God’s Understanding of Sin and Forgiveness

Posted on September 28, 2011 by Pastor Foley

Part XII of the Forgiving and Reconciling Series

We concluded our last post by noting that people don’t go to hell because God is waiting to forgive them until they repent.  When we think that’s the case, we misunderstand not only how God understands forgiveness, but how he understands sin as well.

So let’s take some time to look at both of these. When we do, Jesus’ words in Luke 17:3 make a lot more sense. We’ll see that Jesus’ words here are perfectly consistent with his words and his actions on the cross, where he forgave his enemies even before they repented, and, in so doing, enabled their repentance.

To begin, let’s remind ourselves of something we talked about earlier in our study:

God’s judgment + God’s mercy = God’s forgiveness

Now, to understand that equation correctly, we need to remember that God’s judgment is something much greater than a verdict. God is judge not only in the law court sense of innocent-guilty but also (and even more so) in the Old Testament sense of the Judges of Israel. He is the true Judge of Israel, in fact! He does much more than determine guilt and innocence; he sets right what sin, death, and evil have corrupted and destroyed.

That’s what we’re getting at when we say that God is righteous.  It doesn’t just mean that he does what is right, but that he is setting right what has gone very, very wrong in our lives and in the world.

Jesus himself contrasts these two ideas of judging—judging as rendering a verdict and judging as setting things right—several times in the Gospel of John, like in John 12:47 when he says:

“If anyone hears my words and does not keep them, I do not judge him; for I did not come to judge the world but to save the world.”

In the Gospel of John, there are a lot of places like this where one word is used in two very different ways. Like in John 3, where the phrase “born again” also means “born from above,” or in John 11:50,where the high priest Caiaphas says, “You do not realize that it is better for you that one man die for the people than that the whole nation perish.” What he says is absolutely true, but he has no idea how true!

Same thing here in John 12:47 (except Jesus knows exactly what he’s saying):

“If anyone hears my words and does not do them, I do not judge him.”

Does that mean the one who ignores Jesus is neither guilty nor innocent?  Can we just walk away from Jesus and the Gospel message freely and suffer no consequences?

Of course not—exactly the opposite is true. The one who hears Jesus’ words and ignores them is condemned.

So why does Jesus say that he does not judge such a man? “Because,” says Jesus, “I have come to do more than to render a verdict about that man. I have come to save him.” Or, he could have said, “I have not come to judge/condemn the man; instead, I have come to judge/save the man.”

The NIV captures this nicely in John 3:16-21:

16 For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life. 17 For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him. 18 Whoever believes in him is not condemned, but whoever does not believe stands condemned already because they have not believed in the name of God’s one and only Son. 19 This is the verdict: Light has come into the world, but people loved darkness instead of light because their deeds were evil. 20 Everyone who does evil hates the light, and will not come into the light for fear that their deeds will be exposed. 21 But whoever lives by the truth comes into the light, so that it may be seen plainly that what they have done has been done in the sight of God.

The Father sent Jesus into the world to judge/save it not judge/condemn it.

Why?

Because the world and those in it already stand condemned!  As Jesus explains, their condemnation is obvious: “people loved darkness instead of light because their deeds were evil.” This is why they reject his offer of freedom and refuse to repent; they “will not come into the light for fear that their deeds will be exposed.”

And this takes us right to that key truth:

God’s judgment + God’s mercy = God’s forgiveness

People don’t go to hell because God doesn’t forgive them. They go to hell because they reject God’s offer of forgiveness. They reject God’s judgment – his coming to set things right – in their lives and in the world.

This is why we should welcome God’s judgment!  When we receive his judgment, instead of defending ourselves or denying what we’ve done wrong, we receive his mercy. We don’t earn it; instead, we come to embody it.  His forgiveness transforms us into a new creation.  It’s all his doing, so that none of us can boast. Our part in it is simply to present ourselves.  We do the opposite of what Adam and Eve did in Genesis 3:8, which is to hide from God.

