11/20/2025
Do you see God the Father as a gentle old grey-haired man who forgives you regardless of what you do and without regard to, or memory of, who and what you are? Well, that isn’t so. Without the horrific and yet wonderful sacrifice of His Son Jesus Christ we would be lost, because God’s very nature would prohibit Him from overlooking our sins. Our forgiveness is a supernatural spiritual event that is without precedent, and which cleanses the once permanent stain of sin.
“In him we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of our trespasses, according to the riches of his grace, which he lavished upon us, in all wisdom and insight making known to us the mystery of his will, according to his purpose, which he set forth in Christ as a plan for the fullness of time, to unite all things in him, things in heaven and things on earth.”
Ephesians 1:7-10 ESV
My wife has a younger brother that she loves dearly, but when they were children she would dress him in various doll-like outfits as they played and in her eyes he would assume the identity of some playmate she imagined. However, he was never truly that person. Despite the dress she might put on him, he was still a boy who would grow to manhood and exhibit all the traits of a man. At that time she would imagine him as someone else, but that never changed the reality of who he was.
Some people tend to look at God as my wife looked at her little brother. They dress Him up like a big sister dresses up her little brother, and pretend that He is something He is not, but for all their efforts... He remains God. He remains unable to forgive our sins without the application of a supernatural cure and spiritual cleansing. Despite our imagined and longed for forgiveness, it doesn’t become real without the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ... the Son of God.
Pastor Oswald Chambers wrote about this inability for God to change who He is when he wrote these words...
“Forgiveness is the divine miracle of grace; it cost God the Cross of Jesus Christ before He could forgive sin and remain Holy God. Never accept the Fatherhood of God if it blots out the atonement. The revelation of God is that He cannot forgive; He would contradict His nature if He did. The only way we can be forgiven is by being brought back to God by the atonement.” - Oswald Chambers
Sin is not some minor infraction; it is not a little mistreatment or slight wrong we might perpetuate against one another. It is the unforgivable... that is, it is unforgivable because it would mean that God would have to change who He is for that to happen. So, something amazing and outside our ability to fully understand had to happen for Him to forgive us... a supernatural atonement was required. Sin is an evil that we perpetuate against God alone and is nothing like the ills (regardless of how great we might view them) that we forgive each other of.
“Against you, you only, have I sinned and done what is evil in your sight, so that you may be justified in your words and blameless in your judgment.”
Psalms 51:4 ESV
The truth that is revealed in this verse is that we don’t sin against one another... only God. This is further represented by the use of very different words when we pray the Lord’s Prayer. Some translations use the word “debt”, and others say “trespasses” but not sin.
My wife’s baby brother could forgive his sister for dressing him up in a girl’s dress and pretending that he was her little tea partner, because this didn’t change who he was when she did so... only how he felt. God, on the other hand, is perfect and cannot accept sin without becoming imperfect. Are you beginning to see the difference?
So, something incredible had to occur. Jesus Christ had to become our Redeemer; He had to take on the sins of the world in order to erase them from us. As He hung on the cross an amazing and complete act of love and redemption occurred. This act of sacrifice assumed supernatural spiritual proportion and in a way we can’t begin to understand, He made concession for us and yet maintained the true nature of God as He did so. This is a divine mystery that we wonder about, and are thankful for, but we can’t possibly understand without just accepting it as an unprovable truth... it is an equation that is beyond our ability to calculate. It is like quantum mathematics to an infant when we contemplate it... true, but beyond our ability to fathom.
So, just as my wife, and her brother are now reconciled by his very human forgiveness of her actions, we are also reconciled to God by His divine spiritual forgiveness of our sins. The simple act of human forgiveness that transpired between these two siblings has manifested itself on a cosmic and divine scale that defies our ability to understand, but has made way for our reconciliation with God, our Heavenly Father. This demonstrates to us that our acts of forgiveness are amazingly inadequate and pale in comparison to His ability to forgive… and yet we are told to continue to forgive the transgressions of others and to ask forgiveness of them for our own. Do we do this, and do we strive to go even further by allowing our spirits to praise Him as we accept the atonement of Christ and ask the Lord for forgiveness? Do we bridge the chasm between the physical and spiritual by faith and step into the supernatural... the divine realm of God?
“For if you forgive others their trespasses, your heavenly Father will also forgive you, but if you do not forgive others their trespasses, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses.”
Matthew 6:14-15 ESV
Prayer:
Father, I thank you in words, and in the groaning of my spirit, as I reach out in loving appreciation for the forgiveness that you made possible for my sins. I thank you Lord for erasing the sins I have committed and for remaining true to your nature in the process. You are greater than my ability to understand, or express, and by heart leaps from my chest as I long for your presence in worship and adoration. Hear me Holy Father, and know that in my simple way, I am giving you all that I have within me as I obey and thank you each day. I thank you Father for your Son Jesus Christ who was born, suffered, and nailed to a cross, where He died, rose from the dead, descended into hell, defeated sin, and now sits at your right hand. I thank you for the suffering He endured that I might be washed clean of sin and reconciled to you. I don’t understand how this was made possible, but I praise you for your divine solution to my sins against you. You are my Holy Father, and I will praise you always for your goodness, mercy, and grace. I pray each day and thank you without ceasing for Son Jesus and for making it possible through Him for me to be redeemed, to please you, and to be able to spend eternity in your presence as your washed and perfected child in Him.
“Be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, as God in Christ forgave you.”
Ephesians 4:32 ESV
Hallelujah! Hallelujah! Hallelujah! Amen!
Rich Forbes