ON SUFFERING FOR OTHERS’ SINS
HALIFAX, Nova Scotia, July 6, 2025 – One of the most grievous errors of Christianity is the mistaken belief that you can suffer for others’ sins, that you can take on the burden of their suffering and in that way exonerate them and pay their sin price before God. You cannot do that. Only Jesus could do that, and only for very specific sin. The sin price Jesus paid on the cross was Adam’s sin, which he could only do because he himself was sinless. No-one else could have paid Adam’s sin because no-one but Jesus was sinless.
In paying the sin price owed by Adam, Jesus negated the need for any further ritualistic sacrifice and opened the door for “whosoever will” to enter into right relationship with God again. That door was firmly shut until Jesus’ perfect sacrifice. It’s open now, but only to those God draws to him. Even with Jesus having paid the sin price, we’re still all born sinners. No-one is born in right relationship with God: you’re reborn into right relationship, just as no-one is born a child of God but reborn a child of God. These distinctions are critically important, as they form the basis of who and what we are as born-again believers.
The recent media spectacle of the conclave leading to the coronation of Peter the Roman (a.k.a. Pope Leo the 14th) threw a spotlight on the rank and file of the abomination known as the Catholic church. That organization is infamous for selling ways to reduce sin-related suffering for a certain price, the chief one of which is “indulgences”. Luther condemned the selling of indulgences and in fact pointed to indulgences as being his main motivator for breaking away from the papacy. Unfortunately, that wasn’t the end of the “pay for pray” grifts, as indulgence-like mechanisms persist throughout all denominations even today, fooling people into parting with their money under various promotions such as “donations”, “tithing”, and “sowing”. But the idea underlying what amounts to spiritual extortion is the same as for indulgences: Give us your money, and we’ll make your life better.
As born-again believers, we know that the only way we can make our lives better is through genuine repentance, followed by humbly suffering whatever God deems we need to suffer. There’s no shortcut through this process, no matter how much people want to avoid the suffering part. The good news is that after we repent and are back in right relationship with God, whatever we need to suffer – our own personal sin price – is mitigated by our love for God and his love for us. I’m not saying suffering can be made pleasurable; I would never say that. I’m just saying earned suffering doesn’t feel as bad when you’re in right relationship with God. Scripture says that God will wipe away all our tears, and so he does. No-one can kiss away the pain of a spiritual boo-boo quite like our heavenly Father.
As much as we might want to, we cannot suffer for others as a way to pay their sin price before God any more than we can pay a certain amount of money to make our suffering go away. We all need to make our own peace with God and to do so in our own time and our own way. It cannot be done on by others on our behalf. Jesus paid the sin price owed by Adam and was able to do it 1) because he was born sin-free and 2) lived his life here on Earth sin-free and 3) was tapped by God to do it and agreed to do it. Jesus became the perfect sacrifice that ended the need for any further temple sacrifices.
We, on the other hand, were born in sin and continued to sin up until our rebirth, and then on occasion we sinned again, though not grievously if we’re still born-again, not to the loss of our grace given to us by God at our rebirth. Still, getting into right relationship with God was a process we had to go through; it wasn’t a birthright, just as staying in right relationship with God is an ongoing process, not a “one and done” deal, as false prophets would have us believe.
We cannot suffer for others’ sins because we’re not Jesus, meaning that we weren’t born sinless and haven’t lived sinlessly and aren’t tapped by God to suffer for others. As born-again believers in right-standing with God, we can pray for others, we can help others, we can teach others, and we can preach to others, but we cannot suffer on their behalf: We cannot pray away or pay away their sin. They need to suffer on their own and to the full measure allotted by God. This is a spiritual principle that we need to take to heart lest we, too, be fooled by grifters or by our own spiritual arrogance.
ON SUFFERING TESTS AND DUE REWARDS
HALIFAX, Nova Scotia, July 6, 2025 – People don’t suffer injustices: They suffer tests of spiritual character and due rewards. If you fight back against either, you won’t advance spiritually. Even Jesus’ crucifixion wasn’t unjust, as we know from scripture that Jesus agreed to suffer (test of spiritual character) for Adam’s sin (due reward).
Although the concept of willingly suffering tests of spiritual character and due rewards is alien to unbelievers (who run to a doctor for every ache and pain and to a lawyer for every perceived slight), it shouldn’t be alien to us. By “willingly suffer”, I don’t mean we should go out of our way to volunteer to suffer. Jesus didn’t go out of his way to volunteer to suffer. He didn’t petition God to suffer; he agreed to the messiahship that God offered him, part of the terms of which was to suffer crucifixion. Remember how Jesus, in the garden of Gethsemane, tried to last-minute negotiate a way around those terms? God held his ground. Sometimes you just have to go through what you have to go through, as the agreed-upon terms are writ in stone and therefore inviolable.
In those cases, you don’t have to embrace the terms, you don’t even have to like the terms – you just have to accept them and go through whatever you have to go through. But ironically, when you do make that decision to agree to God’s terms (a decision so profound it moves mountains in the spiritual realm), that’s when the real power starts flowing through you. We see this in Jesus, in everything he says and does after he exits the garden of Gethsemane up to and including his time on the cross. We see this in Paul, when he agrees to suffer whatever he has to suffer as an apostle of Jesus and of the Gospel. And I saw this firsthand in me, when I agreed to choose to forgive someone I thought was unforgiveable and was instantly reborn from atheist to full-on believer. In that unmeasurable span between choosing to forgive and being reborn, God showed me that the pain I’d felt (or what I thought was injustice) was the pain I’d earned (through what I’d done to others). And then he filled me with his Holy Spirit.
For us, as born-again believers, there should be no question that we agree to suffer whatever we’ve earned or whatever God imposes on us as a test of our spiritual character. How else is God going to know (hard proof) that we choose him over Satan? It’s all well and good to say “Yes, I love and believe in God” and “Yes, I love and believe in Jesus”, but this kind of talk is as cheap as any other in an age when even solemn vows uttered at an altar are broken with a shrug. So how else is God to know that we choose him over Satan unless we’re tested and again tested and then tested again and again and again and again… until he’s satisfied that he and he alone has our whole heart and soul and mind and strength? Because if we don’t give God everything we have and everything we are, that portion we’re holding back (however small) goes to Satan, and that portion that we’ve forfeited to Satan (however small) will still be enough to lose us our spot in Heaven.
If we’re genuinely born again, we’ve been penciled in for a place in Heaven. Jesus said to his disciples: “Don’t rejoice that you have power over the demons; rejoice that your names are written in Heaven.” The highest privilege that can be granted a human soul is to be recorded by name in the Book of Life, but that privilege can be revoked (hence the penciling), which means we would lose our spot in Heaven. If it happened to angels, it can happen to us; if it happened to whole nations, it can happen to us. So we should never gloat over our privilege or take it for granted but be humbly ever-aware of it so that we do whatever it takes to maintain our heavenly reservation in good standing.
And if what it takes is to suffer our due rewards or tests of our spiritual character, those things are as nothing when compared to what awaits us when we get Home.
A BORN-AGAIN BELIEVER 