Forgiveness and Its Fruit

 

Forgiveness and Its Fruit

If You, Lord, should mark iniquities, O Lord, who could stand? But there is forgiveness with You, that You may be feared.

Psalm 130: 3, 4

Christianity is the only religion upon the earth which enables us to face the truth about ourselves.  This is particularly true when we come to the issue of our sins.  Every other religion must, of necessity, either make sin seem to be less than what it is; or turn vices into virtues; or somehow wriggle around the awful reality of iniquity.  Christianity alone grapples with the hardest question of our sins and gives a satisfactory answer.  We find that answer in our text today.

God, through Christ, provides forgiveness for all our sins.  What are they?  Our catechism describes sin as ‘any want of conformity unto or transgression of, the law of God.’  Regarding the number of our sins, we would have that their name is ‘Legion,’ for they are many.  If God were to ‘mark’ our iniquities, where should be the end of it?  If He were to set down against our names all the black ‘marks’ which would  indicate the host of our transgressions, how would any one of us be able to ‘stand?’  The answer is, not one of us would be able.

The blessed resolution of this awful situation is the forgiveness of our God through Christ.  If God did not forgive, we would all be lost, and that forever.  God cannot forgive apart from righteousness, because of His character.  God does forgive us upon the basis of the righteousness of Christ imputed to us.  Having said that, our text alludes to a particular fruit which grows out of the fertile ground of forgiveness.  That fruit is our reverence or ‘fear’ for God.  For us to have faced the fact of our sins, and to have come to the realization of the fullness of God’s forgiveness, is for us to begin to enter into a depth of reverence for God that we have never known before.  The greater our sight of Christ, and the wonders of His role in our redemption, the deeper that reverence will become.

Our Gracious Master and Our God,

who is a pardoning God like Thee, 

or who has grace, so rich and free?

Where the Bush is Burning

Tomm Tice