Forgiveness of God

Your New Identity in Christ

There I was, sitting in the green room of the Oprah Winfrey television show, waiting for my turn to share with the world how my new identity had transformed me from the inside out. I stood in front of the floor-to-ceiling mirror startled by my own image. The mirror reflected an image of a tall, slender black woman with shiny, wavy hair that sparkled like dew drops on a crisp autumn morning. The chestnut eyes beamed with vibrant life. The air was filled with deep love, passion, and hope. I didn’t recognize “me.”

As I crawled out of bed the next morning, just out of curiosity, I checked in the mirror. I now saw what I had seen hundreds of times before: an under-tall—5 feet, two inches and shrinking to be exact—Caucasian, over forty-nine and holding, work-in-progress lady.

Perhaps it was just a dream that seemed so real to me. Ten years later I still remember the precise details of my “Oprah adventure.”

Confused and baffled by my identity, I wondered: Who am I anyway?

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God’s Washrag

Come now, and let us reason together, saith the Lord: though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be as white as snow; though they be red like crimson, they shall be as wool. Isaiah 1:18 KJV

When I get up in the morning, I wash my face so that I will be alert and clean. There are many times during the day when I have to wash it again because I get hot and it refreshes me. So it is with Jesus. When we pray the sinner’s prayer and ask Him to forgive us and wash us in His atoning blood, He cleanses us from all sin. However, because of living in a world that is sinful and corrupt, our hearts sometimes become filled with unforgiveness, resentment, bitterness, jealousy, sarcasm and criticism.

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Thanksgiving: Blessings? or Mercies?

We can all provide a catalogue of things wrong with our lives and the world. Thanksgiving is a time when we must forget these things to remember God’s mercies.

The origin of Thanksgiving is in the harvest festival of the Old Testament. The early American celebration was a self-conscious adoption of the Old Testament observance together with many other things. Throughout the year, the Hebrews constantly were summoned to thank God for His mercies and blessings. Many Psalms resound with thankful praise, especially Psalm 136:

O give thanks unto the LORD; for he is good:
for his mercy endureth forever.

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Had a Slip? Is Your Recovery Failing?

“I will love them freely.” Hosea 14:4

This is a condensed version of the glorious message of salvation which was delivered to us in Christ Jesus our Redeemer. It hinges upon the word “freely.” This is the glorious, the suitable, the divine way by which love streams from heaven to earth, a spontaneous love flowing to those who neither deserved it, purchased it, nor sought it. It is, indeed, the only way in which God can love us as we are.

The text is a death-blow to all sorts of conditions: “I will love them freely.” Now, if there were any fitness necessary in us, then he would not love us freely, at least, this would be a mitigation and a drawback to the freeness of it. But it stands, “I will love you freely.”

We complain, “Lord, my heart is so hard.”
“I will love you freely.”

“But I do not feel my need of Christ as I would like.”
“”I will not love you because you feel your need; I will love you freely.”

“But I do not feel that softening of spirit which I desire.”

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What About Salvation?

If anyone is in Christ, he is a new creature; the old things passed away; behold, new things have come. (2 Cor. 5:17)

There are a number of aspects to salvation. Salvation isn’t just getting out of hell and into heaven. There are many different things which make up what we refer to broadly as salvation — things which themselves are great and marvelous, and which together make up a mighty work which only God could conceive and carry out, and which, like all His works, depends only and entirely on His purpose and power and not on anything in the work or its result.

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Why is it Called “Good” Friday?

If while we were enemies we were reconciled to God through the death of His Son, much more, having been reconciled, we shall be saved by His life. (Rom. 5:10)


Before I was a Christian, and even for a while after my conversion, I couldn’t figure out why we call it Good Friday. What on earth could be good about the day on which the hands of godless men nailed Jesus to the cross? But as time has progressed, and with it my knowledge of Scripture, I have come to see that it is indeed good Friday – the best Friday in human history.

