So many people think of being forgiven as permission to continue violating the person offended. For those people they seem to have a personalized internal translation device that converts the words, ‘I forgive you’ to ‘I want you to violate me again! Please, Thank you!’ They believe forgiveness is a blank slate, a clean record, and request to repeat the events.
I bumped one of my son’s the other day and I immediately apologized. He replied, ‘It’s ok.’
I asked if I should bump him again. He looked a little lost. I told him accidentally or intentionally bumping him is not ok and being a parent doesn’t give me a right to be negligent.
I apologized again and he responded, “I forgive you!” He smiled with understanding and continued what he was doing.
Other people believe forgiveness is an automatic process and their God-given right to be forgiven rather they ask forgiveness or not. They sincerely believe they’re entitled to forgiveness. (Sidebar: Sincerely and Correctly are not synonymous. A person can be sincerely incorrect! This is one of those times.)
The blood of the lamb has always had the power to place the offender in right standing with God. See Leviticus 14 balance it with Isaiah 1. The Scripture also tells us there is life in the blood. See Leviticus 17:11.
Because of the Blood of the Lamb, we have the way of salvation. This Blood here is not the mindless lamb lead to the slaughter, void of the knowledge that his death means life for others. (Not to reduce the millions of life’s saved by the blood of those animals.) This Blood is the result of a man who was conscious of His impending doom. He understood the effect of his death in the lives of the who believe in His Life, Death, Burial, and Resurrection and in the eyes of the God he was dying to appease. This man is the Man, Yeshua! He intentional laid down His Life. Just like the lambs who were slain publicly with their blood openly applied to the doorpost of their homes, Yeshua was publicly slain and His blood spilled in plain view of the people to be applied to our bodies and lives.
He didn’t die to remind us of our sin-stained past nor to remind us of the time we spent toiling as slaves, working to build our destruction. He died to bring us to the place He had designed for us to live before we were slaves. Regardless of our past, or how we arrived at this place, some of the nations and others of Israel, it was a mixed Multitude, God delivered from bondage. We were all slaves.
No matter where we came from, the Blood of the Lamb of God us the opportunity to experience deliverance from our past. In Yeshua, we capable of discovering unprecedented victories and levels of joy previously unimaginable. However, this life is only possible if we forgive as we have been forgiven.
Some think they have never needed forgiveness. They sincerely believe their righteousness is exempt from the Mercy of God. Remember you can be sincerely incorrect. Others don’t know salvation and forgiveness are possible because it’s always been like this. While others know God is faithful regardless of how things appear. It was a mixed multitude God delivered from Egypt. The past lives of the people didn’t matter. Their past was behind them because of the blood of the lamb and the Mercy of God.
God has forgiven us with the Blood of the Lamb, not for us to violate Him with a clean slate. He has forgiven us to live with Him and to reflect the truth that we are His. He is our God and we are His people.
He freed us, not just because He had made a promise. He freed us to worship Him freely and completely removed from the hardships of our past.
But just like the great aliyah in Exodus, there are people who are determined to bring you back to Pharaoh, back to oppression, back into bondage. They sincerely don’t believe the power of God is able to change a slave into royalty. Well, that’s how the other Egyptians thought. So Pharaoh and his army of followers were drowned, never to be seen again.
If the Blood has been applied to your life, it is because of the Mercy and Compassion of God. If God has forgiven you and has freed you from oppression do not allow the Pharaohs in your life to drag you back into slavery.
God is able to save us from bondage and our past & it is God who causes us to prosper!
Sha’alu Shalom Yerushalayim! Shabbat Shalom!
Torah Road 