On This Day: Stephen’s Prayer for Saul’s Forgiveness

   Then they cast him out of the city and stoned him. And the witnesses laid down their garments at the feet of a young man named Saul. And as they were stoning Stephen, he called out, “Lord Jesus, receive my spirit.” And falling to his knees he cried out with a loud voice, “Lord, do not hold this sin against them.” And when he had said this, he fell asleep. And Saul approved of his execution. (Acts 7:58-8:1)

   Sometime in the past couple of weeks, someone posted another stereotypical post about Christians only having two options in dealing with how we relate to those who wrong us. One option is always presented as forgiveness (even if the person hasn’t repented), the other option is always presented as anger or bitterness. Since we all know we shouldn’t give room for sinful anger or bitterness, we are tricked into thinking we must then choose to forgive people who have never repented of what they have done.

   When I ask people who believe this where in the Bible do we have an example of God, the prophets, Jesus, or the apostles forgiving someone who is clearly unrepentant, I am never given a text where this is shown. I can show multiple examples of unrepentant people not being forgiven, but there isn’t one example where a person is unrepentant about their sin but is forgiven anyway.

   However, there are two Scriptures that are claimed as proof that we are to forgive unrepentant people. One is when Jesus from the cross prayed, “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.” The other is when Stephen was dying and he prayed, “Lord, do not hold this sin against them.” I am told that this was them forgiving their enemies. And, because I just came to Stephen’s prayer this morning, it seems timely to once again share some very liberating insights.

   My response to the claim that Jesus and Stephen were forgiving their enemies is always something to the effect of, “Read it again.” If the texts were telling us that Jesus and Stephen were forgiving their persecutors, the wording would need to be from Jesus, “Father, I forgive them…”, and from Stephen, “Lord, I do not hold this sin against them.”

   The wording by both Jesus and Stephen is prayer. They are both talking to “our Father in heaven”, and they are both praying for their persecutors. When we realize Jesus DID instruct us to pray for our persecutors, and we see that this is what Jesus was doing, we can back up a bit and ask ourselves what it would look like for us to pray for our enemies like that.

   Back in 1993, I was introduced to the concept of “freedom in Christ”. I was on the verge of heading through one of the most painful valleys of my life as childhood trauma and abuse came leaking out of my people. I began to see how many Scriptures spoke of God doing things for us that I had not seen him doing in me or others, and I felt a longing to experience God the way I was learning in his word.

   In the 3+ decades since then, it has become clear to me why it is so important to show people the difference between praying that God would forgive someone (like Jesus and Stephen did) and just forgiving them even if they haven’t repented (which can’t be found in Scripture). When we know that God never forgives people until they repent, then our prayer for their forgiveness is with the understanding that people “presume on the riches of his kindness and forbearance and patience, not knowing that God's kindness is meant to lead you to repentance”.

   Why do we need God’s kindness leading us to repentance if we are forgiven without repenting? If all our sins are cancelled without repenting, why did Jesus say that “repentance for the forgiveness of sins should be proclaimed in his name to all nations, beginning from Jerusalem” (Luke 24:7)? There is no forgiveness anywhere in the Bible without repentance.

   It is very liberating for abused and traumatized people to understand that no one is forgiven until they repent. Their abusers, their persecutors, their enemies, will not be forgiven unless they repent. If we pray for God to bless them, he won’t answer that prayer without humbling them to repentance first.

   So, instead of these victims cringing at the feeling of injustice with the “just forgive” mantra that can’t be found in the Bible, they can let God lead them into his grace where they truly want God to reach those people with his love and mercy because they have no hope until they repent and are forgiven.

   And when we can truly pray for these people that God would forgive them, and we know this can only happen if they repent, we are able to accept God’s will in this because we can allow ourselves to want these people to experience God’s kindness leading them to repentance just as we experienced for ourselves.

   I know I am in the minority when I show these things from God’s word. If you’re not convinced, I’m still waiting for someone to show me a scene in Scripture where someone is clearly unrepentant and either Yahweh or his prophets in the Old Testament, or Jesus and his apostles in the New Testament, forgave the unrepentant person who was continuing in sin. In all my times through the Bible, I have not come across one instance of this.

