September 19, 2026
Saturday, September 19
The atoning death of Jesus changed everything. First, it opened a door so that all people could be saved. The divine dilemma was solved in a way that perfectly showed His righteousness AND His mercy. God had been holding back His righteous wrath for centuries, as our debt against Him mounted up. But now, it was all paid. No one, no matter how sinful, was banned from His presence. All of us could come to Him and be saved. If we come into His presence filled with shame, He says, “Forget about all of that. It’s been nailed to the cross. Thrown into the sea of forgetfulness. Come and be my child forever.”
But the change went beyond individual salvation. It literally changed the world. Before Christ, forgiveness wasn’t seen as a virtue. Read the ancient philosophers of Greece and Rome, the men who defined what it meant to be a good person. None of them ever mentioned mercy or grace. To them, to be a good person was to be morally superior. Why would a morally superior person ever forgive someone who is morally inferior? In the rest of the world, strength was the chief virtue. If someone sinned against you, it meant your honor was at stake. Only by getting vengeance could we get our honor back.
But that all changed after Jesus. Today, for all the wickedness of our culture, we still find it moving to see a story of forgiveness. Think about the enduring popularity of the musical Les Miserables, for one example. Or the way a news story about a crime victim forgiving her attacker quickly goes viral. The world cheers when we see a person forgive someone else. We know that’s what it means to be a good person. We owe that to what happened on Good Friday. Hannah Arendt, a Jewish scholar who was not a Christian, wrote, “The discoverer of the role of forgiveness in human affairs was Jesus of Nazareth.” She goes on to say that if we want to become truly good people, we must study His life.
While I agree with her, I think she doesn’t go far enough. If all we do is study Jesus’ life, we’ll still never get there. We’ll never become the kind of people who are good enough to forgive. But if we’ve come to believe in Jesus’ sacrifice for our sins, if we recognize that Jesus cut the cord that bound us to our old life, and all our sins, then we are free to forgive. And if we’re not willing, perhaps it’s because we’ve never really come to the cross. CS Lewis said it this way: “To be a Christian means to forgive the inexcusable, because God has forgiven the inexcusable in you.” Is that your story? If not, are you ready to begin living that story today? And if it is, you know the glory of Grace Greater Than Our Sin.
Senior Pastor
First Baptist Conroe
More from Pastor Jeff at his website: jeffbergerwriting.com
