Theological Commentary: Click Here
Discipleship Focus: Forgiveness
- Forgiveness: Forgiveness is when our sins are absolved by God. We do not deserve this forgiveness, but God grants it to us anyway. We cannot earn forgiveness, but God gives it to us anyway. As we are forgiven by God, He also asks us to forgive others. In fact, Jesus Himself teaches us to pray for our forgiveness in the Lord’s Prayer when He says, “Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us.”
This
might seem like an odd day to talk about forgiveness. After all, the reading today is all about
Nehemiah. It is all about the reading of
the Law. It is all about how the people
react to the reading of the Law and how much they are grieved by their
trespasses. Truth is, we should all be
grieved about our trespasses.
However,
at the same time I was struck at the end of the passage by the leaders reaction
to the people and how it was declared that it was to be a time of
celebration! This is the way that it
should be. We should be grieved when we
realize just how much we have violated the Law of God. But as much as we are grieved by that we
should rejoice that our trespasses are less than God’s forgiveness and His
grace!
You see,
God knows how much we get wrong. He
knows when we are genuinely mournful and when we are genuinely repentant. He sent His Son so that when we are genuinely
mournful we can be forgiven. He sent His
Son so that no matter how much we transgress the Law He can forgive. Our sinfulness is great, but God’s ability to
forgive the genuinely repentant is even greater!
On the
day we hear about being grieved by the Law, we should also celebrate. This is a joyous day. Yes, we are sinners. But God is a forgiving God. And that is the greater of the two points.
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