Verses for Today
Romans 3:23 For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God
Matthew 1:21 And she will bear a son, and you shall call His name Jesus, for it is He who will save His people from their sins.
1 John 1:7 But if we walk in the light as He is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus His Son cleanses us from every sin.
1 John 1:9 If we confess our sins, He is faithful and righteous to forgive us our sins and cleanse us from all unrighteousness.
Psalm 103:12 As far as the east is from the west, / So far has He removed our transgressions from us.
Fellowship
When we sin, there is a separation between us and God; we just can’t look Him in the eye so easily because there is a real guilt of sin with us. By confessing we can be free from this guilt and this separation. This is something we should deal with as soon as we can. When we come to the Lord in the morning and are conscious of any sin we’ve committed, we should confess to the Lord right away and receive His forgiveness.
Notice how 1 John 1:9 says, “that if we confess our sins, HE IS FAITHFUL and RIGHTEOUS to forgive us…” In other words, His forgiveness is based on who He is and what He’s done. All we have to do on our side to receive His forgiveness is to confess. This is the best news of the day! For anyone who confesses, Jesus Christ is there to forgive. Hallelujah!
God actually has to forgive us – not only because He said that He would and He would surely not go against His own word, but because He is even righteously obligated to forgive us. To see this, we must understand God’s righteousness. God required the shedding of blood for our sins. God is righteous, altogether just. He cannot simply turn a blind eye to injustices. He judges sinners righteously, and, because He cannot tolerate any sin, the Bible tells us that the wages of sin is death (Romans 6:23).
In His great mercy and wisdom, God made a plan to save us from the wages of sin. He sent His only Son, Jesus Christ, this One who is God, Jehovah, the Great I Am (John 8:24, 58), to die in our stead and to pay the price for our sins. Isaiah 53:5 says: “But He was wounded because of our transgressions; / He was crushed because of our iniquities; / The chastening for our peace was upon Him, / And by His stripes we have been healed.” and verse 8 of the same chapter says that, “He was cut off out of the land of the living / For the transgression of my people to whom the stroke was due”.
Jesus Christ was the sinless one. He did not have to die for Himself because He had no sin. Yet he paid the price for all the sins of mankind. The debt that we owed was fully paid. By His death on the cross, all of God’s righteousness could be fulfilled. God required the blood, and Jesus’ blood satisfied God’s requirement. Matthew 1:21 says: “And she will bear a son, and you shall call His name Jesus, for it is He who will save His people from their sins.” Had you realized that Jesus was born to come and die for us? How we praise and thank Him! We were supposed to die for our sins, but God gave us Jesus as the provision to satisfy God’s righteous requirement. (UUCOC.org, Forgiven because God is Faithful and Righteous , Dec 23, 2020)
