Is Forgiveness Enough?

He sat on the floor of our bathroom, his head in his hands. He lamented the choices he had been making, wishing he could take them all back; wishing he could go back to weeks ago when we ran into each other on the trail near my house. He would have made a different choice if he could go back.

His confession was combined with drug-induced paranoia. I'd seen him a few weeks earlier, bought him lunch and given him a lift. At that point I told him he could go to detox and stay in the nightmare of his addiction and life on the streets. It is a much longer story, but he told me he wasn't ready for detox.

Perhaps, now.

He looked up and asked me, "Do you think forgiveness is enough?"

I surpised myself by answering rather quickly, "No. It's not enough."

He looked at me with questions, and I said, "You ALWAYS have forgiveness. The love of the Father is ALWAYS pursuing you; always! He never gives up. He is always for you. Just ask and it is yours. But you need more than to be forgiven. I need more than forgiveness. I need empowerment to live in a new way. YOU need empowerment to live in a new way."

Jesus didn't live, die and rise again just so we can be forgiven. Forgiveness gets us back from negative accounting to zero. Jesus wants to move us into the black, into positive numbers, into life abundant, into a place where we are exercising authority over the things that have mastered us. He came to bring us into our authority as daughters and sons of our Father in heaven, where we are exercising His Kingdom authority on earth as it is in heaven.