Season 2, Episode 12
There are many different ways and situations through which you can personally come to know Jesus. But what really matters is that, from then on, you know in your own heart that you know Him.
When God first led me to set up this website with my podcasts, blogs, and videos, He also gave me a deep personal desire for those who hear what I say or read what I write – that you will come to know Jesus as personally and intimately as I do.
Perhaps you already knew Him in that way before we ‘met’ here, or have been drawn closer to Him because of what I’ve shared with you. Or maybe you are still trying to find Him. What really matters right now is that you are here, I am here and most important of all … Jesus is here!
I have a particular message on my heart for you right now, whether you already know Jesus, or not. Because He alone can forgive you for your sins and set you free from their power.
The apostle John wrote: “If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness”. (1 John 1:9). Those words are familiar to many Christians – so familiar that they can hear them, or read them in the Bible, yet hardly register their incredible significance.
I sometimes ask people the hypothetical question: If you were totally alone on a desert island with no one to encourage you in your faith, no Bible to read, nobody and nothing to look to or depend on … other than what actually exists between you and God … what would your life be about, and what would really matter to you?
That may seem like an inadequate example to make my point … but it was the very situation in which the apostle John found himself as a prisoner-in-exile on the barren island of Patmos. And right there, in that place of isolation and deprivation, Jesus appeared to John, gave him the most amazing revelation and instructed him to write it down. Thanks to John’s ‘desert island’ experience, that revelation from Jesus became the last book of our Bible.
Not that God intends for us to live in isolation or deprivation – unless He chooses it for us. But it is His intention that each one of us live by our own personal faith in Him alone. Anything short of that will leave you desperately trying to be someone on the outside that you are not on the inside.
Everything God does in our lives always begins within us. At the very centre of our beings each of us is a spirit, created in the image of God who also is a spirit. (John 4:24). When God comes into a person’s life, it is His Spirit who breathes life into their spirit.
You most likely made some sort of outward response when you first opened your heart to God, but if it was the real thing, it was essentially an inward experience through which your spirit was united with God’s Spirit. Whatever form it takes outwardly, a genuine relationship with God comes from the joining together of two spirits – God’s and yours. That’s when you are ‘born-again’ and the Holy Spirit becomes your spiritual life-source.
Forgiveness of sin is a vital aspect of anyone’s initial response to God – because Jesus came ‘to take away the sins of the world’ … including yours! Sin is not talked about so much these days. Not even in churches. But sin is still sin, and it separates us from God as much as it ever did.
But what actually is sin? Theologians or Bible students could expound on that question – but I prefer the simple definition that sin is whatever offends God.
Without God and the new life that comes from Him alone, none of us have any hope of being free from sin. We are all born with a propensity to sin that makes us sinners – and sin is what sinners do!
How awful it would be if that was the end of the story. And it would be, but for Jesus who transforms awful into wonderful – so that any sinner who comes to God has the amazing privilege of not only being forgiven, but also of being cleansed from all unrighteousness. What a miracle of God’s love!
Many go through their lives without knowing God or anything about Him, or even the meaning of the word sin. Yet they are still aware of being sinful. Some put it down to a guilty conscience, or to feeling bad about themselves because of the way they live. To others it’s about ‘right and wrong’. But one thing is certain: no one can come near to God without becoming aware of their own sinfulness.
When that happens, and God’s Spirit convicts you of sin, it is not to condemn you or burden you with guilt, but to bring you to repentance, forgiveness, and freedom. Right at the forefront of that response to God is your need of forgiveness. When you step into God’s presence, His light penetrates deep into your life, showing you what you need to repent of, so that He can freely forgive you.
What, then, is repentance? In the simplest terms, repenting is like making a U-turn. Any life without God is self-focused and headed in the wrong direction. Repentance is a complete turnaround that focuses you on God and the life He always intended you to live. In seeing your need to make that total turnaround, you also begin to see the sinfulness of the way you’ve been living.
The apostle Paul summed it up beautifully: “Godly sorrow brings repentance that leads to salvation and leaves no regret, but worldly sorrow brings death.” (2 Corinthians 7:10) ‘Worldly sorrow’ is that lost, hopeless feeling that comes with facing your own wrongdoing, alone and without God.
God never convicts you of sin to give you a hard time or to make you feel like a hopeless failure. He convicts you so that He can forgive you, then He says: “Go and sin no more”.
Yet not only is God ‘faithful and just to forgive us our sins’. He also knows that we need Him “to cleanse us from all unrighteousness”.
Visualise sinning as jumping into a pigpen and rolling around in the mud and filth. Then, appalled at the repulsiveness of what you’ve just done, you take responsibility for it, climb out of the pen, repent of your unseemly behaviour, and vow never to do it again. Sure, you can be forgiven, but the mud of your foolish escapade still sticks to you, and its stench is in your nostrils! There is no way you can put the pigpen behind you until it’s washed off you!
Whenever God forgives, He also lovingly cleanses us from the filth and stench of our sins. Only then can our personal relationship with Him be truly restored.
If you continue to live with a sense of uncleanness after seeking God’s forgiveness, something is amiss. Have you taken full responsibility for your sins (where is your ‘godly sorrow’)? Are you believing the lie that says, ‘it’s not as simple as that’ or ‘you don’t deserve to be forgiven’?
There’s also another scenario where some Christians, and even entire churches, treat God’s forgiveness (or a priest’s ‘absolution’) as a means of ‘wiping the slate clean’ – not so they can ‘go and sin no more’ … but so they can go and sin some more!
Beware of the ‘sin-and-repentance’ cycle that characterises the lives of many believers. That’s what the apostle Paul called ‘receiving God’s grace in vain’. His forgiveness frees you, not to go ahead and please yourself, but to deny yourself and please Him.
If you feel unworthy or undeserving of God’s forgiveness and cleansing, or if you worry that you are being unreal in believing it – just take hold of this undeniable truth: Jesus gave His life so that you could have the relationship with God that Adam had in the Beginning.
So, come to God. Talk to Him. Confess your sins. Receive His forgiveness and cleansing. Then you can experience the freedom that comes from Him alone. Not freedom to sin, but freedom from sin!
Jesus spoke about the rejoicing that takes place in Heaven whenever even one sinner repents. Can you imagine? And, if that sinner was you, would you be tempted to say: “Oh, come on! Don’t tell me all of Heaven lights up just because I repented?” Yes, it can seem incongruous that such individual responses to God could spark off such joy in Heaven. But what a picture that presents of the immense value God places on each one of us … and the joy we bring Him when, like the Prodigal Son, we return to our Father!
So, with all your heart, reach out to the God who loves you with an everlasting love. Confess your sins. Repent of them. And then freely receive His forgiveness … and His cleansing from all your unrighteousness.
Then step out with Him into this newfound freedom – no longer living for yourself, but for Jesus who loved you and gave Himself for you!
He said: “If the Son sets you free, you will be free indeed.”