The Weekly Word: Has God really forgiven me?

By Rev. Daniel Larson, Cross Lutheran Church

“Have you taken the garbage out yet?”

That’s a weekly phrase that is heard in almost every household, isn’t it? Each week on a given evening or morning, you haul the garbage bins out to the curb, and sooner or later the garbage collectors come and haul it all away.

We produce a lot of garbage in a year’s time, don’t we?

We could say that our lives produce a lot of garbage in a year’s time, too. In fact, our lives are full of garbage. Or, we can call it by another name: sin.

Every time we do things that are wrong; every time we fail to do what God wants us to do, or do the things He tells us not to do, we add to our sins — to our pile of garbage.

We sin every day, too. And our sins produce a lot of guilt within us.

Try as we might, it seems as if we just can’t shake some of those disgusting memories of the sins we have committed in the past — even some going way back into our teen years.

Do you see? Each day we feel our pile of garbage getting bigger and bigger as our sins keep piling up. So, it’s time to take the garbage out — not to the curb, but to the cross.

For it was on the cross at Calvary that Jesus Christ declared, “It is finished!” In that declaration Jesus was proclaiming that our debt of sin was now “paid in full” when He died our death to sin.

Therefore, we can continue to take all our garbage to His cross. There, all our sins — past, present, and future — are hauled away.

It’s kind of like spring cleaning day. No matter how large the pile is at the curb, all our sins are picked up by Christ and hauled away. In other words, all is forgiven!

Isn’t that a great and wonderful thing for us?

The Bible says, “As far as the east is from the west, so far has God removed our transgressions from us” (Psalm 103:12).

And again: “The blood of Jesus Christ cleanses us from ALL sin” (1 John 1:7).

Our sins are long gone, thanks to Christ.

And remember this: We have to pay to have our garbage taken away each week from the curb. But at the cross, there is no fee. Christ has already paid for it. Our forgiveness is free!

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You are welcome to worship with us at Cross Lutheran Church and hear more about this kind of “garbage removal.”