ANNOUNCER: Another question related to forgiveness. Will God judge us for sins He has forgiven us? When we were born again, were we forgiven of all sin, past, present, and future as is often taught? What about consequences of sin? Thank you for joining us today. Let’s talk about these things right here on Grace in Focus. This is a radio broadcast and podcast ministry of the Grace Evangelical Society. Our website, faithalone.org. And it is the time of year when we invite you to come and join us at our national Annual Conference held in May each year. This year the dates are May 18th through the 21st. We are a great group to fellowship with and to learn with and for your kids, VBS. This year their curriculum will be about crowns and rewards and it will be an exciting curriculum for them. So get your family signed up. Everything you need to do that will be found at faithalone.org/events. 

And now with today’s question and answer discussion, Here is Bob Wilkin along with Ken Yates. 

KEN: And Bob, I think this question from Max, you did a couple of blogs on—did Jesus take the punishment of all of our sins, right, wasn’t that the title of it?

BOB: And that was kind of controversial because I said that what He did is He removed the sin barrier by His shed blood. And then there are other benefits from His blood that you have to be a believer to get. Like, you know, if you’re a believer, then you start the Christian life forgiven. 

KEN: Okay, but the issue here is for the believer. Did Jesus take the punishment? Let’s use that word because that’s the word you use, for all of our sin? 

BOB: And my answer would be no, and that’s what I put in those blogs. For example, the Scripture says repeatedly, the wages of sin is death, right? Do Christians die? 

KEN: Yeah, they do. And there’s consequences for our sin. 

BOB: Why? Because we’re sinners. The fact that Jesus died in the cross doesn’t mean that our death penalty has been removed. People would say, oh, yes, it has. You have eternal life now. 

KEN: Because they don’t see that as physical death at all. 

BOB: But it is physical death. And the other part of it is, aren’t there other consequences? In other words, doesn’t Paul say, for example, that sexual sin is a sin against the body, and that we reap consequences in our body for sexual immorality?

KEN: Sure, even if we’re forgiven. 

BOB: All these STDs, which they now call them something else, STIs, I think, all of these things are, you can argue, a consequence of people going against God. And as a result, these terrible diseases become part of our culture. Sometimes they’re even brought into marriages where one of the spouses is not unfaithful, but the other is.

KEN: Right. Well, Max asked a question like this, if we are forgiven of all of our sins, past, present, and future, stop right there. I don’t agree with that. We’re not forgiven, but, okay, we’re forgiven of our sins. How does God judge us for them again and adjudicate as guilty and impose some penalty or loss of reward? I’m assuming that he’s talking about at the Judgment Seat of Christ. So the loss of rewards, I think that’s what he’s saying here. 

BOB: Yeah, but he’s also saying, okay, if God forgives me in this life, 1 John 1:9, right? I confess my sins, he forgives me. So let’s not even talk about past, present, future. Let’s just say, I committed a sin today. I confess it today. I’m forgiven today, right? I’m cleansed today. Okay. Does that mean there are no consequences? 

KEN: Or let’s use a word punishment here. 

BOB: Okay, no punishment. So let’s say, for example, that I’m a youth pastor and I am involved in a sex crime against children. Am I ever going to be a child pastor again? 

KEN: I would go a step further. 

BOB: For the whole rest of my life.

KEN: You should never be. 

BOB: Right. If they do a background check on you and find out you’re a registered sex offender, they will never let you get anywhere near children. 

KEN: And they shouldn’t. 

BOB: They shouldn’t, right? So there are consequences. Now, do you want to call that a punishment? Well, we might argue on whether you call it punishment or not, but we do know there are consequences for our sins. For example, remember King David, a man after God’s own heart. If you read 2 Samuel in chapter 11, remember Nathan confronts him and says, you’re the man and he confesses and he’s forgiven. He was supposed to die for adultery and murder. He doesn’t die. But there’s all kinds of negative consequences in 2 Samuel 7:12-24. 

KEN: I would say there was punishment for it. 

BOB: I would say it’s punishment. 

KEN: I don’t think that’s too strong a word. The baby died. 

BOB: First of all, the baby with him and Bathsheba dies, then Absalom ends up and rebels. And Absalom ends up sleeping with his concubines and Absalom ends up dying in the rebellion. And he laments the death of Absalom. 

KEN: And he loses his kingdom there for a period. 

BOB: And then he ends up foolishly counting the people and that leads to a plague running through Israel. 

KEN: Can I give you another one that most people don’t talk about, but I think about it as a ex-military guy? I remember when later when his military commander does something that David doesn’t, wasn’t going to be real thrilled about and the commander goes, tell him Uriah died. And what I’m saying is, the people who worked below and knew, you know, they knew about his sin, or at least some of them did. And it impacted the way they were interacting with him. So one of the penalties for our sin can be, others will know that we’re a hypocrite. And so even that was affecting his leadership within the kingdom. 

BOB: Right. But here’s my point, Max. It’s a mistake to equate forgiveness with no consequences. Because if that were the case, then wouldn’t that mean there’s no accountability in the Christian life, as long as we confess our sins, we’re not accountable for anything we do. We can be involved in murder or adultery or anything else, even robbing banks. They can’t throw me into prison because I’m a believer. No, the government is God’s minister to support righteousness. So if I go to prison because I rob a bank, that’s as good as God putting me in prison for robbing the bank, right? 