   To encourage me in this viewpoint of Stephen’s prayer for his persecutors (not him forgiving his enemies), I found this comment from William Hendriksen in his commentary on Acts 7. He wrote,

Reflecting on the death of Stephen and Paul’s consent, Augustine made this penetrating comment:
    “If Stephen had not prayed,
    the church would not have had Paul.”[1]

Augustine (and William Hendriksen with him) saw that Stephen’s prayer, “Lord, do not hold this sin against them,” is linked to our introduction to sinful Saul, who became the beloved apostle Paul. When we continue down the road and see how God’s kindness brought Paul to repentance, we can see how Stephen’s prayer was answered in God’s gift to Paul of repentance and faith.

   For me, this hit the bull’s eye of my heart today, not as a way to win a debate on the topic of “to forgive or not to forgive”, but to realize that I have “Sauls” in my life who need me to pray for their forgiveness. I know God will only answer that prayer by leading them to repentance (I have lots of Beatitudinal Valley illustrations to go along with this), and I know I want them to experience that mercy from God as I have on so many occasions.

  Ultimately, we do not pray to make God do something our way. Our praying is to line us up with God’s will. God leading me to pray this way is his will, and it is up to him if I ever see the answer. Stephen did not see his prayer answered that day because he died just seconds later. But seeing Paul’s arrival in eternity some decades later (whatever that feels like in the spiritual realm) would have been an experience of joy filled with praise to God.

   Today, I will pray in hope and praise in confidence. God will work it for good, and I might live long enough to see some of my Sauls reconcile with both God and his people. In the meantime, praying the way Jesus and Stephen did keeps my heart free, and that’s what the people in my life need from me each day. 

 

© 2025 Monte Vigh ~ Box 517, Merritt, BC, V1K 1B8

Email: in2freedom@gmail.com

Unless otherwise noted, Scriptures are from the English Standard Version (The Holy Bible, English Standard Version. ESV® Text Edition: 2016. Copyright © 2001 by Crossway Bibles, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers.)

 

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[1] Kistemaker, S. J., & Hendriksen, W. (1953–2001). Exposition of the Acts of the Apostles (Vol. 17, pp. 281–282). Baker Book House.

On This Day: When God Serves Notice on Sin

   But a man named Ananias, with his wife Sapphira, sold a piece of property, and with his wife's knowledge he kept back for himself some of the proceeds and brought only a part of it and laid it at the apostles' feet. But Peter said, “Ananias, why has Satan filled your heart to lie to the Holy Spirit and to keep back for yourself part of the proceeds of the land? While it remained unsold, did it not remain your own? And after it was sold, was it not at your disposal? Why is it that you have contrived this deed in your heart? You have not lied to man but to God.” When Ananias heard these words, he fell down and breathed his last. And great fear came upon all who heard of it. The young men rose and wrapped him up and carried him out and buried him.

   After an interval of about three hours his wife came in, not knowing what had happened. And Peter said to her, “Tell me whether you sold the land for so much.” And she said, “Yes, for so much.” But Peter said to her, “How is it that you have agreed together to test the Spirit of the Lord? Behold, the feet of those who have buried your husband are at the door, and they will carry you out.”  Immediately she fell down at his feet and breathed her last. When the young men came in they found her dead, and they carried her out and buried her beside her husband. And great fear came upon the whole church and upon all who heard of these things. (Acts 5:1-11)

   Yes, I have kazillions of questions about this. However, they come down to two main ones. Why doesn’t God judge liars in the church today the way he did that one time? And what is the church to do about lying, hypocrisy, cheating in business, deceiving, bearing false witness, and whatever synonymous expressions come to mind?

   When we face scenarios where God did something once and it never appears to be repeated, I see it as God serving notice. A singular event can still reveal things about what God is like as a person, what he wants us to understand about what he’s up to, and how he works to get things done. Noah’s flood will never happen again, but we certainly learn a lot about God in that unique event. Moses’ burning bush was a once-in-history experience, but through it we come to know so much about who God is as the great “I AM”, and how he speaks to his people about what he is doing so we can join him in his work.

   When we come to God’s death sentence on Ananias and Sapphira, and the way it instilled godly fear in everyone when they realized how seriously God took dishonesty, we must accept that this is still what he is like, it is still how he feels about falsehood, and he still wants us treating lying and deceiving as seriously as he does.

