Forgiveness | Removal, Not Covering (03/09/2003)

Forgiveness in Psalm 103: Imputation, Mercy, and Removal of Sin

Well, we've been in the book of Psalms, studying David's idea of forgiveness. And Psalm 103, if you would turn there for me, if I were going to go to war, I would want to go with the prayers of those men that I heard today.

Thank God that we're in a church where we have men, men that lead in the home and lead in the church. Psalm 103, if you would look at verse 10 with me, we'll review just a little before we move into new thoughts on forgiveness today.

David seemed to have a concept or grasp of forgiveness that the Old Testament saints lacked, most of them. We on this side of the cross, with the benefit of the New Testament scriptures, can see what David is saying clearly.

But it's amazing that David could see what David was saying and that he understood this idea of forgiveness. In Psalm 103, verse 10, he says, he hath not dealt with us after our sins nor rewarded us according to our iniquities.

So the first point is that forgiveness comes as a result of imputation. God doesn't deal with us according to the way we sin. He deals with us according to Jesus' righteousness. He dealt with Jesus according to our sins when Jesus was on the cross that day.

And that is the doctrine of imputation. And then you move to verse 11, for as the heaven is high above the earth, so great is his mercy toward them that fear him. We see that this idea of imputation, that when God looks at Jesus, he saw our sins and when he looks at us, he sees Jesus' righteousness, allows for his mercy to be upon us.

And the type of mercy that we see in verse 11 is as high as the heaven is above the earth. That's how high his mercy is and how great his mercy is towards those who fear him. That's why 1 John 1 .9 says, not only if we confess our sins, he is faithful to forgive our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness, but it also says he is just to forgive us and to cleanse us.

It is right for God to do it because of what Jesus Christ did on the cross. When he paid our sin debt as our substitutionary savior, he opened the door for God's mercy to fall upon us, his eternal mercy.

God is eternally just to forgive his own. All of those for whom Jesus Christ died, God is eternally just to have mercy upon them forever. And then it brings us to verse 12, Psalm 103 verse 12. And that is that David understood that God's forgiveness is not just the covering of sin, it is in fact the removal of sin from the sinner.

Look at how David understands this in verse 12. As far as the east is from the west, so far hath he removed our transgressions from us. You won't find that expression in the Old Testament elsewhere. What you'll find is he has covered our sins.

But here we see David has the concept of the removal of sins. Then we started just a little bit into this idea last time of the psychology of forgiveness. And I don't want to go over that again, but I want to use it to launch into the new information we have today.

Forgiveness in Hebrews 10: Perfected Forever and Cleansed Conscience

So turn with me, if you would, to Hebrews chapter 10 and verse 1. We will review one passage I read last time and then move on in this chapter of Hebrews chapter 10. There's much to be learned about forgiveness in this New Testament passage, which was written to the New Testament Jewish church.

You have to understand when you read Hebrews that you have to read it through a Jewish mind, through Jewish eyes, through a person who just a few years previously had been a Jew and had been in the Old Testament economy or dispensation.

And now he's in the New Testament dispensation and there's been a transition through the work of acts to get to this place, but he still looks at all of this through his Old Testament eyes. And it was very difficult for the first century Jewish believers to let some of that go.

But God was moving the church into a new age. We call it the church age. But still there is a great light in their beginning to understand forgiveness as it truly is for us on this side of the cross. Some of them even quoted David because they knew he understood it.

But the light is really beginning to come on in the minds of these Jewish believers about what forgiveness truly is, that it's not just the covering of sin, it's the removal of sin from the sinner. Hebrews chapter 10, verse 1 through 4, we read last time and it talks about the Old Testament sacrifices and how they did not remove sin.

They just rolled it forward another year until Jesus would come. But let's pick it up at about verse 12. Hebrews chapter 10, verse 12, bless you my brother, you figured it out. Hebrews 10, 12. But this man, after he had offered one sacrifice for sins forever, and you have to remember this is contrasted with the first few verses dealing with the Old Testament priest who had to come every year after year after year and offer the sacrificial animals.

But this man, Jesus, offered once, one sacrifice for sins forever. He sat down on the right hand of God from henceforth expecting till his enemies be made a footstool for by one offering he hath perfected forever.

Now if you underline that phrase, perfected forever, you'll see how the light began to come on in the minds of the New Testament Hebrew Christian. Perfected forever, them that are sanctified? He has by his one offering perfected forever them that are sanctified?

