One of my favorite New Covenant truths is that our sins are really GONE! This is something I did not realize for years as a Christian. I always felt my sins were weighing down on me, always felt guilty, always felt I needed to confess and repent all the time to try to "get right" with God again and again, always felt "out of fellowship" with Him, just felt unacceptable to Him so often. What I didn't yet understand was that when Jesus died on the cross He literally TOOK AWAY my sins and they just aren't there on me or in me any longer! Ever since the day I had first believed, I had been right with God and acceptable to Him, not ever guilty, not ever "out of fellowship" or anything. This wasn't because of me keeping my life free from any failure, no, it was because of Jesus' perfect sacrifice for me and the wonderful New Covenant, by which He became my sin on the cross and I became His righteousness! So my sins are truly gone, they got killed off at the cross, went into the grave, were buried, and stayed buried! They are gone, gone, gone!
God says as part of the New Covenant, "Their sins and iniquities I will remember NO MORE!" My children and I have memorized this verse together, and I always like to really emphasize the NO MORE part! Those sins are gone! Past, present, and future, all sins that I ever have or ever will commit are gone! God says He will remember them NO MORE! He has cast them behind His back, thrown them into the sea of forgetfulness, removed them from me as far as the east is from the west! God isn't thinking about my sins! So I shouldn't be dwelling on them and thinking about them either!
Well, this has great implications for me - especially, it means I am soooo secure in Christ! My salvation cannot be lost because I can never be damned, never! Why? Because the thing that could condemn or damn me to hell - sin - has been eradicated from my life, taken away forever by Jesus on the cross! "My sin, not in part, but the whole, has been nailed to the cross and I bear it no more - praise the Lord, praise the Lord, oh my soul!"
In the New Covenant, sins are remembered no more, so there' no need to pay for, deal with, or be punished for sin. There is eternal redemption from the law of sin and death. I've been lifted up out of that law (that says, if you sin, you die), and have bee put in the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus (that says, if you have Christ's Spirit, you live!). There's eternal redemption from the curse of the law - death.
My sin has been taken away and removed, so there's no sin in me to be judged a sinner/lawbreaker. Because I am not judged a sinner, there is no way I can be condemned to death. Because there is no condemnation or death sentence, there is no way I can be punished with eternal death. There is no punishment for me! (God even promises that not only will I not be punished, but He won't even get angry with me or rebuke me! There is nothing to get angry about or to rebuke, even!) Because there is no punishment for me, there is no way I can end up in hell! Wow, because my sin has been taken away by Jesus and God promises to remember it NO MORE, there is NO judgment, no condemnation, no punishment, no hell for me! And since He promised to never ever remember my sin - that's forever - then the benefit of escaping condemnation and punishment is FOREVER as well!
Wow, what a Savior, what a God, what a Redemption! And what security in Him!
