Never Ending Praise The Lord

Colossians 2:13-14 “When you were dead in your sins and in the uncircumcision of your flesh, God made you alive with Christ. He forgave us all our sins, having canceled the charge of our legal indebtedness, which stood against us and condemned us; he has taken it away, nailing it to the cross. 

A few months ago, I wrote a devotion about the gospel. (The Best News You’ll EVER Hear – Never Ending Praise The Lord) I’ve known for quite some time now that I would need to write a follow up. As I’ve muddled through life’s curveballs, I realize that the time has come.

Now that we’ve gone over what sin is a couple of times, I want you to think of the most ‘unforgivable’ sin you can. Go ahead, I’ll wait…

Now that you’ve pondered that, I want to rewind to a few times in the Bible when some of our favorite people committed truly horrific sins. David committed adultery with Bathsheba and then he conspired to have her husband, Uriah, murdered. Guess what? God said he was forgiven. Paul murdered I don’t even know how many Christians before he was ever redeemed. Let’s take it all the way back to Genesis even. Adam and Eve… they really messed up didn’t they? Everything was perfect until they ate the fruit God specifically told them NOT to eat. They were forgiven…but I’ll get back to that.

Now I want to tell you two things. First, that sin you deemed ‘unforgivable’? Let’s talk about it. That sin is no more or less than the white lie you told, sex before marriage, or even stealing. I know we could come up with a miles long list of sins and guess what? Second, Jesus covered every. single. one when his blood was shed on the cross. His death and the brutality he suffered beforehand gives all of us hope and the ability to transform our lives.

Stay with me. I understand that this is a hard pill to swallow- I struggle with this sometimes because I want justice for evil in this world. Justice, however, belongs to God and God alone. Here’s the thing, we want to believe that there’s a scale and that the good outweighs the bad. The bad will be punished and the good will go to heaven… and that thought process nullifies what Christ did at on the cross. How do we even define good? We all have our own thoughts and ideas, but we have to know God has a different view completely, his truth is what matters and none of us live up to that goodness.

I told you once that if you believe with your hearts and confess with your tongues that Jesus is your savior, you’ve received salvation. This doesn’t give us permission to sin. I know, I just said his death covered all the sins and now I’m tossing more at you. Hear me out though. When Christ died so that we would have redemption, it didn’t mean we suddenly had free reign to do whatever we wanted. It’s truly the opposite. His death saved us from eternal, spiritual death but it also called us to action- a transformed life.

Romans 6:1-2 says, “What shall we say then? Shall we go on sinning so that grace may increase? By no means! We are those who have died to sin; how can we live in it any longer?” We don’t want to live in sin, and we don’t want to live in shame so we face consequences of our actions, we ask God for his forgiveness, and we work to be better than we were the day before. David faced consequences, Adam and Eve faced consequences but- they were still covered by grace. Then when wickedness in the world continued to increase, God sent Jesus. So while we may have consequences we have to face, boundaries we have to respect, and new ways of living, we can rest assured that Jesus paid the price and when we truly choose him as our redeemer , and work to transform- we receive that magnificent, beautiful grace.

I don’t believe there is one person in this world who can’t be redeemed. We may not always understand or like it, but we do need to trust God with the unforgivable.