August 23 2025

Saturday August 23

Forgiven According to the Riches of His Grace

Ephesians 1:7-10

“In Him we have redemption through His blood, the forgiveness of sins, according to the riches of His grace.”

I'm doing this chat on Friday evening because early in the morning I'll be leaving to drive to Raleigh, North Carolina to catch a flight to Salt Lake City. And then tomorrow afternoon we'll be driving back from Salt Lake City to Roanoke, Virginia with my son Jonathan and my grandson Jeriah bringing a vehicle back. And so we do appreciate your prayers as we'll be traveling a long distance and flying some too. And so thank you for your prayers and forgive us if we don't have a chat ready for Sunday morning. We hope to be back with a chat on Monday morning.

I believe what we're talking about today is one of the most important things we can talk about in the Bible and especially in the New Testament, and that is the forgiveness of sins. The forgiveness of sins, and knowing that we're forgiven. Yesterday we started looking at Ephesians 1:7, and there it tells us that “in Him we have redemption through His blood”. We explained that yesterday. Redemption through the blood. How His blood has redeemed us, has set us free from our sin, has paid the ransom price to a holy God so that we do not have to stand guilty before Him. And then next He says, "And the forgiveness of sins according to the riches of His grace."

One of the greatest feelings I have ever had emotionally, mentally, spiritually, in any way, humanly speaking, was the day that I knew I was forgiven for my sins. February 21st, 1971. God didn't hold my sins against me any longer. The guilt was gone. The darkness was gone, and the burden was lifted. In the New Testament, the forgiveness of sins is the central theme of the gospel message. It emphasizes God's mercy and His grace through Jesus Christ. It addresses the fact that man is a sinner. That man is a fallen creature. Man is separated from God. Man is alienated from God. We're separated from God by our sin. And “the wages of sin is death”. The payment for sin is death. But my friend, “the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord” (Romans 6:23).

God doesn't forgive us because He loves us. Many people have that mistaken idea, but that's not true. God forgives us because He sent His Son to die in our place for our sin. Jesus took the penalty for our sin. He took the guilt. He took the shame. He took all of it, the death of our sin upon Himself and died in our place in a substitutionary way. Our sin was imputed to Him and His righteousness has been imputed to us, and therefore being justified by faith we have peace with God (Romans 5:1). The word justified means now we have a right standing before a holy God. We're no longer guilty before a holy God.

The only way to be forgiven is to first recognize that you need to be forgiven. That you find yourself under the weight and guilt of your sin and you have no way to deal with that. Going to church, living a good life, doing good deeds, doing anything you're trying to do to remove your sin. The sacraments, religion, nothing can remove your sin. No priest, no man on earth can remove your sin, my friend. Only one person can, and that is Jesus Christ through the death, His death on the cross of Calvary. And when we acknowledge that, then we can cry out to God for forgiveness in repentance of our sins.

At that point, we express our faith and trust in what Jesus did for us on the cross. And that's when the moment of salvation takes place and we are forgiven because we have a Savior, Jesus Christ. There is no other way (Acts 4:12). Oh, no greater experience than to be forgiven. And that's the love God has for us (John 3:16). He sent His Son to die for us. Love is expressed in the fact that He does forgive us through His mercy and the grace of Jesus Christ on the cross.

That's why when we forgive those who trespass against us those who hurt us we are expressing not our love because our love is pretty faulty at best, but we're expressing God's love because God is love and God only can forgive sin and my friend you have experienced that, it's then for Christ's sake that you can forgive others, not that they deserve it any more than we deserved it.

Well, this is a great truth. We have the forgiveness of sin according to the riches of His grace. Have you been forgiven? I trust you have.

God bless!