Have you ever heard someone describe Jesus as “healthy”?
Dr. Luke noticed how completely healthy Jesus was—mentally, physically, spiritually, and relationally—and then told us how we, too, can be wholly healthy.
Leaders, you cannot give to others what you do not possess yourself. If you want the people around you to be healthy, you must first get healthy yourself.
I have five chapters in Shepherd Leadership: The Metrics That Really Matter where I talk about a leader’s health.
This is a weekly series with things I’m reading and pondering from Charles Spurgeon. You can read the original seed thought here, or type “Thursdays With Spurgeon” in the search box to read more entries.
Listen to the podcast of this post by clicking on the player below, and you can also subscribe on iTunes or Spotify.
“All” Means All
Forgiving one another, even as God for Christ’s sake has forgiven you. (Ephesians 4:32)
We pass on to observe what it is that we are told in the text has been done for us and to us, for Christ’s sake: ‘God for Christ’s sake has forgiven you.’ … Have you put your trust in the atoning sacrifice? Then God for Christ’s sake has forgiven you. You have not begun to be a Christian, I hope, with the idea that one day, at some future period, you may obtain forgiveness. No. ‘God for Christ’s sake has forgiven you.’ … Pardon is not a prize to be run for, but a blessing received at the first step of the race. If you have believed in Jesus, your sins are all gone—all gone. All your sins have been erased from the records of the past, never to be mentioned against you forever! …
I have sometimes heard it said that we were so forgiven when we first believed that there is no need to ask for further forgiveness. I will reply, we were so completely forgiven when we first believed that we ought continually to ask for the perpetuity of that one far-reaching act, that the Lord may continue to exert toward us that fullness of forgiving grace that absolved us perfectly at the first, that we may continue to walk before Him with a sense of that complete forgiveness, clear and unquestioned. …
O you believers, think of this, for the ‘all’ is no little thing. It includes sins against a holy God, sins against His loving Son, sins against gospel as well as against law, sins against man as well as against God, sins of the body as well as sins of the mind, sins as numerous as the sands of the seashore and as great as the sea itself, and all are removed from us as far as the east is from the west!
From Forgiveness Made Easy
Let me drive home Charles Spurgeon’s point with two passages of Scripture and a stanza from an old hymn.
[God] does not treat us as our sins deserve or repay us according to our iniquities. For as high as the heavens are above the earth, so great is His love for those who fear Him; as far as the east is from the west, so far has He removed our transgressions from us. (Psalm 103:10-12)
For I will forgive their wickedness and will remember their sins no more. (Hebrews 8:12)
So I think this is a good conclusion—In this freedom Christ has made us free and completely liberated us; stand fast then, and do not be hampered and held ensnared and submit again to a yoke of slavery which you have once put off. (Galatians 5:1 AMP)
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Craig T. Owens 