That's not how it used to work, they're thinking. You mean it's done? You mean it's finished? You mean this counts forever? Forever, and I have a forever perfection? That must mean I have the very righteousness of God, not my own righteousness.

That must mean I'm not saved by works like the Old Testament Jew thought he was. That must mean that God has finished the work that it takes to save my soul. That must mean that forgiveness means my sins are gone forever.

Therefore I am perfect forever. For by one offering he hath perfected forever them that are sanctified. Can we see how the psychology of a Christian is made healthy by a proper understanding of forgiveness?

He understands as Hebrews 9 verses 14 and 27 and 28 said that the conscience is purged because we are truly forgiven. He understands as this passage in Hebrews chapter 10 says that there's no more condemnation on the conscience because of sin, because we have been counted as perfect by God.

That's imputation. He counts us as though we are perfect. He counts us as we have the very righteousness of Jesus Christ, which is after all perfect. We see now in verse 15 we start a new theme here in Hebrews chapter 10, a new theme on what forgiveness, a proper understanding of forgiveness does for us.

It not only gives us a healthy conscience, a healthy psychology for living, but secondly it has a consecrating effect. By consecration I mean the experience life. Now we understand forgiveness is positional.

The forgiveness we're speaking of when we talk about the one sacrifice of Jesus forever that perfects us forever and removes our sin as far as the east is from the west is positional forgiveness. It's from God's viewpoint.

And from God's viewpoint your sins are gone. All of them for all time, for all future, for all eternity. They are gone. We have a human viewpoint of forgiveness taught in the Bible and 1 John 9 is a good example of it where it says when we find ourselves sinning again, even though we are not sinners.

You see a sinner is a person who has a nature to sin. When you're born again you now have the divine nature which is not a nature to sin. But when you find yourself sinning in the flesh, you can still perform sins.

When we do we're supposed to bring that to the Father in confession and agree with Him that that sin is as bad as any other sin in His eyes. And that that sin was in the body of Jesus and that Jesus had to die for that sin that I just did.

And He says when we make that confession we're restored to fellowship. That's experiential. That's on the timeline, on the planet earth in time from the human viewpoint. We have to have that in time. Just as a little child when he does wrong and he is spanked by his father, he does not question whether he's still part of the family.

That's positional. From the father's viewpoint he never leaves the family. So in that sense that sin is not even there really when the father spanks him. But on the child's level he needs to confess his sin to the father for a psychological reason for himself.

He needs to let the father know, yes I'm in agreement I did wrong. And as the father spanks him and does not want to spank him, but he does, and then they cry together, although the child cries more, and they hug each other and pray together, experientially the fellowship is restored.

Did the father really need that as much as the child? No, because the father knew he was going to work that thing through. And all the time the child being his son, never leaving that position, experientially the child needs that psychological refreshment where he knows he can put it behind him, literally.

He can put it behind him and move on as if it never happened. God treats us the same way. From God's viewpoint the sins are not even there. But on our viewpoint we see ourselves in the body of flesh when we're not filled with the spirit, doing a sin, and we sense a division from fellowship with God.

We sense that a holy God will not be in the presence of sin. And we think as a man on the earth and we think, I just sinned. We don't stop and think of all the doctrine that says that sin is not even there anymore, it was already on Christ and it's been sent to hell.

We don't think that through all the time. We just feel as a child that we need to be right with our father. So he gives us this experiential type of forgiveness in 1 John 1 .9 where we're able to come to him and say, I agree that I've done wrong, but I agree that you died for my sins and I thank you for that.

I cleanse my conscience. And then the perfect fellowship is restored. So there is a consecrating effect of forgiveness, of knowing that positionally we have our sins removed. It tends to make us reckon that to be true and live accordingly.

Now the world and much of the world of Christian religion today puts it the other way around. They think if I go out and do a bunch of good things, then I'll be forgiven in God's sight. It doesn't work that way.

There's not one good thing you can do that would forgive you. There's not one good thing you can do that will ever propitiate God's justice. Only what Jesus did 2 ,000 years ago can do that. And it's been done.

It's accomplished and it's finished. So it's up to us by faith to understand that lest we fall into the trap of believing in salvation by works and saying on the other hand that we don't believe in that and that's what many Baptists today do.

They say, oh, I believe in salvation by grace, but I sure better go out and do visitation Thursday night because I think I need God to get closer to me. So they say one thing, they believe one thing they say, and they act another way.

