Forgiveness | Day 9
Daniel 9:9; Matthew 6:14-15; Isaiah 43: 25-26; Micah 7:18-19; Acts 3:19; 2 Corinthians 5:17; Isaiah 1:18
Please comment below with your conversation with God and/or insights from today’s Scriptures.
You can answer the following:
What are the Scriptures telling you about the forgiveness of God?
Have you experienced a time when you asked God for forgiveness and felt His forgiveness come over you?
What does it mean to you that you have been forgiven by God?
What is your prayer to God regarding His forgiveness?
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The Forgiving God | Lemuel Ayudtud
If there is one that should hold sins and errors against you or me, it should be God. He is perfect and knows no sin. He provides life freely and justly. He knows our inner strength and capacity so He can tell whether or not we were capable of not being so quick with our anger or lust. Yet, because of His great grace, He chooses to forgive. From the most horrid to the most innocuous, unintentional sins, God forgives.
The grace of God is reflected in His forgiveness. The depth of that grace we can only begin to know by the telling of His sacrifice at the cross. There on Golgotha’s hill, He gave His life willingly, doing so because of the judgment of God that required meting.
If you consider the Scriptures, you will see that it is that very righteous side of God that required the saving grace of the same God. How can that juxtaposition within God be possible? Because, one, He’s God, but, two, there is an expectation by Him that we, His offsprings, can be both loving yet wholly hateful; that we have the capacity to be good yet choose at times to be evil.
Our own internal vying reflect both the need for the judgment and the grace of God! Judgment because of His holiness and that He created us in purity; grace in that He understands our frame, that we make poor choices allowing lust, anger, offense, fear, doubt and our own unforgiveness to fester in us daily.
So with our daily struggles, God remains faithful to His desire for connection and relationship, extending forgiveness where there should be judgment for our sins. Of course we understand that this grace of God didn’t come without a price, the death of Jesus being the propitiation for our sins.
You’d think that more grace would lead to more sins, that forgiveness would lead to more wrongs. But the wisdom of God knows that forgiveness breeds forgiveness, grace turns to grace, and love covers a multitude of sins. This wisdom is extended to us from Him by teaching us to love one another, to forgive as He forgives and to be gracious with those who need it. By His Spirit we can walk with power to overcome the pull and temptation for comeuppance—returning the wrongs of others with more wrong. But experience shows that though for a moment that feeling seems good, yet we find that doing tit-for-tat damages us more than it damages the other person in the long run.
As God’s forgiveness and love draws us to Him, we can experience the same in our lives. As we forgive, health and healing come to us. As we love, the more love we experience. Sure there will be those who will take advantage, but that’s the beauty of forgiveness—you can continue forgiving.
Much like Jesus at Calvary when with His dying breath He cried, “Father, forgive them for they know not what they do,” so we can forgive others even at the very height of their evil. Why? Because dying with anger and hatred in our hearts will destroy our spirit way before we experience death in our flesh (and may even be the cause of it.)
Lord, thank You so much for Your unmeasurable forgiveness. Thank You that You chose to forgive me because of my inconsistency and incontinence. Help me, Father to take Your forgiveness and extend to others. I want to reflect Your forgiveness to others because I want to celebrate and be grateful for it daily. Thank you. Teach me to live my life in forgiveness as You have given me eternal life with Yours. In Your Name, Jesus, I pray. Amen.