SPIRITUAL DIARY FOR 12/2/2020 1:04 PM
My Worship Time Focus: PT-4 “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.”
The first thing that I want to do in
this SD is have a little bit of review of what we have been looking at. First we looked at four principles in this
phrase found in Matthew 6:12. 1) Sin
makes man guilty and brings punishment; 2) Forgiveness is offered by God on the
ground of Christ’s death; 3) Confession of sin is necessary to receive that
forgiveness from God; and 4) the knockout punch of this passage—Forgiving one
another is an essential part of receiving forgiveness for ourselves. Now from those four principles we have been
looking at four words, and in our last two SD’s we looked at the first one
which is sin. Now today we want to look
at the second word, which is forgiveness.
Now the other two words that follow sin and forgiveness are confession
and forgiving. These two words will be
looked at a later date.
We have come to the conclusion that
sin is the problem and since that is true then forgiveness is the
provision. Forgiveness is God’s passing
by our sin. It is His wiping our sin off
the record, and it is God’s setting us free from punishment and from
guilt.
Now I want to quote the first part
of this section from John MacArthur’s book “Jesus’ Pattern of Prayer,” and it
looks like we will take a couple of days to do this for one would have to admit
that forgiveness of our sin and our sins is the most important thing that any
person can have so we will take our time looking at this.
“It is essentially bound up in what
Micah 7:18-19 says: ‘Who is a God like
unto thee, that pardoneth iniquity and passeth by the transgression of the
remnant of His heritage? He retaineth
not His anger for every, because He delights in mercy. He will turn again, He will have compassion
upon us; He will subdue our iniquities; and thou wilt cast all their sins into
the depths of the sea.’
“Isn’t that great? God in the Old Testament says ‘I will
remember their sin no more’ (Jeremiah 31:34).
It can be summed up in four simple statements: Forgiveness is taking away our sin, covering
our sin, blotting out our sin, and forgetting our sin.
“Isaiah 53:6 says He has taken the
iniquity of us all and laid it on Christ.
“Psalm 85:2 says, ‘Thou hast covered
all their sin.’
“Isaiah 43:25 says, ‘I am he that
blotteth out thy transgressions.’
“And He remembers our sins no
mere. God literally eliminates our sin.
“If we ever get to the place in our
Christian lives where this becomes common place, we have lost that joy of
understanding forgiveness and have hit a dry place. How thankful we should be for such a
forgiveness! It is only possible because
of Christ.
“God could not pass by our sin
unless He placed the punishment for it on someone else, and that is why Christ
Jesus died.
“There are two kinds of
forgiveness. One is judicial
forgiveness, and the other let’s call ‘relational’ forgiveness.” (Now in his sermon he called it parental
forgiveness because of the first words of this prayer “Our Father.”)
“Judicial forgiveness views God as a
judge. He says, ‘You’re guilty, you’ve
broken the law, you’ve under judgment, condemnation. There has to be punishment.
“But then that same Judge says, ‘On
the basis of Christ’s death, He bore your punishment. He took your guilt. He paid for your sin. The price is accomplished. I declare you forgiven.’
“Through salvation, full complete,
positional forgiveness is granted by God as the moral judge of the
universe. And by that act of judicial forgiveness,
all our sins—past, present, future, committed, being committed, and to be
committed—are totally, completely, and forever forgive, and we are justified
from all things forever.
“When does that happen? The moment you invite Jesus Christ into your
life. The moment you are redeemed. The moment you place your faith in Christ,
your sin is put on Him and His righteousness is put on you, and God judicially declares
you justified.”
I have to say that this is the best
news anyone can ever have, and there is a bit more of this good news we want to
talk about, so we will save it for our next SD.
12/2/2020 1:35
PM
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