Forgiveness doesn’t make you holy

The justice of God dictates that your eternal wellbeing be exclusively determined by how virtuous you have become.¹ The sacrifice of Christ doesn’t violate his justice, but rather gives you the opportunity to separate yourself from the moral indictment of your past sins, providing you with sufficient reasons and means to improve so that God’s justice can result in your exaltation instead of abasement. In order to obtain better outcomes than you have, you must become better than you are.

All people are forgiven of the differences between them and God which they are unable to discern. For example, children are forgiven for the law that they are too young to be able to learn² and understand.³ However, there is a difference between being spared the penalty of disobedience to what you don’t yet know and receiving the benefits of obeying what you don’t yet know. Being spared from death and hell is not the same as receiving eternal life.

The atonement frees you from the punishment of failing to live up to how Christ is beyond the limits of your understanding, but it doesn’t provide you with the blessings you would have if you were like Christ beyond the limits of how you understand him to be. Many Christians believe that God declares you righteous as long as you say you believe in Jesus, even if you don’t actually follow his example. You can’t be treated by God as if you were righteous without actually being righteous. This would be a lie.⁴ The gospel doesn’t magically transfer the blessings of Jesus’ righteousness to sinners. Rather, through the gospel, Jesus provides you with the opportunity to choose to be more like him, making a way for you to be forgiven of past sin and providing sufficiently persuasive arguments for you to choose to be better, thus meriting those blessings in your own right⁵

The Lord’s sacrifice provides the opportunity for you to learn more about and live up to how he is, but it doesn’t magically make you more like him than you choose to be.⁶ The idea that God treats sinners as saints simply because they say they believe in him, like him, or worship him, is an example of the extent to which Christians have replaced what Jesus taught with overtly pagan beliefs, in this case the idea that your affinity for an idol transposes its qualities upon you. Sheep gain the benefits of a shepherd by following his instructions, not by saying they like him. Believing that you become holy merely by expressing support for God is as ridiculous as believing that you will magically become a basketball star by wearing your favorite player’s jersey. Forgiveness from God doesn’t reward you with the blessings of obedience any more than it removes from you the temporal consequences of disobedience.

Moral forgiveness doesn’t exempt someone from the temporal consequences of ignorance. Forgiveness from God is a moral absolution, not a material miracle; it absolves you of the divine punishment your past sins would otherwise require, not the temporal consequences that those choices still carry. While you aren’t morally responsible for what you don’t know, you are still subject to the consequences of the laws that apply to your situation, even if you don’t know them.

God’s forgiveness makes you blameless, not holy. Blamelessness is not holiness.⁷ Holiness is a measure of how similar you are to God.⁸ You become holy as you learn what Jesus is like and live that way yourself.⁹ While an innocent person isn’t bad, they are only good to the extent they have become better than neutral. Forgiveness takes away the bad, but it does not substitute the good in its place! To be empty on the inside is much better than to be evil on the inside, but emptiness is not the same as goodness. Emptiness is an indication of preparation for becoming good, but it is not the same as being good. A plowed, weed-free field is not the same as one full of crops ready to harvest. His forgiveness can erase your slate, but it can’t refill it with better things—only you can do that by choosing better things over time. To become better requires learning and living better ideas than what were possessed or followed before.