God’s Word Encourages to Choose the Blessing and Believe Sins Forgiven

A person can do good deeds and live a good life in their own eyes and in the eyes of their friends. However, thinking about eternal life and death can bring about fear and anxiety. In Genesis Chapter 3, the story of the fall into sin of the first human couple, Adam and Eve, is told. As a result of the Fall, all humans became sinful. The serpent, who was God’s enemy and the enemy of souls, deceived them into tasting the forbidden fruit.

I give you now the choice between a blessing and a curse (Deut. 11:26)

Adam and Eve’s homemade clothes did not provide freedom and peace in front of God (Gen. 3:7). God needed to exchange those clothes with coats that He had made (Gen.3:21). In His kingdom, God fulfils the promise of grace given in paradise (Gen. 3:15) and invites us to believe in the forgiveness of sins. When a person hears the gospel of the forgiveness of sins and believes it, they receive the gift of living faith. God gives the Holy Spirit and answers with peace in the heart, showing that such a one is righteous and acceptable to Him.

When God calls a person into relationship with Him, He awakens the conscience to seek God’s kingdom and helps to find it. He gives the power to decide whether to follow the call: I give you now the choice between a blessing and a curse (Deut. 11:26).

God encourages us to choose the blessing. However, the enemy of souls interferes with choosing the blessing, accusing us of being too sinful to be forgiven. The Bible teaches otherwise. Jesus promised the thief on the cross, who was a murderer, access to paradise (Luke 23; Matt. 27; Mark. 15; John 19). At the well of Sychar, Jesus showed mercy to a woman who had committed adultery multiple times (John 4). Zacchaeus, a tax collector who had wrongly taken people’s wealth, had Jesus as a guest in his home (Luke 19).

God’s Word promises to forgive every repentant person’s sins. We must pray for courage and guidance to find God’s kingdom, and we must pray for strength to believe in the simple sermon of forgiveness of sins as we hear it preached with the power of the Holy Spirit from the lips of a believer in God’s kingdom.

The disciples asked Jesus what they would receive by following Him. Jesus replied,

“And everyone who has left houses or brothers or sisters or father or mother or wife or children or fields for my sake will receive a hundred times as much and will inherit eternal life.” (Matt. 19:29)

Image: Summer Services photography in Finland, 2023