   The church is living between that unique event when God pronounce a death sentence on Ananias and Sapphira, and the coming judgment when “all liars, their portion will be in the lake that burns with fire and sulfur, which is the second death” (Revelation 21:8). God has served notice through his judgment on the church’s first two liars, and he has served notice of the judgment that will come on all who live in such sin.

   When I then consider how the church is to live in light of this revelation of God, I am aware that many of us may wonder why God doesn’t do this judgment again with those people who have hurt us so terribly by lying about us, bearing false witness about us, and deceiving people into believing their lies instead of the truth. Yes, I have often asked God why it wouldn’t be advantageous to stop liars from doing so much damage to the church!

   The problem is stated by the Psalmist: “I said in my alarm, ‘All mankind are liars’” (Psalm 116:11). You see, if God put to death every liar in the church there wouldn’t be any church! Okay, maybe that is an exaggeration, but I think you get the point. Who hasn’t lied? Who hasn’t pretended to be doing well when inside we are really dying? Who hasn’t listened to slander about another believer because it was one of our favorite people telling the story? Who hasn’t answered someone to their face with one story and then gone and told our people a totally different one?

   My point is that God served notice how he feels about the sin of lying, and we are now to help one another in the church take this seriously. This means that the church, the body of Christ, must address lying in the church without favoritism or partiality. We side with the truth. We “speak the truth in love”. We worship God “in spirit and in truth”. We seek to be our real “in Christ” selves with all people so that, even when we can’t tell people everything going on inside us, we certainly don’t promote external appearances that contradict our inner love of truth. We must express genuineness, realness, sincerity, so that, even if we keep to ourselves things that only concern us, what we express and say to others is still our truthful and real expression of trying to “Let no corrupting talk come out of your mouths, but only such as is good for building up, as fits the occasion, that it may give grace to those who hear” (Ephesians 4:29). We can absolutely aim to do that in sincerity and truth even while having other struggles and difficulties inside us that we are dealing with just between us and God.

   Obviously, there is much more to say on this matter. However, the main point for me is that, through Ananias and Sapphira, God has told us how deadly serious he is about lying because it is so not him, and it is so Satan. We can ask God if it would be advantageous to do this again in scenarios that seem even more grievous to us than what that first partners-in-crime brought into the church. However, he has left church discipline to the church, so we must follow Jesus’ instructions, follow the apostles’ teaching and examples in the New Testament, and be absolutely truthful in any participation regarding lying, dishonesty, and deception in the church no matter who it is we must side with and who it is we must hold to accouny for sin.

   And, since so many churches can’t discipline the liars because of the power of church politics, we need to be at peace with God that “Beloved, never avenge yourselves, but leave it to the wrath of God, for it is written, ‘Vengeance is mine, I will repay, says the Lord’” (Romans 12:19).   

   Today we must look in the mirror of God, his word, and his Spirit, confess anything in us that smacks of dishonesty, repent and reconcile with people we have hurt with our lying, entrust to God’s sovereign goodness and justice anyone who has wronged us and never repented, and go into our days seeking to “walk in the light, as he is in the light,” because that is the way “we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus his Son cleanses us from all sin” (I John 1:7).

  

© 2025 Monte Vigh ~ Box 517, Merritt, BC, V1K 1B8

Email: in2freedom@gmail.com

Unless otherwise noted, Scriptures are from the English Standard Version (The Holy Bible, English Standard Version. ESV® Text Edition: 2016. Copyright © 2001 by Crossway Bibles, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers.)

 

On This Day: A Multitude With One Heart and Soul

   Now the full number of those who believed were of one heart and soul, and no one said that any of the things that belonged to him was his own, but they had everything in common. (Acts 4:32)

   As soon as I saw Luke’s description of the early church as “of one heart and soul”, I felt two bursts of negative emotions. One was a sorrow that my 60+ years of church life betrayed that most church people do not want this. The other was that the period of my life when it felt like we had this was so short-lived.

   I don’t imagine we would benefit too much from a left-brain elaboration of what we believe about the unity and harmony of Jesus’ church. It’s all there in the Bible. And it is clearer than most church folks seem to notice!

   How would I summarize the reasons that so many church-going people have no interest in pursuing the “one heart and soul reality in the church?

   The shortest answer is: SELF!

