Forgiven and Free

Transcript S2E12

Forgiven and Free

[00:00]

Hi, I'm Tony Kostas, and welcome to Led Into Love!

It's a year now since I made my first podcast episode.

For those of you who don't know me - just to give you a little bit of background … that it was during the few months leading up to that, from the earlier part of last year, 2024, that to my surprise, God steadily pointed me in the direction of recording a podcast – a regular podcast. But not only making a podcast. I mean, I've done a lot of preaching, a lot of teaching, a lot of ministry over many, many years … like 60 plus years.

But the difference with this one is that I knew that God wanted me to just share with a kind of spontaneity, if you like – but certainly without any preparation, each time I record an episode of this podcast. 

The reason for that I'm sure, from God, was – firstly, to trust what was in my heart, and secondly, to believe Him that I would know what it was that I should talk about. And yet without having something in front of me in the form of preparation.

[01:34] 

So, the Led Into Love podcast has been going now for a good year, and here I am again talking with you … sharing my heart with you.

And even though … like, obviously some of my listeners I know well, but I'm really sharing this for those of you that I don't know – even though it might well apply to some that I do know.

[01:58]

The thing that's really on my heart to talk about right now is summed up in 1 John, chapter 1, verse 9: “If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness”.

That's a very well-known verse to many Christians and, like so many Bible verses – and I know that I say this quite a lot … probably every one of my episodes … The trouble with knowing the Bible or being familiar with verses from the Bible is the familiarity that can actually … I was going to say ‘take the edge off them,’ but actually worse than that, it can sort of cause you to just say, “Yep, I know that. That's true,” and tick that box.

Just saying, “Well, what really is this saying?”

[02:52] 

Now, if you know Jesus – if you've had the experience, or been in a situation, where you have made a response to Him, or someone has encouraged you to make a response to Him … someone led you to Jesus or talked to you about Jesus … or you've been somewhere where the gospel's being preached and you made a response. 

You know, there's all kinds of ways in which people make a response to Jesus or understand that they've made a response to Jesus. But the desire of my heart, right from the … my very first episode, is that … you know what it is to know Jesus personally and intimately. Not just because you've made some kind of response, whether it's personal, whether in a meeting, whether because someone has talked with you and prayed with you … but because something has taken place between you and God.

So that if you're on a desert island, you would know that you know God. If you're on a desert island with no one to talk to you, no Bible to read, just what would you do? You know … what would matter to you in your life? I mean… obviously, don't let your mind run away with that. Just, say, well, you know, “I'd like to be rescued” … “I'd like to have food and water”. But you know what I'm talking about … talking about, in isolation. Where would you be? Who would God be to you?

 [04:22] 

This is very, very important. Not because we are meant to live in isolation, but there's a key Bible verse that says that “…the just shall live by his faith”.

Each individual person, if you just – in the eyes of God, because you have made God your God – you stand and you live by the faith in your heart.

And what do I mean by that? By knowing God and knowing that you know God, knowing God and knowing that God can speak to you. Otherwise you're trying to make something happen from the outside in. Let me explain.

[05:07] 

Like, everything that God does in our lives starts from the inside out. 

At the very core of your being, you are a spirit. You are a spiritual being because you're made in the image of God. And when God's Spirit comes into the heart of somebody because they open their hearts to Him, and because Jesus died to make that possible, the life of God – the presence of God, God Himself – comes and gives life to your spirit. That's why the Bible says that the person who is joined to God becomes one spirit with him.

This is a spiritual experience. You might have done something outwardly. 

In my case, as you know if you've heard some of my earlier episodes, I came to Jesus because I made a response at an evangelistic crusade when I was 17 years old.

But however it happens, it only is the real thing, when something happens between you and God, in which case the life of God comes into you.

And then if you keep relating to and responding to God, and you walk with God, you have fellowship with God, then the life of God transforms your life … transforms you into the person that God wants you to be for His glory.

[06:41] 

But key to that whole initial experience, when the gospel is preached or when people are encouraged to come to Jesus, is the forgiveness of sin. 

We don't hear a lot about sin these days, but sin is very real. And sin … the simplest definition, to me – the most basic definition of sin – is sin is whatever is offensive to God.

It's not like, you know, “Is this against the rules?”. Nor is it like, you know … like the law of the land can change. At one point, something can be a crime. At another point, the rules can be changed, and it's not a crime.

