More Importantly, God Gives Us Himself

Sometimes God will give us the gift of obedience and sometimes he won’t.  When God doesn’t, he gives us love and forgiveness.  But more important than that, God gives us himself – freely, joyously and without reservation.
- Steve Brown, A Scandalous Freedom: The Radical Nature of the Gospel, copyright 2004, Howard Books, page 233

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Instead of Apologies, We Give God Bad Excuses and Are All Too Easily Satisfied With Ourselves

Now it seems to me that we often make a mistake both about God’s forgiveness of our sins and about the forgiveness of our sins and about the forgiveness we are told to offer to other people’s sins.  Take it first about God’s forgiveness.  I find that when I think I am asking God to [...]

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If You Do Not Forgive, You Will Not be Forgiven

We believe that God forgives us our sins; but also that He will not do so unless we forgive other people their sins against us.  There is no doubt about the second part of this statement.  It is in the Lord’s Prayer; t was emphatically stated by our Lord.  If you don’t forgive you will [...]

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Jesus Died to Slay the Very Lust that Entangles You

Jesus died to slay the very lust that entangles you.  In fact, it has you trapped precisely because you’re no match for it.  You may be worn and exhausted from the grief and shame of it, ready to throw up your hands and surrender to a life of sin.  But there is stored up in [...]

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Possible to Forgive and to Justify

I believe like a child that suffering will be healed and made up for, that all the humiliating absurdity of human contradictions will vanish like a pitiful mirage, like the despicable fabrication of the impotent and infinitely small Euclidean mind of man, that in the world’s finale, at the moment of eternal harmony, something so [...]

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Justification is Not Merely Forgiveness

The declaration of justification in the law-court of God is not merely forgiveness; it is not merely the status or acquired; it is counting the defendant as morally righteous though in himself he is not.
- John Piper, The Future of Justification: a Response to N.T. Wright, copyright 2007, page 78

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We Do Not Have a Pharisee for an Older Brother

While Act 1 of the parable showed us how free the father’s forgiveness is, Act 2 gives us insight into its costliness.  The younger brother’s restoration was free to him, but it came at enormous cost to the elder brother.  The father could not just forgive the younger son, somebody had to pay!  The father [...]

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The Free and Unmerited Favor of Mercy and Forgiveness

Mercy and forgiveness must be free and unmerited to the wrongdoer. If the wrongdoer has to do something to merit it, then it isn’t mercy, but forgiveness always comes at a cost to the one granting the forgiveness.
- Tim Keller, Prodigal God, copyright 2008, page 83

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The Liberating Nature of One Sentence

When God removes our iniquity, when He takes away our iniquity from us, we experience a liberation unlike anything the world can match.  No windfall profit, no military victory, no election results, no romance or job promotion can liberate the spirit of man as much as one sentence to from God: “Your sins are forgiven!”
- [...]

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When God Forgives

When God forgives a person, that person is forgiven whether we feel the forgiveness or not.  The senuous Chistian lives by his feelings.  The spiritual Christian lives by the Word of God.  If God declares that I am forgiven, then it is sheer arrogance for me to refuse to forgive myself.
- R.C. Sproul, Knowing God, [...]

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