God's Acceptance and Pride

It is not uncommon to find people who feel that God cannot forgive them. They feel they have done too much wrong to be forgiven.

It is an odd instance of wounded pride. You see in this moment the person has placed their sin as being at a level that Jesus' perfect obedience, death, and resurrection could not atone for.

The eternal son of God gave his life for all who will come in faith to him. You see we cannot reasonably place our sin on the level of Jesus' sacrifice.

The apostle Paul before he was converted persecuted the church to a great degree. You see we deceive ourselves if we think our sin has any comparison to the infinite degree of Jesus' work.

God calls us to draw near to him in faith. He does not wish for us to be apart from him. To all who knock the door will be opened. God offers forgiveness freely and without qualification. There are not better or worse prospects to enter the kingdom of heaven.

All of us have sinned and fall short of the perfect life and righteousness necessary to enter the kingdom of God. To all who believe the perfect life and infinite righteousness of Jesus becomes theirs.

Faith is not nearly so hard as we make it out to be. At times that is the difficulty. Mankind wishes to participate in his salvation past simply accepting the righteousness of Jesus. But you see that it is a perfect parallel to the first sin of man.

Man in the beginning would not take God at his word that God had man's best interest in mind. Now God simply asks that man who lives in rebellion against God simply take God at his word.

Remembrance Good and Bad

Remembrance or willingness to not remember is a key ethical part of life. There are things which we should always remember and things which we should not remember in at least the sense of acting upon these memories.

We should always remember what God has done for us. It is good to remember what God has spoken through his word and also it is good to remember how God has acted in history.

It is also good to remember the kindness of others. At times it is good to remember our sufferings so we can understand those that suffer.

Certain remembrances are more worrisome. Remembering the transgressions of others against us is in particular worrisome.

We should not remember these things, because as God reminds us he has forgiven our great debt so we should forgive our small debtors.

All our debtors are small in comparison to our debt to God. It may not seem so, but we should see these things by faith.

Of course not remembering transgressions against us implies that we have forgiven, but not forgotten. Forgetting is often dangerous, since unrepentant people often repeat their actions.

There is often a need for both a remembrance and a forgetfulness with certain transgressors. We need to remember that they may not be trust able, but also forget the trespass in a moral sense.