But sin is not crime. Sin is when you offend God and put something between yourself and God.

We – without God in our lives, without Jesus, without that new life that comes from Him – you have no hope of being sinless, because you are born with a bias to sin. And you are a sinner, and a sinner sins.

Now, that's a terrible thing. But also a wonderful thing … if that sinner then comes to God and discovers what it is. Not just to be forgiven – and this is the key to what I want to talk to you about today. Because whoever I'm talking to, I'm talking to you personally. Talking to you personally about sin and about forgiveness and about being cleansed from unrighteousness.

[08:13] 

Because when you go day by day through your life without God – even if you don't know about God's expectations, even if you don't know what offends God – you live with a sense of sin. And you may not even think of it in those terms.

People talk about ‘a guilty conscience’. People talk about ‘feeling bad about themselves’. People talk about ‘right and wrong’. But when you come near to God, God's spirit convicts you of sin.

And even when you come to God – so long as you walk with him and live with him – His spirit will always convict you of sin. And by that I mean He won't be convicting you of sin if there's no sin to convict you of! But when there's sin to convict you of, He will convict you of it!

But when you first come to Him … Let's talk about if you know that you've made a response to God at some point, whether it's recent or a long time ago. Key to that response being the real thing is that you came to him to receive forgiveness for your sin.

[09:24]

When I speak about being convicted of sin by God, I'm not talking about a guilty conscience. I'm not talking about going through a set of rules to find out if you did something that's a sin. I'm talking about what offends God. And you cannot know what is offensive to God unless you experience the conviction of the Holy Spirit.

When you come to God, you step into God's light. And God's light shines on your life. On the inside, right on the inside, deep down inside, you will know the conviction of sin.

And God does not convict you to make you feel bad. He doesn't convict you to condemn you. He convicts you to bring you to repentance.

[10:21]

Repentance simply means – again, in the simplest terms, it's like making a u-turn. You are going in one direction, and repentance is a complete turnaround in the opposite direction – the direction you should have been going, and will now go with God when you face your sin … when you're convicted.

There's a lovely verse that talks about the godly sorrow that leads to repentance.

There's great sorrow, but again, it's not the sorrow of just the feeling bad. It's not the fear of getting into trouble. It's the realization that there is this wonderful God who loves you so much that he sent His own son to die for you so that you could be forgiven for your sins and receive new life from God. And you realize what it is to offend God. 

And God convicts you not to give you a hard time, but to say, “You don't ever need to live like this again”.

Of course there's a sorrow, but it's a godly sorrow that leads to, to repentance. When you have that conviction of sin, as I say, which is far more than a guilty conscience. It's far deeper than a guilty conscience. And you confess your sins to God. 

“If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all our righteousness.”

[11:58] 

Not only are you forgiven, but you are cleansed.

Now, it's like, “I did the wrong thing”. Say, sinning is like jumping into a pigsty and rolling around in the mud. And then you realize what a stupid thing or what a wrong thing you did. And you get up, and you say, “I'm sorry, I'm not going to do that again”. But you’ve got this smelly mud all over you. What do you do? 

You need to be cleansed. And God does that.

God never saddles anybody with a burden of regret. But nor does he saddle anybody with, like, “the mud stuck, and that's tough. Don't do it again. But that's, you know, what's done is done.”

God cleanses you from all unrighteousness from everything that is not right in his sight.

[12:48] 

The reason why I'm saying this to you is because this is foundational to your relationship with God – whether you're a new Christian or whether you have been a Christian many years. If you are going around struggling with guilt, condemnation – even a sense of, like, being filthy, being dirty, being, you know, like you're glad you're forgiven, but you still don't feel clean.

Then something hasn't happened between you and God, or you're believing a lie about what has happened because God frees you. Not so that you'll feel great. Not, like, as in … as with some Christians and some churches. 

In fact, often it happens, like, “OK, I'm forgiven. I can go off, and then I'll just go off and sin again. And then I'll come back, and I'll be forgiven again”. And they get into a cycle of sin and repentance.

Not for that, but so that you will be free to live for God. And you don't live for God without God. Like, you come to God. God responds to you. You are forgiven, you are cleansed, you are born again. And then God continues with you … if you let him. And if you walk with God and live with God – then of course you'll be tempted. God wants you to be free. Not to sin … but to not sin. He makes it possible.