   Yes, the selfish old heart loves to live in the flesh (“sark” in the Greek). This is the earthly part of us that has no attachment to God. The majority of church people I have ever known speak out of their sarks, their fleshly interests. And we all know there can be no oneness of heart and soul when everyone’s hearts are attached to the flesh and their souls are living nothing more than their earthly existence in a religious kind of way. Not only does everyone have their own ideas of what to do and how to do it, but they can never be in unity with the few who are seeking the “one heart and soul” experience through daily faith in Jesus Christ.

   There is good reason that Jesus summarized being his disciple as, “If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me” (Luke 9:23). Only when we want to come after him, we want to deny ourselves, we want to take up our cross daily, and we want to follow Jesus, can we hope to have unity in the Spirit through the bond of peace (the cross that crucifies us to sin and makes us alive to Jesus).

   This is also a good explanation for the problem of disunity in the church. Church people want to attend church, not “come after” Jesus. They want what their sarky selves want, not denying themselves. They want safety, comfort, and acceptance in the world, not the notoriety of taking up their cross on a daily basis. And they want Jesus to follow them and bless them in what they are doing, not to follow Jesus wherever he leads and join him in whatever he does.

   How do I feel about this?

   Part of me can still feel the joy of when I saw people fall in love with God’s word, enjoy getting to know God for real, unite to know and do God’s will, and love one another in the love and life of Christ. When I heard people pouring out their hearts to God in repentance for leaving him out of church life for so long, and crying to know him the way the Scriptures were teaching them, it was the most wonderful feeling of realness I have ever known.

   Why did it end? And why has it been gone for such a long time in so many churches and denominations?

   Because people discovered something inside them that they would not include in their pursuit of knowing God. And as soon as they chose to start handling that in their sarks (flesh), relying on the old hearts that are deceitful and wicked instead of the new heart that longs to be like Jesus, the selfishness infected everything. We saw the cancer of self-centeredness and self-justification invade the church. We witnessed the lure of self-interest send people heading in so many different and divisive directions. And we experienced the horrible poison of self-protection turning people from loving one another to sacrificing anyone who got in their way.

   Yes, I’m talking about our home churches as much as any of the institutional churches we have been in. And yes, that all comes to mind as I see how the Spirit-filled early church was “of one heart and soul”. It makes me want to repent for everything we are doing to seek our own ways, and to let myself hunger and thirst for this righteousness.

   After all, if our Savior prayed, “that they may be one, even as we are one” (John 17:11), even “that they may become perfectly one, so that the world may know that you sent me and loved them even as you loved me” (John 17:23), then we must let ourselves desire this to the fullest possible extent and then be “eager to maintain the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace” (Ephesians 4:3).

 

© 2025 Monte Vigh ~ Box 517, Merritt, BC, V1K 1B8

Email: in2freedom@gmail.com

Unless otherwise noted, Scriptures are from the English Standard Version (The Holy Bible, English Standard Version. ESV® Text Edition: 2016. Copyright © 2001 by Crossway Bibles, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers.)

 

 

On This Day: Praying In a Series of Parallels

   And now, Lord, look upon their threats and grant to your servants to continue to speak your word with all boldness, while you stretch out your hand to heal, and signs and wonders are performed through the name of your holy servant Jesus.” (Acts 4:29-30)

   When we read the history recorded in God’s word, our application of the word must be careful not to assume that what happened back then must happen now. A favorite illustration of this is Moses’ burning bush experience. That was history. It was not teaching us we need to go out in the wilderness and have our own burning-bush experiences.

   When I consider how the early church prayed about their first episode of persecution, I am immediately free to let myself pray and expect that God will give us boldness to continue making Jesus known in our increasingly hostile world.

   But when it comes to signs and wonders, there is such a mix of claims and fears about this that it requires some honest praying about our own hearts in relation to God’s word. This is because we usually hear the fights between the two extremes on the matter of signs and wonders and spiritual gifts. One side of the pendulum-extreme claims that God doesn’t work that way in our day. The other pendulum-extreme claims that God’s miraculous activity in the church is a three-ring circus where even the devil is welcome to make things happen.

   My concern is to find the parallel between what God was doing in the early church through his apostles and what it is supposed to look like now when God is doing his work through all the members of the body of Christ.

