Friday 17 March: Forgiven

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Bible reading: Romans 3.21–31

The atheist novelist and critic Marghanita Laski once put her finger on the heart of the gospel. She said in a TV interview, ‘What I envy most about you Christians is your forgiveness; I have nobody to forgive me.’

It’s a basic fact of the human condition that we’ve all done wrong – ‘sinned’, in Bible language. ‘Everyone has sinned and is far away from God’s saving presence,’ says Paul (Romans 3.23). 

That word ‘sin’ is a bit loaded. It can make us think of purely religious rules that might seem a bit random, or run against what people might think is pretty normal nowadays. But ‘sin’ is mostly just the God dimension of what we do when we hurt other people, or ourselves, by the choices we make. We do hurt other people, intentionally or not. There’s a line in a Church of England confession that says, ‘We have done those things which we ought not to have done, and we have left undone those things we ought to have done.’ That sums it up pretty well – all of us, if we’re honest, have things in our lives to be ashamed of. 

Where do we go to find forgiveness? We can and should seek it from the people we’ve wronged, as far as we can. But hurts inflicted on other people are also sins against God. Christians are deeply conscious that we rely on his grace and mercy all the time, every day. We may have done great wrong, but we have a greater Saviour.

This reflection was written by Mark Woods, Head of Communications at Bible Society.