At the Cross: forgiveness

            My favorite lyrics of all time are from the hymn, “It Is Well with My Soul.”  My heart soars when I sing:  “My sin--O the joy of this glorious thought, my sin, not in part, but the whole, Is nailed to the cross and I bear it no more, Praise the Lord, praise the Lord, O my soul!” Forgiveness, as described in the Bible, sets the heart free.

            Forgiveness roots itself in God’s character.  “You are forgiving, O Lord” (Ps. 86:5).  Did you notice that being verb?  Forgiving is an adjective modifying God.  He is forgiving.  It is His character to forgive. 

            Forgiveness removes the sin from our record.  “I write to you, dear children, because your sins have been forgiven on account of His (Jesus) name” (I Jn. 2:12).  The word forgiven is aphiemi meaning, “to send forth or to send away.” (1)  God sends forth, propels, hurls, flings, launches, casts, shoots (I enjoy my thesaurus) our sin “as far as the east is from the west” (Ps. 103:12).  Forgiveness “involves the complete removal of the cause of offense.”(2)

            Forgiveness comes only from God.  “I, even I, am He who blots out your transgressions” (Isa. 43:25).  Even the argumentative Pharisees understood this, “Who can forgive sins but God alone?”  (Mark 2:7).  Only God is capable of removing sin.

            God’s forgiveness covers all sin.  “Praise the LORD,..who forgives all your sins…” (Ps. 103:2-3). Notice the plural of sin.  God’s forgiveness is not for just one sin, but for “all sins.”  No sin sneaks by Him or slips through the cracks.   His forgiveness is complete.

            God’s forgiveness touches eternity.  “For I will forgive their wickedness and will remember their sins no more” (Heb. 8:12).  The word remember is mnaomai, meaning,“fixture of the mind or to recollect.”(1)   Hebrews states that God’s forgiveness means our sins are not a fixture of His mind.   He is not meditating on our iniquities day and night, holding them over our heads, or waiting to remind us of them when we sin again.

            God’s forgiveness brings happiness.  “Blessed is he whose transgressions are forgiven, whose sins are covered” (Ps. 32:1).  The word blessed means happy, or as Spurgeon puts it, “’Oh the blessednesses!’–the double joys, the bundles of happiness, the mountains of delight.  Pardoning mercy is of all things in the world most to be prized, for it is the only and sure way to happiness.”(4)

Forgiveness is available to all.  “But now He has appeared once for all at the end of the ages to do away with sin by the sacrifice of himself…so Christ was sacrificed once to take away the sins of many people”  (Heb. 9:26,28).  Because of the cross there is forgiveness. 

                                                      

“Oh the joy of this glorious thought, my sin, not in part, but the whole

is nailed to the cross and I bear it no more,

Praise the Lord, Praise the Lord, O my soul!”

1.  Strong’s Exhaustive Concordance of the Bible.

2. Vine’s Complete Expository Dictionary of Old and New Testament Words.

4.  Charles Spurgeon “Psalms” Vol. 1.  Crossway Books. 1993.