Forgiveness For Punishment (Daily Devotional)

Hello and welcome to Living Supernaturally. We’re so glad you are here today as we look into God’s word, welcome to our daily devotional. This week, we are going to look at the cross and the greatest exchange that was made. The cross historically has been a place of torture and an instrument where people were executed during the Roman times and also even before that. But the Lord Jesus through what He accomplished on the cross turned it around to be a symbol of hope. On the cross was the greatest exchange offer that was ever made for the entire humanity. So today, we will look at one of those things that was exchanged. We look at the fact that there was forgiveness that was exchanged in place of punishment. We might think what is so great about forgiveness, why should there be forgiveness? I don’t feel the need to be forgiven, maybe, you could be in that place. This is what the word of God says in Romans chapter 3, verses 23 and 24 says, ‘for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, being justified freely by His grace through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus,’ The word of God says ‘all’ meaning everybody, the entire humanity and it says that all have sinned and have fallen short of the glory of God which means that entire humanity was heading towards the destiny that is apart from God, a place which is isolated, distanced and separated from God, a place called hell. There is only one hope for humanity which is forgiveness because of what the Lord Jesus did for us on the cross. It says here that this justification and forgiveness is extended freely through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus. That is the greatest exchange offer that the Lord Jesus is extending today because of the cross, forgiveness in place of eternal punishment. Isaiah chapter 53, verses 4 and 5 says, ‘Surely, He has borne our griefs and carried our sorrows; Yet we esteemed Him stricken, Smitten by God, and afflicted. But He was wounded for our transgressions, He was bruised for our iniquities; The chastisement for our peace was upon Him, And by His stripes we are healed.’ The Lord carried our griefs which means our sicknesses, our sorrows which means our pain and our chastisement which means the punishment for us to experience the shalom or the peace of God/ peace with God, He carried upon Himself. So, forgiveness is a great thing. There are things that we could do in place of forgiveness like we could pretend that we don’t need forgiveness, we could come to terms with the guilt, shame and condemnation and pretend we don’t need forgiveness or we could do other things to do deal with it like we could maybe stuff things down and hope that doing something else will help forget the reminder of the guilt and shame, but the fact is that this is a gift of grace. We have access to this great exchange by grace through faith in Jesus. Here are some things that we can do, receive with gratitude, remind ourselves of this truth and resist any attempt of the enemy to take us away from the truth. Shall we pray? Father, we thank you for this gift of grace that we have through faith. We thank you for this great exchange that in place of punishment you give us forgiveness. We receive it gratefully and we remind ourselves of this and we resist any attempt of the enemy to take this truth away from us, in Jesus’ name, Amen.

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Daily devotions to strengthen your faith each day. Daily Devotional for Spirit filled living. Each daily devotion is about five minutes in duration. These daily devotionals are centered around a weekly theme. So there are seven daily devotions that focus on the theme and bring you insight, understanding and revelation from the Bible. Each week’s theme is listed as a series. So you can listen to the current week’s devotions or go to any previous theme/series that speaks to your present need (https://apcwo.org/resources/daily-devotions ). Also available free sermons (https://apcwo.org/sermons), and free Christian books (https://apcwo.org/books) to nourish and strengthen your faith.