Episode Transcript
I want to encourage you in the Lord Jesus.
If Jesus says to us, “You are to be unending in your forgiveness toward your brothers when they repent,” dear Christian, know that God is most certainly unending in his forgiveness toward you.
God's forgiveness is not based on our sincere efforts to repay what we owe.
It is based on God, who is merciful, gracious, and slow to anger; who abounds in steadfast love and faithfulness; who forgives iniquity, transgression, and sin.
It is based on God, who established a covenant in Christ.
“Behold, the days are coming, declares the LORD, when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and the house of Judah, not like the covenant that I made with their fathers on the day when I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt, my covenant that they broke, though I was their husband, declares the LORD. For this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, declares the LORD: I will put my law within them, and I will write it on their hearts. And I will be their God, and they shall be my people. And no longer shall each one teach his neighbor and each his brother, saying, ‘Know the LORD,’ for they shall all know me, from the least of them to the greatest, declares the LORD. For I will forgive their iniquity, and I will remember their sin no more.”
Our forgiveness is based on God, who does not deal with us according to our sin. It is based on God, who has compassion for us.
“The Lord is merciful and gracious, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love. He will not always chide, nor will he keep his anger forever. He does not deal with us according to our sins, nor repay us according to our iniquities. For as high as the heavens are above the earth, so great is his steadfast love toward those who fear him; as far as the east is from the west, so far does he remove our transgressions from us. As a father shows compassion to his children, so the Lord shows compassion to those who fear him. For he knows our frame; he remembers that we are dust.”
Praise be to his name.