When I was a young driver I ran my car into a house. Now thankfully I didn’t end up in the living room, but I did knock a big chunk of bricks off the side of a nice house in Sunnyvale, TX. You see I was a teenager driving at night to an event with one of my friends trying to give me directions over the phone. (This was back in the days before smartphones and in-car GPS navigation.) And after realizing I had to turn around for the umpteenth time, I whipped around a half circle driveway too quickly and took a chunk out of the bricks on the corner of the house. For a moment I sat in my car in shock. In my panic I even considered putting the car in reverse and fleeing the scene. However, the Spirit was not going to let me get away with that, so I stepped limply out of the car only to see the homeowner standing there on the porch looking at me. I told him what happened and offered to give him my information so he could send me the bill. He walked slowly over to the spot, picked up a brick, and then turned to me. “Don’t worry about it!” He said, “I’ll have my contractor look at it. No worries.”

The flood of relief that rushed over me was intense. I went from expecting to devote my entire summer to paying off home damage, to walking away without a dime of debt. The damage was still there, the cost was still going to be paid, but someone else other than me was going to pay it. The homeowner took on the responsibility for my failure, carried the burden of my choices, and paid the debt that I owed against him. I was forgiven.

This idea of forgiveness is central to what it means to be a Christian and has an important place in our study of the Apostles’ Creed.

  1. We are forgiven by grace through faith in Jesus Christ alone.

Salvation is a transaction, but it is not a transaction where we pay our own way. We are saved firstly by grace, meaning that God grants us the opportunity to be forgiven as a gift. It is not something we can earn or deserve, but is a free act of God’s good and generous character. We are saved secondly through faith. Faith is not itself a work that “earns” the grace, but is rather the conduit or means by which we receive the grace. If grace is the milkshake, faith is the straw. This also makes clear that the important thing about faith is not so much how strong it is individually but what it is connected to. Nobody cares if you have a nice straw that is sucking up motor oil! This is why thirdly (though definitely not least!), we are saved in Jesus Christ alone! This alone applies to the whole statement, but especially at this last point. There is no other person who can save us from sin besides Jesus. Not ourselves, not our government, not our culture, not our ancestors, no other idol, no other spiritual being. Only Jesus can save sinners (Acts 4:12). Since Jesus died for our sins, He holds the right of forgiving those sins because He paid for them Himself. 

  1. All people begin life as sinners who push away from God in their nature, action, and attitude.

This clause makes it clear that sin is not absent in this creed, though it is a bit hidden if you’re not looking. Forgiveness implies that a wrong has been committed. Only those who are in the wrong or worthy of being punished need to be forgiven. This is why the Gospel is for everyone because we all begin life as sinners who sin (Rom 3:9-20,23). We are sinners from the moment our life begins in the womb (Psalm 51:5) and without God we would stay that way because we have a sinful heart or nature. We sin because we are sinners, meaning that our individual sins are a symptom of our sinful nature that we inherited like bad genes from our first parent Adam (Rom 5:12-14). It’s like our heart was a compass, and because we are sinners that compass needle that directs our attitude and actions, instead of pointing north toward God, points south, always leading us toward sin. We may stumble north on accident from time to time and get things right, but our tendency and trajectory of our life pulls us constantly away from God and what He wants for us. 

  1. Jesus pays the penalty for our sin. We can’t earn it, it comes as a gift. 

But thanks be to God, Jesus dies to pay the penalty for our sins! (Ephesians 2:1-10). Notice that we can’t earn this forgiveness. Jesus came to do for us what we could not do for ourselves. He died to free us from the punishment from our sin. This is why we trust in Jesus as our savior, because since He paid for our sins, only by uniting ourselves to Him as His followers, can we experience the benefits of His forgiveness. 

For instance, in my previous story, if I had decided to drive off without talking to the homeowner, I would have missed the opportunity to be forgiven. He might have snapped a picture of my license plate and sent the cops after me! Or even if He did let me off the hook, I would still be weighed down by the guilt of my offense. Only by going to the person I wronged could I receive forgiveness. We can’t demand forgiveness from Jesus and we can’t earn it from Him either. We can only receive the gift of grace He offers us.

  1. Forgiveness means our sin penalty is paid, our sin position is swapped to righteous, and our separation is turned to belonging with God. 

This forgiveness is a placeholder for a whole set of results that come from being saved by Jesus. First, Jesus pays the penalty for our sins, which we had discussed already. He covers the bill. Second, Jesus changes positions with us, so that our sin is credited to Him, and His perfection is credited to us! This is amazing! It would be like instead of the man simply not charging me for the broken bricks, he gave me his credit card to spend too! This is what it means to be “in Christ”. All of His perfection is given to us, so that when God looks at us, He sees His perfect, innocent, and righteous Son. And thirdly, Jesus brings us into belonging with God. Ever since God kidded humans out of the Garden of Eden, we have been separated from God’s gracious presence. Anytime God came close, it would result in judgment for the sinners around Him. But now in Christ, we can draw near to God without fear of judgment because our status before God is made right through Christ (Hebrews 4:16).

  1. We receive this forgiveness by trusting and following Jesus alone, which frees us from guilt.

People don’t really seem to like grace. In fact, I think most people hate grace! I think that because they will do anything else but receive the grace of God offered to them. 

They will try to manage their sin. They try to cover up the symptoms of sin without dealing with their sinful nature. They try to walk straight with a broken compass. It doesn’t get to the heart of the problem. In the end they fall apart and feel defeated. They need to let go and trust God to transform them by grace.

They will try to hide their sin. They try to stuff all their bad choices and consequences beneath a thin layer of smiles and happy phrases. But it doesn’t get rid of the guilt and shame. It doesn’t keep them from going back to their old sinful ways. It only makes them feel crushed under the weight of the sins they are trying to hide. It’s time to come out of hiding and let Jesus see and forgive you.

They will try to celebrate their sin. Some people have gone to the extreme by trying to redefine their sin and not sin, or even as a virtue! “That anger’s not bad, after all did you see how they treated me?” They will say. “My desire can’t be bad, it makes me feel good, and must be who I am!” They will say. “God would want me to be happy, and this makes me happy!” They will say. God knows the heart and God owns the truth. We can’t redefine what God calls sin into something else. In the end we will be exposed as the mask wearing frauds we are. It’s time to let Jesus call our sin what it is, and deal with it in the way only He can.

None of these other ways work. Jesus is the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through Him! (John 14:6) Trusting in Jesus to forgive our sins is central to what it means to be a Christian and is the best news the world has ever heard!