August 14, 2011 – Luke 1:67 – 2:20

Verse 77 talks about salvation and the method of salvation. It says that people will receive salvation through the belief in the Son of God, Jesus Christ. OOPS. No it says that they will receive salvation through the forgiveness of their sins. If the path to salvation is through the forgiveness of your sins, what the Bible has to say about the forgiveness of your sins is probably pretty important. I don’t know of anywhere in the Bible that it says all your sins will be forgiven by praying to God and asking for that. It does say that Christ gave the power to the Apostles to forgive or retain sins. This is not a power He gave to a large group or the masses, just the Apostles. And if a person has the power to forgive or retain the sins of others, there must be some way for them to know what the sins are. Christ appears to set up a middle man between God and Us when it comes to the forgiveness of our sins. It is good to talk to God and ask for forgiveness when we fail, but to obtain that clean slate that God wants, there is a requirement to involve someone special that has the power, given from God, to forgive you of those sins.