Forgiveness

Isaiah 1:18-20 ESV
18 “Come now, let us reason together, says the Lord:
though your sins are like scarlet, they shall be as white as snow; though they are red like crimson, they shall become like wool. 19 If you are willing and obedient, you shall eat the good of the land; 20 but if you refuse and rebel, you shall be eaten by the sword; for the mouth of the Lord has spoken.”

Please read Psalm 66:18 and Proverbs 28:13. I thought of these verses right off because this portion of scripture the Lord is putting it all on the table: "You have sinned, but you can be clean."

Personally, I see Isaiah 1:19-20 in a new light, and that would be accepting or rejecting the forgiveness God has for us and the results of following either path. Obedience and disobedience in this case could very well be the difference of confessing and forsaking the sin or holding and hiding the sin.

2 Corinthians 7:10 talks about godly grief/sorrow and worldly grief/sorrow. We started with God addressing our sin and giving us a choice to accept forgiveness or to reject it. 2 Corinthians 7:10 guides us in understanding that accepting that forgiveness is no light matter, but comes from the sorrow we know from disobeying God in the first place. Guilt, or worldly sorrow, doesn't produce the confessing or forsaking but rather produces either rebellion or depression, i.e. death.

What does this mean to us? We sin. God knows. We know. We can be feel bad about it, beat ourselves up over it and just shut off God from our lives. Or we grieve because we disobeyed God, turn from and forsake the sin and then continue to grow in the Lord.