1 John 2:12 “I am writing to you, little children, because your sins are forgiven on account of his name.” Today's episode talks about how we are forgiven not because of anything we do but because of what Jesus did. Jesus paid the price for our sins so we don't have to earn our forgiveness, it is freely given. It also talks about he difference between redemption and salvation. You are forgiven! Music:"Adding the Sun" Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com) Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0 License http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
I am Forgiven
1 John 2:12 “I am writing to you, little children, because your sins are forgiven on account of his name.”
I decided to stick with some of the verses from the “I Am Who God Says I Am” Challenge from my Big Life mentoring group. I have talked about many of the verses however the next one that I had not talked about before is 2 John 2:12. I particularly liked this one because I am not sure this is one that most of us would agree with. Do you believe you are forgiven? I recently learned something that I thought was so interesting. I was at a meeting and we were talking about the difference between Redemption vs Salvation.
The way they explained it was to picture that you are in jail. Redemption means someone has been paid for your freedom. This means you have been redeemed. You are now free to go, free to leave the jail in which you were held captive. However, the salvation doesn’t come until you leave the prison. You need to be the one to accept that redemption and walk out of the door. That is the hard part, that is the part that we struggle with a lot. We might understand on some level that Jesus died for the sins of the world and yet we struggle to believe that he died for our sins in particular.
Do you believe that Jesus died for your sins? Do you believe there is nothing you can do that won’t be forgiven if you repent? Do you believe you don’t have to earn your forgiveness? This is something else that we struggle with. We think we have to be good enough to be forgiven. We mess up and then we think we need to fix everything before we turn to the Lord and ask for forgiveness. This couldn’t be further from the truth. There is nothing you have to do to be forgiven other than to be sorry for what you have done. You can’t earn your forgiveness, Jesus already paid the price for you. He paid a high price and when we try to earn our forgiveness we are essentially saying what He paid wasn’t enough.
Father Mike was just talking about this idea of earning our forgiveness the other day on the Catechism in a Year podcast when he was talking about the sacrament of reconciliation. When Catholics go to confession, we confess our sins we say we are sorry to God for having sinned against Him, we receive absolution for our sins and then the priest gives us a penance. Sometimes when we get the penance we think that it is not severe enough. For instance we confess we committed a mortal sin and the priest says that we should say 5 Hail Marys and 5 Our Fathers. We don’t see how that could possible atone for our sins. That’s the thing, we are not atoning for our sins, our forgiveness is freely given to us because Jesus died on the cross. He already atoned for our sins. Penance is meant to help us turn our hearts back to God. Just as our sin was an active choice of turning away from God, penance is an active choice of turning back to God.
What penance is meant to do is to help us get back on track. In an ideal world your penance would have something to do with what you were struggling with at the time of confession. For instance, if you are struggling with being kind to your family, your penance might be to say three kind things to each one of them before going to bed that night. If you are struggling with pride your penance might be to say the Litany of Humility. This would be in an ideal world, however, there are not enough priests and the priest might not always be able to come up with a creative penance that has to do with your specific struggle or your specific sins. If you are given a penance that doesn’t seem to “fit the crime” so to speak, remember that you are not earning your forgiveness, you are not trying to buy it, it has already been purchased for you. I read an article about doing penance after confession and it said, “Just as sin wounds (or breaks) our relationship with God and makes our souls sick, penance is medicine that helps us turn our hearts back towards our Creator. Confession removes that sin from our shoulders. Penance helps us move towards a more holy future.”
The verse above says that our sins are forgiven on account of his name.” I mentioned earlier that sometimes we think we need to fix things before we confess what we have done. We think we need to be perfect before we approach God and tell Him what we have done. Romans 5:8 tells us, “But God proves his love for us in that while we were still sinners Christ died for us.” He didn’t wait till we stopped sinning. He didn’t wait until we had all our ducks in a row, He didn’t wait until we had life all figured out. He died for our sins while we were still sinners. This shows us how much God loves us and also shows us that He doesn’t want us to wait until we are perfect because that day will never come. God told Paul that His power is made perfect in our weakness.
We think we need to be perfect for God and yet God doesn’t require that of us. He would rather we come to Him in our weakness and our brokenness. If we are perfect we don’t need God. If we could do it all ourselves we wouldn’t need God. God is not there to watch us do all the work ourselves and then forgive us or love us after we have figured it all out. He is there to help us figure it out. He is there to guide us and to lead us in the right direction. We can’t change the really hard stuff without God’s help. We can’t forgive others without God helping us change our hearts. We can want to forgive and yet God is the one that is in charge of conversion of hearts. He is the one that forgives us and helps us forgive others. We need him all along the process.
The one thing I want to leave you with today is that your sins were forgiven when Jesus died on that cross. You don’t have to earn your forgiveness, you just have to accept it. You have to walk in that freedom that comes with forgiveness. If God has forgiven your sins and yet you are still walking around in a prison of your past mistakes then what do you think that says to the Lord? It says that you don’t believe Jesus’ sacrifice was enough to cover your sins. It says you think you know more than God does because He has said you are forgiven and you aren’t accepting that forgiveness. God has already paid your debt, He has already unlocked the door to your prison, all you have to do it walk out the door and live in that freedom. Can you do that today? Can you finally walk out of your prison and accept God’s forgiveness?
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask you to bless all those listening to this episode today. Lord, we love you and we ask you to help us accept your forgiveness. We are tired of living in our own prisons Lord, show us the way out. Change our hearts and our minds so we can accept that you love us so much you sent your only son to die for our sins, even while we were still sinning. Help us to walk in that freedom you bought for us. Help us to forgive others as well. You are the best Lord and we ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’ holy name, Amen!
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. I look forward to bringing you a witness tomorrow. I would like to encourage each and every one of you listening to do a witness for Witness Wednesday. I know you may be thinking that nothing miraculous has happened in your life and that may be true and yet I think if you really examine you life you will see ways that God worked all things for your good. You might also see when you were in a really difficult situation and God gave you the strength to get through it. You also could just tell your story. We all have a story and even though it may not seem that spectacular to us, we never know what telling our story could mean to someone else. We don’t know how what we say could change another persons life. Please pray about it and considering sharing a witness with me and everyone listening. CLICK HERE to contact me. Also, you could go to walkboldlywithjesus.com and go to the contact me part of the website. Remember, Jesus loves you and so do I! Have a blessed day!