In whom we have redemption through His blood, <U>the forgiveness of sins</U>, according to the riches of His grace. Ephesians 1:7
When we consider the story of the prodigal son, we often get the impression that the son did little more than grab some money from his father and leave home. But there was much more to his departure than this! By demanding his share of the inheritance, he was as much as telling his father than he wished the old man was dead and gone, and he was tired of waiting for it to happen. How would you feel if one of your children told you something like that? As the second son, the share of the inheritance would have been one-third of the father’s possessions. Today, a father could take such a share from his bank account or from his investments, and nobody but the bank would know about it. But in the society where the prodigal son lived, wealth was in lands and livestock, and the father would have to sell some of those to meet the son’s demands. Everybody would know about it, and the father would be publicly disgraced. There was plenty of justification for the older son’s anger at his brother’s return. Even the prodigal son never expected forgiveness; he was looking only for some pity from his kindly father. He came home expecting to eat far more humble pie than fatted calf. But the father, just like our Heavenly Father, was thinking only of forgiveness.
In many ways, we were just as bad as the prodigal son in our attitude toward God in our unsaved days. We rejected and despised the Gospel for far too many years, and we were ungrateful for all the blessings that God had given to us. What reason did we ever give God for extending His forgiveness to us? Thankfully, God’s forgiveness is not based on anything of ourselves but, as our text declares, on the riches of His grace. Forgiveness clears away all of the issues that separated us from God, that prevented us from appreciating Him, and that caused us to ignore and reject Him. Forgiveness also disposes of the guilt associated with our sins, because those sins are gone. As one of the spiritual blessings that are listed in Ephesians 1, forgiveness is a wonderful component of our salvation. But it is also a wonderful component of a victorious Christian life.
We readily admit that as Christians, we are not perfect. In fact, I saw a bumper sticker that said as much: Christians are not perfect, just forgiven. Our sins and strayings and stumblings can cause us to grieve the Holy Spirit, and interfere with our testimony as a child of God. But God keeps reminding us that He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us of all unrighteousness – as long as we confess those sins (1 John 1:9).
Forgiveness brings us as sinners to our God and restores us as children to our Heavenly Father. -Jim MacIntosh