Who Needs Forgiveness?نموونە

Holiness—or right living—comes neither from trying to be good, nor by trying not to be bad. Rather, it comes from seeing that the sacrifice of Jesus on that Cross was for us personally, and that it totally, once and for all, deals the death blow to all our sin and guilt and failure and defeat. 

The forgiveness of the Cross reaches down into the depths of our conscience to cleanse from shame and blame; from bitterness and hatred; from anxiety and self-despising. 

God’s forgiveness touches the deepest levels of our unconscious fears and insecurities, our inferiority, our damaged emotions, our unresolved conflicts and tensions. 

It provides the only true base for the resolution of many of our physical and mental disorders. It is able to penetrate the hidden recesses and chambers of our memory and there cleanses and purges totally and permanently.

Such a transformation took place in the life of my mother when she was in her late 50s. She was invited by a neighbour to hear a visiting missionary speaking at a teaching mission at a nearby church. 

Though a regular churchgoing woman, she was rather shy and it was not like her to go to a ‘religious’ meeting in a strange church, at night and during the week. She was normally very private in regards to what she believed about God and Jesus Christ, and so I was somewhat surprised when she readied herself and went off with her friend.

When she returned later that evening she came straight into my bedroom to tell me about her outing. I immediately knew something extraordinary must have happened because her face just shone. 

Her eyes were bright and there was a calmness about her that I had never seen before. As she sat on the end of my bed she told me that the preacher had been speaking about God’s holiness and his forgiveness of sins. 

She then said very simply: ‘I saw the Lord tonight’. I was puzzled. She explained that while the preacher was speaking, he suddenly seemed to disappear from the pulpit and Jesus stood in his place in all his glory. She said: ‘The Lord looked right through me and immediately I knew I was entirely forgiven’. 

From that moment she was a transformed woman. She later told me that her conscience was at rest and her memory of past failures was entirely cleansed. Her otherwise formal belief in God suddenly came alive. No longer did she grind through the day never being sure if she was in a right relationship with her Lord. She now knew it to be so—with a quiet but deep inner knowing.

Mum lived to 86 and was a constant and eloquent demonstration of the reality of God’s love and forgiveness. She communicated this forgiveness at every opportunity and was a grand testimony to God’s grace to all who knew her.