Can We Hope For Forgiveness?

July 18

When we have transgressed the immutable law of God, do we dare hope that we can actually be forgiven? We tend to carry upon ourselves the weight of all the wrong that we’ve done. We have a difficult time relinquishing the guilt that besets us. We sometimes go from oblivion as to our need for a Savior to certainty that nothing, that no one, can possibly save us.

This traverses the spectrum of sins and the types of people who have committed them. An elderly woman who augmented her family’s paltry resources during WW II when her brothers were fighting in Europe to defeat the Nazis was reduced to tears every time she mentioned the abortion she had, killing the baby she had conceived through prostitution.

A former executive, retired and quite comfortable financially, still became disconcerted when he reflected upon the rising star in the company he had undermined by his false accusations against him. Things that seem so reasonable when we’re doing them come back to haunt us at the most inopportune times. At those times when we wish we could relax and enjoy life, we are instead beleaguered by guilt we thought we’d assuaged long ago. Yet, if we turn to the Word of God, we find great comfort. Isaiah 1:5-18 addresses this perplexity.

It says, “Why should you be stricken any more?...Wash you and make you clean; put away the evil of your doings…cease to do wrong…though your sins be as scarlet…they shall be washed white as snow.” Jesus has cleansed us from every semblance of sin. If we will but appropriate the salvation He has provided through His shed blood, we will be clean. Our conscience will be clean. We will be sin-free for as we are told in Nehemiah 9:17, “You are a forgiving God, gracious and compassionate, slow to anger and abounding in love.”