Let's don't fall into that trap. There is a consecrating effect. There is an effect that will cause us to live a cleaner life experientially if we understand properly the doctrine of forgiveness, just understanding it psychologically.

There is a part of that that will cause us to live a better, cleaner life in this world. We see that right here in the following scriptures. Look at Hebrews 10, 15, where for the Holy Ghost also is a witness to us for after that he had said before, this is the covenant that I will make with them after those days say it the Lord.

I will put my laws in their hearts and in their minds while I write them and their sins and iniquities will I remember no more. Do you see how in this passage it gives you the positional God viewpoint?

I will remember their sins no more. That is the truth that your sins are gone and God remembers them no more, but right above it in verse 16 he also says I will put my laws in their hearts and in their minds.

Can you not see a direct correlation to better living in God's pleasure if you have his laws in your heart and in your mind rather than if you are trying to keep a list? If you are walking in the spirit and you have the divine nature which every born again person has and he has placed that within your heart and in fact given you a new heart and you walk according to that heart it produces a cleaner life.

It produces the very fruits of righteousness which come from the fruits of the Holy Spirit. It's like you are a tree giving forth fruit but you didn't make the fruit. It came from the root Jesus. You are in Christ and you bear fruit.

People see the fruit. That's the experiential righteous living, the clean life, the holiness that everyone wants to have they say that goes to church and they go about trying to live it. You can't do it that way.

That's like trying to bake fruit when you don't know how. And yet nearly every church around us today is that way and I don't say that to make it sound like ours is the only right one. I know there are tens of thousands of people that see these things alive on the planet today.

We're not sure where they are but we know they're there. But I'm just saying and I think you would agree if you've been in other churches that we're surrounded today by people who are Christians. Some really are Christians but they think that they have to go about to produce fruit rather than bear the fruit.

Bearing the fruit happens in part when we understand we are forgiven. We understand our position before God is as a child. We have an inheritance already waiting for us in heaven with our name on it. And we understand that it causes us to want to live like a child of the king.

When you know who you are you tend to want to live as who you are. A lot of Christians sadly they don't know who they are yet. So he's placed his laws in our hearts and he has remembered our sins no more.

Secondly in verse 18 we see that the mind knows that Jesus Christ cannot be crucified. The informed Christian mind knows that Jesus Christ cannot be re-crucified. So we understand then the sufficiency of his blood.

His blood shed once was enough to remove our sins forever. Verse 18 says now where remission of these is. Remission means removal of the sins and it also means forgiveness which is the same thing. Where remission of these is there is no more offering.

You understand that in a simple sentence? It says where you find, now look in your own life. Look inside at the new man this morning. Look in there and where you see that remission is. Where you know forgiveness is there.

Where you know the sins have been removed. Then you also know there will never be another offering for sins. Jesus will not die again. He doesn't have to. Therefore your sins are gone. They're not going to come back and then him die again and remove them again.

Do you see the healthy psychology behind this in the mind of the informed Christian? The one who studies the word. The one who uplifts God's word even as God himself lifted his word above his name. We live in a rabbit trail here.

We live in an era where the word of God is diminished and the experience of the Christian is put up front as the big thing. Whether I can do this or perform this weird miraculous thing or do this better than someone else.

That's God moving and the Bible says he lifts his word above his very name. You see that doctrine is not protected anymore. That experience creates doctrine today. Do you know what this is? This is merely the Roman Catholicism of Protestantism.

And it's brought about predominantly by the Pentecostal charismatic movement. And there are those among that movement that I love dearly and even work with every day. I love them and believe this. I have learned this.

They do not all believe the same way. They do not all believe Kenneth Copeland is true. They do not all believe Benny Hinn is real. Now we might differ and even debate in Christian love over certain things such as is tongues gibberish or is it languages?

But that doesn't mean that they all believe all the wild things going on and people roaring like animals and this being the Holy Spirit and all this garbage that's thrown out there. And the weird doctrines that are created every day.

They don't all believe those. But I will say this. Those who are informed on the forgiveness of God are those who are in the Word of God, not those who are watching experiences. That won't teach you about God.

It won't teach you God's forgiveness. When we understand His forgiveness, we understand the sufficiency of His death. And when we understand the sufficiency of His death, we then understand His forgiveness and it creates a very healthy cycle for us to think about in our minds.

