3rd December

I have swept away your offences like a cloud, your sins like the morning mist. Return to me for I have redeemed you. Isaiah 44, 22

You are redeemed with the precious blood of Christ, a lamb without blemish or defect. 1 Peter 1, 18 & 19

Indelible stain

Everybody spends some of his time with cleaning: hoover the dust, polish the car, clean the windows, wash the dishes or the washing, everybody wrestles against dirt.

However, there is a stain which man cannot remove in spite of all his efforts; the stain of sin. He can well try to cover it with the polish of civilization by a coat of social or humanitary help; sin stays in the human heart where God sees it with all it's ugliness. Nobody can remove it; we have to give it up. God declared: "Although you wash yourself with soda and use an abundance of soap, the stain of your guilt is still before me" (Jeremiah 2, 22).

God is the only one who can remove it. He does it for him who recognizes his state: "God have mercy on me, a sinner" (Luke 18, 13).

Man cannot do anything; God has done everything. However, what a high price he had to pay to remove sin!

He did not spare his own Son, but gave him up for us all (Romans 8, 32). On the cross, Jesus, the only righteous one, had to say: "My sins have overtaken me" (Psalm 40, 12).

These were my sins which he carried and which he made disappear; but "the blood of Jesus purifies us from all sin" (1 John 1, 7). If we despise what he has done for us we cannot be forgiven.