PT-5 "God's Pardon" (Forgiveness)

 

SPIRITUAL DIARY FOR 12/3/2020 10:29 AM

 

My Worship Time                                                      Focus: PT-5 “God’s Pardon” (Forgiveness)

 

Bible Reading & Meditation                                                 Reference:  Matthew 6:12

 

            Message of the verse:  “12 ’And forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors.”

 

            I want to pick up where I left off from our quotation from John MacArthur’s book “Jesus’ Pattern of Prayer.”

 

            “Declared righteous—positionally and forever, all sin covered, passed over, blotted out, and forgiven.  Oh, what a thought!

            “And it is all because of what Christ did on the cross.  In Matthew 26:28 He said as He held the cup, ‘This is my blood of the new testament, which is shed for many for the remission of sins.’

            “In Ephesians 1:7 Paul said, ‘In whom [Christ] we have redemption through His blood, the forgiveness of sins.’ 

            “In 1 John 2:12, ‘I write unto you, little children, because your sins are forgiven you for His name’s sake.’

            “Ephesians 4:32, ‘Even as God for Christ’s sake hath forgiven you.’

            “Colossians 2:13, ‘And you, being dead in your sins and the uncircumcision of your flesh, hath He quickened together with Him, having forgiven you all trespasses; blotting out the handwriting of ordinances that was against us…and took it out of the way, nailing it to His cross.

            “In those days a criminal was crucified with the record of his crimes nailed at the top of the cross for all the world to see why he was being executed.  The apostle Paul was saying that when Jesus died on the cross, God pulled all the pages out of the sin books, stacked them all together, nailed them to the cross as if they were the crimes of Jesus, and when Jesus died He paid the penalty, and God blotted them out.

            “That is judicial forgiveness.  Oh, to know that we are ultimately and forever forgiven in Christ is tremendous joy!  We can say with Paul in Romans 8:34, “34 who is the one who condemns? Christ Jesus is He who died, yes, rather who was raised, who is at the right hand of God, who also intercedes for us. 35 Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword?

            “Let’s look now at Hebrews 10, where the writer is comparing the sacrificial system of Israel with the sacrifice of Christ.  In verse 10 he says, ‘We are sanctified by the offering of the body of Jesus Christ once for all.’

            “Sanctified means to be made pure, made holy, set apart, separated.  We are made holy by the one sacrifice of Christ.  When He died and we believed, His sacrifice was sufficient.  He said on the cross, ‘It is finished.’         

            “In contrast to that, in verse 11, the priests in the Old Testament were daily ministering, and they were offering the same sacrifice again and again, always standing because the job was never done.  Verse 12, ‘But this man [Christ], after He had offered one sacrifice for sins forever, sat down.’  Why? It was over.

            “Verse 14, ‘For by one offering He hath perfected for ever them that are sanctified.’

            “Jesus says in Matthew 5:48, ‘Be ye perfect,’ and then goes to the cross and perfects us.  Christ is the solution to the sin problem.’

 

            I don’t care how many times that you go over verses like we have gone over to show that as a believer in Jesus Christ we are totally forgiven it has to make us so very thankful that we are given the gift of eternal life when not one person who has ever lived on this planet can ever earn this or deserve it.

 

12/3/2020 10:49 AM