Is forgiveness really a big deal? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.
For those who don’t know, my wife Allie is blogging now. One of her recent blog posts can be found here. It was what she wrote yesterday on the topic of forgiveness and I figured that was something I could write on from my more apologetic perspective, and I did indeed comment on her blog to give her a brief inkling of my own thoughts on the matter.
Now I have said the Gospel is not all about forgiveness, but forgiveness is certainly a large part of it. The Gospel is first about God being king through Christ and forgiveness is the means God provides to get on the right side of Jesus. Forgiveness is God saying that He is cancelling the social debt between the two of you. You can be in a right relationship with Him again. It does not mean the consequences are removed. It does not even mean there can be no punishment given. Both of those could be removed, but forgiveness does not necessitate that that happen. (This is a problem with the shooting in South Carolina recently. People thought forgiving the killer would mean he would not go to jail or face any penalties. It didn’t.)
As we talked about it last night (After all, what couple doesn’t have theological discussion for their pillow talk), I pointed out that if we do not have our lives defined by joy, perhaps we are not really figuring out what forgiveness is. Perhaps we are taking it for granted. How many of us have ever said “Even if this is wrong, it’s a little sin after all so it’s really no big deal.” Sadly, I know I’ve said that, and it needs to stop. Chances are you have as well. Now I’m not at all saying that every sin is equal. I do think some sins are worse than others. I am saying that all sin is still serious.
When we come to God, we should realize God has the right to judge us. He has the power to judge us. He has the knowledge to know He’s right in His judgment. He has the holiness to say He is not being a hypocrite at all and is guilty of no wrong Himself. He has the omnipresence to know and be there for every sin we commit. Look. There’s no way of pulling a fast one over on Him. Any excuse you could have, He knows it already and He knows the ones you don’t even know about. You’re not going to be able to change His mind on anything because nothing is beyond His knowledge.
You’re in a tight spot with God and the penalty is severe. Eternal removal from His presence is no light matter.
And yet, God pronounces you forgiven because you simply ask for it and seek to live differently. You don’t have to do some grand feat. He already did the grand feat. Now let’s take all that you’ve heard above about the nature of God and realize this, this God who can do everything to you and would be entirely right in doing so has chosen to not only forgive you, but then in turn to give you an eternal blessing.
This is really hard for us to grasp because everything we do, we do with mixed motives. For instance, I would like every motive with my own wife to be pure, but I am sure I can do many things because there is a large part of me looking for what I could get in the bedroom later on for it. Now in my case, what I tell guys who wrestle with that is to do the right thing anyway and pray that God will help you to purify your motives. Chances are you will not reach 100% purification and husbands and wives need to realize that as much as we want to serve one another, we will in some ways end up seeking to please ourselves too.
God is not like that.
God never treats you as an object to His own end as the exclusion of your humanity. His forgiveness is total and let’s remember how great it is. If you commit the same sin several times a day and sincerely ask forgiveness and seek to change, God will forgive you. Consider also this in Romans 4:5
However, to the one who does not work but trusts God who justifies the ungodly, their faith is credited as righteousness.
God who justifies the ungodly….
Yes. The one who is wicked is said to be made righteous in His sight.
Now the question we have to ask is how should we live our lives? If we do not live our lives as lives of joy we have to ask some things. Do we see our sins as minor and thus no big deal to forgive them? Do we see the justice of God as no big deal to violate? Do we see the guarantee of being in His presence for eternity as no big deal? Or is it some combination thereof and possibly other facts I have not considered? Where are we lacking.
Then we think about our evangelism. One show I’ve come to like lately is “Fool Us.” I can enjoy magic and Penn and Teller being atheists doesn’t bother me. It’s still entertaining, although I still wonder at the end “How the heck did those people do that trick?” While I think Penn Jillette is wrong on many things, I have to agree with his words here. How much do you have to hate someone to be a Christian and not tell them about Jesus?
Am I being indicted on this? Yep. Sure am.
And maybe it’s because like you, I need to step back and realize what forgiveness is. Perhaps I need to consider Luke 7.
“47 Therefore I tell you, her sins, which are many, are forgiven—for she loved much. But he who is forgiven little, loves little.”
Do we really realize how much we’ve been forgiven?
Is Heaven going to be a place for murderers? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.
