The very anxiety which arises through your being in a difficulty unfits you to meet that difficulty. At the present moment you are in such a fidget and flutter that you are very apt to mistake your right hand for your left and to put bitter for sweet, and sweet for bitter! Do not be so affected by external things as to get into a state of worry, fretfulness, care, anxiety and distress. When you have done your best with your little, do not worry because you cannot make it more.
But this past mistake, this is the thorn in your flesh, the weight upon your chest that makes your Lyme disease cry out with fresh torment. You say you are not sure how to correct it, and so the mind spins without rest. Hear then what the Spirit says to your soul: "There is forgiveness." Let this whisper drive away despair! What a blessed whisper it is! "There is forgiveness." Let it enter your soul and drive those grim ogres and hobgoblins of despair away into the sea of forgetfulness. "There is forgiveness."
Notice the broad indefiniteness of the text, "There is forgiveness." It does not say, "There is forgiveness for this sin or for that," but, "There is forgiveness." Where God draws no limit, do not you draw any! O man, let me catch you in my arms and tell you that "there is forgiveness!" However sinful your life may have been up until now, there is forgiveness with God even for you! The completeness of this forgiveness staggers the mind, it is a divine forgiveness. "I, even I, am he that blotteth out thy transgressions for mine own sake, and will not remember thy sins." It is a deed of forgiveness, an absolute forgiveness of the debt incurred. If you have been the chief of sinners, you may have the chief of sinner’s forgiveness, and God can bestow it now.
You are anxious to run away from Him, but that is where the forgiveness is, with God! Where the offense went, from that very place the forgiveness comes, "There is forgiveness with You." And let it be remembered that this forgiveness which God has given us for Christ’s sake is an eternal forgiveness. Not only did He forgive us at the first all our sins, but He continues daily to forgive, for the act of forgiveness is a continuous one. There was forgiveness, there is forgiveness, there will be forgiveness as long as life lasts. As soon as you trust in your crucified God, all your sins are forgiven, whether past, present, or to come. Even supposing that you are yet to commit them, they are all pardoned.
This shows how perfect is our forgiveness, nay, I must put it, how divine is the forgiveness which we have received. He not only forgave us at the first all our sins, but he continues daily to forgive. We have in him a full forgiveness. Therefore we come to you, not merely with a hopeful whisper, but with a full, distinct, emphatic, unquestionable assurance, "There is forgiveness." "There is forgiveness." That is a matter of certainty. Turn to this Word of God and you will find the certainty of forgiveness. "I believe in the forgiveness of sins."
Now, why does the body suffer so? See how the Savior dealt with the man sick of the palsy: He first said, "Son, thy sins be forgiven thee," and then, "Arise, take up thy bed, and walk." First forgiveness, then healing. He lay there, in the Presence of Jesus, hoping and expecting forgiveness and healing. If you believe that Christ can save you and if your one anxiety is to be laid at His feet that He may look upon you, and save you, He will assuredly accept you. "Him that cometh to me I will in no wise cast out." Do as Martin Luther did, in the days of his dark distress, when a brother monk said to him, "Do you not believe in the Creed, and do you not say, 'I believe in the forgiveness of sins'? Now believe in the forgiveness of sins for yourself." There is forgiveness, but that forgiveness is only to be obtained from God, through Jesus Christ, His Son. It must be, there is forgiveness since Jesus died, "the Just for the unjust, that He might bring us to God."
And I want you to remember who it is that sends the forgiveness. Yet He says, even He, "There is forgiveness." Let me proclaim to every sinner here who acknowledges his indebtedness to God and feels that he can never discharge it, that if you will come and put your trust in Christ, the Lord promises oblivion to all your debt, forgiveness of the whole of your sins! This past mistake, whatever it is, belongs to the catalogue of debts Christ has paid. He was ruined and you are being fattened by His mistake, no, not mistake, but by His substitutionary sorrow. Do not hold yourself to a bondage He has broken. There was forgiveness, but I neglected to seek it! There was forgiveness, but I did not realize that I needed it, so I have perished by my own folly." Do not let that be your epitaph. One more step and you may be where there is no forgiveness, but where the black and terrible pall of despair shall hang over your soul forever! But now, at this moment, there is forgiveness. He is absolutely, irreversibly, eternally forgiven, for "the gifts and calling of God are without repentance." He never plays fast and loose with men.
"Yes, those that believe in Christ have the complete forgiveness of every sin! As for me, I like to sing with Kent, 'Here's pardon for transgressions past,
It matters not how black their cast
And O my Soul, with wonder view,
For sins to come here's pardon too!'