of life.

Not Every Promotion Is Necessarily God’s Best For You

I often tell my congregation that they should believe God not just for a job, but depend on His favor for a
position of influence
. However, I also remind them to be careful not to get promoted
out
of their place of blessings, because not every promotion is necessarily God’s best for them.

Do you know that you can be promoted out of the good success that you are currently enjoying into a place where you enjoy only partial success? That promotion that you receive may also come with new responsibilities that will cause you to compromise your time with your family and draw you away from being in the house of God. All of a sudden, instead of being in God’s house on Sunday morning and bringing your kids for a picnic after church, you find yourself in the office every weekend. Perhaps you need to respond to urgent emails, resolve major crises, attend pressing board meetings or have yet another critical business trip to go for. You see, it can all sound very legitimate, but is this the “good success” that God wants for you?

Listen carefully to what I am saying. I am all for you being promoted in your workplace. In fact, I believe that God can promote you way beyond your educational qualifications and work experience! Just look at what God did for Joseph. He was promoted from a slave (the lowest possible position) to an overseer in Potiphar’s house. And even when he was thrown into prison, the Lord’s favor caused him to be promoted again and he became the overseer of all the prisoners.

Joseph experienced one promotion after another until he became the prime minister of Egypt (the highest possible position)! There is no doubt that God wants to promote and increase you. But note that Joseph’s eyes were not fixed on any of the promotions that he received. His eyes were fixed on the Lord each step of the way.
That
made him safe for the next round of promotion and he grew in the
good success
that the Lord had for him.

Fear Robs You Of Your Inheritance In Christ

Let’s look at Joshua 1, which records a critical point in Israel’s history, to see what we can learn about having the “good success” that God promised Joshua. Joshua was appointed as the new leader of Israel after Moses died and he was to bring God’s people into the Promised Land. This was a mammoth responsibility. Forty years before that, the children of Israel were on the brink of entering their Promised Land. But because they had refused to believe God’s promises to them, that generation spent 40 years wandering in the wilderness.

That was not God’s will for them. God wanted to bring them into a land that was
flowing
with milk and honey. He wanted to give them a land filled with large and beautiful cities they did not build, houses full of good things they did not fill, hewn-out wells they did not dig, and vineyards and olive trees they did not plant.
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In other words, He wanted them to enjoy the fruits and labor of another.

We do not have to strive and strain to be blessed.

Beloved,
that
is good success. That’s the kind of success where you enjoy abundance of provision in every area of your life. That’s the kind of success that is characterized by rest because today, the Bible says that our promised land is God’s rest.
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We are enjoying the fruits and labor of Another. And that’s the kind of success Christ has given us today. We do not have to strive and strain to be blessed.

What caused the entire generation to be robbed of their promised inheritance? To answer this question, we need to ask another: Who were the leaders over that generation? The Lord showed me that Moses had followed his father-in-law’s advice to appoint “able men, such as fear God, men of truth, hating covetousness”
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as his leaders to help him rule over the children of Israel.

The 12 spies who were sent to spy on Canaan must have been picked from this pool of leaders. This means that they were all able men who
feared God
, men of truth, hating covetousness. (By the way, when Jesus was tempted by the devil in the wilderness, He said, “Away with you, Satan! For it is written, ‘You shall
worship
the Lord your God, and Him only you shall serve.’”
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Jesus was quoting from Deuteronomy 6:13, which actually reads, “You shall
fear
the Lord your God and serve Him...” Jesus substituted the word “fear” with the word “worship.” So according to Jesus, to fear God is to
worship
God.) But despite having all these leadership attributes,
none
of these spies or leaders whom Moses appointed entered the Promised Land apart from Joshua and Caleb. None! Why was this so?