Lately, there’s been an image going around the internet. It’s certainly one that grips people powerfully, but it is fundamentally flawed. The image can be seen here:
For the atheists that share this online, this seems unthinkable. God will allow a murderer to be in Heaven? He will not only allow a murderer to be in Heaven, but the people he murdered or whose loved ones he murdered will have to spend all eternity with this person? What kind of God is this?
At the start, it looks like for the atheist, you can’t win for losing. I’m not going to really debate on the view of Heaven presented here, but consider that if God sends people to Hell, well he’s wrong for doing that supposedly. If He snuffs them out of existence, well that’s pretty cruel. He’s wrong for doing that. If He lets them into Heaven, well look. People have to spend eternity with such evil people and they get a free pass.
So no matter what, it looks like there’s an excuse to argue against God.
But notice what’s going on here. It’s this assumption that you could never be happy to see someone who murdered you or a loved one of yours in eternity. What’s going on here?
Years ago, Christopher Hitchens issued this challenge.
A fair challenge we have been told. You don’t need God to be good. Atheists are just as good as Christians.
In many cases, I can agree. The argument has never been that you need to be a Christian or a theist to be a good person or to know good from evil, but Hitchens’s challenge does say that atheists can do good just as much as you religious people can.
So how about forgiving people?
Because what atheists are assuming is that little Timmy in the above photo will be just as he is now. He will be just as prone to sinful tendencies as he is now. He will harbor hatred in his heart just as much as he is capable of doing so now.
But the Christian claim is that Christ transforms us entirely. He takes away all that isn’t us. He makes us to be like Him. He makes it so that we can love those who wronged us. He reveals to us the grace we need.
As C.S. Lewis would say, we forgive others because God has forgiven the unforgivable in us.
And you know what? We have some real examples of that.
How about Corrie Ten Boom? She was in the holocaust. Her sister died in a prison camp and one of the guards from that camp came to see Corrie and asked for forgiveness.
Kent Whitaker underwent a nightmare. Not only were two members of his family murdered, but the culprit behind the crime was his own son. Kent managed to forgive his son. Why? Because of Christ.
Bert Baker’s sister was murdered by her estranged husband. While in prison, the husband, James, came to Jesus and asked Bert for forgiveness. Bert gave it. Today, Bert and James do prison ministry together.
There is also the case of the forgiveness of serial killer Gary Ridgway. Ridgway murdered several and one of the victims stood up to say he doesn’t hate Ridgway, though he’s made it hard to follow the principle of forgiveness, and yet he still gave it. Why? Because God says this is the right way to live.
How about Gladys Staines? She’s the widow of Graham Staines. He and two of their sons were killed by a mob in India where he was serving as a missionary. She holds no ill-will towards the killers.
What about the story of Karla Faye Tucker? She found forgiveness in Christ in prison. Who else forgave her? Ron Carlson. His sister had been murdered by Tucker.
“It made me sick to know what they did to my sister,” Carlson recalls his feelings the day after the killing. “The bodies were mutilated…some twenty-five to thirty puncture wounds on each body…My sister was in the wrong place at the wrong time.”
He remembers months of wishing, night and day, that he would someday have the OPPORTUNITY to kill Karla Faye; he wished he could have her at his mercy, with a pickaxe in his hands. Already having experimented with drugs, the loathing drove him deeper into the practice until his life no longer resembled what it had been before the tragedy.
States he: “I knew I had to do something with the hatred and the anger that was within me. It was consuming me.”
Strangely, as did the woman he despised, he found his faith in the Bible. Reading about the crucifixion of Christ, he realized the reality of the tests everyone is put to in this life. “I learned that if I want to be forgiven, I must learn to forgive,” he attests.
Another famous story is the story of Elizabeth Elliot. It was made famous in the movie The End of the Spear. Her husband Jim, along with his companions were killed by a tribe in South America that they were trying to evangelize. Later, Elizabeth and the wife of one of the companions went to South America themselves to this same tribe. The tribe eventually became Christians and one even apologized for what was done to Jim.
Would anyone object to the idea behind Desmond Tutu’s Forgiveness Project? We might disagree with some theological matters, but many of us know forgiveness is the right way to live.
Blinky Rodriguez was a world champion in martial arts and kickboxing. His son was killed by gang-related activity. Rodriguez met with the killers. To punish them? No. Surely as a martial arts and kickboxing expert he could have, but to forgive them. In fact, he worked with the gangs in the area even getting a treaty that greatly reduced gang-related crime in the area.
