On What Our Forgiveness Rests
Treasured Friends,
Have you ever thought about how different things might be if you didn’t know the date of your birth? Imagine how many forms we fill out that require a birth date. Would you know with certainty you are old enough to drive, or vote, or if you had inadvertently neglected to register for the draft by the required time? Our birth certificate roots the concept we call “age” in something historically factual: we know with certainty how old we are only because we know the date on which we were born.
Our Christian faith assures us of the freedom we have in knowing that our sins are forgiven. The Gospels tell the story of Jesus healing a paralyzed man, but first assuring him that his sins are forgiven (Matthew 9:1-8). Only then can the man go forward fully restored, and fully unburdened, not just in his extremities but in his soul.
The same, we must realize, is true for us. Whether or not our bodies are in tip-top shape, if our souls are burdened with a sense that things are not alright between us and God, that uncertainty and fear will weigh on us like an immovable weight.
That’s why the good news of the gospel isn’t about what we have to do to remove that weight from ourselves, but how Jesus has come to remove it for us. The gospel says, “you are forgiven!,” but look closely at the form of that sentence. It is a declaration to be heard, believed, and embraced, not an instruction to go out and accomplish. To keep with the birthday analogy, the gospel starts with the bad news that you and I are no more able to save ourselves than we are of giving birth to ourselves, but it continues with the good news that just as our birth was given to us by our mother, so our salvation has been given to us by our Heavenly Father.
And here is the point of connection: the assurance of our forgiveness – just like our age – will always remain uncertain unless it too is rooted in something real, something concrete, and factual. And this is what God has given us in Jesus Christ: forgiveness and favor, not as an abstract idea, but wrapped up in flesh and blood.
Dear friends, forgiveness of your sins is God’s gift to you, and it’s a gift that’s rooted in something real. It is in real events that happened in real places at very real times on our very real calendar. And where do you find it? You find it where you find Him. In a manger in Bethlehem; along the dusty streets of Nazareth and Capernaum; on a cross outside Jerusalem; and an empty tomb on Olivet. That’s where your forgiveness lies.
All these things happened, not for Christ’s sake but for yours. So you could be forgiven, and you could be free. And you are! It’s as real as the manger that cradled Him, the cross that bound Him, and the grave that could not hold Him.
So, believe it. Embrace it. Receive it. In Christ, you are forgiven! Turn from everything else, and seek Him always!
On the journey with you,
Mike