I’m Forgiven
By
Melinda Clements

It always amazes me how many people have spent years in church and still don’t know beyond a shadow of a doubt if they are saved and going to heaven when they die.  I guess what bothers me most is the misconception that people have that there is some way they can live, something they can do, something they can give, that will ensure their salvation.  
	The older I get the more I see the misconceptions of what people have lived with and or tried to live up to most of their lives.  They deal with ulcers, live in the rat race of our society today to gain more to give more and still don’t understand that what God offers them is unconditional, free for the taking, love and salvation through the blessed blood of Jesus Christ.
	Joe Beam, in his book, Getting Past Guilt: Embracing God’s Forgiveness comments about a little elderly woman who came to him after a service and told him she wasn’t sure if she was going to heaven.  He asked her if she was a Christian and she told him she was and had been in the church for some sixty years.  She had been married in the church, raised her children in the church, had volunteered and lived her life in her church.  What then, Bean asked her could possible make her think that she wasn’t going to heaven.  She confided in him that as a young, unmarried girl she had slept with someone and was not a virgin when she married.  Bean went on to ask her if her husband had known and she told him yes he had and had told her he wasn’t pure either at the time they married.  Bean went on to ask her if she had asked God for forgiveness of this sin and the woman had.  But she had spent the last forty plus years wondering and feeling badly about this sin in her life.  Somehow and for some reason she just never felt the God could forgive her for her indiscretion.  
	How does one spend that much time in their church and not know whether or not they are forgiven?  How is it that our churches are not getting through to God’s people that once they have accepted Christ as their personal savior that sin is forgotten?  How is it that people just keep trying to do more and give more and bargain more in hopes of making it to heaven? We cannot save our souls, we cannot ensure our own salvation, only Christ can do that and has already done that.  He won’t come back to do it again. Remember he said on the cross “It is finished.”
	Ephesians 2:4-6 says, “But because of his great love for us, God, who is rich in mercy, made us alive with Christ even when we were dead in transgressions—is it by grace you have been save.  And God raised us up with Christ…” Ephesians goes on to say in verse 2:13 “But now in Christ Jesus you who once were far away have been brought near through the blood of Jesus.” (Also read Colossians 1:20)
	My heart breaks for that little woman who, for most of the years of her life, had tried to deal with her transgression, never knowing quite for sure if God had forgiven her.  Somehow, she kept worrying and thinking the wrath of God would strike her down and send her to hell. She had carried that burden for a long time.  A sin that God had forgiven and no longer remembered she had worried about for many years of her life.
	Are you carrying around some excess baggage?  Are you trying to do more and give more and carry more so that somehow God will see you as a good person, a person who goes to church, and does right by others?  Are you pulling strings and being nice and doing and doing and doing so God can see that you really aren’t the bad person he thinks you are or that you think you are? 
	Then STOP!  Toss out that excess trash and lay that discretion at the cross.  Jesus had already taken care of that sin. His blood, his pain, his death took your sin.  He took your debt, a debt he did not owe so that you can become a new creation through the blessed blood of Jesus.  The mystery of God is that you and I are heirs, members of one body in the promise of Christ (Ephesians 3:6).  
	“I want to know Jesus Christ and the power of his resurrection” (Phil. 3:10).  It is who HE is and what HE has done that we are made whole, clean, and pure.  It is through His blessed blood that you are forgiven.  You cannot buy it, you cannot earn it, you cannot own it, steal it, or deserve it.  All you can do, through faith, is believe it and say, “Thank you, Lord, I accept your gift.”  Then let Him work the miracle in your life.
	The song says, “I’m forgiven because you were forsaken.”  

Be Blessed this Day!  “And in him you too are being built together to become a dwelling in which God lives by his spirit.” (Ephesians 2:22)

(Drawing copyrighted by artist)

© Melinda Clements January 2005