Love week3

  “Blessed are those

whose transgressions are forgiven,

whose sins are covered.

Blessed is the one

whose sin the Lord will never count against them.”

Romans 4:7-8

Love is the trumpet of the morning, the sentinel of midnight, the loaf of bread at noon. Love is the pathway through the wilderness of our fears. There is one grand basis for the Christian’s peace. Our sins have been forgiven once and for all, Romans 4.8 says, ‘Blessed is the man whose sin the Lord will never count against him.’

In The Pilgrim's Progress, John Bunyans character Christian is on his way up the hill to the cross and is bent by the weight of his sin. This sin is symbolized by a huge bundle under which he has staggered all his life. When Christian arrives at the cross, his burden of sin is released. The bundle "fell from off his back, and began to tumble."

The burden that has bent Christian low all his life rolls off and is gone. It rolls down the hill of Calvary and is swallowed up in the mouth of the open sepulchre, which Christ left empty when he rose again.

Now Christian is free! His unrighteousness is forgiven! His sin is covered! His condition is ever as the psalmist says, ‘As far as the east is from the west, so far has he removed our transgressions from us' (Psalm 103.12).

There is no more wonderful evidence of God's giving love than the lightness of being we discover when we stand up straight for the first time in our lives, knowing that God has completely forgiven all our sins. The greatest gift of God's giving love is to be free of the curse of our sins forever. Small wonder the hymn writer wrote,

Free from the law, O happy condition, 

Jesus has bled and there is remission,

Cursed by the law and bruised by the fall, 

Grace hath redeemed us once for all.