Daily Devotional for Thursday, December 15

The Blessedness of Forgiveness

When children play games, sometimes when things do not go right, they cry out for a do over. The claim is made that something happened, and they should get a second chance. Adults do this; in golf it is called a mulligan. We love the idea that we can mess up and get a second chance.
There is no intent to sound flip here. But God is a God of the ultimate do over. More than any children’s game, we have messed up our turns at life. Starting with Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden, and carried on by our own sin natures, we have ruined what God gave us from the beginning. What He gave us was communion and fellowship with Him. What we did was sever that relationship by sinning. God is perfect and sin represents imperfection; these two are incompatible and, because they are, we are separated from God. We enter this world already separated, and what we need is to be restored.
The beauty of the second chance God offers us is that we never have to justify our claim. In fact, we cannot even come close to providing a good reason God should give us a second chance! “But we are all as an unclean thing, and all our righteousnesses are as filthy rags; and we all do fade as a leaf; and our iniquities, like the wind, have taken us away” (Isaiah 64:6). God does not owe us a second chance, and we do not deserve it.
That is the blessing of salvation. It is easy. Repentance toward God and faith in the Lord Jesus Christ. It is so simple a child can get it. The question is this: have you?

JUST A THOUGHT: Our actions in this life may have consequences that stay with us until life is over, but God wipes our eternal slate clean at our salvation.

Wally Fry