Temptation
I keep making the same mistake and coming back with the same apology. Is there a point where God finally gives up on me?
“Come now, and let us reason together, saith the LORD: though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be as white as snow; though they be red like crimson, they shall be as wool.”
Isaiah opens with God taking a nation to court over a long record of failure, and in the middle of the indictment comes an invitation to sit down and reason together. The offer is not made to people who have just started slipping. It is made to the people described in the harshest terms in the chapter, and the colors are chosen because scarlet dye was famously permanent.
“Then came Peter to him, and said, Lord, how oft shall my brother sin against me, and I forgive him? till seven times? Jesus saith unto him, I say not unto thee, Until seven times: but, Until seventy times seven.”
Peter asks Jesus for a cap on forgiveness and proposes seven, already generous by the standards of his day. Jesus multiplies the number into absurdity, not to set a higher ceiling but to show that counting is the wrong activity altogether. If that is the standard he sets for ordinary people forgiving each other, it says something about the one setting it.
A path forward
Notice that the fear itself is a good sign. People who have genuinely stopped caring do not lie awake wondering whether God has had enough of them.
Change what you do afterward, not only what you do beforehand. Come back the same day rather than serving yourself a three day sentence first, because the delay is where most of the damage gets done.
Say this exact fear out loud to a pastor or a mature Christian friend. The question 'has God given up on me' loses a surprising amount of its power once another person has heard it.
Closing verse
“For I am persuaded, that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers, nor things present, nor things to come, Nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature, shall be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.”
- Romans 8:38-39
Coming Soon
Want to ask your own question?
Revealed is building a feature that lets you ask anything and receive a Bible-rooted response drawn from both Testaments. Join the waitlist to be first to know when it launches.