Forgiveness and Salvation Are Not The Same Thing

I must preface this by saying, please read the entire post. It will not make sense unless you do that. Also, do not let the title throw you.

You enter into this post with one of two mindsets: with a narrow viewpoint brought about by what you already "know" or a broad viewpoint brought about by not allowing your knowledge to interfere with what you will read. I pray that you have the latter mindset.

First and foremost, we must look what the Bible says about forgiveness, specifically forgiveness of sin. I use the English Standard Version (ESV) in my study. In the gospels, whenever Christ talks of forgiveness, it is always in relation to us forgiving other people. We must forgive to be forgiven. Move onto Acts. In chapter 2 verse 38, Peter said to the crowds at Pentecost, "Repent and be baptized everyone of you in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins, and you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit." Spoiler Alert: This is the only time I've found in Scripture where asking for forgiveness leads to salvation. By the way, this was addressed to the Jews, alone, who had seen Jesus and knew who He was. Later in Acts, we find Peter again preaching, this time to Gentiles and notice the difference: "To [Christ] all the prophets bear witness that everyone who believes in Him receives forgiveness of sins through His name." (Acts 10:43) Yes, he just said belief comes before forgiveness. Perhaps you knew that. Let's keep going.

Paul doesn't actually spend a lot of time on forgiveness in his letters. Why? He is writing to Gentile churches who didn't know who Jesus was prior to a evangelist coming. Instead, he says "righteousness" and "made righteous" and "justified". In Romans 4:5, he writes "And to the one who does not work, but believes in Him who justifies the ungodly, his faith is counted as righteousness." He does say that it is through Christ's blood that we are redeemed and forgiven in Ephesians 1:7 and Colossians 1:13-14.

In Hebrews, which was written to Jewish Christians, the writer echoes the Old Testament and says in 9:22 "without the shedding of blood there is no forgivess of sins." And in chapter 10, she (I believe Priscilla wrote Hebrews) writes "Christ had offered for all time a single sacrifice for sins" (verse 12).

This brings us to one of the most quoted verses in all of Scripture, 1 John 1:9, which says "If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness." However, even here this doesn't say it gives us eternal life or that we are saved.

Now we have to look at what Scripture says saves us. This is simple, in words, but very difficult in terms of actions and understanding. Faith saves us. More than that, our confession of Christ as Lord and Master saves us. It isn't asking for forgiveness that saves us, as we like to tell people. I would posit that we don't even have to necessarily ask for forgiveness to be saved. Most of you think I'm bordering on heresy, so let me hit the Scriptures.

Let's look at the most famous passage of Scripture, John 3. Here, Jesus tells Nicodemus he must be born again, which throws the Pharisee for a loop. He doesn't understand that. "How can a grown man go back into his mother's womb?" Silly Nicodemus. Jesus isn't speaking physical, he is speaking spiritually. Look at 3:14 and 15, "And as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of Man be lifted up, that whoever believes in Him may have eternal life." Did you see that? Jesus himself says its about belief in Him that saves us. He didn't say, "anyone who confesses their sins to me will be saved."

And here, you may be saying, "Yeah, but Jesus died for our sins." Well, duh. Sin still separates us from God, and we can't get past that gap. Forgiveness is incomplete, though. (Now I know you think I'm speaking heresy.) It's true, though. Forgiveness isn't enough to save us. Let's look in Romans 10. "If you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart God raised Him from the dead, you will be saved. For with the heart one believes and is justified, and with the mouth one confesses and is saved." What does this mean? Simply, We have to accept that Jesus is our Master and believe that He is alive and defeated death. You can believe in your heart and be justified. Literally, you can believe in Jesus in your heart and get forgiveness of sins, but do you see what actually saves us? We have to confess with our mouth that Jesus is Lord!!! It's not all about the inward. We have to confess and tell the world that we serve Jesus. This is what is meant by "If you deny me before men, I will deny you before my Father." Uh-oh.

You may be asking, "Are you saying that we can ask God to forgive us, but if we don't live for Him and serve Him, we aren't saved?" YES!! That's exactly it! We have to tell people we serve Christ and we actually have to serve in order to be saved!!

"Are you saying that its our works that save us, then?" NEVER!! It's our faith in Christ that saves us (Ephesians 2:8-9), but we actually have to show we have faith by serving (James 2:14-26)!

Now, we combine these two. If we confess Jesus as Lord and serve Him, then He will forgive us! Jesus says in Matthew 7:21, "Not everyone who says to me, 'Lord, Lord' will enter the kingdom of heaven, but the one who does the will of my Father in who is heaven." Jesus then speaks of those who did miracles and prophesied in his name that won't enter into heaven. He calls them "workers of lawlessness." They did those things for themselves, or because they wanted to, not because God commanded it.

Why did I spend all this time on this subject when the majority of people who will read this are already Christians? Because I want those who think that because they asked for forgiveness they are going to heaven, that isn't necessarily true. I don't want you to question your salvation, unless you are not actually living for Christ and acknowledge Him as your Master.

The other reason I write this is for those of us who spread the Word of God and the Gospel of Christ to those who need it. People need to understand it isn't the forgiveness of sins that saves us, its the faith in Christ and subsequent living for Him showing our faith. It's our acknowledgement of Him as Master.