Oooh, I should be doing something else right now, but crossnote, I have to ask:
Why would God/His Holy Spirit convict you of sins that He has clearly stated that He is not holding against you?
16 So from now on we regard no one from a worldly point of view. Though we once regarded Christ in this way, we do so no longer.
17 Therefore, if anyone is in Christ,the new creation has come: The old has gone, the new is here! 18 All this is from God, who reconciled us to himself through Christ and gave us the ministry of reconciliation:
19 that God was reconciling the world to himself in Christ, not counting people’s sins against them.
And he has committed to us the message of reconciliation. 20 We are therefore Christ’s ambassadors, as though God were making his appeal through us. We implore you on Christ’s behalf: Be reconciled to God. 21 God made him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God. (from 2 Cor. 5)
Put another way, why would God/His Holy Spirit, remind you of sins He has told us He chooses to remember no more (see Jer. 31 and Heb. 10)?
-JGIG
For the purpose of conforming us to His image.
When you sin, does God applaud it or...
Hebrews 12:5-8 KJVS
[5] And ye have forgotten the exhortation which speaketh unto you as unto children, My son, despise not thou the chastening of the Lord, nor faint when thou art rebuked of him: [6] For whom the Lord loveth he chasteneth, and scourgeth every son whom he receiveth. [7] If ye endure chastening, God dealeth with you as with sons; for what son is he whom the father chasteneth not? [8] But if ye be without chastisement, whereof all are partakers, then are ye bastards, and not sons.
I'll happy to answer your question just as soon as you answer mine. (And I do have an answer regarding Heb. 12)
God says very clearly that in the New Covenant, this will be the case:
34 And no longer shall each one teach his neighbor and each his brother, saying, ‘Know the Lord,’ for they shall all know me, from the least of them to the greatest, declares the Lord. For I will forgive their iniquity, and I will remember their sin no more.” (from Jer. 31)
It's repeated here:
17 Then he adds:
“Their sins and lawless acts
I will remember no more.”
18 And where these have been forgiven, sacrifice for sin is no longer necessary. (from Heb. 10)
And I'll actually add to my question.
If further forgiveness for sins is necessary for believers why is sacrifice for those sins no longer necessary?
And why would God/His Holy Spirit, remind you of sins He has told us He chooses to remember no more and have already been forgiven?
And if you say that sins committed after you believed still need to be confessed before they're forgiven because they are in the future, THINK for a moment:
EVERY SIN that you committed was in the future when Christ did the Work of the Cross, the Resurrection, the Ascension, and became the Perfect, Permanent High Priest Who SITS in the heavenly Temple at the Right Hand of God in a position of REST because His Work is DONE.
Your sins, my sins, everyone's sins for ALL TIME were dealt with by Christ already. There is no process of sin, ask forgiveness, rinse, and repeat for the believer. You were cleansed by the Blood of Christ for ONE reason, and that was so that you could be indwelt with New Life - sealed with the Holy Spirit, because God won't live in dirty places. Christ made you CLEAN.
If His cleansing, and the Righteousness and New Life of His Spirit that was gifted to you (which, and please please please get this - this is NOT Gnostic thought - the Righteousness and the New Life we receive is HIS, not ours, just cleaned up until our next sin - look it up) could be defiled, EVERY SIN, NO MATTER HOW GREAT OR HOW SMALL that you commit, would cause God's Spirit to leave you, making you spiritually DEAD. That's serious business, and the New Covenant Scriptures are clear that is not what happens when we sin.
"Little children, when you sin, confess your sins to receive forgiveness to restore fellowship . . . "
No, that's not what John says, he says this:
My little children, I am writing these things to you so that you may not sin. But if anyone does sin, we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous. (from 1 John 2)
John follows up by telling us why that advocacy is in place:
2 He is the propitiation [the full satisfaction of God's justice] for our sins, and not for ours only but also for the sins of the whole world. 3 And by this we know that we have come to know him, if we keep his commandments. (from 1 John 2)
There it is! We have to keep His commandments! Also defined by John:
23 And this is his commandment, that we believe in the name of his Son Jesus Christ and love one another, just as he has commanded us. 24 Whoever keeps his commandments abides in God, and God in him. And by this we know that he abides in us, by the Spirit whom he has given us. (from 1 John 3)
God's commandments after the Cross are only two: Believe in Christ and love one another. And Love is the First Fruit of the Spirit that He gives us and Who abides in us. And He cannot abide in us unless we are first cleansed by Him, and after He abides (comes to live) in us, He SEALS US UNTO THE DAY OF REDEMPTION (see Eph. 1).
Nowhere does New Covenant Scripture say that your behavior undoes any or all of that. Rather New Covenant Scriptures tell us over and over who we are in Christ (read through the Epistles and see how many times you see 'in Christ', 'through Christ', 'because of Christ', etc.), building us up in Him and then exhorting us to live/behave accordingly.
That is Grace - getting what we DON"T deserve - the Godhead maintaining our salvation because we can no more maintain it that we could attain it - it is by faith from first to last.
** Remember those questions above. I highlighted them in red for you =).
-JGIG
