When you read this verse, do not think of your sins.

Why will Jesus appear a second time to those who believe? It will be in connection with the rewards of all the believers; it will not have anything to do with their sins. Since sin was forgiven eternally two thousand years ago, a believer is already without sin. There is a hymn that includes the line,

Even people who believe in Jesus may be enticed to commit sins, but they will not end up in hell. This is because a person who is forgiven has already been designated as a son of God. If your son made a mistake, you might scold him harshly, or spank him, but you could not cut him off from the blood lineage of the family, could you?

God has established a covenant with us through the blood of Christ. So once you have come to believe in Jesus, the sins you commit are the sins of children of God, not the sins of unbelievers. The judgment for sin and condemnation to hell is already over. All that remains is the judgment for receiving rewards.

When Jesus died two thousand years ago, eternal forgiveness for sins was completely accomplished. Now all that remains for you is to be grateful to Jesus because He died for your sins. When I talk about the gospel in this way, there are some people who are critical and say, "Does that mean that once you believe in Jesus, you can sin as much as you please and it does not matter?"

There cannot possibly be any such doctrine. Nowhere in the Bible does it say that if you believe in Jesus and have received eternal forgiveness, you can just sin as you please. Since Jesus has forgiven your sins, you feel so grateful that you cannot go on sinning. It may be that you face temptations and make mistakes in the course of your life. It may be that you sin unknowingly and stumble in a certain situation, not being able to distinguish between what is a sin and what is not. Such are the sins of a son of God. When a son does something wrong, his parents will scold him and sometimes spank him, but that does not mean that he is no longer their son.

As you read through the Proverbs, you will come across the verse that says, "Remove far from me vanity and lies" (Proverbs 30:8). When an individual lies, whether he considers it a big lie or a small lie, he will feel uneasy. It is even possible that doubts may arise regarding the basics of his faith. If he has been telling a lot of lies, for example, his prayer might be: "Lord, in view of the way I've been lying left and right, and I wonder now if perhaps I'm not one of Your children after all?"

For this reason, if a person has definitely become a child of God, he must make an effort not to do anything that he knows to be sinful, no matter how small a sin it might be. In the Bible there is a verse that says, "Grieve not the holy Spirit of God" (Ephesians 4:30). We should obey God's words that tell us, "Wherefore putting away lying... Be ye angry, and sin not: let not the sun go down upon your wrath (Ephesians 4:25-26). It is because believers may make mistakes in the course of their lives that God said these things.

When we do something wrong and sin before God, that sin will cause us to be deeply troubled in our consciences, but God will not cast us aside because of it. God's love is truly eternal. We firmly believe that we have an advocate who is speaking before God on our behalf regarding all the sins that we have committed, whether knowingly or in ignorance.