Wednesday, March 6, 2024

Forgiveness, Salvation, and the Prodigal Son

      Our salvation through Jesus Christ isn't about forgiveness, but this does not preclude forgiveness. If God isn't willing that any should perish but that all should come to repentance, then that is exactly what is going to happen. Salvation isn't about forgiveness, because God isn't worried about the offenses. He's the Father who runs to the prodigal son, not the pagan god that demands blood and then might "consider" forgiving.

      God's main objective for all human beings is that they come to their senses and come home, and this will happen for all human beings sooner or later because this is His will. It is His objective to bring them out of the darkness, and into the light, but He will not force it. It must be voluntary or it destroys the person He is intent on rescuing. And so yes, He allows them to be tossed into the outer darkness within Eternity, but eternity and forever are two different things in the Greek language in which the New Testament is written. He allows them to be subject to servitude and starve while pigs get more food than they do. Why? So that the person, the consciousness, will come to their senses and come home, and God is patient. Time has no meaning for Him except for what passes through Him, but He Himself is not subject to. 

     What is easier to say, "Your sins are forgiven you," or "get up and walk?" Jesus was clear that the miracle was not the forgiveness of sins, that's easy for God. The miracle was getting the lame man to walk, and so this is the miracle of salvation, getting us human beings to "walk in the Spirit" of Christ. To submit to and cooperate with the Spirit of Christ just as Jesus Christ submitted to and cooperated with the Father so that, "if you have seen Me, you have seen the Father." The son who never left home and to whom everything the Father has belongs is this one who has gotten up and walked. Everything the Father has belongs to the one who is in submission to and cooperation with the Spirit of Christ.

     The parable of the prodigal son is the message that He's not holding any of our offenses against us, and it's only our persistence in the darkness of our own minds that is keeping us from Him. All He wants is for us to come to our senses and come home. And once we have done this, our salvation in this life is Him making it possible for us to "get up and walk."

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