The wages of sin is death. We all know that. But, who has not sinned? I am painfully aware of my own sin, yet I continue to fall into sin, wretched man that I am.

I have prayed to God for His forgiveness, as all of my sin is ultimately sin against God, and I know that God forgives me. He placed all of the sin of mankind on the shoulders of His son and allowed Him to be crucified, sacrificed for – sacrificed for me. God shed his glory and became man to take on my sin and the sin of the world gladly to rescue us from ourselves

I do not deserve it, yet I know He freely offers me that forgiveness, and I dare not reject such a sacrifice.

At the same time, I am keenly aware that the sin I have committed, the sin that has affected me, does not affect me alone.

The days, and weeks, and months and all the time I have not walked in faith, I have walked in sin. Those times of walking in sin have certainly had a profound effect on my children and my wife because, the fruit of that sin surely could be seen and felt by them.

I know that God sees all of it, everything that I have done, good and bad, beautiful and ugly, more ugly than I probably care to know. In spite of His perfection, righteousness and justice, He forgives me though I do not deserve it. He is perfect love, and He is faithful to forgive those who fall on His mercy and grace.

I cannot fool myself into thinking that my children have not also seen some of that sin, the ugly sinfulness that I would cringe to see and relive on a movie projector screen. They are not God. They do not have the perspective of God. They look to me for the love that God has for us, as God’s representative of that love on earth, and I have failed in all the times I have walked not in faith, but in sin.

These things strike me today as I reflect on the failings that I often ignore, and sometimes see too well. I have asked for forgiveness and know that I am forgiven by a faithful, merciful God.

I now apologize to my children and my wife for not being more of a reflection of God in their lives. I pray that they will gain the perspective of knowing God, knowing His perfect love, knowing His forgiveness though we do not deserve it, that gives people hope and gives people peace and causes us to turn again and again to the Creator and Lover of us all.

I pray that, in spite of the sin that remains, they see God in me, working in me, changing me into the child of God He has chosen me to be. I pray that they understand this flesh with which I wrestle is a dying man, that rising within me is the child of God I have been called to be and, indeed, am by the will and grace of God.

I pray that they want to follow the spiritual man I am becoming and not the man of flesh that I am leaving behind.