The Cradle Of Christian Truth: Apostles’ Creed (Part 17)—The Forgiveness of Sins

by on May 27, 2025 | Comment

When I was a kid, my grandfather would often talk about his hypothetical outline for what he would do if he won millions of dollars. He intended to pay off his own debts and the debts and expenses of all his children too. His plans highlight why so many of us with loving family members would be excited if a family member came into newfound wealth. We know that not only they, but also we would have the opportunity to reap the rewards.

When we are tied directly to someone who possesses abundant resources, it seems to spill over onto us. That depends on their generosity and loving provision. That seems especially pertinent when we are behind on our debts, right? It is hard enough to be right on the money if you live paycheck to paycheck. Even more, it strains us when we know that we are coming from behind to make up ground to satisfy what we owe. It is better to satisfy all that you owe and have extra.

The problem that encompasses every human person is that we owe a debt to God that we can never satisfy on our own. That insurmountable debt is on account of sin. God’s justice means that sinners should be everlastingly condemned. Our problem is that separation from God in that cursed condemnation is the opposite of all that will satisfy us. It runs contrary to how God designed us to have our end in enjoying him.

When we realize the debt and its penalty that we have accrued before the Lord, we realize our greatest need: the forgiveness of sins. We need our debt erased, paid, and taken care of. We need relief from the debt that we cannot pay.

As we work through the Apostles’ Creed, we have seen that this Trinitarian document summarizes the whole Scripture. The Bible recounts the story of the triune God saving his people in Jesus Christ, and the Old Testament and New Testament are equally about that same reality. In our final section of the Creed, we are considering the Holy Spirit and the works most closely associated with him. Now, we come to the line that we believe in “the forgiveness of sins.”

It might feel like a curveball that the affirmation of the forgiveness of sins falls here in the section that we are saying recounts the works most closely linked with the Holy Spirit. Normally, we are focused directly on Christ and his death as the ground for the forgiveness of sins. Certainly, Jesus Christ and his work is the ground of our reconciliation with God. We will, however, see that there is a way to appreciate the role that the Spirit has in making us receive that forgiveness of sin. The main point is that forgiveness of sin settles our debt to God.

The Problem

During my time living in the UK, we had to apply to renew our visas to continue living there. As you might expect with anything related to the government, the visa application had a hefty fee attached. Kindly, the church where I worked covered those fees for my family. Several months later, we heard from the denomination’s finance office that the British government considered the amount in fees that the congregation paid for us as part of my earnings, so we now owed additional income taxes for that year. That debt was quite a shock.

My point is not about the irony of the government charging taxes on fees paid to the government. It is about how sometimes we are liable for a debt that might surprise us. In our present cultural climate with its domesticated, unbiblical views of God, people often claim to be confused about why God is mad at sin. When we announce the bad news before the good news, people act surprised that they are condemned before God and that they have this debt to experience God’s everlasting curse if they do not receive salvation in Christ.

What explains why we are condemned before the Lord even when so many outside the Christian faith cannot seem to understand why we are accountable to him for our sin? Romans 5:12–14 says:

Therefore, just as sin came into the world through one man, and death through sin, and so death spread to all men because all sinned—for sin indeed was in the world before the law was given, but sin is not counted where there is no law. Yet death reigned from Adam to Moses, even over those whose sinning was not like the transgression of Adam, who was a type of the one who was to come.

I want to highlight a few points from these verses that help us understand why all sinners are condemned before God.

First, sin is the cause of death: “and death [came] through sin.” To put it another way, death is the physical and spiritual debt we accrue because of sin. It is a penalty debt. Like when you are late on a payment and incur a late fee, death is the penalty debt added to our account in addition to how we were created to obey God by acting in righteousness. Death is a debt because of sin.

Second, sin is a violation of the law: “Sin is not counted where there is no law.” Westminster Shorter Catechism 14 makes this connection, asking, “What is sin?” and answering, “Sin is any want of conformity unto, or transgression of, the law of God.” God’s law can be broken both by failing to do what it instructs and by doing what it forbids. If we do not honor the Sabbath, then we have failed to do what it says. We have sinned by not conforming to it. If we steal from someone else, we have done what it forbids.

Third, Paul’s connection between sin, the law, and Adam can easily be missed. We might not catch that even Adam had the law here. Our death is the result of sin. Sin is not counted unless there is a law. But death has been in the world since Adam. The implicit premise here is that Adam had the law and broke it, bringing death upon us all since he sinned as our representative.

