The short answer
Christ’s offering is complete, and nothing more has to be offered when a believer sins. Believers still sin, though, and Jesus taught them to ask the Father for forgiveness day by day. When they ask, they come through Jesus Christ the righteous, who is alive with the Father as their advocate and is himself “the propitiation for our sins” (1 John 2:1–2). God forgives because he keeps his covenant and the sacrifice is before him.
Forgiven People Who Still Sin
The New Testament speaks of a believer’s sins as forgiven. Hebrews says that “by one offering he hath perfected for ever them that are sanctified,” and it quotes God’s promise in the new covenant: “their sins and iniquities will I remember no more” (Hebrews 10:14, 17). It concludes, “Now where remission of these is, there is no more offering for sin” (Hebrews 10:18). Many Christians read verses like these and wonder why they should keep asking for something God has already given.
The same apostles expect believers to go on sinning. John writes, “If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us” (1 John 1:8). James says, “in many things we offend all” (James 3:2). Then John gives a promise:
If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins, and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.
1 John 1:9
John is writing to believers. He calls them “my little children,” and he writes first of all “that ye sin not” (1 John 2:1). His readers are forgiven people, and he expects them to confess when they fail.
How Christians Have Answered the Question
Many evangelical teachers explain this with two kinds of forgiveness. At conversion God forgives a person once for all, as a judge settles a case, and that standing never changes. Confession afterward concerns the believer’s fellowship with God as Father, the way a child who has wronged a parent remains a child and still needs to make things right. On this reading 1 John 1:9 restores closeness with God, and the believer’s salvation is never in question.
Some teachers go further and hold that a Christian need not confess at all, since every sin, past and future, was forgiven at the cross; they usually read 1 John 1:9 as addressed to unbelievers. Catholic, Orthodox, Lutheran and Anglican Christians practise confession as part of the church’s worship, and some of them with a priest. Each of these answers takes seriously something the New Testament says about forgiveness, and sincere believers hold all of them.
Chris White’s answer in How Atonement Works ties the believer’s confession to two things: the pattern of Israel’s daily offerings, and Christ’s present work as high priest. It is his synthesis of Leviticus, Hebrews and 1 John.
How Israel’s Relationship With God Was Kept
Under the law of Moses the relationship between God and his people needed keeping every day. Two lambs were offered “day by day continually,” one in the morning and one in the evening, as “a continual burnt offering” at the door of the tabernacle, “where I will meet you” (Exodus 29:38, 42). Of the fire on the altar the law says, “it shall never go out” (Leviticus 6:13).
When an Israelite learned that he had broken one of the commandments, “then he shall bring his offering” (Leviticus 4:28). The priest made atonement for him, “and it shall be forgiven him” (Leviticus 4:31). Once a year the Day of Atonement cleansed what the year had left behind, “that ye may be clean from all your sins before the LORD” (Leviticus 16:30).
Even so, the people stayed outside. On the Day of Atonement one man went behind the veil and came out again. The sacrifices kept God living among his people, and Hebrews says they “could not make him that did the service perfect, as pertaining to the conscience” (Hebrews 9:9). So the offerings came round every day and the great day came round every year.
No More Offering, Yet a Daily Prayer
Under the new covenant the offerings have ended, because the one offering has been presented and the priest who is that offering remains in the holiest. Believers still sin, and Jesus taught them to ask for forgiveness as often as they ask for bread:
When ye pray, say, Our Father which art in heaven . . . Give us day by day our daily bread. And forgive us our sins; for we also forgive every one that is indebted to us.
Luke 11:2–4
The prayer is addressed to “Our Father.” It is the prayer of children who have been brought near, and the request for forgiveness stands next to the request for bread “day by day.” In Matthew’s form Jesus ties it to the forgiveness his disciples show others: “forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors” (Matthew 6:12).