The answer is this: They lacked courage! We can read an account of this story in Numbers 13:17–14:9. Moses sent 12 spies into the Promised Land. Only Joshua and Caleb came back with a good report of the land, saying, “The land we passed through to spy out is an exceedingly good land. If the Lord delights in us, then He will bring us into this land and give it to us, ‘a land which flows with milk and honey.’ Only do not rebel against the Lord, nor fear the people of the land, for they are our bread; their protection has departed from them, and the Lord is with us. Do not fear them.”
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The other 10 spies gave a bad report, saying, “We are not able to go up against the people, for they are stronger than we...all the people whom we saw in it are men of great stature. There we saw the giants...and we were like grasshoppers in our own sight, and so we were in their sight.”
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They all saw the same land, the same giants, but what a stark contrast in the reports that they brought back! Joshua and Caleb had a different spirit
⁷
(a spirit of faith) and focused on the promises and goodness of God. But the rest cowered in fear and saw only the giants and challenges in the land.
They had good leadership qualities, but it was all negated because they were fearful.
Fear paralyzed them! The nation of Israel could only go as far as their leaders could bring them. Because their leaders were fearful, the entire generation was robbed of God’s promises for their lives!

Don’t Be Fearful Of Man’s Opinion Of You

Let’s get back to Joshua 1. In that one chapter, Joshua was exhorted to be strong and courageous four times.
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This is a powerful leadership lesson. God’s appointed leadership needs to be full of His strength and courage. Every believer is a leader in some capacity, so that exhortation applies to YOU. It means that you need to dare to be different. You need to stand up for what you believe, instead of compromising on your Christian morals and values. It also means that you do not act out of fear of man’s opinion of you, or allow your decisions to be shaped by the need for man’s approval.

Fellow pastors and ministers, be strong and of good courage. Your people can only go as far as their leadership leads them. They need you to lead them into the promised land. They need you to bring them to a place where they can enjoy the good success that Christ has purchased for them! Stop compromising on God’s new covenant promises. Don’t back away from the gospel of grace just because there is a small minority of people who abuse the gospel of grace and claim it as their license to sin.

Whether you preach grace or not, this handful of people will still exercise their free choice and continue to live in sin. In fact, the only way to help them is to preach grace without compromise, since only grace (unmerited favor) has the power to transform a sinner and remove the dominion of sin over him.
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The gospel of grace is not the license to sin. On the contrary, it is the power for people to sin no more!

My leaders have no qualms about confronting people who attend our church but insist on living in sin. They do not back down from the gospel of grace even if these people argue that they have the right to continue living as they please because they are “under grace.” In fact, my leaders would tell them outright that they are
not
under grace, because according to Romans 6:14, if they are under grace, then sin shall not have dominion over them! (Thank God that it has only been a few folks down through the years and that itself is a testament to the power of the gospel of grace being preached in our church.) The gospel of grace is not the license to sin. On the contrary, it is the power for them to sin no more!

A pastor once told me that after he had got hold of my teachings on the complete forgiveness of sins, he searched the Scriptures and studied all the verses that I had used in my teachings. He confirmed that
all
our sins—past, present and future—were indeed forgiven when Jesus died on our behalf. But despite knowing that God’s Word declares that all our sins have been forgiven and telling me that “it’s in the Bible and I see that,” he actually told me that he would not preach it to his congregation because “there’s no telling what they would do.” I was flabbergasted and deeply saddened. This pastor had more faith in the flesh of his people than in the Holy Spirit who indwells them.

What we need is a whole new generation of grace preachers who can be very strong and courageous in preaching the unadulterated gospel of Jesus, His person and His perfect work on the cross. We need leaders who are established in the new covenant of grace (unmerited favor), and who will not be satisfied with putting new wine into old wineskins by compromising with a mixture of law and grace! Be bold and preach the gospel as it is without adding to it by magnifying man’s works, or subtracting from it by trying to remove God’s unmerited favor from the equation. It is the gospel of Jesus and His unmerited favor that produce good success. It’s time for us to bring the people into their promised inheritance!

Meditate On The Word Of God

Coming back to Joshua’s appointment as Moses’ successor, look at the instructions that God gave Joshua: “This Book of the Law shall not depart from your mouth, but you shall meditate in it day and night, that you may observe to do according to all that is written in it. For then you will make your way
prosperous
, and then you will have
good success
.”
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God told Joshua that to have good success, he had to meditate on the law day and night. Joshua lived under the old covenant, so how should we, who live under the new covenant, benefit from this scripture?