NOTE:  As you read this, I am not saying:  There is no punishment for Sin.  Clearly there is.   II Cor 5:21 tells us who took the punishment.    I am also not saying that people who don’t accept and believe in Christ will end up spending Eternity with the Father, quite the contrary.  There will be eternity with out God for  those who do not believe.  Debates about what Hell will be like aside, the Hell of it will be knowing fully what they could have had.

For us to have eternal life with the Father, in view of the mercy from the Cross, we must accept the forgiveness He see us as worthy of.   We are so worthy that he sent His Son… We must believe Christ, and the power of his forgiveness.

(Hmmm.. Believe Christ -vs- Believe in Christ…Sounds like another post)….

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II Cor 5:21… I keep coming back to this verse as one of(At least to me) the most pivotal in Scripture.   Growing up Catholic the understanding of Sin was very different.   I was taught that forgiveness for sin to be an on going process (I just don’t believe that to be so anymore), but I never understood how us being worthy of forgiveness lead to repentance.

²¹ God made him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.

(and yes for one of my readers, I know this can be rapped… )

It speaks directly to why Jesus had to come to earth, die, and rise again.  For God to view us as worthy and righteous there had to be a perfect sacrifice.  That sacrifice had to be for the forgiveness of our sin.    Our forgiveness for sin had to happen once, when Christ took all the sin of the world, past and present, onto his shoulders.  Sin was forgiven… Our part becomes to recognize and accept that forgiveness, and repent.

I could be way off base here, but to continue to ask for forgiveness puts Christ back on the cross, which just doesn’t need to be done.   God already sees us as worthy of that Grace… Putting Christ back on the cross for something already forgiven, is because of our own view of not being worthy of his Grace.   The guilt of hanging Christ there with our sin keeps us from truly releasing the bonds that chain us to sin, accepting the forgiveness,  and the guilt keeps us from repenting.

However, because we are worthy and accept the forgiveness, we draw closer and closer  to God, we will recognize more and more of the sin in our life that is already forgiven.  We then accept the forgiveness already afforded  by God’s grace and turn to Him for strength to leave it behind.   We enter a new life lived by the Spirit

This has fundamentally changed how I approach others that may not know Christ and his forgiveness.

My real question to those who follow Christ… Can you look at the other person, and see them in the same light?  Can you look at the other sinner, and see that they to are forgiven?   Regardless of if they believe in Christ or not?   Christ took their sin to the cross just as He took ours.   Can you look past their sin, and do the work Christ commanded?   Can you love them…

Can you love?….  Neither the sexually immoral nor idolaters nor adulterers nor men who have sex with men ¹⁰ nor thieves nor the greedy nor drunkards nor slanderers nor swindlers will inherit the kingdom of God.   (1 Cor 6: 8-10)

Can you love?……   lawbreakers and rebels, the ungodly and sinful, the unholy and irreligious, for those who kill their fathers or mothers, for murderers, ¹⁰ for the sexually immoral, for those practicing homosexuality, for slave traders and liars and perjurers—and for whatever else is contrary to the sound doctrine  (1 Timothy 1: 9-10)

My message to all reading… You are worthy of God’s Grace regardless of where you fall in the list of sin, and Christ is who proves you as worthy….