The apostles’ letters treat a believer’s sin the same way. James tells the church, “Confess your faults one to another, and pray one for another, that ye may be healed” (James 5:16). John tells a believer who sees his brother sin “a sin which is not unto death” to pray for him (1 John 5:16). Peter calls believers “an holy priesthood” (1 Peter 2:5). In the book’s reading, that priesthood brings sins before God in prayer, as the priests of Israel brought them before God with offerings.
Israel kept its relationship with God by a lamb in the morning and a lamb in the evening, an offering for each sin, and the one great day each year. In the book’s words, “Believers keep theirs day by day, in Jesus’ name, at the throne where the offering already is.”
An Advocate With the Father
John explains how this forgiveness works for those who belong to Christ. “If we walk in the light, as he is in the light . . . the blood of Jesus Christ his Son cleanseth us from all sin” (1 John 1:7). After the promise of verse 9 he says what stands behind it:
My little children, these things write I unto you, that ye sin not. And if any man sin, we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous: And he is the propitiation for our sins: and not for ours only, but also for the sins of the whole world.
1 John 2:1–2
When one of John’s children sins, he already has an advocate with the Father. The advocate is himself the propitiation for that sin, and he is alive and in the Father’s presence. The Greek word for “advocate” is the word the King James Version translates “Comforter” when Jesus promises the Spirit (John 14:16).
The New Testament describes the advocate’s work in two ways. Some passages speak of prayer. On the night before he died, Jesus told Peter that Satan wanted to sift him as wheat, “But I have prayed for thee, that thy faith fail not” (Luke 22:32). Peter denied him three times that night. His faith did not fail, and after the resurrection Jesus gave him back his work: “Feed my sheep” (John 21:17). Other passages speak of presence. Christ entered heaven “now to appear in the presence of God for us” (Hebrews 9:24), and he “ever liveth to make intercession” for those who come to God by him (Hebrews 7:25).
The book treats these as one ministry. The advocate is a living man who speaks to his Father for his people, and what he asks carries the weight of who he is, the atoning sacrifice present in the holy of holies. He has no reluctant Father to persuade and nothing new to offer. The article on what Jesus is doing in heaven now follows this ministry further, and the article on Jesus our high priest explains why Hebrews calls him a priest at all.
So when a believer sins, nothing more has to be offered. He comes by the way Christ opened, confesses the sin, and asks the Father for forgiveness in Jesus’ name (John 16:23). God is “faithful” because he keeps the promise of the new covenant, and “just” because the sacrifice is before him in the person of “Jesus Christ the righteous.” In John’s Greek, “just” in 1 John 1:9 and “righteous” in 1 John 2:1 are the same word.
Boldness to come to the throne
Hebrews tells believers how to come: “Let us therefore come boldly unto the throne of grace, that we may obtain mercy, and find grace to help in time of need” (Hebrews 4:16). The verse before gives the reason. Their high priest “was in all points tempted like as we are, yet without sin,” and he is “touched with the feeling of our infirmities” (Hebrews 4:15). The access Christ opened is for people who have been reconciled to God and who still fail.
The book reasons from this that if the first sin after a person was reconciled undid the reconciliation, no one would stay reconciled for long, and that the boldness to enter and the audience with God that believers have been given are how the reconciliation is kept. Under the law one man entered the holiest once a year. Now all the “brethren” have “boldness to enter into the holiest by the blood of Jesus” (Hebrews 10:19), and the word translated “boldness” was the ordinary Greek word for speaking freely.
Daily forgiveness is one part of a larger account. How Atonement Works traces the whole Day of Atonement through the work of Christ: the blood, the high priest in heaven, the scapegoat that carried sins away, and the defeat of the devil.
Get the Paperback on AmazonAccess for Those Who Are in Christ
Israel’s high priest wore the names of the twelve tribes on his breastplate when he went into the holy place (Exodus 28:29). The names went in, and the people stayed outside. The New Testament says believers are “in Christ.” Paul writes that “your life is hid with Christ in God” (Colossians 3:3). Christ is in the Father’s presence, and those who are in him come to the Father in him.
Jesus connected that access to asking:
If ye abide in me, and my words abide in you, ye shall ask what ye will, and it shall be done unto you.
