I think about how I could encourage you this week, and it’s
like standing in a candy store, trying to choose something I know you’d love. It’s
all incredible, but what’s the sweetest thing I could give you?
During Easter weekend, I want to give you the glorious truth
about His forgiveness.
I have found that the longer we walk in a relationship with
God and the more God reveals about Who He is, the greater our desire becomes to
know and understand forgiveness. When you feel this way, consider these truths:
You
stand forgiven.
That work was done on the cross. God tells us
that “in Him we have redemption through His blood, the forgiveness of sins, in
accordance with the riches of God’s grace.” (Ephesians 1:7)
This is just a slice of an incredible Psalm (Ps. 103) that tells us that God’s love is immeasurable and infinite, and so is the
distance He puts between us and our sins. God does not have a trash bucket full
of our sins sitting behind His throne that He pulls out when we come to Him,
picking up pieces of our trash and messes, showing them to us again, with a
stern look of disapproval. No, He throws our sin infinitely away from us,
seeing us only through the precious blood of His Son, Jesus. You stand…
Fully
forgiven.
What’s more, “Out of sheer generosity He puts
us in right standing with Himself. A pure gift. He got us out of the mess we’re
in and restored us to where He always wanted us to be. And He did it by means
of Jesus Christ.” (Romans 3:24, MSG) If you have trusted Christ as your Savior,
you are justified freely--you have Christ’s record of having always obeyed.
What astonishing, freeing truths!
Now I could agree with all of that in my head, and even in my
heart, but I’ll let you in on something, I haven’t always felt forgiven. The truth has
been told, but the truth be lived or the truth be felt, I have believed that Biblically, God
would forgive me. The Bible says in the verses above that God forgives sin
because of Jesus’ death on the cross. He does forgive, He will forgive. Absolutely.
But I didn't know how He felt about it, and therefore,
I didn't know how to feel forgiven.
I learned something in Psalm 51, a bedrock of my journey to
living beyond my past—my journey to wholeness, and it has helped me understand
how God feels about forgiving me.
Psalm
51:1-2
1 Have
mercy on me, O God, according to Your unfailing love; according to Your
great compassion blot out my transgressions.
2 Wash away all my iniquity
and cleanse me from my sin.
When we long to be forgiven, to tell God about our sin, get
it out in the open, and be set free from it, we come to Him with words that
sound a lot like
Have mercy on me, O
God,
But how does He have mercy? Or why would He?
According to a contract that says He does?
According to how hard I ask or how bad I feel? According to how far I've already come in trying to fix my mess?
No.
We know we can ask for mercy and that He will
have mercy on us
according
to Your unfailing love;
according
to Your great compassion
Look at the order of the truths in verses
1-2. His unfailing love precedes forgiveness. His great compassion comes before
our confession has ever left our lips. It’s because
of these things that He moves to forgive us.
David called and relied upon God’s unchanging character. Consider that your
character is known because of who you are and
what you do. God set the rules for love and love is always demonstrative.
Compassion is sympathy that’s moved to action. Love shows, compassion shows. God
is unfailing, faithful love and
great, abundant compassion. It is His very nature of love and compassion that
is demonstrated in forgiveness.
I think sometimes I don’t feel forgiveness because I don’t believe
He loves me without failing when I've failed, and that He has great compassion
that He pours out on me when I've screwed up…again. Because I have not been unchanging, because I have wavered, I wonder if God’s love
or sympathy for me has changed or run out. Therefore, I just call on and rely
on the “have mercy on me” and “wash this away” parts, hoping that part of the
gospel still stands, even if God’s “feelings” towards me have changed.
The problem with my thinking is love and
compassion aren't God’s feelings, they are His unchanging character.
They are Him. When I believe
Him, when I call on His unchanging character, then I will begin to fully
experience—that’s see, know, and feel—His
forgiveness.
blot
out my transgressions.
Wash
away all my iniquity
and
cleanse me from my sin.
And it is full forgiveness. The individual
words here all have special meanings. He wanted his rebellion, his
premeditated sin to be wiped out, obliterated. He wanted his personal
perversity, moral evil, depravity, guilt and fault to be intensively,
intentionally, thoroughly, exceedingly washed away. He wanted God to cleanse
him physically, ceremonially, and morally from his condition of sin and his
habitual offense and its penalty.
His cry was deep and thorough. He wanted
nothing more to do with sin and needed what only God can give: cleansing.
And that’s exactly what God did for him.
And what God does for us,
according to His unfailing love and great compassion
for us.
Along the way I learned these truths (and other rich, freeing
truths in Psalm 51—you should explore it!), but I learned it’s more than knowing truth. It’s believing and therefore,
living truth. It took time and experiences living the truth that God not only
forgives me but that He loves me and has compassion on me and that’s why and how He forgives me. It’s Him--His love and compassion shown through
Jesus Christ’s life, death, and resurrection--that I can run to, rest in, and
rely on when I need to confess my sins—trusting I am fully forgiven in Him, and
again, I am forgiven for this that I've confessed. And slowly but surely I
began to believe and live in His love, His compassion, and I began to feel what I am: fully forgiven.
Just another seed of my faith,
Ginny
No comments:
Post a Comment