All of these tell the power of forgiveness.
And there are no doubt many many more out there. (And if you have one, please leave it in the comments.)
You see, it’s like the world is just now learning that the Gospel is about forgiveness. It’s about God becoming King over this world, not because He wants to destroy His enemies, but because He does want to forgive them and any who want to take part in that are free to. That forgiveness is something huge. It is cancelling the debt that exists that we owe to God. Now we could get into a debate on if God exists, but let’s consider the Christian story as it stands. As it stands, we are all guilty of something before God. Some atheists unfortunately have an idea that the Christian message is like this:
This is just nonsense. It’s like your only crime is not being a Christian. The reality is, God doesn’t exclude you from His kingdom for not believing in Jesus. God excludes you for all the other things that you’ve done. Even the most saintly atheist can look in the mirror and realize there are things he’s done wrong in his life and knows there are ways he needs to be improve in being a good person. The most saintly Christian can say the same thing. Believing in Jesus does grant you that forgiveness that you need. If you don’t have that, God judges you by the only thing He can judge you by. Your works. They have to meet His standard of perfection for no impurity can be in the Kingdom.
Forgiveness is the solution. We are forgiven for we could never make up for what we’ve done.
And this is why it’s so important we forgive one another. The stakes are serious. The Gospel destroys the gap between God and man. Whatever my fellow man has done to me, what I have done to God is far worse. If God can erase my debt, ought I not to erase the debt of my fellow man to me? If I do not, have I fully imbibed the Gospel message?
Note that this does not mean that all consequences for an action are removed. There could be a debt owed to society still. Some consequences I think are built into the system. If you sleep around and get an STD and pray for forgiveness, you will be forgiven, but there is no guarantee you will be cured of your disease. David was forgiven for his sin with Bathsheba, but the child born from the relationship still died.
I also encourage people for the most part to always have an attitude of forgiveness and show that forgiveness, but don’t pronounce it until someone asks for it. Why? Because you do not want to rob someone of something beautiful. Them coming to you thinking you could never forgive them and your still pronouncing that forgiveness. It will mean so much more if they ask for the forgiveness first, but you will only be able to forgive if you have already forgiven in your own heart.
So as we look back at the meme again, we have to accept it. Who will be in Heaven? Will murderers be in Heaven. Yep. Will rapists be in Heaven? Yep. Will adulterers be in Heaven? Yep. Will pedophiles be in Heaven? Yep. Provided they have repented and received forgiveness, all of these people will be in Heaven.
So will some of their victims who have done the same thing.
They would have it no other way.
Heaven is meant to be a place of unity and grace and love. It is not a place for hatred of your fellow man or pride or people who don’t forgive.
If you have a problem with grace, love, and forgiveness, Heaven is not the place for you.
IF you want to stay in anger and hatred towards those who have wronged you in this life, Heaven is not for you.
Your every action is preparing you for one of those places more and more. Of course, the central action is how you respond to Jesus which will affect everything, but how you spend eternity wherever you are will be based largely on what your actions are.
If you think a society where the chains of unforgiveness should be held onto is ideal, then Heaven is not the place for you.
I’m not going to pretend this is easy. My wife Allie means everything to me. If someone hurts me, I can take it. No sweat. I’m used to it. People will be jerks. I know this.
If someone hurts her, well it is on…..
But you know, I know with the Gospel that ultimately, when push comes to shove, I have to forgive, even if something horrendous happens to her. I pray it never will, but I also pray that if it does, I will be able to forgive.
Maybe if atheists are touting this meme like it’s an argument, it’s because we’ve found an answer to Hitchens’s challenge.
Maybe that answer is that we can forgiven the unforgivable.
Because you see, in the end, this meme is not an argument against Christianity.
It’s an argument for Christianity.
This illustrates that in the renewed Heaven and Earth, anger and animosity towards those who’ve wronged us will be so much a thing of the past, that murderers, rapists, pedophiles, and their victims will be able to walk in unison and joy together.
The lion and the lamb will lie down together.
And the murderer and his victim will walk hand in hand together.
Because that forgiveness thing, we take it seriously.
And we take it seriously because God takes it seriously.
If you have a problem with that, you’re not revealing anything about Christianity.
