10 REFLECTIONS FROM
OUR DAILY BREAD
INTRODUCTION | Karen Huang, Our Daily Bread Author
Released
I t was 11 a.m., and I was still in bed.
I wanted sleep; I wanted oblivion. Months of relentless work and the launch of a successful project had left me exhausted. I gave up time with family and sacrificed rest and weekends, I thought. Success is difficult because I care too much. I want to stop caring.
No, it wasn’t really the project that I cared about—I was worried about making mistakes. I’d always been afraid of failing, and my fear had driven me to a life that revolved around check marks on to-do lists and ensuring all details in every task were covered. “What is it about mistakes that makes you afraid?” a friend once asked. “Is it disappointing others? Losing control?”
“It’s not being loved,” I said. The words came out of my mouth quickly, but I was surprised to hear them. Maybe my fear had already become so great that it could overpower my voice.
Of course, my fear wasn’t limited to work. In my relationships, a voice within always said, The love of another is like plaster on a wall. If you fail them, a chip will fall.
And although I’d been a believer in Jesus for many years, this was also how I understood God’s love. I believed that His love for me was dependent on how well I behaved. Consequently, I was in denial of my many sinful habits, since I thought that owning up to them would mean facing the “fact” that God’s love for me had dwindled!
When we allow the reality of
forgiveness to become ours,
we give God unhindered access
to work in us
Then one morning when I was experiencing quiet despair over these fears, I came across a familiar verse: “God showed his great love for us by sending Christ to die for us while we were still sinners” (ROMANS 5:8). The words comforted me as they never had before. My hungry heart made my eyes devour them. Is it really true? Yes. Even while we were still sinners, God loved us.
He could have responded to us in any way He chose. We were defenseless, after all; our unrighteousness was an offense to His holy nature. But because God loved us, He sent His Son, Jesus, to die on our behalf. The blood He shed on the cross was the payment for our release from the debt we owed Him and from eternal separation from Him (ROMANS 6:23; EPHESIANS 1:7).
I’d believed that if I made mistakes, I wouldn’t be loved. But Scripture says God already loved me even when my sinful nature defined me as one who’d forever fail Him. Jesus released me from the penalty of being a sinner and took on my sin (2 CORINTHIANS 5:21).
Ephesians 1:7 says, “[Christ] purchased our freedom with the blood of his Son and forgave our sins” (SEE ALSO COLOSSIANS 1:14; HEBREWS 9:15). The Greek word translated “purchased our freedom” means a release brought about by payment of a ransom.
This is the hope-filled message of Easter! When we believe what Jesus did for us through His death and resurrection, and choose to follow Him as our Savior, His perfection becomes ours. No, it doesn’t mean we turn into sinless human beings, but our identity and standing before God are now forever defined by Jesus’ work at the cross. Through the sacrifice of His blood, God provides forgiveness, final and absolute. It transforms everything—how God sees us, how we’re to see ourselves, how we’re to live in this world, and how our physical death will be nothing more than the beginning of eternity with Him.
“I will forgive their wickedness,” God said of us in Hebrews 8:12, “and will never again remember their sins.” And when we do sin, as we inevitably will, God not only promises us forgiveness if we turn to Him in repentance, but also helps us overcome sin (1 JOHN 1:9).
Because God releases us from our debt to Him, we can release others from their debt to us by forgiving them. It’s humanly impossible to forgive others in our own strength, and God knows this. He wants us to ask Him to help us. Just as it was His love that did the work of drawing us to Himself, it’s His love that will enable us to forgive others. It’s also His love that will absorb our pain.
Accepting God’s forgiveness and embracing a life that offers this forgiveness to others means putting a stop to a life defined by the lie that sin is more powerful than the cross. When we allow the reality of forgiveness to become ours, we give God unhindered access to work in us.
The following devotional articles will help you reflect on the new life Jesus purchased with His death and resurrection. My prayer for you this Easter is that you’ll ask God to help you receive His forgiveness and then offer it to others. Doing so will lead you to new depths and joys in your life.
Those who reject Jesus’ death on the cross might think it foolish to believe that the Son of God died and rose again to release us from the consequences of our sin. But for those who believe, those who are “being saved,” the cross “is the very power of God” (V. 18). As Paul says, God makes foolish the wisdom of the world, but “this foolish plan of God is wiser than the wisest of human plans”.
Scripture tells us that we have value because God has made us His children, not because of anything we offer or accomplish. “God… has blessed us with every spiritual blessing” without any thought to what we might extend in return (EPHESIANS 1:3). God set His eyes on us simply because it “gave him great pleasure” to make us His own.
When we focus on our insufficiencies instead of God’s ever- sufficient grace, it’s hard to live like we trust God. But even in that struggle, God can help us see ourselves as redeemed people who are called and empowered to live for Jesus—pointing others to the hope we have in Him.
When Jesus hung on the cross, the events swirling around Him involved people who also had stories. Soldiers made brutal by years of combat, religionists hardened by years of trying to obey the law, crowds desperate for rescue but without real hope. None of that excused their hate-filled actions, but it may help to explain why Christ showed them mercy when He cried from the cross, “Father, forgive them, for they don’t know what they are doing”
The park rangers responded to Karina with grace, thanking her for returning the rock and recognizing that she was becoming a good steward of the natural resources of the park. By admitting our guilt, we honor the sacrifice made for us by Jesus, who gave His life in payment for it and rose again to give us new life. God faithfully and generously responds with His forgiveness.
The word redemption here comes from the Hebrew word padah, which means “to ransom”—to pay the necessary price so that someone can be freed from punishment. This is what Jesus’ death accomplished for us. And as we walk with Him today in newness of life, He promises us forgiveness for the sins we still commit whenever we turn to Him in repentance.
We watch as the bread and wine is passed to each person. In the front row sits Edna’s sister, who’s been in the process of divorcing her husband but who now lovingly holds his hand. Next, we see Moses, an African American man who’s helped Edna with her farm. In that segregated era in the United States, it’s a surprising sight.
Extending grace to someone is often an unexpected gift that can lift a heaviness of the heart. It’s an offshoot of the incredible grace that God has given us. We deserved to be eternally separated from God because of our sin, but instead, He gave us a gift that was completely undeserved—His Son, Jesus, who was Himself “full of grace and truth” (JOHN 1:14 NIV). This Grace-Giver transformed Good Friday’s sorrow into Easter’s joy.
The reality of what the tiniest defect did to the Hubble Telescope can be seen as a contrast to the unequaled value of Jesus, who is absolutely perfect, sinless, and spotless (1 PETER 1:19). Jesus was born, lived, died, and was raised from the dead without ever committing a sin in His words, thoughts, or actions. Not even a defect as small as the width of a hair.
“Return, O Israel, to the LORD your God…. Bring your confessions, and return to the LORD. Say to him, ‘Forgive all our sins and graciously receive us.’ ” Big or small, few or many, our sins separate us from God. But the gap can be closed by turning from sin to Him and receiving the forgiveness He’s graciously provided through the death and resurrection of Jesus.
When God forgives our sin through Jesus, He breathes new life into us. His forgiveness is perfect—He loves flawlessly and forgives completely. God is able to let go of the past entirely so that we can make a new beginning with Him. For everyone who comes to Him—no matter where they’ve been or what they’ve done—He promises, “I will forgive their wickedness, and I will never again remember their sins” (HEBREWS 8:12).
