In the name of the father, and of the son, and of the holy spirit. Amen. What we have just read, and I hope have listened to, and have taken to heart. But the difficulty is we've heard it so often that these words cease to stimulate us. They cease to excite us.
They become humdrum. Monotonous. Now, somehow or other is the we we don't really accept this. That is, I mean, and a matter of fact, that sin does happen. Notice I didn't say it's a reality.
Sin does happen. Sin is a fact. And cry because of sin, Christ came into this world. The church in its holy week services sings or used to sing with joy, Felix Kupa, referring to Adam's sin. Happy fault, Felix.
Happy joyous. Means fault, sin. But the actual fact that sin can happen even to me. You see, somehow we we don't really digest that. And that it's for that reason that I need Jesus Christ, and it's for that reason that he came.
As I remarked yesterday, in that closing episode of brideshead revisited, when Julia, in the wake of her father's death, can't go through this wedding with after she's divorced and she's going to marry a divorced man. She's been out of the church for years, but she cannot face now the prospect of living in sin again. And she says, I probably will be I will sin again. But she says, the worse I am, the more I need God. See, that's the actual truth.
But this not is not the main point I want to make this morning. The point I want to make is a little more delicate. And that's it. This, that Christ not only forgives sins, but he heals the wounds. He heals the wounds.
This is a very important consideration. I, in my career, have come to see, and I guess some of you too, if not in your own lives but have seen it in others, how forgiveness alone doesn't solve the problem of guilt. Not at all. Not at all. And the problem of guilt, what we I'm talking about real guilt now.
I'm not talking about this fictitious that I mean where we have done wrong and we feel horrible about it. And maybe the wrong we've done is an act of some kind of injustice to another person that we cannot undo. That we can't undo. Right away, I think of that poor woman up in New York. I think it was Wilmington, Delaware years ago.
She had a young child. She dashes out of the house to get into her car to go shopping. She backs the car down the driveway over her little baby. And she goes in the house and shoots herself. This matter of guilt is an extremely dangerous thing, absolutely dangerous.
And forgiveness, you see, doesn't touch that necessarily. Because in many ways, the the consequences of our wrongdoing we cannot undo. So merely to have the confidence of a Christian that I am forgiven and God has forgiven me, that is absolutely wonderful. But there's something more we need if we're going to have the peace of Christ in our souls. And that's the confidence in our Lord that he heals the wounds of sin.
He restores his peace to my soul. And a life of a Christian or a person who's trying to be a Christian, who's trying to live a life of Christ without his brand of peace, forget it. Forget it. Their life is going to be miserable. It's the difference between an alcoholic who is simply not drinking and an alcoholic who has achieved sobriety.
The whole there's no comparison between the two. And so, this is the thought that I Christ came for the benefit of sinners. That's me. You see, let's let's not hesitate to say it. And this isn't a fiction.
It doesn't mean that I've gone out and committed murder. But you see, you have to weigh sin not in terms of man, but in terms of God. That's the reason you see so many people today don't want to use the word sin. They want to use the word unethical conduct, unneighborly conduct. But you see, as soon as you use that tiny three letter word sin, you are in a whole new world.
You're in a world where you stand with God. You're in a world where you have in some way torn yourself away from him. That's what you've done. And that we that's the essence of sin. Not the harm that I do myself.
Not the harm that I do my neighbor. Not the harm that I do society, whatever that is. The essence of sin is what happens between me and God as the consequence. That's what counts. And it's not merely enough to be forgiven.
We need the balm. We need the saving grace of Jesus Christ to heal the wounds of sin, if we're ever to have the peace of Christ in our souls. And this is what we must bring home to ourselves. That our blessed Lord came not merely to forgive sins, which is no small matter, but he came to heal the wounds of sin. To restore us to what we were, and what we ought to be and what we can be with Jesus Christ.
He is our salvation.