How does that help us with our opening problem? Like we were liable to pay more taxes but were not aware of it until we were told, people may claim unawareness of their liability on account of sin. But God’s law has been with us since creation, and Adam’s sin rendered us all sinners as he represented us. The problem is that we are condemned by our liability to the law’s curse as sinners.

The Payment

Sin brings about a debt, namely a debt of penalty where we are now liable to everlasting punishment. Furthermore, that debt arises because we are lawbreakers before God. Those two points raise the question about how we can be forgiven of our sin. Romans 5:6–8 answers this, saying,

For while we were still weak, at the right time Christ died for the ungodly. For one will scarcely die for a righteous person—though perhaps for a good person one would dare even to die—but God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.

That Christ died to forgive our sin is familiar, but how his death provides forgiveness also needs reflection. How is it that his death satisfied our debt to forgive our sin? The gist is that in eternity, he took the responsibility for our sin, committing to pay for it by dying on behalf of the elect given to him by the Father.

Let’s illustrate this by pulling more on our debt metaphor. If you are under a crushing amount of debt, perhaps your newly rich family member offers to cover your debts. Now, there are two ways that can happen. Maybe the payment still comes due to you each month, and your family member simply writes a cheque each time the bill must be paid and sends it in your stead. That is one way. That is the way I believe we assume forgiveness works. I am still on the hook before God, but Christ sends forgiveness my way as I need it.

The alternative would be that you and your family member both go into the bank, and you change all your debt into his name. In this case, you are no longer on the hook for it at all. Rather, someone else has made themselves liable for the whole payment and you are no longer connected to it at all.

That is what Christ has done for you. As the mediator appointed in eternity to redeem us, he took responsibility to pay for the sins of all his elect. The wrongdoings of every believer, Old or New Testament we might add, were credited to Christ as our mediator in eternity as he was appointed to represent us. The payment is that Christ satisfied our debts by taking them as his own and giving us the privileges of all that he earned as the obedient mediator for his people.

The Postage

How does everything that we have considered brings us back to the work of the Holy Spirit? The connection is that although Christ accomplished the forgiveness of our sin, the Spirit applies that work to us so that we receive the forgiveness of sin.

Think about when you go to the mailbox and find a really special letter from a dear friend. Who gave that letter to you? The answer might be more complicated than it first seems. On the one hand, your friend composed this letter for you and sent it to you. On the other hand, the mailman brought it from your friend directly to you. There was making the letter and delivering the letter, completed by different people, both in a sense giving you the letter.

The point is that while Christ composed the forgiveness of your sin, the Spirit delivers it to you.

Hope does not put us to shame, because God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us. For while we were still weak, at the right time Christ died for the ungodly. (Rom 5:5–6)

The Holy Spirit is given to us to pour God’s love directly into us. The Spirit is God’s indwelling presence in every believer. But note the connection, the logic: the Spirit has been poured into our hearts because Christ died for the ungodly. To pull it back into the illustration, the mailman comes to deliver because your friend composed a letter to be delivered. So too, the Spirit comes to deliver the blessing authored by Jesus. The blessings are authored by Jesus but the postage is carried out by the Spirit.
When the Spirit brings you to faith, you are connected to Christ who assumed responsibility for your debts and has paid them in full. As Jesus rose from the grave by the power of the Spirit, he stands in heaven now to pour out his Spirit so that Christ himself indwells us by the Spirit’s presence in us. In this way, Christ acts by the power of the Spirit to forgive sin as the Spirit takes the saving blessings of Christ and brings them home to us by bringing us to faith and sustaining us in faith. It is good then to walk by the Spirit, because walking by the Spirit is walking with Christ.

©Harrison Perkins. All Rights Reserved.

You can find the whole series here.

RESOURCES

Heidelberg Reformation Association
1637 E. Valley Parkway #391
Escondido CA 92027
USA
The HRA is a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization

Subscribe to the Heidelblog today!


Comment

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Comments are welcome but must observe the moral law. Comments that are profane, deny the gospel, advance positions contrary to the Reformed confession, or that irritate the management are subject to deletion. Anonymous comments, posted without permission, are forbidden. Please use a working email address so we can contact you, if necessary, about content or corrections.

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.