Two reasons for God to forgive sin

In the past, vacations have often been times of spiritual drift for me. I sleep in longer, get up later, and then don’t want to spend time in the Bible because I want to get on with my day. I get out of the habit of praying, reading God’s Word, and then I get spiritually lazy and out of shape. I’m open to the attacks of Satan in a whole host of areas.

God was good to Emma and me this vacation. We had at least one person praying for us that we would be faithful in reading his Word. And, although we both had to do some scrambling at times, I’m thankful to God that he did keep us in his Word. He kept me more spiritually ‘tuned up’ than I’ve been in the past on vacations.

The spiritual journey is all about taking the small steps of faithfulness each day to keep yourself in the way of God’s blessing and provision. It happened to me again this morning.

This morning I read Psalm 25.11 and saw two reasons for God to forgive my sin.

The verse says: ‘For your name’s sake, O LORD, pardon my guilt, for it is great.’

Reason number one: God pardons our guilt for his name’s sake. In other words, he displays his worth to the world by being merciful to us. He demonstrates that he has the power to forgive sin and the merciful character to forgive sin. He changes us through the gospel so that we more and more come to reflect his character and display his worth by becoming like him.

Reason number two: God pardons our guilt because it is great. In other words, it needs to be pardoned. It’s not just a small offence that can be forgotten, swept under the proverbial rug. It is great. And therefore it will either damn the one who has committed it, or it will need to be forgiven.

So, two reasons for God’s forgiveness: the greatness of his name and the greatness of our sin. The only thing we contribute to God when we come to him in response to the call of the gospel is our sin.

This was a word I needed to hear this morning, and I’m thankful for it.

Posted by Stephen Witmer on Feb 2, 09:27 AM