If God is all-powerful, why can't He simply forgive sin and be done with it? It's one of the most common objections to Christianity — and the answer reveals something most of us have never considered about what our sin actually costs.

In this episode of Clearview Today, we wrap up our study on the holiness of God by looking at why forgiveness was never free. Dr. Abidan Shah uses a simple illustration — a borrowed pen, broken and handed off — to show what happens every time we take something that belongs to God and twist it. Mercy is easy to give when it costs you nothing. But real forgiveness always has a price, and someone has to pay it.

We walk through Leviticus 17:11 and why blood represents both death and life, why the Old Testament sacrificial system was only ever a placeholder for the real thing, and how nearly every ancient culture on earth — Aztec, Egyptian, Hittite, Scandinavian, Irish — understood instinctively that someone had to die. What sets Scripture apart is that God didn't demand a substitute from us. He provided one Himself.

The episode closes in Isaiah 53, written centuries before the cross and describing it in detail, and then lands somewhere practical: the response to all of this is humility. There is nothing in you that you can take credit for. Begin every day grateful, and give yourself back to the God who paid for you.

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