All photos courtesy of Unsplash
“Sorry seems to be the hardest word!” It is sometimes a hard word to say, it certainly is a hard word to mean and maybe even harder to accept.
I used to be a headteacher and at times boys would be sent to my office for fighting on the yard. They would come into my office saying sorry before even I spoke. I would often tell them that if they were really sorry it would not happen again, but often they would be sent back a little while later for fighting again. They were not sorry at all. They saw “sorry” only as a word that got them out of trouble. That is the difference between being sorry that you were caught and being repentant of an action. To be truly repentant means that you turn away from it.
When we feel the weight of our sin, when our conscience is bothered and we look to the cross where Jesus Christ died for sinners, it is there that we find true forgiveness when we repent of our sins and turn to God with thankful hearts for Him sending His perfect Son Jesus Christ. When we believe in Him and trust in all that He has done for us, then we can know forgiveness and peace with God.
God is perfect, He hates sin, but amazingly He still loves us so much.
The famous verse in John chapter 3 verse 16 starts with ‘God so loved!’ We can not express how great His love is for us and He showed this immense love by giving. He gave His perfect Son for us.
His Son, the Lord Jesus spoke a parable about forgiveness. He told of a king who called in his debtors, one man owed a huge amount of money, in today’s money, he owed millions! Yet the king looked at the man who begged for time and was moved with compassion and forgave the huge debt. We may be might thinking that it was a wonderful thing to do! It was, but far greater is the fact that God in Christ forgives us.
Just imagine how the man felt, his relief must have been enormous, the weight of all that debt had gone, the worry about its consequences had evaporated. He must have been a different man after that, or so you would have thought.
As the man walked away from the palace, he demonstrated that there was no real change in him at all. He recognised a man that owed him a tiny amount. This man owed him in today’s money, around one hundred pounds. Similarly, the second man just could not repay, he too begged for time, but was offered none, but rather was thrown into prison. The parable of the Lord Jesus has much to teach us and some straight questions for us all to answer about ourselves.
Do we know the forgiveness of God?
Do we have peace with God in our souls or does our conscience bother us because of our sin?
Have we accepted Jesus Christ as Saviour, are we trusting in what He has done for us on the cross?
Maybe the answers to those questions bother you, then you need to believe in the Lord Jesus Christ so that you will be saved.
If you are a believer in the Lord Jesus, then there is another question for us. Are we like Christ? When we turned to God in repentance, He in Christ forgave us! Are we forgiving to others who have offended us? We have been forgiven the great debt, so God expects us to forgive the small debt and show the love that we have been shown through Christ to those around.
Written by Stuart Scammell for Messages with Meaning (26/05/21) & Your542Day
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