Aug 18
20
PARDON FOR SIN
When a president leaves office, he frequently pardons prisoners. Those prisoners are set free from prison, but those former prisoners remain guilty. The president of the United States has power to set a guilty prisoner free from prison, but he does not have the power to make that prisoner not guilty. Society must look on that former prisoner as a free man but everyone knows he is really still guilty.
GOD DOES NOT PARDON SIN LIKE THE PRESIDENT PARDONS PRISONERS. God is holy. God ALWAYS punishes sin.
God “will by no means clear the guilty” (Ex. 34:7). So when God pardons sin, God removes the guilt of sin through the sacrifice of His Son, our Lord Jesus Christ. The guilt of the sin of all of God’s elect was charged to Christ our Substitute. The blood of Christ removed the guilt of the sin of His people. In Christ we stand NOT GUILTY. The Father does not wink at the sin of His people and accept them in spite of their sin. The Father accepts His elect in Christ because in Christ they have no sin! “And I will cleanse them from all their iniquity, whereby they have sinned against me; and I will pardon all their iniquities, whereby they have sinned, and whereby they have transgressed against me” (Jer 33:8). Frank Tate