THE REALITY OF RESTITUTION –When, how , why………..
“Then Zacchaeus stood and said to the Lord, “Look, Lord, I give half of my goods to the poor; and if I have taken anything from anyone by false accusation, I restore fourfold.” Luke 19:8

W H
E N ?
...
After you are genuinely saved, restitution is the next thing to do; it is meant for those who are genuinely saved as it’s the confirmation of your new life in Jesus, one of the evidence of your genuine salvation. Restitution is restoring, returning things wrongly acquired in old life; revealing lies, faked, falsified, fraudulent information and documents of past; reconciling with people we offended by apologizing and people who offending by FORGIVING them; lastly it is also repaying debts we owed in the past which we refused to pay or forgot to pay. By reality, everybody is involved in at least one or two aspects of restitution.

H O W ?
In different online and phone transaction, after you have sent your desired transaction, you will be asked to confirm your transaction. If you fail to “just” confirm, thinking since you have filled all the forms, supplied all the needed information and sent them, you feel confirming again is of no use, your transaction will be invalid and will not be processed. The same is in reality with restitution. After you have repented and confessed your sin to God and He has forgiven and cleansed you, you need to respond back to confirm your salvation by restitution. Think about it, if I were your neighbor and I stole your stuffs in past and using them. You knew and just kept quiet, then later I got saved and come to preach to you and still using what I stole from you, how will you feel?

If truly you believe God has forgiven you, it will not be hard for you to confess to one another as the case may be. We must live in conscience void of offence before God and men. If you reject to restitute, and excusing yourself that you have confessed to God, it means if you saw God physically you might to confess to Him.

W H Y ?
Restitution is important because (1) it confirms your salvation as said earlier (2) it cuts off the linkage of your old life. You can’t continue to enjoy the benefits of the lies, wrong and evil you did in the past in your new life, how will you want to continue to dwell on the lies and evil of your past old life after you claim to have new life of Jesus in the present? Except you are deceiving yourself (3) Restitution creates new beginning. Without appropriate restitution, you are still living in your past life. Even with your salvation and without restitution, you don’t have new life and hope of heaven; it is salvation without new life.

W R O N G
Some preachers say restitution is not important; they wrongly quote 1 Corinthians 8:1 and others. Beloved, God will judge you by His Word not by such misguided pastors, and you will not want to go where such pastors are going. Your conscience has made it cleared to you, God’s Spirit has been ministering to you since you are saved and now God’s people are telling you, so why will you delay further and eventually land in hell after all these, just because of few unsettled matters?

W H A T ?
What if rapture takes place or you die with undone restitution after you are saved? That will be a sorry case for eternal sorrow in hell. What if you can’t remember all the wrongs or things to restitute now? The point is you don’t need to remember all at once, you just need to be ready to do all, and you take it one at a time, even if the end comes in the process, your heaven is sure because you have concluded to do all. Restitution is a continuous activity for every heavenly minded Christian, saying sorry to your subordinate is part of it. Readiness and action are what God demands from us

B E N E F I T S
You will have peace and unshakable assurance of heaven. Every time I do restitution, I have that great peace and I now feel like doing more, because I enjoy the peace which follows. We keep examining our lives, anyone to apologize or to forgive? And we keep enjoying the benefits here and forever there in heaven!

BE STRONG!
Don’t be afraid, fear brings snares. Satan is trying to make you afraid and keep you in his snare till the end. Will you not loose yourself and confirm your total freedom? God is with you and He will go ahead of you. You know what? At the end, all will work for your good, because you love God. But even if you loose all, you will gain your soul for eternal life, it is better to go to heaven from prison than to go to hell from palace.

W A R N I N G !
No need to waste time any further, we should redeem the time because days are full of evil - that is, anything can happen at any time and so procrastination is dangerous to your soul.

R E A L I T Y
In reality, restitution is not optional but a must for the few who see heaven as a must. Humble yourself and allow God to perfect His work in your life. Restitution must be done after prayer and proper counsel. Much as you need do restitution, you need godly counsel from godly ministers.

James 5:16: Therefore confess your sins to each other and pray for each other so that you may be healed.”

This message is from Revelation of Truth Evangelical Ministries RTEM, if you need further explanation or counseling on Restitution, please feel free to contact us at any time:
Email: rtemoutreaches@yahoo.com or call Tel: (+234) (0)80 392 49751, (0)705 937 3351, (0)802 578 7942.
http://www.facebook.com/pages/Revelation-of-Truth-Evangelical-Ministries-RTEM/244086502364394
May we be blessed as we earnestly wait for the coming of our Lord Jesus!

