In my last message (a link to it is in the description) I mentioned I would talk about FUNT this week.
To start with, it is not a reference to Alan Funt, of Candid Camera fame.
If you prefer to watch a video, click on this link: Watch the video.
To review, OSAS is “Once Saved, Always Saved”, and the reason it is a lie is because there is no such thing as automatic forgiveness of sins.
There is a never-ending desire by God to forgive your sins (Ezekiel 18:23), but to even suggest that your sins will be forgiven automatically just because you have accepted Yeshua as the Messiah is unbiblical.
The forgiveness system has 5 steps to it:
- You must sin (after all, you can’t be forgiven if there is nothing to forgive- DUH!);
- You must confess your sin (if you refuse to accept that you sinned, it is a rejection of recognizing God’s authority);
- You must repent of your sin (God will not forgive an unrepentant sinner);
- You must ask to be forgiven with the shedding innocent blood (Hebrews 9:22); the Torah allows for a sacrifice to be substituted for your own blood;
- You must do t’shuvah (turn from sin) and rededicate yourself to obedience to God.
Yeshua, the Messiah, died as a once-and-for-all (meaning all people) sacrifice of innocent blood in lieu of bringing an animal to the temple in Jerusalem, the only place according to the Torah where sacrifices could be made (Deuteronomy 12:5; 2 Kings 21:7). Once the temple was destroyed (70 AD), there was no possibility to be forgiven without Yeshua.
Once you accepted Yeshua and asked to be forgiven by means of his sacrifice, the sins you had committed UP TO THAT POINT were forgiven, but any future sins (and we all continue to sin) are separate and new, not covered by that initial request.
When Shaul said that our sins were nailed to the tree with Yeshua (Colossians 2:14), he was referring to the prior sins, not any future ones.
The real danger of OSAS is that people who think they are doing what is right stop asking for forgiveness, assuming they are already forgiven, And, given human nature, if we know we are already forgiven, then we will think it is OK to sin, which means there won’t be confession, or repentance, or t’shuvah!
How many of you think that God will accept a person who has sinned continually, not confessing, repenting, or even trying to be better?
Yeah, me, too.
The way forgiveness really works is FUNT– Forgiven Until Next Time.
Believing that Yeshua is the Messiah is not enough- after all, every demon in hell knows he is.
And obedience to the Torah is not enough, because no one can be 100% obedient, 100% of the time.
What we need is a combination of accepting Yeshua and trying our very best to be obedient to the Torah (not to a religion), which is God’s User Manual for Righteousness.
So, when you screw up (and you will), if you confess, repent, ask forgiveness by means of Yeshua’s sacrifice, and try to be better (t’shuvah) in the future, God will forgive you…THIS TIME!
We know that the next time we sin, if we do all these steps that God outlined for us in the Torah, we will (again) be forgiven because, as I pointed out in Ezekiel 18:23, God is not only willing to forgive, but desires to do so.
But only when we go through the proper procedure.
God desires to forgive us, and Yeshua made forgiveness available to us any time, any where, but forgiveness, itself, is not automatic.
Thank you for being here, and please share these messages with everyone you know, even non-believers. Hey! after all, you never know how fertile the soil is until you plant a seed in it.
That’s it for today, so l’hitraot and Baruch HaShem!
