No matter who you are, or what  race, creed, or color you happen to be, we all need forgiveness. We need to understand where it comes from and how to apply it for use in our everyday lives. In the following article I will try to explain the big picture of what forgiveness is, and what it means to us as individuals, and as a whole.

When God created the world it was His intention that man would live forever in fellowship with Him in the perfect world He had created him. ( Genesis, chapters 1 and 2). For all His freedom in that perfect world, there was only one thing man was told he could not do - eat of the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. By the third chapter of Genesis, Eve succumbs to the temptation of the serpent, Satan, the fallen Angel, and Adam all to quickly follows,  thereby breaking the only prohibitive commandment God gave them.

There are 1,189 chapters in the Bible and by the third chapter man had already chosen to disobey God.  Yes, Satan tempted Adam and Eve , but remember, they could have told him no way, God said we must not! They could have called out to God to help them with this and various other choices, but they did not.  Scripture states " There hath no temptation taken you but such as is common to man: but God is faithful, who will not suffer you to be tempted above that ye are able; but will with the temptation also make a way to escape , that ye may be able to bear it" (1 Corinthians 10:13)

Like it or not, we are always responsible for our own actions, and  cannot say, "The devil made me do it!"

So sin, disobedience to God, entered the world.  Man became eternally separated from God by his own choice; by willfully choosing to disobey God. The penalty for sin is death. On the spiritual plane death can be best described as eternal separation from God. You see,  there is something we all need to come to grips with, and to have an understanding about. Hell and the Lake of Fire were not created for mankind to be placed into it. It was created for the punishment of Satan, and the third of the angelic host who rebelled against God with him. They too disobeyed God, and "sinned against Him".  Read Isaiah 14:12-16, and Revelation 12:9 to see what the devil's motivation was, and their end. No, I am not saying you are the same as the devil because of your sin. We are not devils, even if your mom and dad said they thought you were. Yet, we have to keep in mind that sin is sin, no matter who commits it, and God, who is Holy and Just, has decreed that the punishment for sin is death. Death, as I noted before,  is to be completely and forever separated from God's life that He has provided in Jesus. The punishment is to be cast into Hell and the Lake of Fire with Satan and all of his demons. God does not do this because He does not love us, He loves us with an everlasting love, it is because we choose to ignore so great a salvation that has been provided by Him through our Lord Christ Jesus. We remain responsible for our own actions.

"For the wages of sin is death; but the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus our Lord". (Romans 6:23)

The Bible states, "For God so loved the world that he gave His only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life". (John 3:16)

So God in His great love for us sent His son Jesus to pay the price for our sin, or disobedience to Him. Jesus who never committed  sin of any kind took our place in death, and paid the penalty  for our sin, and the sin of all mankind. Now that is forgiveness! Most of us would rather not pick up the check when we have dinner with friends. Christ picked up the ultimate check.

The New Testament Greek Lexicon defines the word forgive in this manner, original word, "apo", a primary particle.
 Definition :of separation, of local separation, after verbs of motion from a place i.e. of departing, of fleeing, ...
of separation of a part from the whole, where of a whole some part is taken, of any kind of separation of one thing from another by which the union or fellowship of the two is destroyed, of a state of separation, that is of distance physical, of distance of place temporal, of distance of time of origin of the place whence anything is, comes, befalls, is taken of origin of a cause.
OK, something easier to understand for us non theologians,  Psalms 103:12 says, "As far as the east is from the west, so far hath he removed our transgressions from us". The East and the West never meet! Now that is separating our sins from us.

So  how do we receive  forgiveness: First, we must come  realize that we have not lived according to God's plan for our lives, we have sinned, or missed the mark that God has set for us, which is to live in His likeness. We must acknowledge this by confessing  in our own words that we have sinned against Him. We must  recognize and affirm that Jesus Christ is the son of God, and that He died on the cross in our place. We must also believe that He rose from the dead on the third day. Finally  we must ask God to forgive us of our sin, and ask Him to give us His eternal life through His son Jesus. When we do this we are born again, not of the physical nature, obviously,  but of the spiritual nature.( John 3:3 ) Only then will we enter into what God intended for us in the beginning. Genesis means beginning.

2nd Corinthians 5:17, "Therefore if any man be in Christ, he is a new creature: old things have passed away; behold, all things have become new'. This passage literally means that God is restores us to what He originally intended for us.

When we are born again, God the Father looks at us as if we have never sinned! That's great news! This  means we are "justified", made as if we have never sinned. He accepts us through the  blood  Jesus shed on the cross. Sinners, like you and I, become sinless through Jesus. Jesus receives us as His own child, and when we die, He is there to take us to Heaven to live with Him forever. This is far better than any investment in the stock market.

Choose today, right now, to receive God's forgiveness through His son Jesus. We are all decedents of Adam and Eve, and have fallen to sin and disobedience to God. No matter how hard we try, or how many "good deeds" we have done, none of them will save us from spiritual death. As I have stated before, spiritual death is eternal separation from God in Hell. We send ourselves there by our own choice, God does not.  God in His everlasting love, mercy, and compassion for us, sent Jesus to die in our place on the cross, making a way to enter into eternal life with Him.

It is never too late to reach out to Jesus. Nothing you have done can separate you from God's forgiveness in Christ. Jesus is here, right now, waiting for you to call out to Him. Take responsibility for your life, acknowledge your sin to Him. Ask the Father to forgive you, and receive forgiveness of sin, and eternal life through Christ as your Lord and Savior. You will be born again, justified, made spiritually as if you have never sinned. You can now enter into God's plan for your life. All of God's promises and provisions for life are yours through His Word, as you seek to do His will. Read the Bible to learn about God's will for your life. Go to Church and fellowship with other Christians. Learn what it means to be "born again".
It all starts with Forgiveness.

Danny Young's personal testimony
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Shape Up
Making the transition from techniques to principles
For every negative ... God has a positive!
The conquest of one's soul is the greatest journey of all.
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What Happened to Innocence
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7/18/03