39. The Message of Forgiveness

The Message of Forgiveness

First, turn toRevelation 1:5-6and read the text that we have already read more than once: “Unto Him that loved us, and washed us from our sins in His own blood, and hath made us kings and priests unto God and His Father; to Him be our glory and dominion forever and ever. Amen.” Read it as we have it in the Revised Version, “Unto Him that loved us and loosed us from our sins, be glory.” See the glory of the delivered life, “unto Him who loved us and loosed us.” The first message of the cross is forgiveness; but never let us forget that forgiveness means freedom for the forgiven one. Forgiveness without freedom would leave us in a position that would rob the forgiveness of its sweetness and of its reality. But in the New Testament God’s word for forgiveness always means deliverance from the power which has made the forgiveness necessary. The glory of the death of the Lord Jesus Christ is the fullness of the victory which He has won on Calvary, and the completeness, the perfection of the salvation which He has wrought out for us here in everyday life.

There is an inscription in an old English abbey which perfectly describes the delivered life:

I am on the cross for thee, Thou who sinnest, cease from sin.

Cease; I pardon;

Fight; I help;

Conquer; I crown.

Now that is the life that is free, that is the description of the life that is free. It is a life that knows pardon for sin, that ceases to love its sin, that, in cooperation with the Spirit of God, through the victory of the cross, fights the sin and never gives in; and that, conquering, receives a crown, the glory of the freed life.