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.)
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