   In other words, the book of Acts revolves around how Jesus laid the foundation for the church through the apostles. You can read all about this in Ephesians 2 where Paul describes the apostles as the foundation of the church, Jesus as the cornerstone, and the rest of us as the blocks that make up the structure of the spiritual temple that is “a dwelling place for God by the Spirit.”

    So, the parallel to the boldness the early church prayed for is that we would be just as bold in continuing to proclaim the good news of the kingdom of God in our day.

   However, the parallel to the early church seeing signs and wonders being done through the apostles is that we want God to work in our churches using all the spiritual gifts described in the New Testament (on God’s terms) so that the church Jesus is building on “the foundation of the apostles and prophets” is showing the same evidence of Jesus’ presence through the Holy Spirit that people will “declare that God is really among you” (I Cor 14:25).

   And with that, it should be obvious why this must be a matter of PRAYER!!!

   The opportunity for Satan to use such a glorious prayer to divide Christians is well-documented. The experiences of losing fellowship with people because of their rules about what the Holy Spirit is allowed or not allowed to do in our churches are painful memories reminding us of our weaknesses. Self-protection rules some who cannot bear the thought of God doing something they can’t control. Self-glorification rules others who must be in the spotlight even if they need to fabricate mirages of signs and wonders when God is not the least bit impressed with their pride.

   As I receive God’s word this morning, it is with a sense that I must let God lead me into his will about this, and I must pray with all my heart for God’s activity in his church to be just as evident now as it was in the early days of the church. Jesus is still building his church. The gates of hell still cannot prevail against what Jesus is building. Satan is fulfilling what Scripture warned about him that he would steal, kill, and destroy God’s work wherever people will let him.

   With all that in mind, Jesus’ church prays for the Triune God to be glorified in us, among us, and through us, so people know that Jesus Christ came into the world to save sinners. And, when Jesus saves sinners, he saves them into the fullness of life, a life that must be pursued in prayer so our hearts are ready to attach to God in whatever he shows us he is doing.

 

 

© 2025 Monte Vigh ~ Box 517, Merritt, BC, V1K 1B8

Email: in2freedom@gmail.com

Unless otherwise noted, Scriptures are from the English Standard Version (The Holy Bible, English Standard Version. ESV® Text Edition: 2016. Copyright © 2001 by Crossway Bibles, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers.)

 

On This Day: Surprising Evidence that Jesus is God

   So they called them and charged them not to speak or teach at all in the name of Jesus. But Peter and John answered them, “Whether it is right in the sight of God to listen to you rather than to God, you must judge, for we cannot but speak of what we have seen and heard.” (Acts 4:18-20)

   I have had JW’s come to the door and tell me that Jesus is not God (I must be a marked man because I see them come to our neighbourhood, but no longer to my house!). I have watched videos of Muslims demanding that the Christians show where Jesus ever said the words, “I am God”. I have seen atheists defending their faith that there is no God. And I grew up with the agnostic claim that we can’t ever know if there is a God for certain.

   From a young age, I knew there was a God and that he was watching over me in a good way, so that ruled out atheism and agnosticism.

   Over the subsequent decades, I have seen the Triunity of God all through the pages of Scripture. It has been amazing to me how people can claim otherwise when it is so clearly revealed.

   A big part of the focus on the Trinity is whether the Bible ever presents Jesus as God. To me, that’s a silly question. Read your Bible. It presents Jesus as God.

   However, the older I get, and the better I get to know the Bible, the more delightful it is when God completely surprises me with something I have never noticed before. And all the more so when it is in a familiar section of Scripture!

   When Peter and John said, “Whether it is right in the sight of God to listen to you rather than to God,” I suddenly saw two persons. The apostles first pointed upwards (with their words) to “in the sight of God”. For their Jewish listeners, in God’s sight meant in the sight of the God of Israel, the one we call “Yahweh”. God was in heaven above, so to be in his sight meant he was looking down on the proceedings, evaluating what both parties were doing (the apostles vs the religious elites).

   The second person was the one the apostles had listened to as “to God”. We could fill pages upon pages with examples of Jesus identifying himself as God, with the apostles and prophets revealing him as God, and how Jesus was the one who told the apostles to teach the “good news of great joy” announced by angels and fulfilled in the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ the Lord.

   After the apostle John told us that “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God” (John 1:1-2), he added, “And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen his glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth” (vs 14). This is what the apostles had seen.

