Repentance demonstrated

Genesis 44

For your servant became collateral for the boy to my father, saying, ‘If I don’t bring
him to you, then I will bear the blame to my father forever.’ Now therefore, please let your servant stay instead of the boy, my Lord’s slave; and let the boy go up with his brothers. For how will I go up to my father, if the boy isn’t with me?—lest I see the evil that will come on my father.”

Genesis 44:32‭-‬34

Judah was the mastermind of selling Joseph into slavery. In the last few chapters, we see how God had slowly brought him from such an evil beginning slowly over to repentance, and here we see the competion of that repentance.

Joseph had framed Benjamin not because of Benjamin, but because of Judah and the other brothers.

If they had not repented, I am guessing Joseph would have just kept Benjamin, not as a slave as he had threatened, but as his brother and honoured guest.

But since Judah and the other brothers had repented, and showed their repentance by offering to take Benjamin's place as the Prime Minister of Egypt's slave, Joseph knew that they had repented, so all of them reaped his bounty.

God loves us and doesn't want evil people to die in their sins and be condemned. He wants us to repent and be saved.

I need to repent whenever I sin and not stay away from God. I also need to look at people who do evil the way God does - as  sinners who need His salvation - and not just hate them  - for I, too, am a sinner saved by grace.

Father, help me to keep looking at people through Your eyes of grace and not my eyes of anger or revenge. In Jesus' name,  amen.