Do we recognize what forgiveness is? Let’s dive into Deeper Waters and find out!
C.S. Lewis has a wonderful essay in his book The Weight of Glory on the forgiveness of sins. Don’t we all believe in that? Oh we say we do. But do we really? Lewis points out that many times when we say we want to be forgiven, what we really want is to be excused. Many times when we come to God in prayer, we list our sins and we often tell about how it happened and why we did what we did and how we tried so hard to resist a temptation and we just gave in. Then we ask for forgiveness.
When we ask for forgiveness, we really mean that we want it treated as if it never happened. Too often however, we ask not for forgiveness, but for our sins to be excused. We want God to simply understand why it is that the sin happened. We want Him to overlook what happened, but when we do that, then in essence, the sin is still there. (Of course, I do think God truly forgives it, but for us, it is there.)
Forgiveness is not excusing however.
You see, there are realities many times that can make it harder to resist a sin. A guy with sexual addiction for instance could have a hard time driving past a store selling pornographic supplies even if he is a Christian. Now someone like myself who is someone who very much enjoys sex, really has an attitude of wanting to avoid that as much as possible and wanting to honor my wife with my eyes. Can there still be a temptation? No doubt, but that temptation is not as strong as it is for someone with an addiction. I would be more prone to fall short in other areas, like losing my temper unnecessarily with my Allie or in a struggle with pride.
So let’s suppose someone with the addiction goes in anyway and then later confesses. The reality is, God knows all the excuses the man can give. In fact, He knows them better than the man does. He also knows what a struggle it has been for the person. He knows there are several factors at play. But He also knows one thing on His own. He knows that there is a sin. There can be no excuses for the sin. In the end, the person did do something wrong even if it was harder for him to resist and that part cannot be overlooked. That part is a blight on the face of God.
You see, sin is in many ways a sort of divine treason. Let’s look at all the things we implicitly say when we sin.
We deny the goodness of God because we think He is keeping something good from us.
We deny the love of God because we think He is being unloving keeping something from us.
We deny the omniscience of God because we think He doesn’t know that this is something we should do.
We deny the omnipresence of God because we think He doesn’t see.
We deny the omnipotence of God because we think He won’t judge.
We deny the righteousness of God because we think He has no place to judge.
We deny the rule of God because we are rebelling against Him.
In fact, we are committing divine treason. We are saying that God should not be on the throne. We should be. We want to be deity.
I have a theory also on seeing sin as uncreation. In creation, God makes a world good and beautiful. Our sin changed much of that and whenever we do sin, we are undoing the work of God. When we do that which is righteous, we are extending the work of God. We are being traitors to our own side and we will be held accountable for that.
Unless we are forgiven.
So really think about that. God does what we think could not be done. He really forgives us. He knows there is no excuse for what we did. There is no justifying it. Nothing can ever make what we did right. Yet despite all of that, He willing to treat it as if it didn’t happen and He is willing to restore us to a place that we don’t even deserve in the first place, in fact, to a place even better than the garden.
God never justifies sin. He cannot. He will not. There is no justification for anything that is done wrong. God justifies sinners. His hatred and disgust of sin will never change. But so also, His love of those of us who struggle with it will also never change. You cannot do something to make God love you less. You cannot do anything to make Him love you more. It’s constant.
Because God already loves you, He will forgive you when you ask. You do not earn forgiveness. You never could. It is a gift and it is a gift that is freely given. When God forgives you, He truly does. He no longer holds your sins against you. Too often it is we who still hold them against ourselves. If only we could grasp for a moment even the forgiveness of God and live with it for the rest of our lives.
Rest assured Christian. If you have confessed, you are forgiven, but go and sin no more. Yet when you do, confess and be forgiven. God is with you in your struggle.
What do I think about Donald Macleod’s book on the atonement? Let’s talk about it on Deeper Waters.
Paul wrote to the Corinthians that he desired to know nothing else save Christ and Him crucified. Why? What makes the crucifixion of Christ so central? What is it about those six hours on a Friday afternoon that forever rocked the world?
Donald MacLeod’s work is all about this event and what all it entails as he goes through the Gospels and the rest of the New Testament writings. This is an in-depth look at the doctrine of the atonement. After going through it, you should never think about the doctrine the same way and a reading of this got me to realize I need to think about the atonement more seriously.
