God Forbid!

June 27

What a blessing salvation is to all who believe. The package Jesus purchased for mankind at Calvary encompasses forgiveness for sin, healing for disease, fellowship with people of like precious faith and intimacy with the Living God, the Creator of and Lord of life. It doesn’t get any better than that.

When we have embraced Christ as our Savior, we are set free from bondage to every sin. Whether we have been snared on the horns of unspeakable sin as was Adolph Hitler whose extermination camps were a stench upon the people who operated them or whether we 'merely' allow the occasional profane word to escape our lips and stain our hearts, we are free.

What does the knowledge of our freedom afford us? Certainly it gives us great liberty to rejoice in Jesus and thank and praise Him for the sacrifice of Himself that has made our freedom a possibility that becomes our reality the minute we receive Him into our hearts. But does it give us a license to sin with impunity? Does it afford us such access to His mercy that we can repeat our transgressions and slip through their trap repeatedly?

Perhaps it does, for His forgiveness extends beyond what we can imagine. But we have the example of Pharaoh in the book of Exodus in the Bible who repented many times of his sin of persecution of the people of God but was finally swallowed into the Red Sea and eternally lost because of his continual return to his sin. As Romans 6:1, 2 states clearly, “Should we continue in sin in order that grace may multiply?” Paul’s redounding answer to us is, “God forbid!”