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On Feeling Forgiven

1 John 1:9 "If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness" (ESV).



The nature of the God we serve is holy and perfect, "God is light and in him is no darkness at all" (1 Jn 1:5 ESV). Despite this holiness, this purity, God chose to love me, a dark impure being. While the nature of God is pure and good, the nature of man is sin. And the nature of sin is that it thoroughly, and methodically corrupts until the vessel is full of darkness with no light, standing in direct opposition to God. That is the nature of the flesh, of my flesh. However, despite my sin and my evil, God came and died for me. 1 John 1:9 makes receiving forgiveness sound easy, after all, all we have to do is confess. But what are we supposed to do with this boundless, infinite forgiveness? When we sin again and again and we view the forgiveness of God as being cheap, costing only a moment of our time, forgiveness begins to feel trite. However forgiveness isn't free, it cost God so much more than we could ever imagine.

God stepped down from his perfect, holy, sin-free, pain-free, tear-free (even more tear free than Johnson&Johnson shampoo) environment of heaven and became a man for about 33 years. He went from being enthroned in glory and majesty to being a baby who needed his butt to be wiped and couldn't even feed himself, to being a traveling teacher, until he was killed as the lowest of all criminals, whose life was deemed less worthy of existing than Barrabas, an insurrectionist and a murderer. My sin, my evil, my rebellion against God cost him the life of his only son, because he loved me that much (John 3:16). The almighty, omnipotent, creator of all things, the one who breathed out the stars, who existed before time, and made all things with nothing more than the power of his word, the only God who is so indescribable that his name simply is "I AM WHO I AM" that is that God who died for me. The same God who initially breathed the breath of life into Adam and changed him from dust to a living soul died so that he might once again breathe the breath of life into these dead bones. God's forgiveness is infinite because the price that was paid on my behalf is also infinite. The blood of Jesus never runs dry and I must always be covered by it.

Thank you for forgiving me Lord, thank you that it is not a light-hearted, trite, meaningless forgiveness, but that it is a heavy, bloody, infinitely expensive forgiveness that only an infinite and perfect God could give. O Lord, may the high price of my salvation ever be before me, that I would always fix my eyes upon the cross, and never lose sight of you.

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