The best way to reflect God's forgiveness is to first experience it in our own lives. If I do not personally experience God's forgiveness of my sins, then I find it difficult to show forgiveness to others.

Sometimes there are specific sins that we continue to feel guilty about. Often women who have had abortions find it difficult to feel forgiven. Whenever some event reminds them of their past mistake, they are overcome with guilt.

Sometimes well-meaning friends try to minimize the sins of the past, or to excuse our actions by pointing to all the difficult circumstances that surrounded our sin. But excuses and minimizing don't take away guilt. Only forgiveness can do that.

No matter what the sin was, some of us have faced the enormity of our sin and its devastating consequences. But now we need to fix our eyes on Jesus and let his power make us new again. For "we all, like sheep, have gone astray, each of us has turned to his own way; and the Lord has laid on him the iniquity of us all" (Isaiah 53:6). Because of that I am a new creation. The old is gone, and my guilt is gone.

We need to repeat to ourselves, "I am brand-new in Jesus Christ. Leaving what is behind, I press on toward the prize of the high calling in Christ Jesus."