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KEN: And I would say, you know, you take, I mean, just a simple example in the Scriptures when Mark abandons Paul on the first missionary journey. On the second missionary journey Paul says, nope. 

BOB: And that leads to him and Barnabas separating. 

KEN: Exactly. And there’s no doubt that Mark confessed, said, I’m sorry, because he’s coming back and says, let me go with you the next time. But Barnabas says, yeah, let’s do it. But Paul says, no. 

BOB: But you know, the funny thing is in some of Paul’s later letters, he mentions Mark in a positive light. And he wants Mark to come visit him. 

KEN: Right, but for a period of time there anyway, Paul was like, no, I can’t trust you.

BOB: Well, remember, he did that with Demas in 2 Timothy 4:10. He says, Demas has forsaken me, having loved this present world. In his earlier epistles, he mentions Demas right alongside the beloved physician Luke, as one of his co-workers. But then he says in 2 Timothy 4:10, he’s forsaken me or departed for me, having loved this present world. Now we don’t know if Demas came back or not. We know Mark came back. 

KEN: Right. Another example would be, what if Paul in 1 Timothy 3 gives as a requirement for an elder? 

BOB: Great point. So what are some of the requirements? 

KEN: The husband of one wife, however we determine that. 

BOB: Let me give you a quick one on the husband of one wife, which is literally in Greek is “a one woman man” because later on in 2 Timothy 5, he says, women aren’t to be put on the list, unless they’re one man women. So in other words, if a woman has been widowed and remarried, she can’t be put on the list. She didn’t do anything wrong. She was widowed, she remarried, but she said two husbands, so she can’t be on the list. A lot of people think, this is a minority, that if you’ve been married more than once, even if it’s because you were widowed, you can’t be an elder. In fact, S. Lewis Johnson, who left Dallas Seminary just before you and I got there, S. Lewis Johnson was an elder at Believer’s Chapel in Dallas. And his wife died and he was a widower for a number of years. Well then he remarried and guess what he did when he remarried. 

KEN: Resigned as an elder? 

BOB: He did. He continued to preach, but he was no longer an elder because he believed that if you were married a second time, it’s an issue of remarriage. If you’ve been married to more than one woman, whether you’re a polygamist or you’re a widower who is remarried or a divorced man who’s remarried, in this view you’re disqualified. 

Well, is that a punishment for sin? Well, it’s not a punishment for sin if you’ve done nothing wrong. Let’s say you have a divorce and the reason you’re divorced is because you were cheating on your wife. 

KEN: That’s what I was getting at, right. 

BOB: Well then it is a sort of a punishment because you are not allowed to be an elder. Now, don’t get me wrong, most churches would say today that divorced men who’ve remarried are perfectly fine to be elders. That’s a matter of your own interpretation of Scripture. Every church needs to make that decision. But if you hold the view that I’m suggesting, then you would certainly say that that infidelity on their part has some permanent consequences. 

KEN: Well, you know, when Paul says they need to have a good reputation with those outside the church, you mentioned one earlier, well, what if you’ve been convicted of child molestation or you’re an extortioner, you know, embezzled funds? Well, you have a bad reputation and even if you’ve repented and even if you’ve confessed that, you’re disqualified from being an elder in those cases. 

Right. In terms of after this life is over, in my view, we’re not punished for our sins at the Judgment Seat of Christ if we’re a believer. But there are consequences for our bad deeds because 2 Corinthians 5:10, we talked about this on a previous episode says that each one will receive the things done in the body with a good or bad. So even though our sins won’t be judged as sins, our bad works will be judged and since sins or bad works, we will have some sort of accountability of the Judgment Seat of Christ for our entire Christian life, whether good or bad. I don’t particularly like that. But if that’s true, which as far as I can tell from Scripture, it is true, then I should recognize that’s true. The things we’ve done in darkness. What did Jesus say? 

KEN: There are loads of things, the thing that you hear in the dark, shout in the light in Luke. [Editor’s note: Luke 12:3 reads: “Therefore whatever you have spoken in the dark will be heard in the light, and what you have spoken in the ear in inner rooms will be proclaimed on the housetops.”]

BOB: But the Lord specifically said that those things which are done in secret we made public. And that’s true for good things as well. Like in Matthew 6, if you fast, secretly and pray secretly and give secretly, then publicly at the Judgment Seat of Christ, you’ll be rewarded. But the negative is also true. The deeds of darkness Paul says will be revealed at the Judgment Seat of Christ. Not as sins, but as deeds. So is there going to be a recompense for our life? Sure. Now, every believer is going to have joy forever. But some will have more joy, some will reign with Christ, some won’t. And we should long in this life to live in such a way that we hear the Lord Jesus say, well done, good servant, right? 

KEN: Yeah. And so Max, the bottom line is we can be forgiven, but still have consequences both in this life and in the life to come at the Judgment Seat for the bad things that we’ve done. Well, great question, Max. And remember, keep grace in focus. 

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And on our next episode: are we arrogant if we reject the teachings of the early church fathers? Please join us for that, and until then, let’s keep grace in focus.