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1 John 1:9- "If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness." The Bible teaches two distinct applications of forgiveness. The first is that of our positional forgiveness in Christ through what is called the Doctrine of Justification . This forgiveness applies to our eternal standing with God and is reckoned to our past, present, and future sins as a free gift from God.  The second is that of relational forgiveness. This is the application of forgiveness that the Apostle John is describing in 1 John 1:9 and it does not interfere with the free gift of salvation that we receive in our positional forgiveness. The purpose of relational forgiveness is to "purify us from all unrighteousness." The idea is that as we walk out our relationship with God we regularly collect residue in our soul from sin that we commit daily, and through confession we are able to be purified of this residue and enab...

A few months ago myself and three other pastors from my church were meeting to decide on the wording for a brief statement of faith that we wanted to start reciting at the beginning of our Sunday morning services. At one point I suggested that we use the word "justification" in one of the sentences, another pastor quickly looked at me and said, "do you know how many people don't even know what that word means?" What he said caught me by surprise, but as I thought about it I began to realize that he was probably right. This dilemma began to roll around in my thoughts for the next couple months until I finally decided that I needed to write this blog. So here it is, I am going to take some time to explain what justification is, it's repercussions, and why it is so crucial to understand as believers. Justification is the declaring of a person to be just or righteous. It is a legal term signifying acquittal (Baker's Evangelical Dictionary of Biblical The...