Daily Worship

The Awakening of Sins Forgiven

Albert Bogle April 07, 2021 0 3
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1 Corinthians 15: 1-12 (NIVUK)

1 Now, brothers and sisters, I want to remind you of the gospel I preached to you, which you received and on which you have taken your stand. 2 By this gospel you are saved, if you hold firmly to the word I preached to you. Otherwise, you have believed in vain.

3 For what I received I passed on to you as of first importance: that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, 4 that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day according to the Scriptures, 5 and that he appeared to Cephas, and then to the Twelve. 6 After that, he appeared to more than five hundred of the brothers and sisters at the same time, most of whom are still living, though some have fallen asleep. 7 Then he appeared to James, then to all the apostles, 8 and last of all he appeared to me also, as to one abnormally born.

9 For I am the least of the apostles and do not even deserve to be called an apostle, because I persecuted the church of God. 10 But by the grace of God I am what I am, and his grace to me was not without effect. No, I worked harder than all of them – yet not I, but the grace of God that was with me. 11 Whether, then, it is I or they, this is what we preach, and this is what you believed.

The power of the above verses is that Paul highlights that it is the forgiveness of sins that is at the heart of the good news for humanity. It changes the tone from “O dear what can I do?” to “Look there can you grasp what he has done? Christ died for our sins!”

Sin is a word that we don’t like to use in conversations, simply because we don’t know how to deal with it. If we are being truthful we don’t want to own it at all — yet deep in our hearts we know it owns us. Why is it that the good we want to do, we don’t do and the evil we dare not do we end up doing? 

These three little letters that describe so much of our lives — always carrying a history of regret and injustice packed right in the middle along with the “I”. A word that goes to the heart of so much of our broken relationships. Sin inflicts hurts that cannot be mended, destructive thoughts and feelings that have robbed us of sleep, friendships and love. Further the results of sin often have to be borne by the innocent. All of this is doubly compounded back upon us as we reflect upon our part in that which we dare not speak about to another. Yet would it not be the greatest of all sins if we failed to tell another about the forgiveness of sins?

Forgiveness

Lord,
Your cross
Changes everything
May everything 
Change in me
Give me the courage
To carry my cross
Living through a life of forgiveness
Giving through deeds of forgiveness
Awakened by the power forgiveness
To change a broken world.
Forgive me when I fail to speak to others about forgiveness.