So let’s cover the positives. First off, the first couple of chapters are just gripping as we go through a brief look at the life of Christ but described in terms of what the events must have been like for the Christ and how He was rejected by the world and His friends and the weight of bearing the sin of the world on the cross.
In fact, I’d say this was my favorite part of the book and if you purchase it (As IVP sent me a review copy and I greatly thank them for that) then this part will easily be worth the whole price of the book. I do not consider myself an emotional person and empathy is not a strong suit of mine, but I still found myself gripped by what I was reading.
Second positive, Macleod goes into great detail on theological terms used in Scripture like Propitiation and redemption and terms we might not think too much about. A section I thought would last a few pages turned out to go through a whole chapter.
Third, Macleod gives an apologetic presentation as well answering questions at the end such as if there was another way. He looks at rival theories that seek to explain the death of the Christ without it being a substitution and blood atonement. He also throughout the book answers charges of cosmic child abuse and other such claims.
Finally, Macleod ends the book rightly where he should, with a look at what this means for the Great Commission. He shows us that by the work of Christ, the devil has been defeated and we are free to go into the world and fulfill the Great Commission.
Now let’s talk about ways I thought the book could have been improved. On a minor point, Macleod is quite sure that Jesus was buried honorably. This is a point that I would contest. This is only a minor one, but it did stand out to me.
Second, Macleod raises some questions about divine impassibility, the idea that God does not have emotions. I found this troubling throughout as the ramifications of God being emotional are problematic as I think it ends up being a deity that is changing and progressing and in fact, dependent on His creation. A few times Macleod points to how it must have been for the Father to see His Son on the cross and at suffering in the heart of God. The theory of the atonement does not depend on God suffering and I found such ideas raising questions that I do not think are adequately answered if impassibility is denied.
Third, I would have liked to have seen more on justification. There was not a whole chapter on it and that would have been a welcome inclusion. Especially I would have liked to have seen how Macleod’s view of the atonement would interact with the New Perspective on Paul. Could we see some interaction with Wright and Dunn and others?
The good thing is that none of these negatives ultimately distract from the book as a whole. You can still walk away with a good theory of the atonement and understand that these are points you can disagree on. The argument as a whole still stands as none of these points are central.
In conclusion, I do recommend the work as one if you want to understand the atonement more thoroughly as Macleod has gone highly in-depth and we owe him a debt of gratitude.
Hello everyone and welcome back to Deeper Waters where we are diving into the ocean of truth. Tonight, I’m going to be continuing my look at marriage one year later by seeing how grace works in the marriage relationship.
We’ve all been told about burying the hatchet. In theory, everyone agrees it’s a good idea. In practice, we seem to have a hard time doing such. C.S. Lewis wrote about how in marriage it would seem many of us will be granted grace for all the times we could have said a “zinger” and refused to do so. Often the point of the zingers is not the betterment of our spouses, but our proving our own selves. There are some things better left unsaid.
There will be disagreements in the marriage. That’s a fact of life. The point to keep in mind here is what is going to be done when those disagreements are done? We can say that we will bury the hatchet, but most of us usually have a good idea where that hatchet is buried and wish to recall past disagreements so that we can use them in future battles.
To the Christian reader, a question. What would it be like if God did that to you?
Do you think you could handle if he kept pulling your past sins to account to you again and again, knowing that He was entirely right?
But that’s what you want to do to your spouse anyway?
The concept of forgiveness includes letting the past stay in the past. Natural consequences will play themselves out, but it should not be an offense totally held over someone’s head. Now you might have to avoid some things true, but you should not do so as an indictment of bad character but realizing your spouse has difficulty in an area and at that time you need to help them in that area in their growth of personal holiness.
There have been times when I’ve been driving with my wife out somewhere and then she’ll confess something she’s done that I won’t like. Usually, I don’t. I’ll ask her about it some and then get some clarification without getting angry or raising my voice. Then, when we get there, I just let her know firmly that I did not approve, and I love her and know she’s better. That usually follows with something like a hug.
What we need to remember is to love our spouses the way God loves us. When we go to the cross, all our sins are right there and God says that we are forgiven by trusting in Him. He will not bring the past to account against us anymore. Such a great love and grace is extended to us and why ought we not to show that same love and grace to the person we say is the most important person in our lives? Why not show such love to the one who we claim to love the most?
