Do you ever feel like you’re stuck in the past—stuck in your past? If we’re honest, all of us have histories that are dotted with mistakes. We’ve all failed to be truthful at times. We’ve all fallen into temptation, broken promises and done things outside of God’s will.
And so, sometimes—even as Christians, who believe in the forgiveness of the cross—we can still find ourselves weighted down by guilt and regret. Intellectually, we may know that we’re forgiven. But we struggle to move forward in the freedom of that forgiveness.
Can you relate to this? I know I can. But, thankfully, when we read Matthew 26:31-32 together with Matthew 28:16-20, we get to see how Jesus helped his disciples move beyond their mistakes and into a new, fresh chapter with Him.
There is so much we can learn and apply.
In Matthew 26:31-32, Jesus told His disciples, “All of you will be made to stumble because of me tonight, for it is written, ‘I will strike the shepherd, and the sheep of the flock will be scattered.’ But after I am raised up I will go before you into Galilee.”
It wasn’t long after Jesus said these words that Judas betrayed Him, Peter denied knowing Him three times and the rest of the disciples deserted Him out of fear. Then, Jesus was convicted of crimes He didn’t commit, He was crucified and buried.
There was a lot of human failure in this story and the failure seemed pretty final. And yet remember what Jesus said to His disciples—”after I am raised up I will go before you into Galilee.”
After.
There is always an “after” with God.
After we have failed and wandered away… after hope seems lost… God always ensures we have a way to find Him again—a way to reconnect with Him. The question is: will we take Him up on His offer?
Jesus told the disciples to meet Him in Galilee, after their stumbling and after the resurrection. And in Matthew 28:16-20, we see that the remaining disciples (minus Judas) took Him up on that offer.
Let’s read what happened during the meeting:
But the eleven disciples went into Galilee, to the mountain where Jesus had sent them. When they saw him, they bowed down to him; but some doubted. Jesus came to them and spoke to them, saying, ‘All authority has been given to me in heaven and on earth. Go and make disciples of all nations, baptising them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all things that I commanded you. Behold, I am with you always, even to the end of the age.” Amen.
In this passage, we see a beautiful example of how Jesus can move people like us beyond their mistakes and into the freedom of forgiveness. Three things stand out:
One. He takes us from looking at our flaws to looking at His scars.
Peter had denied Jesus. The disciples had all scattered like Jesus had predicted. And these choices had to have left them with some lingering regrets. Yet when they met with Jesus in Galilee, their focus shifted from their failure to His victory. Verse 17 says, “When they saw him, they bowed down to him…”
Can you imagine seeing the newly-resurrected Jesus—full of life and love, bearing scars in the exact shape of your sins? The disciples must have been in complete awe. And His words of hope must have been ringing in their ears: “my blood … is poured out for the forgiveness of sins.” (Matthew 26:28, NIV)
Jesus had gone to the cross to remedy sins and failures just like theirs—just like ours. And because He rose out of the grave, we can now rise out of shame to live in the freedom of forgiveness. All we have to do is believe.
You know, I thought it was interesting that verse 17 said “some doubted” when they saw Jesus on that mountain. And don’t we sometimes doubt, too, in our own way?
Even though we, as Christians, have placed our faith in Jesus for salvation, sometimes guilt over past sins resurfaces and we entertain the thought that maybe there’s something more to be done. We feel like our sins are on us again and think, “If only there was something I could do…to undo this, to set things right, to free my conscience.”
When we think like this, we are, in essence, doubting that what Jesus did was enough.
But here’s what we need to remember: When we are taunted by the guilt of sins we’ve already confessed and been forgiven of, there is only one thing we need to do: believe.
We must turn our eyes from our flaws to Christ’s scars—and believe that His sacrifice was enough to remedy our sins. Faith like that brings the freedom we’re looking for.
Two. He takes us from being scattered to being sent.
In verses 18-20, Jesus went on to give His disciples their “great commission.” He told them to “go and make disciples of all nations.”
Don’t you love this? These men who were previously scattered themselves, were now being sent to minister to scattered people—those scattered all across the globe, and even more importantly, those scattered far from God.
If Jesus has forgiven us, we need to stop thinking of ourselves as “damaged goods,” unworthy of being used by Him. Jesus’ forgiveness makes us truly innocent again, through and through. And it instills us with new purpose. God wants to use us for His glory and the good of others!
The great commission is our commission, too.
He specializes in sending the previously scattered to the currently scattered. God doesn’t want us to stay stuck in the past. He wants to move us forward with a new, redemptive purpose.
Three. He takes us from trying to hold on to God to being held by God.
Back in Matthew 26, when Jesus told the disciples they would all fall away, Peter argued with Him. He thought he was strong enough to hold onto Jesus, even if everyone else fell away. Of course, we know how Peter’s story turned out. He wasn’t strong enough.
But listen to what Jesus says to the disciples in verse 20: “Behold, I am with you always, even to the end of the age.” (Matthew 28:20)
On this side of the cross, our relationship with God isn’t secured by our grip on Him, but by His grip on us. And this is great news because, like Peter, our ability to hold onto God is shaky at best. But God’s hold on us is unshakeable.
We don’t have to fear that one day we’ll mess up and find ourselves ostracized from God. In all likelihood, we probably will mess up. But God won’t let go. And as we learn to live dependent on Him, He can even enable greater faithfulness in us.
So, we don’t need to live today tied up in knots, trying to get everything right. Instead, we can live today resting in the grip of a Savior who never lets go.
These verses remind us:
We are not meant to live in the guilt of our past sins.
We are not meant to live on the shelf, because we feel we’ve been disqualified by our failures.
And we are not meant to live in the self-effort of “trying to get it all right” from now on.
We are meant to live—from this moment forward—in the forgiving, repurposing, and sustaining hands of Jesus.
His hands bring freedom.
And they move us eternally forward.
This devotion is based on one of the Scriptures from my 2025 reading plan: “A Year in the Gospels” To receive a copy of the reading plan (and future reading plans), sign up for the email list below. Hope you’ll follow along! You can also learn more about my Scripture over Screentime experiment here.
Written by Paige K. Burhans
©2024 Paige K. Burhans
Scriptures taken from the World English Bible British Edition. Public Domain.
Scripture quotations taken from The Holy Bible, New International Version® NIV®
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Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide.