Jesus did indeed die on what we call Friday – the next to last day of the Jewish week, of which the seventh day was the sabbath. We use essentially the same week, though instead of paying special attention to the seventh day, we give heed to the first day of the week; instead of the sabbath, we celebrate the Lord’s Day. But whatever we call the day – Friday in English, el viernes in Spanish, other names in the other languages of the world – on this particular Friday, Good Friday, we turn our minds to the infinite good that took place on another Friday, 2,000 years ago.

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Grace Brings Context to Our Lives

The Grace of Jesus brings true context to our lives. If you examine your meaning by any other context, you cheapen your worth. Also, relationships viewed through the lenses of Grace take on an unalterable value. Apart from Grace we tend to use people and love things. Grace implores us to use things and love people!

The Word became a human being; we are his address; he resides in us! He captivates our gaze! The glory we see there is not a religious replica; he is the authentic begotten son. The glory (that Adam lost) returns in fullness! Only grace can communicate truth in such complete context! He is the source of our completeness.

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Memories: Ouch!

Restore unto me the joy of thy salvation;
and uphold me with thy free spirit.
Psalm 51:12


Autumn floods me with childhood memories of locusts inhabiting our farm and caterpillars on twigs, kept on mason jars, just waiting to become monarch butterflies.

And, with that flooding, often comes the tinged bittersweet feelings that accompany a childhood innocence of long ago.

I recently caught a funny post on the internet. It read: “Memories: Ouch!”

They say humor is humor because it is unflinching truth. And that certainly was the case with this post.

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What is Forgiveness of Sin?

What is forgiveness of sin?

1) To forgive sin, is to take away iniquity.
“Why dost thou not take away mine iniquity?” Job 7:21.
It is a metaphor taken from a man that carries a heavy burden which is ready to sink him, and another comes, and lifts it off, so when the heavy burden of sin is on us, God in pardoning, lifts it off from the conscience, and lays it upon Christ.
He has laid on him the iniquity of us all. Isaiah 53:6.

2) To forgive sin, is to cover it.
Thou hast covered all their sin. Psalm 85:2.
This was typified by the mercy-seat covering the ark, to show God’s covering of sin through Christ. God does not cover sin in the Antinomian sense, so as he sees it not, but he so covers it, that he will not impute it.

3) To forgive sin, is to blot it out.
“I am he that blotteth out thy transgressions.” Isaiah 43:25.
The Hebrew word, to blot out, alludes to a creditor who, when his debtor has paid him, blots out the debt, and gives him an acquittance; so when God forgives sin, he blots out the debt, he draws the red lines of Christ’s blood over it, and so crosses the debt-book.

4) To forgive sin is for God to scatter our sins as a cloud.
“I have blotted out as a thick cloud thy transgressions.” Isaiah 44:22.
Sin is the cloud, an interposing cloud, which disperses, that the light of his countenance may break forth.

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Are you in a prison of hopeless despair?

Too many of us have lived our lives suffering in a silent, shameful prison of hopeless despair. When we tried to hope — our hopes were always deferred. We were heart sick from all our seeming endless deferred hopes (Proverbs). Hope for us was more of a mirage; one which was continually being pushed into an elusive, uncertain and clouded future.

Thus, our lives became defined by disappointment, disillusionment and shame. And like Rowan and Martin, on the 1970’s show Laugh In, we regularly awarded ourselves with “the twisted finger of fate,” instead of embracing our true divine destiny in Christ.

These three cousins of hopelessness (disappointment, disillusionment and shame) ‘mar’ the true image of God. I don’t recall whose quote this belongs to; but, it goes something like this: “God created man in his image and likeness. Unfortunately, man has returned the favor. We have shaped God into the ‘twisted’ and ‘wicked’ view we have of ourselves.” Disappointment, disillusionment and shame diminished us!

Not so in Christ! With him in our hearts, “hope springs eternal.”

Such hope never disappoints, disillusions or shames us; for God’s love has been poured out in our hearts through the Holy Spirit Who has been given to us. Romans 5:5, Amplified (my editorial change – deludes changed to disillusions)

Hope enables us to wait patiently for our redemption.

That is why (hopeful) waiting does not diminish us;

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