Devotion: Though your sins are as scarlet(Isaiah 1:18)

These days I was thinking about the extent of God’s forgiveness. Sometimes we misunderstand God’s forgiveness or can God really forgive all sins? Is God’s forgiveness just forgetting things? When Moses asked God to reveal himself in Exodus 34:6,7 – 

He says

“The Lord, the Lord God, merciful and gracious, long-suffering, and abounding in goodness and truth, ⁷ keeping mercy for thousands, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin, by no means clearing the guilty, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children and the children’s children to the third and the fourth generation.”

That’s how God introduced himself, I am merciful, I am gracious, I forgive iniquity and transgression and sin. And those who are guilty, those who don’t ask for forgiveness he punishes them. I was thinking is there any sin that God cannot forgive and will not forgive. New Testament says about a sin that God does not forgive in Mark 3 – Blasphemy against the Holy Spirit, which was committed by the Pharisees. They saw the miracles and they were aware that Jesus performed these miracles by the power of the Holy Spirit but they willfully attributed it to the work of Beelzebub. That was the blasphemy against the Holy Spirit. Today those who are true believers cannot commit that sin as we acknowledge and accept Holy Spirit. So there is no other sin that God can’t forgive.  

When we turn to prophet Isaiah, we see - Come now, and let us reason together, saith the Lord: though your sins are as scarlet, they shall be as white as snow; though they are red like crimson, they shall be as wool – Isa 1:18

This verse I feel is one of the best verse which explains forgiveness. Two words are used to represent the worst of the sin that one could commit – Scarlet and Crimson. These two are the Red colors which are at the end of the color spectrum, next to orange.

In this verse, we see the condition for forgiveness - repentance and the effect of forgiveness – reconciliation or restoration of the states. Today I would like to give the true meaning of God’s forgiveness. It's not just forgetting things, the effect of forgiveness is the restoration of previous relationships.

Repentance

Israel’s sin is mentioned in the verses above - the faithful city has become a harlot and murderers. But God says wash clean, stop doing evil, whatever it maybe I, though it is as scarlet. I will forgive you. Here we see the extent to which God can forgive.

The sins that are not forgiven are those sins which we don’t take it to Him. Rahab was forgiven, David was forgiven, King Manasseh of Israel was forgiven, and Apostle Paul was forgiven.

Reconciliation

The effect of forgiveness is reconciliation not just forgetting sin. After forgiveness, your sin and your condition will not remain as scarlet or crimson. But a change will happen, you will be made white as snow, like wool. White shows purity. The other extent.

Col 1: 21, 22 – He has reconciled us through his death for what – To be holy and blameless above reproach. That is the state that God wants and the result of forgiveness is that we are declared holy and blameless before God. Transferred from the kingdom of darkness to the kingdom of God. (V14). That is the restoration happens in our state as a result of God’s forgiveness. Our forgiveness is basically forgetting things and we try to keep them at a distance even after forgiveness. But here God restores the previous relationship that we had with him before sin.

Basis of forgiveness

Col 1:14

The basis for God’s forgiveness is the cross of Christ. The thing which was blocking our forgiveness from God was our sins. But Jesus who bore our sins on the cross and paid the penalty of sin. So that we might receive his forgiveness. If we had not died, we would have remained in that broken relationship with God, still in the kingdom of darkness, in the position of enemies of God. All our sins are forgiven on account of his name. Christ’s death is sufficient to get forgiveness for all our sins. He died for our past, present, and future sins. We just need to confess to God when we sin to restore the relationship with God which was broken because of sin.  

Conclusion

Let us thankfully remember the sacrifice of Lord Jesus Christ. Without which we would never come into a relationship with God. Through his death on the cross, by making him sin, we are declared holy and blameless before God. 

Devotion: Magnanimity an attainment

Luke 23:34

 “Then said Jesus, Father, forgive them; for they know not what they do.” This is a very powerful statement. We cannot fully understand its power since we have not gone through a situation like this and we have never said this before.

In our newspaper, we read about the murders in the name of revenge.

The cross of Christ also shows his magnanimity along with His love, grace, and his physical sufferings. I would like to point out 2 things so that it helps us to understand his magnanimity.

1. A rare instance of Human Magnanimity
2. A beautiful example of practicing what you preach

A rare instance of Human Magnanimity

It's very important to note that when did he say this statement. He said this statement when he was on the cross. These first of the seven words from the cross seem, from their position in the record, to have been spoken very early in the awful scene, probably while the nails were being driven into the hands and feet.

Different from other holy dying men, he had no need to say, “Forgive me.”

Conscious, not only of perfect innocence but of the purest and even the loftiest aims, Jesus Christ found himself not only unrewarded and unappreciated, but misunderstood, ill-treated, condemned on a totally false charge, sentenced to the cruelest and shameful death a man could die.

What wonder if, under those conditions, all the kindliness of his nature had turned to the sourness of spirit!

2. At this very moment, he was the object of the most heartless cruelty man could inflict, and must have been suffering the pain of body and of mind that was literally agonizing.

3. At such a time, and under such treatment, he forgets himself to remember the the guilt of those who were so shamefully wronging him.

4. Instead of entertaining any feeling of resentment, he desired that they might be forgiven for their wrong-doing.

5. He did not haughtily and contemptuously decline to condemn them; he did not and reluctantly forgive them; he found for them a generous extenuation; he sincerely prayed for his heavenly Father to forgive them. Human magnanimity could hardly go further than that.

6. The greatness of his forgiveness can be better understood when we compare it to our forgiveness. It’s very difficult for us to forgive a person who has done wrong to us and love him as before.

A beautiful example of practicing what you preach

There are certain topics about which it's very easy to preach about but difficult to practice  One of such topic is forgiveness.

When in his great sermon, (Matthew 5-7.) he said, “Love your enemies. Pray for them which despite-fully use and persecute you, that ye may be the children of your Father which is in heaven,” he urged upon us to cherish and to illustrate the loftiest virtue on the highest grounds.

This he now beautifully, perfectly exemplified. He was literally and truly praying for those who were using him despite-fully, as the greatest generals and captains have proudly and honorably claimed that they “never bad men do that which they were not willing to do themselves,” so this our glorious

Leader, he who came to be the “Leader and perfector of the faith”

(Hebrews 12:2), never desired of us any virtue or grace which

he did not possess and did not himself adorn. He could and did say to his disciples, not only,” Go thither in the way of righteousness,” but also, “Follow me in every path of purity and love.” We may well love our enemies, and pray for those who despitefully use us, that we may be the children of our Father in heaven, and that we may be followers of our patient, magnanimous Master. And it is here, truly, that we have —

Conclusion

I just wanted to point out the greatness of his forgiveness. His forgiveness is not like ours. Just like he forgave the soldiers and the people around him he forgave our sins also. This should not encourage us to do more sins to test his forgiveness. The nails that the soldiers hammered were on his hands and feet, but today we are hammering the nails on his heart through our sins after getting that salvation. To pray sincerely for those who do us wrong is one of the very highest points, if not actually the very loftiest, of human magnanimity. To dismiss all vindictive purpose, all resentful thought; to look at our enemy’s procedure in a kindly light, and to take, as Christ did here, a generous view of it; to cherish a positive wish for his good; to put this wish into action, into prayer; — by these stages we reach the summit of nobility.