What Forgiveness is Really All About -- About All

Forgiveness and the grace of God through His Blood is not a piecemeal affair.

Jesus' death on the Cross is a once, for all, forever deal.

He is the payment and the ongoing mercy seat for all the sins of all the world, too (1 John 2: 1-2)

Yet I struggled with forgiveness for many reasons.

There was a thick layer of lies and confusion which I struggled with for a long time.

I had believed that everything in my life depended on me.

Yet I do not have life of myself in the first place, for He is my life (Colossians 3: 4)

If you think that everything, or anything for that matter, depends on you, then you are trying to be God, when only God can provide all things.

Yes, AA talks about our need to quit playing God.

Yet as long as there is sin in our lives, there will be this unending compulsion to do something about the sin.

As long as we do not feel that the sin is paid for, we will live in our selves, in our flesh, and try to fix it.

Yet the Bible could not be clearer about the final sacrifice which Jesus made at the Cross for us:

"Be it known unto you therefore, men and brethren, that through this man is preached unto you the forgiveness of sins: 39And by him all that believe are justified from all things, from which ye could not be justified by the law of Moses." (Acts 13: 38-39)

and

"13And you, being dead in your sins and the uncircumcision of your flesh, hath he quickened together with him, having forgiven you all trespasses; 14Blotting out the handwriting of ordinances that was against us, which was contrary to us, and took it out of the way, nailing it to his cross; 15And having spoiled principalities and powers, he made a shew of them openly, triumphing over them in it." (Colossians 2: 13-15)

and then

"For he hath made him to be sin for us, who knew no sin; that we might be made the righteousness of God in him." (2 Corinthians 5: 21)

and also

"1God, who at sundry times and in divers manners spake in time past unto the fathers by the prophets, 2Hath in these last days spoken unto us by his Son, whom he hath appointed heir of all things, by whom also he made the worlds; 3Who being the brightness of his glory, and the express image of his person, and upholding all things by the word of his power, when he had by himself purged our sins, sat down on the right hand of the Majesty on high; 4Being made so much better than the angels, as he hath by inheritance obtained a more excellent name than they." (Hebrews 1: 1-4)

How about this one?

"1My little children, these things write I unto you, that ye sin not. And if any man sin, we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous: 2And he is the propitiation for our sins: and not for ours only, but also for the sins of the whole world." (1 John 2: 1-2)

Forgiveness is that Jesus has paid for all sins, including yours and mine, and your abusive mother, or the neighbor who molested you, or the credit card hack who stole your money, or the evil dictator who killed your family.

Does that offend you? Forgiveness is more than our sins being put away forever, but His life and protection accorded to us, too:

"10For this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, saith the Lord; I will put my laws into their mind, and write them in their hearts: and I will be to them a God, and they shall be to me a people:

11And they shall not teach every man his neighbour, and every man his brother, saying, Know the Lord: for all shall know me, from the least to the greatest.

 

12For I will be merciful to their unrighteousness, and their sins and their iniquities will I remember no more." (Hebrews 8: 10-12)

 

I have to bring out a powerful point in Ephesians 4: 31-32:

 

"31Let all bitterness, and wrath, and anger, and clamour, and evil speaking, be put away from you, with all malice: 32And be ye kind one to another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, even as God for Christ's sake hath forgiven you." (Ephesians  4: 31-32)

 

"Forgive" is better rendered "Be gracious"  or "grant favor", for God has superabounded in His grace toward us, where all our sins are forgiven, where even the sin in our flesh has been condemned (Romans 8: 3), where we can trust that with Christ God will freely give us all things (Romans 8: 32)

 

Forgiveness is more than letting bad stuff. It's about getting everything from Him who has been from the beginning (1 John 2: 12-14)

Everything is given to us, because all is gift, beginning with the twin gifts of righteousness and grace, which God gives to us in Christ (Romans 5: 17)

Forgiveness is all about seeing finding out about all that we have in Christ:

"16That he would grant you, according to the riches of his glory, to be strengthened with might by his Spirit in the inner man; 17That Christ may dwell in your hearts by faith; that ye, being rooted and grounded in love, 18May be able to comprehend with all saints what is the breadth, and length, and depth, and height; 19And to know the love of Christ, which passeth knowledge, that ye might be filled with all the fulness of God." (Ephesians 3: 16-19)

and

"That the communication of thy faith may become effectual by the acknowledging of every good thing which is in you in Christ Jesus." (Philemon 6)