Dickerson: God controls the spiritual 'C' button in our lives
By Chris Dickerson
Green Springs Baptist Church
What makes you say "wow" in life? For me it's seeing an amazing double play in baseball. Or maybe it's seeing the receiver catch the football with one hand as his toes barely graze the ground as he falls through the end zone.
It was certainly what I thought as I saw each of my four children born into this world. When we see something amazing, we respond by saying "wow."
There was such a wow moment in the life of a paralyzed man. He had been sick and unable to care for himself his entire life. Can you imagine not being able to walk, to eat or get dressed without someone's help? This man's life was filled with disappointment after disappointment. No doctor could cure him. No man could help him. No hope was for him.
But then he heard about a man named Jesus who was in town teaching. So the man asked his four friends to take him to Jesus. As they approached the house that afternoon, it was standing-room only. It would have been impossible to pull a stretcher through that crowd. And so the friends became inventive. After casing the house, they dug a hole in the roof and lowered him right in front of Jesus.
Now here comes the wow. Jesus looks at the man and says, "Your sins are forgiven." A lot of people can do a lot of things, but no one has ever forgiven sin; only God can do that. But to prove that the man's sin was forgiven, Jesus healed the man instantly of his paralysis. Can you imagine being in the house that day? You can hear the hush over the crowd as they collectively said, "Wow."
Do you know what it means that your sins are forgiven? My son is a first-grader at Baldwin Elementary School. His favorite subject right now is math. The first day of school, I picked up an old calculator they were giving away at the school. As I was showing him how to use the calculator that afternoon, he asked, "Daddy, what's that C button for?" I replied, "That's the clear button. You push that when you type in something wrong or you mess up the math equation."
Friend, that's what forgiveness is. When we mess up, when we do something wrong, when we disobey God, all we have to do is press the spiritual "C" button in our life and Jesus forgives us. He clears the record. He wipes it away. He removes our wrong as far as the east is from the west. The "C" button on your spiritual calculator stands not for clear, but for Christ. And when Jesus clears your account, that is forgiveness.
As the Civil War was coming to an end, a reporter asked President Abraham Lincoln the following question: "What are you going to do to those rebellious Southerners after the war is over? How are you going to treat them when they come back to the United States?"
Lincoln replied, "I will treat them as if they had never been away." That's how Jesus looks at us after he forgives us. He responds as if we'd been in the family all along. He says, "I'll treat them as if they had never been away." That's forgiveness. And that makes me say wow!
Chris Dickerson is pastor at Green Springs Baptist Church in Parkton.