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A young man came into my office after our worship service one Sunday morning. He was clearly distraught. As he told me of the wrong things he had done and the guilt he had experienced, tears came to his eyes.

What message did I have for him?

The most basic message of Christianity: no matter what we have done, where we have been, or how much we have sinned, God freely offers to us a restored relationship with Him and the healing and forgiveness that go with it.

Guilt is a universal phenomenon. It is based on the fact that we have not done what we should have done and and not become what we should have become. It is a basic reality of human existence (this side of Adam’s fall).

What are we to do with the guilt we feel? The message of evangelical Christianity is to come, come back to God, come home, and receive forgiveness and new life.

I love the way Isaiah describes this. He compares a life of a restored relationship with God to eating at a banquet table. He says: “Come, all you who are thirsty, come to the waters; and you who have no money, come, buy and eat! Come, buy wine and milk without money and without cost” (Is. 55:1).

This is a message not only for unbelievers. It is a message for believers. As Christians, we have not made our Christian life what it should have been. But: “If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness” (1 John 1:9).

I have encountered so many people who have felt that they were worthless because they had failed. They failed God. They failed other people. They failed themselves.

The good news: God still wants to use you. He wants to restore you. He wants you to come home. He values you even others don’t, even when you don’t value yourself.

It’s crucial to see that though this forgiveness is free for us, it cost God something very weighty: His own Son. Isaiah 55 comes on the heels of Isaiah 53: “But he was pierced for our transgressions, he was crushed for our iniquities; the punishment that brought us peace was on him, and by his wounds we are healed. We all, like sheep, have gone astray, each of us has turned to our own way; and the Lord has laid on him the iniquity of us all” (5–6).

He pays. We get life for free.

That is an astonishing and joyful message. It is a message for the weary soul burdened with guilt and for those searching for meaning. It’s the joy of this message that led people like Billy Graham to preach to millions. He wanted to let people know that the way to God was wide open because of Jesus.

In Isaiah 55, there are several pictures of what happens when people receive this offer.

One of these pictures of new life in God is this: “instead of briers the myrtle will grow” (v. 12). Since I’ve been in the South, I’ve grown to love the myrtle trees. I finally got tired of the ugly trees on the side of my driveway and replaced them with two myrtle trees this winter. I have great hope that these will beautify my landscape and symbolize the beauty of God’s forgiveness.

Isaiah also says that these things are “for an everlasting sign, that will endure forever.” I recently hiked the Chickamauga National Military Park. There are monuments everywhere: to man’s sacrifice and to his strength in the face of battle.

When people accept God’s forgiveness, they become monuments, too. Not to man’s strength and sacrifice, but to God’s sacrifice and grace.

And we can be sure that God’s Word will produce such monuments wherever we announce God’s free grace. “As the rain and the snow come down from heaven, and do not return to it without watering the earth and making it bud and flourish, so that it yields seed for the sower and bread for the eater, so is my word that goes out from my mouth: It will not return to me empty, but will accomplish what I desire and achieve the purpose for which I sent it” (10–11).