Week 5, Day 33 - Forgiven!

"If we claim to be without sin, we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us. If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness."  1 John 1: 8,9

REFLECT

She was a well-known novelist and secular humanist. In a television interview in 1988, shortly before she died, Marghanita Laski made a surprising admission, "What I envy most about you Christians is your forgiveness; I have nobody to forgive me." What an awful thing - to feel like you need to be forgiven, that you are responsible to some higher authority, but to not believe there is any God to talk to; no one to grant forgiveness.

It is the bold, powerful declarations of God's word that communicates the completeness of forgiveness. We can receive with confidence the truth that: "Though your sins are like scarlet they will be white as snow" Isaiah 1:18; "As far as the east is from the west, so far has God removed our transgressions from us." Psalm 103:12. These words of forgiveness come after confession. "If we confess our sins" says John. But think this through. It is not the voicing of confession that makes forgiveness happen, nor even the mental recollection of our misdeed. If this were the case, then we'd have to live a life of anxiety worrying that we may have forgotten some of our misdeeds or had not voiced confession convincingly enough. Confession is not to inform God. He is sovereign, He already knows. Confession is for our benefit. It confronts us with what separates us from the intimacy God desires from each of us.

Forgiveness happens because God is "faithful and just." It is because God chooses to extend mercy and grace that we have any hope of forgiveness. Fortunately when God forgives it is not in the way we human beings often forgive each other (with some reluctance). God not only makes the guilt of our sin a thing of the past he then nudges us and empowers us to move in the right direction. He will "purify us from all unrighteousness." We don't just cease doing the wrong things. The Holy Spirit transforms us from within so my heart and mind desire to be in alignment with God's desire and will. Let the word FORGIVEN ring out loud and clear and true. Let that truth become the "wings beneath your feet." We begin our journey with Jesus from the solid foundation of being "forgiven".

MAKE IT REAL

Think about someone you know who needs a reminder that God has forgiven him or her. Either pray for that person or seek a way to gently remind him or her through a note or in person.

Day 34