It's an eternal thing. We move into verse 19, we see here that this forgiveness then results in the acceptance of God. This is because of propitiation, which we've already studied. God's holiness, God's justice is satisfied with the death of His Son as payment for the sins of all the elect.

Now since God's justice is satisfied, He then is free to accept those for whom Jesus died. Verse 19 says, having therefore, brethren, boldness to enter into the holiest by the blood of Jesus, by a new and living way which He hath consecrated for us, through the veil, that is to say His flesh, and having a high priest over the house of God.

We now can come into the holy place. We can come into this place where once only the priest could come, the place that symbolized this holy place where God is. Because we are in Christ, because our sins have been removed in Christ, and because God has imputed Jesus' righteousness to us, we can come boldly into the holiest by the blood of Jesus.

We can come into the place where God is and bring our petitions before Him in a new and living way because of what Jesus has done for us. And we see that this then brings full assurance in verse 22. Let us draw near with a true heart and full assurance of faith, having our hearts sprinkled from an evil conscience and our bodies washed with pure water.

All of the washings of the Old Testament were pictures of this, by the way. I believe that the water washing was a picture of the 1 John 1, 9 type of experiential forgiveness, which we're going to study next time, not today.

We're going to look at it in Leviticus and see the pictures of it. But that can only come if you have the positional forgiveness of the removal of the sin first. And you'll see that in the sacrifices.

As we go back to the sacrifices next week, the Lord willing, and we look at positional and experiential forgiveness shown in those sacrifices, it's just unbelievable what's there for us to learn and see.

But the thing is, we see in verse 22 that we have assurance of our salvation. We have assurance of total forgiveness. We have the assurance that the sins are gone from us because of what Jesus has done.

And then we move into verse 23, and this is profound. Our faithfulness is based upon His faithfulness. You've heard it said that the true Christian is the one who holds out to the end. And those around us who don't believe in eternal security, such as the Methodists and the Pentecostals, some forms of the United Pentecostal to be specific, they're the ones who don't believe in eternal security.

Other groups who don't, they will say this, you have to hold out to the end if you're going to be saved. And they put the focus on you, the human, holding out. What they don't understand is that logically it is true that you will hold out to the end if you are saved.

But that's not to say the same thing as to say you are saved if you hold out to the end, if what you mean by that is that the saving is done by you holding out to the end because it's not. Look at this, it shows very clearly in verse 23 that our faithfulness, now faithfulness is that which would cause the believer to hold out and walk with Jesus all the way to the end of the road and never forsake Him.

Stay with Jesus to the end until we meet Him. It's faithfulness that would cause that. But where does our faithfulness come from? Let us hold fast the profession. You see, they sometimes even use that verse to try to prove you could lose your salvation.

Well, unless you hold fast your profession, you'll lose your salvation. It's not what God's saying here. He's saying because we understand forgiveness, because we understand the positional value of it, that it's accomplished once and for all almost 2 ,000 years ago by the finished work of Jesus.

And we understand He's removed our sins as far as the east is from the west. Because we understand that, we will hold fast our profession. Let us hold fast our profession of faith without wavering. And look at the parenthetical.

You see, here is the reason, and this is conveniently left out by those who quote this to prove you could lose your salvation. They don't quote this last part. For he is faithful that promised. What is that word, the promise, an allusion to?

Someone tell me. What promise is this? The promise. That's a part of a result of it, but I'm going back further than that. The promise goes way back to the Old Testament to a certain person. There you go.

The Abrahamic promise. For he is faithful that promised. Listen, if God lets one of his little ones end up in hell, then he lied to David. And then he also lied to Abraham. And God will not do that. You are not saved so much because of any promise that's made by you as you are by the promise that was made to Abraham and to David.

Do you understand that? It's amazing. You're saved by the promise. It has nothing to do with us primarily. We gain the benefit from it in a secondary fashion. Now, if you want to understand that we're now grafted in and part of that promise, yes, it has to do with it, but it goes back to Abraham.

In other words, it's a promise that was made to Abraham and to his seed forever. So you can't take this promise away. You can't come out here today as a Gentile believer and say, well, I might lose my salvation without making God a liar to Abraham and to David and to all the seed of Abraham, which then includes you and me.

What a powerful thing. Our faithfulness, our ability to hold fast our profession of faith all the way to the end of our life without wavering is based on God's promise to Abraham and to David and to the seed of Abraham.

