The Good News About Sin

We must never forget these powerful truths:

Yes, my title is a bit misleading. ‘What is good about sin?’ you rightly ask. ‘Nothing’ is the correct answer. But there IS real good news as to how the sin question has been dealt with, and how those in Christ can find growing victory over it.

All believers must take seriously the matter of sin, and understand more fully what it was that God in Christ did about it, and how that impacts our lives as Christians. Plenty of biblical, theological and practical issues arise here. And one very practical matter concerns the issue of the assurance of the believer.

I recently wrote a piece on this, dealing with things like the security of the believer, the possibility of losing one’s salvation, how we are to understand the warning passages of Scripture, and so on. That piece is found here: https://billmuehlenberg.com/2025/12/27/on-hebrews-6-security-in-salvation-and-falling-away/

A few years ago American pastor and theologian Sam Storms penned a helpful volume called A Dozen Things God Did with Your Sin (And Three Things He’ll Never Do) (Crossway, 2022).

Many Christians can be quite anxious about all these matters. They can question their salvation; they can have many doubts; they can wonder if God really loves them; and they can wonder if what Christ did at Calvary sufficiently covers their own sin. These are all important issues, and are all dealt with biblically and pastorally in this slim 200-page book.

In the book’s Introduction he speaks to the heaviness of heart that so many believers have, often involving a “defiled conscience”. Struggles with sin have taken away the joy and peace of the believer and caused them to seriously question how God could ever love them.

He begins by telling the story of Marie and her many doubts, fears and worries as she struggles to please and obey God. She hears sermons about the joy of the Lord, but is left wondering why it is not her experience. Storms then says this:

Let me dig a little deeper into the problem that this book is designed to address. All of us at some time or another, to varying degrees, struggle with the fear and the apprehension that perhaps God has not dealt fully and finally with our sin. We read in Scripture, just like Marie has done countless times, about the “joy” of our salvation and we’ve tasted it, a bit here and a bit there. But there is often this unshakable sense of condemnation that simply won’t go away. It haunts us and taunts us and wants us to believe that there’s simply no way God could look with love and approval on us.

 

Some of you react this way because you are plagued by an overly sensitive conscience. Even the slightest moral misstep squeezes from your heart what little joy you worked so hard to attain. You can barely hear anyone talk about the importance of obedience in the Christian life without concluding that you have failed miserably and are on the verge of being cast out. Others of you were raised in extremely religious and legalistic homes, and the church you attended only made matters worse with its oppressive, rigid, heavy-handed approach to Christian living. (p. 17)

Fully and repeatedly keeping in mind just what it is that Christ has done for us is the remedy to these and related problems. The twelve points he discusses are examined in twelve meaty chapters. They are, in outline form:

He laid our sin on his Son, Jesus Christ.
He has forgiven us of our sin.
He has cleansed us from our sin.
He has covered our sin.
He has cast our sin behind his back.
He has removed our sin as far as the east is from the west.
He has passed over our sin.
He has trampled our sin underfoot.
He has cast our sin into the depths of the sea.
He has blotted out our sin.
He has turned his face away from our sin.
He has forgotten all our sin.

Let me just discuss the first one of these. This concept is known as ‘penal substitutionary atonement’. Storms begins his chapter on this as follows:

Of the dozen things God has done with your sin, none is more foundational to securing for you the joy and peace of a clean conscience than the fact that God has laid your sin upon his Son. In fact, all of the eleven remaining things that God has done with your sin are grounded in this one. Most of the other eleven truths we will explore are images or metaphors or analogies designed to drive home the glorious truth that because of God’s having laid our sin on his Son, we are forgiven. In other words, it is precisely, and for no other reason, that God has judged Jesus in your place, as your atoning substitute, that we can even speak of the possibility of forgiveness. (p. 31)

He explains the doctrine and looks at various objections to it, such as the claim that this pits one member of the Trinity against another. He replies:

But there is nothing wrong in principle with saying that one person of the Trinity does something ‘to’ another. The Father “sends” the Son, “loves” the Son, “glorifies” the Son, and so on. The Son, in turn, sent the Spirit whose primary goal is to shed light on the glory and splendor of the Son (John 16:7-15). Why is it so difficult to envision a scenario in which, by voluntary agreement, the Father “punishes” the Son in the place of those for whom he dies?  (pp. 41-42)

As for the three things God says he doesn’t and never will do, Storms says this:

These three glorious truths are so intertwined and overlapping that I will examine them together. Two of them appear in the same verse. Once again, in Psalm 103:10, we are told that God “does not deal with us according to our sins, nor repay us according to our iniquities.” And in Psalm 32:2, David declares that person blessed “against whom the Lord counts no iniquity.” (p. 168)

In all these matters he goes into some detail about how these great biblical truths have practical bearing on how we see ourselves as redeemed sinners. He reminds us of course that sin does indeed impact on our fellowship with God, and must be dealt with (by means of confession and so on), but our relationship with God is secure.

It is knowing what Scripture says about the amazing things Christ has done for us and our salvation that forever must be clung on to and cherished. What he says in his two closing paragraphs is certainly worth sharing here:

What ultimately makes the gospel good news isn’t that we get forgiven, saved, delivered, healed, renewed, justified, and adopted, as good and glorious as these experiences are. The gospel is good news because it gets us God! It overcomes every obstacle to our beholding the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ for our everlasting enjoyment! As Piper says, “The saving love of God is God’s commitment to do everything necessary to enthrall us with what is most deeply and durably satisfying, namely himself.” Furthermore, “If you could have heaven, with no sickness, and with all the friends you ever had on earth, and all the food you ever liked, and all the leisure activities you ever enjoyed, and all the natural beauties you ever saw, all the physical pleasures you ever tasted, and no human conflict or any natural disasters, could you be satisfied with heaven, if Christ was not there?”

 

Gifts such as predestination, the incarnation of Christ, reconciliation, redemption in Christ’s blood, even the consummation of our salvation at the second coming of Christ “are all good to the degree that they make possible the one great good—namely, knowing and enjoying God himself.” This, then, is the ground of our joy. This, then, is the reason we rejoice, because we get God in all his glory and majesty and dominion and authority. And we get God because of what he has done with our sin and what he has promised not to do with it. (pp. 204-205)

That is wonderful good news indeed. Let us dive deeply into these truths. And let us do with them what God through Moses commanded the Israelites to do concerning the greatest commandment as found in Deuteronomy 6:7-9:

“You shall teach them diligently to your children, and shall talk of them when you sit in your house, and when you walk by the way, and when you lie down, and when you rise. You shall bind them as a sign on your hand, and they shall be as frontlets between your eyes. You shall write them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates.”

[1477 words]