   The apostle Peter wrote of himself, “as a fellow elder and a witness of the sufferings of Christ” (I Peter 5:1). And, of course, Peter’s witness of the sufferings of Christ included the unforgettable experience of denying his Savior three times while Jesus was suffering on his way to the cross!

   There are such good resources online addressing Jesus’ deity in general, but also in specific response to Muslims, JW’s, Jews, and Mormons who all claim Jesus was not God. However, today God had a very personal ministry to me (after asking him to make my time with him feel like I was with him, not just me trying to understand his word), showing me afresh the multi-faceted revelation of his word that doesn’t require the exact words from Jesus, “I am God”, to show he, his Father, and the Scriptures, all bear witness to the deity of Jesus Christ our Lord.

   Did you need to see this treasure of wisdom and knowledge as much as I did? I certainly hope so. But if not, part of the lesson in sharing this is that God speaks through his word, so make sure you are in God’s word each day, hearing what the Spirit is saying to the churches. Whatever God shows each of us will be equally delightful in ministering to our souls exactly what we need in Jesus’ name.

 

© 2025 Monte Vigh ~ Box 517, Merritt, BC, V1K 1B8

Email: in2freedom@gmail.com

Unless otherwise noted, Scriptures are from the English Standard Version (The Holy Bible, English Standard Version. ESV® Text Edition: 2016. Copyright © 2001 by Crossway Bibles, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers.)

 

On This Day: The Package is Bigger Than We Thought

   Repent therefore, and turn back, that your sins may be blotted out, that times of refreshing may come from the presence of the Lord, and that he may send the Christ appointed for you, Jesus, whom heaven must receive until the time for restoring all the things about which God spoke by the mouth of his holy prophets long ago. Moses said, ‘The Lord God will raise up for you a prophet like me from your brothers. You shall listen to him in whatever he tells you. And it shall be that every soul who does not listen to that prophet shall be destroyed from the people.’ And all the prophets who have spoken, from Samuel and those who came after him, also proclaimed these days. You are the sons of the prophets and of the covenant that God made with your fathers, saying to Abraham, ‘And in your offspring shall all the families of the earth be blessed.’ God, having raised up his servant, sent him to you first, to bless you by turning every one of you from your wickedness.” (Acts 3:19-26)

   “Easy Believism” has been a problem for a long time. It is the false notion that the “package” we call “salvation” is so small that all we need to do is ask Jesus into our hearts, and all will be well. Anything else is considered optional, and, in many cases, so-called “believers” are shocked to discover that Jesus actually requires them to walk in “the obedience of faith” with all their hearts, souls, minds, and strengths.

   When we travel through the book of Acts and consider how the Jewish apostles proclaimed the “good news of the kingdom” to their Jewish audiences, we don’t hear anything that resembles the “just ask Jesus into your hearts” gospel. The good news is always presented as dramatically life changing.

   The Jews would need to leave the old covenant they had lived under since the time of Moses, they would need to confess themselves as sinners in the sight of the God they thought they were serving, and they would need to admit that, even though they were descendants of Abraham, they weren’t actually IN the kingdom of God! They had to repent, be baptized, declare Jesus Christ as Lord, and join the church Jesus was building, no matter what the cost.

   What Peter told the Jews in today’s text above challenged my thinkin’-cap. Partly this was because I am still amazed at how the Old Testament Scriptures spoke of what Jesus did during his ministry and what he will do when he returns. And partly because of how radically life-changing it was for these people to admit their “wickedness” and turn to “this Jesus” for complete salvation.

   One of the Scriptures I often share to help myself and others picture how much change we should expect in our lives when we receive Jesus is this:

   “He has delivered us from the domain of darkness and transferred us to the kingdom of his beloved Son, in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins” (Colossians 1:13-14).

   The tiny package of “just accept Jesus into your heart” pictures Jesus coming to us. The full package of salvation sees Jesus calling us to come to him. And coming to him means being delivered out of our sinful lives, being transferred into his kingdom, and living the life of redemption in a restored relationship with God.

   And, in that relationship, Jesus is now head of his church, we are now members of his body, the Spirit has gifted us to serve others in love, and 100% of who we are and what we have is his. Yes, 100% of it!

