one more post @ forgiveness

Near & dear to my heart

is the story

of God's gift of forgiveness to His children.

In the Old testament God's people

had to bring an animal sacrifice to atone for their sins.

"The best that such sacrifices could accomplish 

was to set aside the consequences of former acts of sin.  

They could not remove the sinfulness of man or change his character.

But now,

 through the blood of the Lord Jesus Christ, 

we are experiencing,

 not the bypassing of the consequences of sin,

 but the remission,

the removal of sin itself,

 i.e.,

 its guilt and power.

There is a transformation which occurs in the sinner.  

It is not only his sins that are dealt with,

 but he, himself.

He becomes sanctified

through the sacrifice of the Lord Jesus

once and for all.

What Jesus did through His blood 

was to lift our sins away from us.

He did not just wink at them.

He changed our character in making us just,

people who inherently recognize 

God's rights upon them.

Through justification in Christ,

man regains the image he formally had with God 

before his fall

as a result of disobedience."

Every once in a while I read and recognize something that is profound...

that blows me away.  

This is one of those passages.

*Everything in the parenthesis was copied directly from the study notes of my

New American Standard Hebrew/Greek Study Bible.

"Blessed is the man whose sin the Lord will not take into account."

Romans 4:8