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A CHAIR WAS A FORBIDDEN PIECE OF FURNITURE INSIDE THE JEWISH tabernacle and later in the temple. Why? Imagine for a moment that you’re an average citizen of Israel. You enter the temple on the Day of Atonement and are greeted by a priest lounging in a La-Z-Boy. What would this communicate to you? He must have nothing left to do! To avoid this false impression, God didn’t allow such a scene to take place. He forbade Levitical priests to sit down on the job, so that the image of unfinished business would be imprinted on their consciences.

Hebrews contrasts the constant standing and ongoing religious performances of Old priests with our seated High Priest, who will never again offer another sacrifice for sins:

Day after day every priest stands and performs his religious duties; again and again he offers the same sacrifices, which can never take away sins. But when this priest [Jesus] had offered for all time one sacrifice for sins, he sat down at the right hand of God.

HEBREWS 10:11-12, italics added

After [Jesus] had provided purification for sins, he sat down at the right hand of the Majesty in heaven.

HEBREWS 1:3

We’re now forgiven for all time .

Grasping this truth can revolutionize our understanding of how pure and clean we are before God. We’re invited to recognize our High Priest as seated at the right hand of the Father, with nothing left to do about our sins. The work is completed, and we’re now forgiven for all time.

Our past, present, and future sins were dealt with simultaneously through the cross. God didn’t discriminate with regard to time of occurrence. All of our sins were in the future when Jesus died. He looked down the entire timeline of human existence and took away all sins. Whether the sins occurred two thousand years before or after the cross made no difference. When Jesus finished wiping out all record of our sins, he took a seat. And he has been relaxing at God’s right hand ever since.

What position are you in with regard to your sins? Are you standing up, running around, and trying to make up for them? Attempting to get forgiven, to get cleansed? Or are you seated with Jesus Christ in a relaxed position? Do you realize that your Savior has taken them away once and for all?

Christians today talk about wanting to be like Jesus and to think like Jesus. We often hear the popular question, “What would Jesus do?” Thinking like Jesus involves having the same attitude about our sins that he does. He assures us that the sin issue is over. There’s no other act that will make us more forgiven than we already are: “By one offering [Jesus] has perfected for all time those who are sanctified” (Hebrews 10:14 NASB, italics added).

Are you willing to be like Jesus by forgetting your sins? Are you eager to agree with God that you’re a forgiven person? Would you go so far as to agree with the writer of Hebrews that you’ve been made perfect forever? Anything short of these astounding claims is not faith in the gospel. God wants us to know that real forgiveness has been accomplished on our behalf. It’s ours to enjoy. Freedom from guilt is our daily destiny as believers in Jesus.

IT’S ALL IN THE PAST

Nothing is more convincing than the numerous Bible passages that refer to our forgiveness as a completed act. When it comes to forgiveness, most of these passages talk about it using the past tense:

When you were dead in your sins…, 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.

COLOSSIANS 2:13-14 NIV

Be kind and compassionate to one another, forgiving each other, just as in Christ God forgave you.

EPHESIANS 4:32

“Their sins and lawless acts I will remember no more.”

And where these have been forgiven, sacrifice for sin is no longer necessary.

HEBREWS 10:17-18

Since Jesus
doesn’t die daily,
our forgiveness
is not issued daily.

Whether it’s expressed as “forgave” or “have been forgiven” makes little difference. The concept is plain and obvious. Jesus shed his blood, and this brought forgiveness. Since he doesn’t die daily, our forgiveness is not issued daily. Since he’ll never die again, there’s no further forgiveness needed. We have been forgiven, and therefore we live in a forgiven state.

PERPETUAL PROPOSALS

Let’s say you are a married man. Imagine if every night before you went to sleep, you leaned over to your wife and asked her to marry you. It’s just something that would make you feel better—asking her again and again. It’s your way of confirming that you’re married. So every night you say, “Honey, will you marry me?” The words you choose are no big deal. It’s just semantics. You know you’re really married, but you just like to ask her over and over.

This ritual is more than a bit strange, isn’t it? Your wife would never let you get away with something so ridiculous. Semantics? Hardly. Repeating a question like that over and over might even be a little insulting.

If I were to try this with my wife, she would ask me to reconsider my thought processes: “Don’t you remember the ceremony? The vows? The witnesses? We were married years ago. I have the photo album right here. It’s now a past event. We live in a constant state of being married. There’s no need to ask me over and over if I’ll marry you.”

It’s the same way with our forgiven state. And it’s not just semantics. It matters. Have you thought about how many times the epistles urge us to ask God for forgiveness? The answer is zero times. You won’t find a single epistle that suggests that we ask God for forgiveness. Why not? Because the writers penned their words after the death of Jesus. They were fully aware of their forgiveness as an accomplished fact.

Like my wife’s recollection of our wedding, the writers remembered the “ceremony” of the cross and the “vow” made by God to remember their sins no more. In fact, some of them were eyewitnesses of the once-for-all sacrifice. It wouldn’t make sense to urge their readers to ask God for forgiveness.

These authors were Jews by birth. They were fully aware of God’s economy—only blood brings forgiveness. In their minds, asking for forgiveness would be equivalent to requesting that Jesus hang on a cross over and over again. You know—one death for today’s sins, another death for tomorrow’s sins, and so forth.

They knew better.