   My fear is that the majority of people who have only asked Jesus into their hearts have never actually opened their hearts to Jesus at all. Some may have been born into the church as preemies, so to speak, but others have only put on the clothes of self-centered religion and have never been saved.

   While there is some distinctiveness in how the gospel was first shared with the Jews who had such rich history in the Scriptures, it was to prepare the way for us Gentiles (non-Jews) to realize that “all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God,” that “the wages of sin is death”, and that only when we repent (turn from sin) and believe (turn to Christ) can we leave our world of sin, enter Jesus’ kingdom, and walk with our Savior in the newness of life.

   Please do not take any chances with this. The small package version of the gospel does not save anyone. Jesus is the full package of salvation, and we all must be sure we have come to him, and that no one can ever snatch us out of his hand!

 

© 2025 Monte Vigh ~ Box 517, Merritt, BC, V1K 1B8

Email: in2freedom@gmail.com

Unless otherwise noted, Scriptures are from the English Standard Version (The Holy Bible, English Standard Version. ESV® Text Edition: 2016. Copyright © 2001 by Crossway Bibles, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers.)

 

 

On This Day: A Debt Cancelled; A Gift Received

   And Peter said to them, “Repent and be baptized every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins, and you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit. (Acts 2:38)

   Spending time with God in his word and prayer is not only about learning facts and information. It is about getting to know God better than we have ever known him before. Sometimes that revolves around discovering things in his word that have never stood out to us which leads us to relate to God more deeply about those very things.

   But other times it is discovering a new facet of something we already know and feeling it touch on things going on in us and around us that are simply the present work of God in our lives.

   Today, my meditation on God’s word led me to see “forgiveness of your sins” and “the gift of the Holy Spirit” in a relational way that hadn’t stood out to me previously, or that just happened to be exactly what I needed today. Either way, it ministered to me the word of God, and it led me to trust him for the very things he was speaking to me about.

   Previously, when I would hear the word “sin”, I would think of it as a thing. It was a particular transgression. An act of wrongdoing. It was simply a thing that was bad, wrong… SINFUL!

   But today’s focus on Peter’s use of “sins” was the discovery that it was more about the effects of our wrongdoing. In other words, it was about the guilt that separates us from God. It wasn’t just doing bad things, but doing the very things that took us away from God.

   So, when Peter emphasized the “forgiveness” of our sins, it was about God dealing with our estrangement from him so there was no longer anything between us. Our sin-debt was cancelled. Our violation of relationship with him was forgiven. The guilt, shame, and fear of sin were removed. From God’s side, there is no longer any debt, any condemnation, any works that still need to be done to restore us to him. He has done it all in Jesus Christ, and repentance and faith (as expressed in baptism) bring us into this gift of God.

   On the other side, the “gift of the Holy Spirit” is all about attachment. Forgiveness heals the estrangement, and the gift of the Holy Spirit gives us restored attachment. God removes what took us away from him and gives us his own presence to bring us close to him.

   I share this, not only to satisfy the full-brained needs of our bodies, and the full-minded needs of our souls, but to testify that what God showed me today was what I needed today. I needed to be reminded, and to feel it more deeply, that there is no longer anything between me and God to justify feeling estranged from him. And I needed to be reminded that the free gift of the Holy Spirit is God’s way of attaching to us during this earthly life so we can keep getting to know him better than we have ever known him before.

   And all of that made this Scripture resonate in and around me like a friend God has given me to help me along my way: “and hope does not put us to shame, because God's love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us” (Romans 5:5). When God gives the Holy Spirit to his forgiven children, his love is poured into our hearts. We grow in our experience of that love (attachment) as we seek every day to be “filled with the Spirit”.

   To put this into practice, my primary focus will be on the “set your minds on the Spirit” activity of faith. The battle is for my mind. Satan is just as active to speak his lies to my mind as God is at work to speak his truth in love. But God has spoken his love into my heart today in the exact way I need, and I expect he will keep me focused on him throughout this whole day so that his love feels every bit as real as it really is.

 

 

© 2025 Monte Vigh ~ Box 517, Merritt, BC, V1K 1B8

Email: in2freedom@gmail.com

Unless otherwise noted, Scriptures are from the English Standard Version (The Holy Bible, English Standard Version. ESV® Text Edition: 2016. Copyright © 2001 by Crossway Bibles, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers.)