How to ask God for forgiveness
I have suffered and been hurt many times in my life. Not only did the actions of others affect me, but in my sin, I struggled with bitterness and shame, resulting in a reluctance to forgive. My heart has been beaten, hurt, left with marks of shame, regret, anxiety and stains of sin. There have been many times when the sin and pain I caused someone else have left me ashamed, and there have been many times when situations beyond my jurisdiction have left me angry and bitter with God.
None of these emotions or choices on my part are wholesome, and none of them lead me to the abundant life Jesus speaks of in John 10:10: “The thief comes only to steal, kill, and destroy. I came to have life and have it in abundance. "
The thief comes to steal, kill and destroy, but Jesus offers abundant life. The question is how? How do we receive this life in abundance and how do we bring out this bitterness, anger against God and the fruitless pain that is so prevalent in the midst of pain?
How does God forgive us?
God's forgiveness is the answer. You may already close the tab on this article and move on, believing that forgiveness is too great a burden, too much to bear, but I must ask you to listen to me. I am not writing this article from a place with a high and mighty heart. I struggled just yesterday to forgive someone who hurt me. I know very well the pain of being devastated and still need to be forgiven and forgive. Forgiveness is not only something we must gather strength to give, but it is first given for free so that we can be healed.
God initiates forgiveness from beginning to end
When Adam and Eve were in the garden - the first humans created by God - they walked in perfect relationship with Him. There were no tears, no hard work, no struggle until the fall, when they rejected God's rulership. Immediately after their disobedience , pain and shame entered the world and sin came with all its strength. Adam and Eve may have rejected their creator, but God remained faithful despite their disobedience. One of the first recorded acts of God after the fall is that of forgiveness, as God made the first sacrifice to cover their sin, without them ever asking for it (Genesis 3:21). God's forgiveness never started with us, it was always first started with him. God repaid our evil with his mercy. He provided grace upon grace, forgiving them for the first initial sin and promising that one day he would make all things right through the sacrifice and final Savior, Jesus.
Jesus forgives first and last
Our part in forgiveness is an act of obedience, but it is never our job to get together and begin. God carried the weight of Adam and Eve's sin from the garden onward, just as He bears the weight of our sin. Jesus, the Holy Son of God, was mocked, tempted, threatened, betrayed, doubted, whipped and left to die alone on a cross. He allowed himself to be ridiculed and crucified, without justification. Jesus received what Adam and Eve deserved in the garden and received the full wrath of God as he took the punishment for our sin. The most painful act in human history took place on the Perfect man, turning him away from His Father for the sake of our forgiveness. As John 3:16 -18 says, this forgiveness is offered freely to all who believe:
“Because God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, so that whoever believes in him may not perish but have eternal life. Because God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him. Whoever believes in him is not condemned, but whoever does not believe is already condemned because he did not believe in the name of the one and only Son of God ".
Jesus both offers forgiveness freely through faith in the gospel and, in a sense, puts to death all that must be forgiven (Romans 5:12 –21, Philippians 3: 8 –9, 2 Corinthians 5: 19–21) . Jesus, on the cross, did not simply die for the single sin or past sin you struggle with, but offers complete forgiveness and at the end when he is resurrected from severe defeat, sin, Satan and death forever. His resurrection provides both the freedom to be forgiven and the abundant life that comes with it.
How Do We Receive God's Forgiveness?
There are no magic words we have to say for God to forgive us. We simply receive God's mercy in humility by admitting that we are sinners in need of his grace. In Luke 8:13 (AMP), Jesus gives us a picture of what the prayer for God's forgiveness looks like:
“But the tax collector, standing at a distance, did not even raise his eyes to heaven, but struck his breast [with humility and repentance], saying, 'God, be merciful and kind to me, the sinner [especially wicked] [ that I am]!'"
Receiving God's forgiveness begins with admitting our sin and asking for His grace. We do this in an act of saving faith, as we believe for the first time in the life, death and resurrection of Jesus and as a continuous act of obedience in repentance. John 1: 9 says:
“If we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us. If we confess our sins, it is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and cleanse us from all injustice ”.
Although we are forgiven and fully justified by believing in the gospel of salvation, our sin does not leave us miraculously forever. We still struggle with sin and we will do it until the day Jesus returns. Because of this “almost, but not yet” period of time that we live in, we must continue to take our confession to Jesus and repent of all sins. Stephen Wellum, in his article, If all my sins are forgiven, why must I keep repenting? , he says it like this:
“We are always complete in Christ, but we are also in a true relationship with God. By analogy, in human relationships we know something of this truth. As a parent, I am in a relationship with my five children. Since they are my family, they will never be cast out; the relationship is permanent. However, if they sin against me, or I against them, our relationship is strained and needs to be restored. Our covenant relationship with God works in a similar way. This is how we can make sense of our full justification in the teaching of Christ and the scriptures that we need continuous forgiveness. By asking God to forgive us, we add nothing to Christ's perfect work. Instead, we are reapplying what Christ did for us as our covenant head and Redeemer. ”
To help our hearts not swell with pride and hypocrisy we must continue to confess our sins and ask for forgiveness so that we can live in a restored relationship with God. Repentance of sin is for both one-time sin and repeated patterns of sin in our life. We must ask for forgiveness for a one-time lie, just as we ask for forgiveness for an ongoing addiction. Both require our confession and both require the same kind of repentance: giving up the life of sin, turning to the cross and believing that Jesus is better. We fight sin by being honest with our struggles and fight sin by confessing to God and others. We look to the cross admiring all that Jesus did to forgive us, and let it nourish our obedience in faith to Him.
God's forgiveness offers life and life in abundance
Through God's initiatory and saving grace we receive a rich and transformed life. This means that “we have been crucified with Christ. It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me. And the life that I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me ”(Galatians 2:20).
God's forgiveness calls us to "strip off your old self, which belongs to your old way of life and is corrupted through deceptive desires, and to be renewed in the spirit of your mind, and to clothe yourself with the new self, created in the likeness of God in true justice and holiness ”(Ephesians 4: 22-24).
Through the gospel, we are now able to forgive others because Jesus first forgave us (Ephesians 4:32). Being forgiven by the risen Christ means that we now have the power to fight the temptation of the enemy (2 Corinthians 5: 19-21). Receiving God's forgiveness only by grace, only by faith, only in Christ offers us the love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, kindness, faithfulness and self-control of God now and for eternity (John 5:24, Galatians 5: 22-23). It is from this renewed spirit that we continually seek to grow in God's grace and extend God's grace to others. God never leaves us alone to understand forgiveness. He provides us with the means for forgiveness through His child and offers a transformed life that provides peace and understanding as we seek to forgive others as well.