Tracy Press

 
We all need divine forgiveness.

Disobedience to God is made clear: “The wages of sin is death” (Rom. 6:23). We inherited it from Adam when he and Eve disobeyed God’s warning, and we earn it by our sinful choices during our lifetime. Spiritual death is separation from God. And that permanent separation from the perfect God can only be reversed one way, by faith in the plan that God designed through his son, Jesus the Savior. There are no sins too big to forgive — or sins too small to ignore. Sin separates; faith in Christ unites us with God.

Christianity is unique among the religions of the world. In God’s perfect plan, all babies are born separated from God, just as our ancestral parents were banished from God’s presence in the garden.

Sin separates; Christ restores.

Jesus himself was separated from his heavenly father by our sin, our selfishness, our deceit, our hatred. That’s the very reason he cried out from the cross, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” (Psalm 22:1). God turned his back on his own beloved son as he punished Jesus and rejected him — to death — for the sins we committed.

By causing sin to be inherited by all children from their parents, God destroyed the question, “Do I need to be freed from sin? Do I need to be forgiven?” We are unacceptable to God at birth. Beautiful in appearance and loved dearly, but spiritually unacceptable.

Being born with the contamination of Adam’s original sin does not mean that we are bad people in our actions. God is equal-opportunity. We all carry the seed of disobedience and rebellion that needs to be removed by God as a free gift before we can have the close and loving relationship with him that he desperately wants. We all start in the same place. We are all in need of repair! Only God himself can remove that rebellious spiritual DNA that is a part of us at birth.

We need to follow God’s lead and go to him with the humility of a child, asking the Lord to remove our sin the only way that it can be removed: in the name of Jesus, who died to take it away. Once that instant forgiveness is complete, we can begin to become more like the savior in our actions — a lifetime project.

Our life with God begins but one way: by believing that Jesus died (according to the father’s plan) to pay the price for our disobedience. Don’t listen to anyone who tells you that you have nothing to confess. Instead, confess it to the Lord. He’s waiting.

• To contact the Rev. Jim Bush, a pastor of Heartland Church, e-mail This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it . All religious leaders in the Tracy community are invited to write columns for Reflections on Faith.