Spiritual Growth / Repentance and Forgiveness

  • The Deception of Empty Words

    Ephesians 5:6

    There are men and women struggling with sexual sin in all of our congregations. They want to please God and are seeking to mortify the flesh, and we should do all that we can to help them. This means creating ...Read More

  • Grieving the Holy Spirit

    Ephesians 4:30

    Just as we experience the joy of restoration upon repentance, so we make amends for grieving the Spirit when we turn from our sin and seek to do His will. When we sense a distance in our relationship to God ...Read More

  • What We Learned in Christ

    Ephesians 4:23-24

    Taking off our old selves — our Adamic natures that love rebellion — and putting on Christ is really a single act. We cannot live in Adam and in Christ at the same time, which means that we cannot refuse to give ...Read More

  • Learning Christ

    Ephesians 4:20-22

    John Calvin writes, “He whose life differs not from that of unbelievers, has learned nothing of Christ; for the knowledge of Christ cannot be separated from the mortification of the flesh.” Scripture never asserts that sinless perfection is attainable before ...Read More

  • The Church is Holy

    1 Corinthians 1:2

    Through the blood of Christ, God sees His church as holy, although He is by no means ignorant of the sin that persists in our lives. Yet this declaration of holiness gives us confidence that we can make real progress ...Read More

  • The Mystery’s of God’s Purpose

    Ephesians 1:8-9

    Wisdom, the ability to put what we know into right action, seems to be in short supply these days, but Paul assures us that we have the wisdom needed to live for Christ as a gift of divine grace. The ...Read More

  • The Costs and Demands of Love

    Philemon 17-18

    Are you hesitating to do something that godly love compels you to do? If so, then may Philemon encourage you to stop putting it off and move forward today. Insofar as we are able, we must seek to be reconciled ...Read More

  • Always Reforming

    Nehemiah 13

    Consistent preaching of the gospel both to ourselves and to the world around us is necessary if reformation is to endure. We need to be reminded of the gravity of our sin and the greatness of our Savior in order ...Read More

  • Weeping for God’s People

    Nehemiah 1:4-11

    The most important reformation of all is the reformation of the church. When the people of God return to Him and submit themselves anew to the Word, then the Lord moves in powerful ways among them. Submission to the Word ...Read More

  • Restoration Fulfilled?

    2 Chronicles 36:22-23

    Even though the citizens of Judah returned to the Promised Land beginning around 538 BC, the restoration did not take place as God had foretold — on account of impenitence. Hundreds of years after the return, He sent His one and ...Read More

  • A Futile Striving

    Lamentations 2:1-5

    Because our Lord is slow to anger, we should not live in fear that He is always about to “get us” because of our sins. At the same time, we should understand that if we harden our hearts persistently, we ...Read More

  • The Revelation

    Genesis 45

    We often long for things to be “just as they were before [fill in the blank] happened” in our relationships with other people. If we are the main offending party, however, we cannot realistically expect this to happen if our ...Read More

  • Unlimited Forgiveness

    Matthew 18:21–35

    It is not as if unforgiving people lose their salvation, Matthew Henry says, for “those who do not forgive their brother’s trespasses, did never truly repent of their own, and therefore that which is taken away is only what ...Read More

  • Redemptive Discipline

    Matthew 18:15–17

    In excommunication, Dr. John MacArthur writes, “the idea is not merely to punish the offender, or to shun him completely, but to remove him as a detrimental influence from the fellowship of the church, and then to regard him as ...Read More

  • The Disciples’ Prayer

    Matthew 6:9–15

    Lack of forgiveness, we learn in today’s passage, may prove a lack of faith. No matter how hard it may be to forgive others, we simply cannot call ourselves followers of Christ if we do not forgive those who ...Read More