But if you sin … if you sin … then His forgiveness is there and the cleansing is there.

[14:30] 

But God wants you to be the person that He created you to be. And that life with him is built step-by-step in relationship with Him. That's why I'm going back to that foundational step for you. If you are not sure that this is real between you and God, then I can only urge you with all my heart. If you know … if you are convicted of sin … even if you feel guilty, because even though you believe God's forgiven you, you still feel dirty, you still feel unclean, you still feel unrighteous. You're still going around with regret. A burden of regret. Then something has to happen between you and God.

You might feel you're not worth it. You might feel you don't deserve it. You might feel you're being unreal. But Jesus died to bring you back to God. To give you what Adam had in the beginning with God – when Adam and Eve were pure and spotless without sin, just as Jesus was in this world. So God makes you when you come to Him.

But this has to happen between you and God. It will not happen because you read Bible verses about it. It will not happen because other people talk with you about it. It won't happen just because you think about it, and think about it more and more. It will happen because you will come into God's presence, and you will talk to God about this.

[16:11] 

And you will ask God to forgive you and to give you that sense of his forgiveness. You will ask him to cleanse you and to give you that sense. And you will believe him that you are clean. And that will free you. It should free you. And it will free you, if it's the real thing.

Free you to live as if you had never sinned before, and to live free from the power of sin.

God never condemns anybody. But those who come to him will always be convicted. The verse before the one I quoted from (1 John 1:9) says, “If we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves”.

Talk to God. Come to God. Give yourself freely to God. Confess your sins. Receive His forgiveness. And don't stop there. Let it go all the way, because that will free you.

And unless your heart's desire … I'll rephrase that. I won't say your heart's desire. Unless you, in the deceit of your own mind, think, “Great, now I can just do what I like. God, set me free.” You'll abuse the grace of God and you can end up in a worse position than you were before.

But if you say, “Thank you, God, because this is what I want. Because I want to live for you now”. You have no idea how God wants to be glorified in your life. 

You can't make that happen, but you can constantly keep yourself in a position where God has got that freedom to speak to your heart, to lead you in His way – and know that He won't have to have a struggle with your will, or your own agenda.

[18:13] 

When Jesus called people to follow Him and be His disciples, He did expect something very fundamental from them.

I once heard that the two main qualifications for a disciple is willingness to hear and willingness to obey.

God wants to speak to you, but having the experience of God speaking to you means nothing if you don't obey Him! When you are willing to hear and you are willing to obey – and you follow through on that. And then God speaks and you do obey … you'll be amazed! Like, seriously!

Your life was designed to glorify God. 

There's a wonderful verse in the Bible that talks about the joy in Heaven over one sinner that repents. So, imagine that the joy in heaven … like, it sounds like, “Oh, come on. Like, you know – you mean all of Heaven lights up because I repented?”

[19:23] 

And that's because we think of ourselves, and we naturally have … unless we're really, really self-deceived … we naturally have a small view of ourselves.

But you are worth so much. You are worth the life of the Son of God. But that life doesn't become yours if you're a sinner who hasn't repented. 

When a sinner repents – when you say, “I'm a sinner,” and you repent, and you face your sin … yeah, it might be a devastating experience because there's brokenness with repentance too. And there's a realization of what you've done.

But the joy in Heaven over one sinner who repents!

[20:00] 

And the reason for it is because now God has someone for whom Jesus died, that has now become His … like the Prodigal Son. And He can do with you and your life the thing that He's always wanted to do … and the thing that otherwise you will go through your life to the end of your life and it will never happen. Yes, it can't happen unless you make those responses to God.

So that's really what I want to talk about right now. “If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.”

[20:40] 

See to it that you do business with God.

See to it that you face your sin.

See to it that you've confessed your sin to God. 

See to it that you believe that forgiveness, and you have a sense of being forgiven. 

And if you don't have it, stay with God –because you don't want to be trying to psych yourself into it. You need to know it. To know it in your heart. To know the cleansing from all unrighteousness – the mud and the filth washed off you – and to know that you are free for God. 

And then if that's what you've needed to happen, or if that's what hasn't happened till now … if it has happened, great. I'm so happy for you because you know how you should be living anyway, and I hope you are.

So then yield your life to God.

Give up your right to yourself. 

Be a disciple.

Come to God always with that willingness to hear and willingness to obey … and live your life for Him.