Forgiven Sinner

This post is the second of a 4 part series.

Part 1, Part 2, and Part 3

There is a lot of different ways man can put himself in a situation where he can feel there is no hope, no way of breaking free. Sometimes it’s financial debt, he may have spent and spent and spent money on all the latest gadgets and all the latest fads but his credit card bill is looming over him. He sits defeated in a home he does not own, surrounded by possessions he does not own and a slave to the credit card that promised him of great and glorious things. Time is running out and the party is coming to a close but there is nothing he can do within himself to free himself from his immense debt, a debt that will take a lifetime to pay. There is no amount of hard work that will take care of the problem.

Another scenario is that of a drowning man. He had no problem getting himself into the mess but his salvation does not rest in himself. He can by no means pluck himself out of the water than he can turn that said water into wine.  He is in desperate need and the answer lies in the external. Someone else needs to help him and just like a drowning man needs another to pull him out of the depths of the sea so does the one in debt needs someone to bail him out in his hour of need. I hope we are beginning to see an important spiritual truth in instances like these.

As we saw in the week before last week’s post, man is in a serious predicament. Just like in these real world situations the answer lies outside the one in trouble so to are we in need of someone to bail us out of our trouble. As we saw last week man is a sinner who is completely depraved. He is stained by sin and he must bear the price of sin: Death in hell. There is nothing we can do to pay its cost. We can do no good, we can do no redemptive work on our own behalf and because of that we are consigned to our fate to bear the punishment for our wrongdoings.

Yet, just as we mentioned last week that God is holy, just and righteous we musn’t forget that He is also loving, compassionate and caring. God in His redemptive plan provided us the solution to our sin problem. Seeing that we cannot save ourselves and knowing that our sin needed to be righteously punished sent Jesus Christ His Son to bear the iniquity of us all. He acted as our substitute to pay for our sin and allowed God to not only punish sin but offer forgiveness of sin through Him who saves us from our sin.

In Romans 5:1 and 8:1 we have amazing truth. When we are in Christ we have moved from death to life and from condemnation to standing justified. As we have seen here so far man has racked up a debt he cannot pay and he suffers eternal consequences, he stands condemned before God. We can look at these verses and think “Great!” but the next though on our mind is “How do I move from condemnation? What does it mean to be in Christ?” Well in light of what we looked at, and if we understand our position before God we can claim this truth quite easily. We just need to look at 1 John 1:9

If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.

Next week we’ll continue on with a more focused look at the death of Christ.

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