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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Forgiving and Reconciling, Part IX: The Best Bible Story On Forgiveness That’s Rarely Told (And Even More Poorly Understood)

Posted on September 21, 2011 by Pastor Foley

It’s the best Bible story on forgiveness that’s rarely told in churches and Sunday School lessons–and even less rarely understood. It explains why our reflecting Christ’s forgiveness to our enemies is such a crucial part of his plan to draw the world to himself.

The story is found in Matthew 18:21-35.

Therefore, the kingdom of heaven is like a king who wanted to settle accounts with his servants. As he began the settlement, a man who owed him ten thousand talents was brought to him. Since he was not able to pay, the master ordered that he and his wife and his children and all that he had be sold to repay the debt.

The servant fell on his knees before him. “Be patient with me,” he begged, “and I will pay back everything.” The servant’s master took pity on him, canceled the debt and let him go.

But when that servant went out, he found one of his fellow servants who owed him a hundred denarii. He grabbed him and began to choke him. “Pay back what you owe me!” he demanded.

His fellow servant fell to his knees and begged him, “Be patient with me, and I will pay you back.”

But he refused. Instead, he went off and had the man thrown into prison until he could pay the debt. When the other servants saw what had happened, they were greatly distressed and went and told their master everything that had happened.

Then the master called the servant in. “You wicked servant,” he said, “I canceled all that debt of yours because you begged me to. Shouldn’t you have had mercy on your fellow servant just as I had on you?” In anger his master turned him over to the jailers to be tortured, until he should pay back all he owed.

This is how my heavenly Father will treat each of you unless you forgive your brother from your heart.

This is how Jesus defines forgiveness. Not as feeling, forgetting, or act of will, like human beings think about it. Instead, he defines forgiveness as our passing on to those who have sinned against us the judgment and the mercy that we ourselves receive from God. 

In the story, what should the servant have done? He should have passed on the judgment and the mercy he received from the king. 

What was the judgment? The judgment was that the man could not pay the debt, and therefore by rights he and his wife and his children and all that he had be sold to repay the debt.

What was the mercy? The mercy was that the king bore the debt himself. The debt didn’t just disappear. It was real money that someone had to pay. So the king paid it.

So what should the servant have done when he met the man who owed him money? He should have passed on that judgment and mercy that he had received from the king. That would have sounded something like this: “By rights, you yourself should be sold to pay this debt. But I will bear this debt myself, in the name of the king, who bears my debt in himself.”

And that last part of the sentence is the key: “in the name of the king, who bears my debt in himself.” Many readers of the parable miss that. If you ask them, “Why is the servant thrown in jail to be tortured?” they will say, “Because the servant should have been more generous. The master forgave the servant a big debt, so the least the servant could do is to forgive his fellow servant the small debt.”

But that misses the point. It leaves out the realization Jesus is wanting Peter and his other hearers to have. The servant is not thrown in jail and tortured because he wasn’t more generous. Torture, after all, is quite an extreme punishment for selfishness. Instead, the servant is thrown in jail and tortured for being, as the master calls him in verse 32, a “wicked servant.” He is a wicked servant because through his actions he has hidden the work of the king, who bears the servant’s debt in himself.

What would make the servant a “good servant”? Not just forgiving the debt owed him but forgiving the debt in such a way that the generous character of the king would be revealed. If all the servant did was to forgive the debt of his fellow servant, he would still be missing the point. He would simply be drawing attention to his own generosity (and drawing on his own generosity, which would last all of about a day before it burned a hole in him).

But if he said, “My fellow servant, I forgive your debt—I bear the cost myself—because our master the king is generous, and today he has forgiven me, and he bears my debt in himself.” That would draw attention to the work and character of the king master. And that would make him no longer a wicked servant.

So, back to Peter:

What Jesus is showing Peter is that how Peter forgives reveals—accurately or inaccurately—the work and character of Peter’s God. If Peter forgives seven times, the God of Peter is a God who forgives like a human being. Like a human being, that God quickly runs out of patience and wants sinners to pay for their sins themselves.

But if Peter forgives seventy-seven times in the name of the God of Peter, then the God of Peter is revealed to be a generous God indeed—one who does not forgive like human beings do. One whose forgiveness is judgment plus mercy—a force so powerful that it will eventually set right the damage that sin and death and evil have caused.

So God’s mission of righteousness—setting the world right through his judgment and mercy (which is what he means by forgiveness)—is advanced or hindered precisely to the degree that Peter realizes that his own forgiveness of others is nothing more or less or other than part of that mission.

Debts to the servant, in other words, have become debts to the master; as the servant forgives those debts, so forgives the master.

If the servant fails to forgive those debts, the generous character of the master is shrouded or, worse, denied. And sin and unforgiveness continues to burn like acid through our human race, sinners and sinned against alike.

But as we’ll share in Part X, the good news is how through the Holy Spirit, Christ is continuing to overcome our foolishness and gather our race’s sin and unforgiveness to himself.

We just don’t recognize him as he does it.

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