Comfort, comfort my people, says your God. Speak tenderly to Jerusalem, and proclaim to her that her hard service has been completed, that her sin has been paid for, that she has received from the Lord’s hand double for all her sins.
Isaiah 40: 1-2
These last two weeks we have been trying to understand God, in as much as a human mind can understand the divine.
If we are to understand God then yes, we understand he is creator, lawgiver, and everything in between. To understand God is to understand our sin and the importance of repentance. Yet to think that it is our repentance that gives us hope would be a mistake.
God, speaking through Isaiah said ‘Comfort, comfort my people, says your God. Speak tenderly to Jeruslaem, and proclaim to her that her hard service has been completed, that her sin has been paid for.’
Here is the key to understanding the hope we have in God. It is not that we have paid for our sin, it is not that we have made up for our sin, it is not that our repentance makes everything ok. It is that our sin has been paid for. God himself, in the person of Jesus Christ has paid the price through Jesus death on the cross. The perfect sinless creator sacrificing himself for the sinful creation.
This hope, our sin being paid for is received though faith in Jesus Christ. That means it is received simply by believing, trusting, being assured that through the cross we have forgiveness of sins. Believing means living in a way that shows this to be true – which is what we call repentance, the change of life, the change in how we live.
As we finish our set of reflections on understanding God we are left with the question, do we understand the hope of God? Is now the time to start believing in a creator God deserving of our total obedience and so to turn from the sin that besets each one of us, trusting in his salvation receiving his hope?
I hope these reflections have helped us to understand God, and in understanding him we have grown to know him better.
Prayer Lord Jesus Christ, I have sinned. As David said, I have sinned against you and you alone. I am not worthy of the hope you bring through Jesus Christ. Yet Lord I thank you because of Jesus, his life, death, and resurrection. I thank you for the hope of his return in glory. Lord, forgive me, renew me, and teach me to live as you have commanded. May the hope of the gospel be real in my life and seen in my life. Amen