Can you be forgiven in old age if you willfully sinned in your youth?
Question:
Good day, minister,
I have been faced with this question a few times and even got the question recently again, but I never had any real good answer to it.
I have read your article about deathbed repentance, but my question doesn't really extend that far. Whether it is scriptural or not, I refuse to teach wilful ignorance death bed repentance as a doctrine. The question that I get asked a lot, however, is if someone sinned willfully for most of their life, not close to death or on their deathbed, but if someone lived in sin willfully while being in the body of Christ, would they be saved if they repented late in their life. This whole attitude of "Well, I can sin while I'm young and preach when I'm old."
As I said, I did read the article on your website about deathbed repentance and that it's a dangerous game because we don't know when we are going to die, and things happen unexpectedly and all that. Those arguments I truly do understand. But for the sake of argument, let's say you have psychic powers and you know you won't die until age whatever; if you repented and lived a Christian life, would you be forgiven your sins even though they were done willfully with full knowledge of the sin?
Kind regards.
Answer:
It seems to me that the focus is completely wrong. God said that those who meet His conditions for forgiveness can be saved.
Hear: The message of the Gospel cannot save a person if he refuses to listen to the message (Romans 10:14-17; II Thessalonians 2:10).
Faith: The message heard does a person no good if he doesn't believe it (John 8:24; Romans 5:1-2).
Call on His Name (Christ's Authority): Faith doesn't do anyone any good if it doesn't motivate a person to want to accept Jesus' authority over his life (Romans 10:12-13).
Repentance: You can't claim to accept Christ's authority over your life if you don't change your life to conform to His will (Acts 3:19; II Corinthians 7:10-11).
Confession: A claimed belief is not real if you aren't willing to admit that you have it (Matthew 10:32-33; Romans 10:8-10).
Be Baptized: God selected a simple method by which we demonstrate and declare our acceptance of His offer of salvation -- immersion in water. It is a physical act that symbolically represents what salvation is all about (Romans 6:3-7; Mark 16:16; Acts 2:38; Acts 10:47-48; Acts 22:16; I Peter 3:21).
Hope: If we didn't expect God to save us, why would we bother to do His Will? (Romans 8:24).
Obedience: It would be meaningless to accept Christ's authority over our lives if we refused to do what he commands of us (Hebrews 5:9; Luke 6:46).
Works: Not man-created works, but doing the works of God. Obedience doesn't exist if no effort is put into doing what God commands of us (Ephesians 2:10; James 2:20-26).
None of these conditions discuss how willfully sin was committed. Even if we talk about someone willfully sinning after becoming a Christian, there is nothing that states he cannot be forgiven if he repents and confesses his sins. The truly difficult part is that a person who willfully sins is not likely to repent, which is why there are strong warnings in Hebrews 6 and Hebrews 10. God knows a person's heart and motives. He can't play games with God or think a technicality can save him. However, nothing God said indicates that a sincerely repentant person can't be saved.
Response:
Thank you so much for your answer. It actually answered the exact question I get asked a lot. Thank you so much for your help.
God bless you.