So can God lie? Can God break a promise is the question you have to ask if you're going to answer, yes, I can lose my salvation, then you have to say, yes, God can break a promise, or you don't understand that you're part of the promise, or you don't understand forgiveness, and I understand that.

I understand. I understand. There are so many believers around. Listen, we talked about the confusion of war, of battle. When you look at a battle, that's the first thing you notice. They're one thing they all have in common.

Nothing happens like you planned it. Confusion. You want to look at Christianity in America today with the Pentecostals, the Charismatics and all the hostiles and addicts that have added new doctrine that was never written about before 1900.

We have many, many commentaries going all the way back to Christ Ostrom and to Augustine, who lived only 200 years after Jesus died and said tongues don't exist anymore in the church. He said it. I can get you those two quotes.

History shows us that tongues ceased, true biblical tongues, languages given to people who hadn't studied them, ceased historically in the church. There are many church fathers that we can go and read besides Christ Ostrom and Augustine.

There's Polycarp, who was John's, the Apostle John's disciple, who pastored the church after John was gone. Many others, more than 10, none of them ever once mentioned tongues in their writings, in any of their commentaries.

It was already gone by that time. Explain that to me. And yet they come in today and we have a new type of tongues that's been reinvented and it comes hand in hand with awful doctrines, doctrines that teach you can lose your salvation, doctrines that teach all manner of strange things.

Every man has his own private interpretation that doesn't hold up against the prophets of old and the rest of the word of God. The exhortation to allow the prophets to interpret the prophets, allow the words to interpret the word is ignored.

And we run into all of these problems and we're even taught that a person could lose his salvation and unless he holds out to the end, he'll lose that. Well, only if God can lie, only if God can break a promise.

It's blasphemous to even consider it. So let's move away from it. Go to verse 24. We see a strong point here that good works spring from a forgiven heart, from the heart that rightly understands God's forgiveness.

Yes, this is not just a Christian. This is a Christian who studies. This is a Christian who asked the Holy Spirit to help him interpret the word of God as the Holy Spirit would interpret it. Not as we want it to speak, but as it in fact speaks.

Let us consider one another to provoke and to love and to good works. You see, this is in the context of forgiveness. If you're not forgiven and you don't know that you're forgiven, did you know you're like the Old Testament priest who would try to then give a sacrifice without first cleansing his hands?

You know what would happen to him? Either God would kill him or they would stone him. He would be dead. Why was it so important for them to do that exactly right? Because it's supposed to teach us the spiritual truth that we cannot serve God if we're not cleansed.

Now we know we are cleansed positionally already by the blood, but our conscience has to be pure and clean, and that happens by the washing of the water. 1 John 1 .9, confessing and agreeing with God and believing that he has removed the sins is just like a bath.

It's like a cleansing that takes place. And when that happens, the Bible says that we can then provoke one another to love and to good works. And look at the next verse, not forsaking the assembly of ourselves together.

One of the greatest good works you can do is not mischurch. Where God has ordained a local group of believers to be there, and you know that they're meeting and the group has sensed that the Holy Spirit has led them in their hearts to meet at certain times.

We have to be careful not to miss that. We need to be here when we can be here, not forsaking the assembly of ourselves together as the manner of some is. In other words, God says very clearly, some do forsake it.

But exhorting one another, encouraging one another, and it's even more important as you see the day approaching. There's only one the day, and that's the second coming of Jesus. As that gets closer, we need to be together more.

We need to not forsake the assembly of ourselves together so that we can come together and be encouraged and exhorted to stay with the truth in these last days. The mindset in the last days is to wander into your own doctrines, to take a little passage of scripture and blow that thing out of proportion and make a whole group out of that one passage is what the mindset of the end times is, and that's what started in the year 1900 with Amy Semple McPherson, first popular female tongue talker.

To me, it's one of the most grievous things that happened in the history of the church and one of the sad things that's happened because it causes us not to walk together sometimes just because of that one thing.

If you don't have the second blessing yet, sometimes those who do won't walk with you and vice versa. As we studied in Sunday school this morning, even though there was a second blessing, so to speak, in the book of Acts to the Jew, there was only one time in history, ladies and gentlemen, where a person could be saved before they heard the gospel.

Can you tell me when that time was? It was in the history recorded in the book of Acts because you can have a person who was saved under the Old Testament dispensation and was still alive and walking around after Jesus preached the gospel, even after Jesus died and resurrected, and even after Pentecost.