John 15:7
Those who remain in him have the Father’s ear, and forgiveness is among the things they ask for. In chapter 18 the book describes how a person comes to be in Christ. Faith in the New Testament, the book argues, includes believing the announcement about Jesus, trusting him, and giving him allegiance as the risen King. Repentance is turning from the master a person served before and toward God. Jesus asked, “why call ye me, Lord, Lord, and do not the things which I say?” (Luke 6:46). He also taught his disciples to pray daily for forgiveness, so he did not expect perfect performance from them. A servant who has failed his Lord and asks his pardon is still serving him.
God also gives the power to change. Paul writes that “it is God which worketh in you both to will and to do of his good pleasure” (Philippians 2:13). Confession and the Spirit’s work go together in the life of a believer: forgiveness takes away the charge, and the Spirit changes the will that kept producing it.
A Failure Is Different From Falling Away
Many people who ask why they should keep asking forgiveness are also asking a harder question: whether a sin after conversion puts them outside God’s family. Christians answer the larger question in different ways. Many sincere Christians hold that a person who has come to real faith cannot afterward be lost, and they point to Jesus’ promise that no one shall pluck his sheep out of his hand (John 10:28–29). Others, including Chris White, read the warnings in John 15:6, Colossians 1:23, Hebrews 3:14 and Romans 11:22 as addressed to real believers.
Whichever view a reader holds, the book draws a clear line between a believer who falls into a sin and a person who falls away. A believer who sins has an advocate, and he keeps his place by confessing and asking forgiveness in Jesus’ name. Falling away, as the book describes it, is going back to the old master, refusing the King’s rule, and treating the blood of the covenant as an unholy thing (Hebrews 10:29). The book compares a servant who fails his lord and asks pardon with a servant who leaves his lord’s house.
Peter is the clearest example. He denied Jesus three times on the worst night of his life. Jesus had already prayed for him, his faith did not fail, and he was restored and sent to feed the flock.
Scripture gives assurance to believers who are abiding. John writes, “hereby we know that he abideth in us, by the Spirit which he hath given us” (1 John 3:24), and Paul says that the Spirit “beareth witness with our spirit, that we are the children of God” (Romans 8:16). God also keeps them. He is “able to keep you from falling” (Jude 24), and believers are “kept by the power of God through faith” (1 Peter 1:5).
What a Christian Can Do After Sinning
The New Testament’s instructions for a believer who has sinned are simple and hopeful.
- Come to the Father. The Lord’s Prayer begins “Our Father.” A believer who sins is a child coming to a Father who has already reconciled him (2 Corinthians 5:18).
- Confess the sin. God “is faithful and just to forgive us our sins” (1 John 1:9).
- Ask in Jesus’ name. The advocate is already with the Father, and he is the propitiation for that sin (1 John 2:1–2).
- Forgive others. Jesus joined the request for forgiveness with forgiving those who are indebted to us (Luke 11:4).
- Ask others to pray. James tells believers to confess their faults to one another and pray for one another (James 5:16).
Christ’s sacrifice stays once for all. Forgiven people live with God day by day through the high priest who “ever liveth to make intercession for them” (Hebrews 7:25).
Where This Understanding Comes From
The book draws on a long line of Christian reading. David M. Moffitt, in Rethinking the Atonement (2022), reads 1 John 1:7–2:2 as a witness to Christ’s continuing work of forgiveness and cleansing in the Father’s presence. F. F. Bruce, in his commentary on Hebrews, saw Jesus’ prayer for Peter as the best picture of Christ’s intercession. The Westminster Larger Catechism describes that intercession as Christ appearing in our nature before the Father, and connects it with believers’ access to the throne of grace and peace of conscience despite daily failings. Peter Orr’s study of the ascended Christ argues that Christ prays for the perseverance of believers. B. F. Westcott connected the sprinkling and washing of Hebrews 10:22 with the consecration of Israel’s priests. On faith as allegiance, the book draws on Matthew W. Bates. How Atonement Works builds on this scholarship and credits it.