This is the truth and nothing but the truth. All these prosperity pastors cant preach hard core truth of the bible like this becsuse they dont want to lose members which amounts to revenue loss for them. I pity christians who are heading to hell for not making restitutions where their conscience is pointing to them to do it. Some of them are working or studying with falsified results and document, falsified age, result obtained thru exam malpractice. Some travel with fake documents, some embezzled government or company money, some obtained things through fraudulent means yet they dont want to go settle things with those they defrauded. Anybody who wants to make heaven must make restitutions where he has commited any such things and even more as his or her conscience points it out. God bless you poster. This is the kind of message needed here and not all the rubbish people are posting here. Notice that not many people respond to threads with hard truth like this. The world wants cheap gospel.

Aha! First, they accuse the Catholics, then they imitate what we do. You are so close to home...yet so far, unfortunately.

What you are talking about (perhaps without understanding it fully) is Penance, temporal punishment and Purgatory.

Read these up for your own good.

We will pay for every sin we commit, even if we are forgiven, either in this life or in the next.

italo: Aha! First, they accuse the Catholics, then they imitate what we do. You are so close to home...yet so far, unfortunately.

What you are talking about (perhaps without understanding it fully) is Penance, temporal punishment and Purgatory.

Read these up for your own good.

We will pay for every sin we commit, even if we are forgiven, either in this life or in the next.

You are getting it all wrong. What you people are doing is confessing to a priest which is quite different from what we are saying. Read this post carefully my friend.

alexleo:

You are getting it all wrong. What you people are doing is confessing to a priest which is quite different from what we are saying. Read this post carefully my friend.

The OP is about RESTITUTION. And Penance, Temporal punishment and Purgatory are all about restitution. And you cannot separate them from restitution if you truly understand all of these.

Restitution is a great gesture. It gives the offending party and the offended closure (as much as possible). It takes humility and sincere repentance to do it!

seyibrown: Restitution is a great gesture. It gives the offending party and the offended closure (as much as possible). It takes humility and sincere repentance to do it!

God bless u my dear. You are 100% correct.

Op,supposing i cheated in only 1 course while in college,r u sayping after repentance i shd return my degree certificate*SMH*

The_keeper: Op,supposing i cheated in only 1 course while in college,r u sayping after repentance i shd return my degree certificate*SMH*

What you should do is to go to the school. I think you may start by going to the lecturer of the course to tell him you cheated in his course. The outcome of it will determine what next to do. And i also think if he forgives you then you are free but if he refers you to higher authorities like the head of department you keep moving until final decision is taken. But most importantly, ask for God's direction and grace. This is my thinking. Op and others who knows about restitution can still add their own

If a pastor embezzles church money he has to make restitution or face hell. God is no respecter of persons.

Nice message the spirit of the lord has been troubling me to restitute for my sins but i've found it quite tasking due to lack of finance so what can i do about this

i have 3 questions;
1) how about if i sleep with someone before becoming a christian how do i restitute.

2) what happens to the sins i committ severally after beciming saved. Do i still need to restitute them?

3) how do you explain the case of the thief on cross?

I've done a lot of wrong and I'm finding it difficult to do my restitution because of fear of what the other person may say or do or think about me. For example, I stole money from my classmate and we're like on and off friends, how do I apologize? And also I did something wrong to a guy in my class and the teacher asked who did it and I didn't reply. Should I apologize to the teacher or to the boy or both. It was really terrible, what I did? I still have contact with both and these were done about two years ago. And for those I don't have contact with, will God pardon me?

Pipey:
I've done a lot of wrong and I'm finding it difficult to do my restitution because of fear of what the other person may say or do or think about me. For example, I stole money from my classmate and we're like on and off friends, how do I apologize? And also I did something wrong to a guy in my class and the teacher asked who did it and I didn't reply. Should I apologize to the teacher or to the boy or both. It was really terrible, what I did? I still have contact with both and these were done about two years ago. And for those I don't have contact with, will God pardon me?

you have to understand that God forgiving you of your sins is base on what Christ has done.

Romans 3:25
Whom God hath set forth to be a propitiation through faith in his blood, to declare his righteousness for the remission of sins that are past, through the forbearance of God;


When you believe on Jesus and his work for you.
You have automatically being justified from All things

Acts 13:39
And by him all that believe are justified from all things, from which ye could not be justified by the law of Moses.

The condition for forgiveness and salvation is to believe on Jesus.
If you have already saved, and you commit sin just confess your sins to God so that he will cleanse you from all unrighteousness.

Restitution is not about God forgiving you but about having right relationship with your fellow human.
Restitution is about showing love to your fellow human

Romans 13:8
Owe no man any thing, but to love one another: for he that loveth another hath fulfilled the law.