The one who hears Jesus’ words but does not do them, however, is not judged/saved by Jesus.  He remains enslaved to sin. He rejects the truth that only Jesus can set him free and set his life and the world right.

This is the exact discussion Jesus has in John 8, with people who ultimately reject him because they do not see that they are in bondage and thus they will not invite him to judge/save them:

31 To the Jews who had believed him, Jesus said, “If you hold to my teaching, you are really my disciples. 32 Then you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.”

33 They answered him, “We are Abraham’s descendants and have never been slaves of anyone. How can you say that we shall be set free?”

34 Jesus replied, “Very truly I tell you, everyone who sins is a slave to sin. 35 Now a slave has no permanent place in the family, but a son belongs to it forever. 36 So if the Son sets you free, you will be free indeed.

Sum it up and say:

Forgiveness is release from bondage by Christ, who makes it possible for the sin-slave to be set free because he himself bears the slave’s sin. When we understand this, we can see why God’s forgiveness must precede our repentance: a slave to sin can only carry out sin’s command.

Repentance means making a fundamental turn in life – renouncing evil and receiving Christ. Only Christ can make that possible through his bearing all sin. Or, to put it a bit differently, it’s not our repentance that makes Christ’s forgiveness possible. It’s his forgiveness that makes our repentance possible.

Tragically, though, many will respond by insisting, “We have never been slaves of anyone…”

Now, how does all this forgiving and reconciling business relate to our forgiveness of those who sin against us?

Tune into the next post to find out!

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Which Comes First – Forgiveness or Repentance?

Posted on September 26, 2011 by Pastor Foley

Part XI of the Forgiving and Reconciling Series

Which comes first: forgiveness or repentance?

If that is a little too abstract, let me ask it like this: when someone sins against you, which comes first?  Forgiveness or repentance?

In practice, we Christians will often give an answer based on a human understanding of forgiveness. As we talked about previously, that human understanding sees forgiveness as a change in…

  • Feeling, like moving from hurt to acceptance, or
  • Memory, like moving from dwelling on the sin to forgetting about it, or
  • Will, like trying our hardest to rebuild (or get along without) what the sinner broke in our relationship through his or her sin.

And when we think about forgiveness in this human way, we’ll usually say something like:

“Of course their repentance needs to come first. They need to know what they did wrong and show that they’re genuinely sorry. They need to make an effort to change. Otherwise I’ll get taken advantage of, and the same thing will happen over and over again.”

So in our human understanding, forgiveness is the result of repentance.

But as we’ve been learning, God’s forgiveness is very, very different than humans’ understanding of forgiveness. God’s forgiveness is aphesia in the Greek—release from bondage. And it’s nasa’ in the Hebrew—bearing or carrying away.  Put those together and you get:

In Christ, God makes possible our release from the bondage of sin by bearing the sin himself. 

This means that with God, repentance is made possible by forgiveness, not the other way around. In fact, his forgiveness is the only thing that makes repentance possible.

Now this whole subject creates all kinds of disagreements and conflicts (ironically) among good, well-meaning Christians. And it’s easy to understand why, because one group (like ours) will say:

“Yes, forgiveness is what makes repentance possible. That’s why on the cross in Luke 23:34 Jesus says, ‘Father, forgive them, for they know not what they’re doing.’ And that’s why when Stephen is being stoned in Acts 7:60, he says, ‘Lord, do not lay this sin to their charge.’ And it’s why Paul says in Romans 5:8, ‘But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.’ Without forgiveness, repentance is simply not possible.”

But then the other group will say:

“Yeah, but what about in Luke 17:3, where Jesus says, ‘If your brother or sister sins against you, rebuke them; and if they repent, forgive them’? You can’t get much more straightforward than that, right? And if God forgives everybody, are you saying that nobody goes to hell?”

Well, we love that ‘other group’. But they are wrong, you know.