There were still those who had been saved, say, when they heard the preaching of John the Baptist or because they were saved under the Jewish economy, but they did not understand yet the gospel of Jesus and the filling of the Holy Spirit.

So there were, in fact, some people who got saved first, waited some period of time, and then, especially if this happened to the Jewish people, another Jewish believer would come and say, have you heard about the Holy Spirit?

Are you filled with the Holy Spirit? No, I have not heard that there is a Holy Spirit. And they would lay hands on them and they would be indwelt by the Spirit at that time. Now they've built a doctrine on that saying that that's still the way it happens today, but it's not.

As you move into a situation where no one could be saved without first hearing the gospel, then you find in Acts chapter 10 that when they heard and believed, they were indwelt by the Spirit instantaneously.

And that is the modus operandi of God in the church age, which is predominantly Gentile. So can you see how easy it is to misinterpret scripture if you don't let the Bible interpret the Bible? And it's sad to me because it has brought division, but I know that God has his reasons for bringing these things to pass.

He tells us that Jesus cannot come again unless there be a great apostasy, a great falling away from the New Testament truth. Jesus said, when I come, will I find the faith on the earth, or will I find churches doing totally different things than what the early church really did?

It's all part of God's sovereign plan. Another point we find if we look at this is forgiveness has its roots in agape love. Forgiveness has its roots in agape love. Now, let me see if I can steer you to the right verse.

Forgiveness Rooted in Agape Love and the Father's Compassion

Hebrews chapter 10, let's go. I think, I'm sorry, but I've lost which chapter I'm in. I don't know what verse it is. I don't have it written down. Okay. Go back to Psalm 103. Psalm 103, we started out this morning looking at David's perception of forgiveness.

Starting with verse 10, where he shows imputation. Verse 11, where he shows that God's mercy is as high as the heaven from the earth. In verse 12, where he shows the removal of sin is the true definition of forgiveness.

Now, verse 13 shows that forgiveness has its roots in agape love. Like as the father pitieth his child, so the Lord pitieth them that fear him. Now, I've got to show you something here. This word pity doesn't mean what you think it does in the English.

If you look at the Hebrew word that this comes from, it's rakam, and it means to fondle. It means to fondle in the old English use of that word, which is a sweet thing that a mother does with her child, that a father does with his children.

It is not what the Roman Catholic priest does with the altar boy. That's what the new word means. It's ruined. It's like the word gay has been ruined. We can't use it anymore. This word has been ruined by the news media, but it is the most perhaps endearing word that describes the love of a parent and a child.

This is the Hebrew word. So it says, like as a father fondles his children, so the Lord fondles them that fear him. God's forgiveness is rooted in his love, his endearment, goes all the way back to Deuteronomy chapter seven, where he says, Thou art a holy people unto the Lord, thy God.

The Lord, thy God has chosen thee to be a special people unto himself above all people that are upon the face of the earth. The Lord did not set his love upon you nor choose you because you were more in number than the other people, but because the Lord loved you.

It's all because of his love. So we see that God's forgiveness is eternal. We see that his forgiveness is a removal of sin from us because Jesus took it away as a scapegoat into the wilderness, and we see that his forgiveness is rooted in his great.

We properly understand this one doctrine. We've studied many already of salvation, redemption, reconciliation, propitiation. If we just understood this one doctrine of forgiveness, we would have the peace and the joy that God offers in a bundle life, just knowing we're forgiven, just knowing that positionally we're a child of the Father, and that never changes.

Sometimes we need a spanking. Sometimes the fellowship needs to be restored, and there needs to be a cleansing in that sense. That's 1 John 1 .9. Talk about that type of forgiveness next time. But positional forgiveness is once and for all because of the one-time death of Jesus on the cross.

Let's stand and have prayer. Father, as we study salvation by breaking it down into the components that you give us in your word, each one of them is worth a year's worth of study. Each one of them has aspects that if we studied the rest of our lives on this earth, we would not see the full depth of that one aspect of your salvation.

But as we relatively quickly move through the different aspects of redemption and reconciliation and propitiation and now forgiveness, and we understand more and more that it's all by your word, not by ours, what peace it brings to us, Lord, may you remind our hearts, may your Holy Spirit speak to our minds as we're tempted by the devil to feel unforgiven, that we are forgiven once and for all, and we can always come boldly before the throne because of the blood of Jesus and by that blood, and we can have Jesus wash our feet from the earth dirt that gets on us when we do fall into the flesh and sin.