Many times when people are first introduced to God’s grace and forgiveness they say things like, “God couldn’t forgive me. I’m too sinful. I’ve failed too much. I can’t change. I’m not worth it. I don’t deserve it.” I know how those people feel. I feel the same way. But God’s grace is only given to people who know those things about themselves. That is good news. And experiencing that kind of grace, a grace that reaches down into the dirt.
We are just as dirty as the woman at the well. Apart from Christ, our hearts are black with the dirt and muck of sin. We don’t like to publicize it, we don’t like to talk about it, but in our honest moments, when we are alone looking at ourselves in the mirror, we know it’s true. We are just as helpless, clueless, and culpable for our sins as that Samaritan woman was.
“Well,” you say, “I haven’t been divorced five times. I’m not sleeping around. I don’t think I am as bad as all that.” I will grant you that some sins are easier to see than others. Some sins very clearly show their evil as soon as they are committed. We often compare ourselves to other people and comfort ourselves that we are not all that bad compared to some. But sin is not best shown by comparing one sinner to another, but by holding ourselves up to the Holy God who sets the standard of righteousness. Make whatever distinctions or rationalizations you want between you and your neighbor, but when it comes to our spiritual state, apart from Christ all are dead. Not sick. Not Dying. Dead. Jesus said,
For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life. For 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 stands condemned already because he has not believed in the name of God’s one and only Son (John 3:16-18).
Jesus did not come into the world to condemn it because it was already justly condemned! Jesus came to save people who without Him would perish! That includes you and me.
We are just as helpless to get to God on our own as the woman at the well. Dead people do not respond to the calls of the living. They are dead, they can’t hear the call. If Jesus had not gone to that woman Himself, she would have died in her sins. But Jesus had to go through Samaria!
Which leads right to my last point: God is just as willing to meet us right here, right now, where we are and give us that same well of living water. Jesus was willing to go through Samaria to meet that woman. Jesus was willing to go to the cross for you. If Jesus would go to the cross for you, where would He not go? It does not matter what you might have done. How you might have failed. How far you might have fallen. There is life in Him. He can kindle in you the life that we do not have apart from Christ. We could not come to God, so He has come to us. He came to make us new creatures, with new hearts so that we would turn and repent of our sins and freely love Him with all our heart, soul, mind, and strength.
Forgiveness is real. And it is real because of the cross. God’s forgiveness is possible not because He swept our sins under the rug. It is possible only because He punished it all at the cross. No sin is safe from the justice of our holy God. All sin gets punished. But because He remembered it, He can now forget it.
Learning To Be Full Of Grace And Truth. 