Plenty of people go to hell, but not because God refuses to forgive them. That idea—that God refuses to forgive until we repent, and that we are to act the same way with people who sin against us—is a grave misunderstanding of both God’s understanding of forgiveness and God’s understanding of sin.

Both of which we’ll be looking at in our next post.

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Forgiving and Reconciling, Part X: Jesus Is The Only Scapegoat Capable Of Bearing Sin For Longer Than A Few Days

Posted on September 23, 2011 by Pastor Foley

Jesus, the lamb of God who bears the sins of the world, turns out to be the only scapegoat capable of permanently bearing sin.

When Jesus forgives sin, it doesn’t just vanish with a wave of his hand. He bears it—to the cross. Only he—God in the flesh—can do this. No one else can. That’s why he is proclaimed as worthy by the elders and the living creatures in the throne room of heaven in the Book of Revelation:

You are worthy to take the scroll
and to open its seals,
because you were slain,
and with your blood you purchased men for God
from every tribe and language and people and nation.
You have made them to be a kingdom and priests to serve our God, and they will reign on the earth. (Revelation 5:9–10)

It’s just not possible for human beings to forgive–to bear sin–permanently. And that’s why it is necessary—absolutely necessary, no alternative—for humans to forgive with the forgiveness of Christ, not human forgiveness.

Christ recognizes this in John 20:22 after he is resurrected from the dead, and that’s why he breathes his Holy Spirit on the disciples for the accomplishment of this task. They are to minister his forgiveness to others, not their own.

Their conflicts have become his conflicts. That’s why he says, “Saul, Saul, why do you persecute me?” in Acts 9:4, when Saul is persecuting Christians. And in turn, the disciples’ forgiveness becomes Christ’s forgiveness, and his becomes theirs.

“We are therefore Christ’s ambassadors, as though God were making his appeal through us”—that’s what Saul says after he receives Christ’s forgiveness and becomes Paul. “We implore you on Christ’s behalf: Be reconciled to God” (2 Corinthians 5:20). “Imitate me as I imitate Christ,” he says in 1 Corinthians 11:1.

Look at me and catch a glimpse of him, says Paul. He forgives with the same forgiveness with which I am forgiving you.

But if we fail to forgive, the opposite message is conveyed: As I do not forgive you, neither does he. And that is wickedness on the part of the servant—character assassination of the master, our king Jesus.

This is why Jesus says in the Lord’s Prayer, “Forgive us our sins in the same way as we forgive those who sin against us.” The New Testament repeats the message over and over: “You have been forgiven. Now go pour out his forgiveness in his name so that others will be reconciled to him.”

Author Walter Wangerin Jr. has it absolutely correct in his short story called Ragman:

Even before the dawn one Friday morning I noticed a young man, handsome and strong, walking the alleys of our City. He was pulling an old cart filled with clothes both bright and new, and he was calling in a clear, tenor voice: “Rags!” Ah, the air was foul and the first light filthy to be crossed by such sweet music.

“Rags! New rags for old! I take your tired rags! Rags!”

“Now, this is a wonder,” I thought to myself, for the man stood six-feet-four, and his arms were like tree limbs, hard and muscular, and his eyes flashed intelligence. Could he find no better job than this, to be a ragman in the inner city?

I followed him. My curiosity drove me. And I wasn’t disappointed.

Soon the Ragman saw a woman sitting on her back porch. She was sobbing into a handkerchief, sighing, and shedding a thousand tears. Her knees and elbows made a sad X. Her shoulders shook. Her heart was breaking.

The Ragman stopped his cart. Quietly, he walked to the woman, stepping round tin cans, dead toys, and Pampers.

“Give me your rag,” he said so gently, “and I’ll give you another.”

He slipped the handkerchief from her eyes. She looked up, and he laid across her palm a linen cloth so clean and new that it shined. She blinked from the gift to the giver.

Then, as he began to pull his cart again, the Ragman did a strange thing: he put her stained handkerchief to his own face; and then HE began to weep, to sob as grievously as she had done, his shoulders shaking. Yet she was left without a tear…

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