...That Man Might Live

March 2

“Seek the LORD while He may be found, call upon Him while He is near. Let the wicked forsake his way, and the unrighteous man his thoughts; let him return to the LORD, and He will have mercy on him; to our God, for He will abundantly pardon,” Isaiah 55:6, 7.

Man is fallible. All men make mistakes. All men fail. All men fall short of the mark. All men sin. Can anything about our species be clearer than that one outstanding truth?

Yet, over and over again in the scriptures, the holy Word of God invites us to seek the Lord, to call upon Him in the throes of our errancy, to forsake our sinful thoughts and deeds—God makes it abundantly clear that He wants to have mercy on us, to forgive us and to receive us to Himself.

Jesus makes this possible. Because of His propitiatory life, death, and resurrection, all mankind, no matter how profound our failures or grievous our sins, may reach out to the hand of the Holy One who is ever reaching out to him, and receive the grace to be pardoned and the love to be received into the family of God.

Isaiah does not state the simple fact of the desire of our Heavenly Father to forgive and redeem us, he tells us that it is the desire of the One who inhabits eternity to “abundantly pardon” His wayward children. It is His desire to clean our slate, to make us completely new in Christ!

Our fallen species tends to hold grudges, to plot and scheme for opportunities to ‘get even,’ to exact harsh payment against any who may undermine us, but our loving Lord has devised an infallible plan to redeem the ones who turned from fellowship with Him to pursue our self-destructive path of rebellion.

The concept of forgiving the offender is alien to us. But because Jesus has walked where we walk, because He has lived in human flesh, because He has been “tempted in all points like as we are,” Hebrews 4:15, He can be our true Redeemer! He can abundantly pardon!

Let us not delay to receive such full, free deliverance from the weight that pulls us from the Lord and His eternal salvation! Let us not delay to receive the loving embrace of the God who died that man might live.