I was reading The Naked Gospel today by Andrew Farley and I came across an analogy that I thought was really good. He was talking about how Christ's death and resurrection forgave us once and for all, he then writes...

"Let's say you are a married man. Imagine if every night before you went to sleep, you leaned over to your wife and asked her to marry you. It's just something that would make you feel better - asking her over and over again. It's your way of confirming you're married. So every night you say, 'Honey, will you marry me?' The words you choose are no big deal. It's just semantics. You know you're really married, you just like to ask her over and over.....

...If i were to try this with my wife, she would ask me to reconsider my thought processes: 'Don't you remember the ceremony? the vows? the witnesses? we were married years ago. I have the photo albums right here. It's now a past event. We live in a constant state of being married, there's no need to ask me over and over again if I'll marry you.

It's the same way with our forgiven state. And it's not just semantics. It matters. Have you thought about how many times the epistles urge us to ask God's forgiveness? The answer is zero times. You won't find a single epistle that suggests that we ask God for forgiveness. Why not? Because the writers penned their words after the death of Jesus. They were fully aware of their forgiveness as an accomplished fact."

So i know that was kinda long, but it just continues to strike me how we as humans continue to try and earn our salvation through works or words or ritual. Our forgiveness has been accomplished already. Christ said "It is finished," so why don't we believe him?