![]() ![]() ![]() He poured out His blood for many for the forgiveness of sins (Matthew 26:28). God the Son was ready to take the burden of sin and guilt upon Himself and to pay the ransom by dying in our place. But He does not want man to perish, and therefore He offers a solution Himself. The Lord is aware of our inability to get right with Him. The sobering conclusion is that we can’t get right with God ourselves. The law just shows us how sinful we actually are. This is confirmed by the apostle Paul in Romans 3:20, where he says that no human being will be justified by works of the law. We are only making things worse by continually falling short of God’s standards. The prophet Isaiah says that even our good deeds are not pure (Isaiah 64:6). We can’t compensate for our sins by leading extra righteous lives. The whole earth belongs to God already He does not need anything from us. We can’t “buy” forgiveness with money or sacrifices or anything else. But no human, not even the most respected religious expert, is able to do this. The only way to restore the relationship between man and God is to remove the debt completely. Since God is righteous, He won’t simply condone our offense and “forget about it”. That leaves us guilty and damages our relationship with the Lord God. We are all affected by sin we deny God the honor He is due and we continuously transgress against His commandment to love God above all and other people as ourselves. “ All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God” (Romans 3:23). But since the first humans decided to disobey their Creator, they became sinful and so did all their descendants. Since God created us as good and righteous people whose purpose it was to glorify Him, He has every right to demand our perfect devotion. The Bible says that every human being is in debt to the Lord God. The father does not reject him, but welcomes him with hugs, kisses and a festive meal. But when the son ends up in big trouble, he realizes what he has done and returns home. The father has lost hope of ever seeing his son again. The son has hurt his father deeply by claiming the part of the father’s property that he is supposed to receive in the future, leaving for another country and wasting the money there. Jesus gives a wonderful example of forgiveness in a story about a father and a son in Luke 15:11-32. Forgiving the wrongdoer means to give up any claim for compensation, to let go of any negative emotions towards this person, and to restore the relationship whenever possible. ![]() He needs to compensate for the hurt or loss the other person has suffered – for example financially or emotionally. When someone has treated another person badly or wrongly, this damages their relationship and brings the wrongdoer into a position of debt to the wronged party. ![]()
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