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March
Forgiveness
Dear Friends,
The Bible tells us that we do not know how to pray properly (Rom. 8:25). The disciples of Jesus, sensing this, asked our Lord to teach them how to pray (Lk. 11:1). Jesus responded to their request by giving to them and to us a model prayer which we call The Lord’s Prayer. This model prayer should be our clearest guide for the form and character of our own prayers. It teaches us rightly to pray for things of paramount importance and vital necessity. One of the things we are taught to pray for, as a petition to the throne of God’s grace, is forgiveness. Jesus tells us to ask God to: Forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors. We do well, therefore, not only to ask forgiveness of our God, but also to understand that for which we are asking. It is too easy for us to have vague and weak notions of forgiveness, and such notions undermine our apprehension of the precious potency of that forgiveness that we receive from God as well as the forgiveness that we give to those who have sinned against us.
A simple definition of the verb, to forgive, is to give away a right. The right arises from an injurious offense that one person receives from another. The injury gives the offended party the right, in accordance with the dictates of justice, to collect payment for damages suffered. The one who forgives relinquishes his right to receive such payment that is due to him from the party that offended him.
It takes but a moment’s reflection upon this definition for us to sense how costly forgiveness is to the one who gives it. The forgiving party is the offended and injured party, and by his rendering forgiveness he determines to require no payment from the offending party. Such payment would justly be the offended person’s due and would also serve to repair the offensive damage he has suffered. Therefore, we should note how the forgiving person suffers twice: first when he endures the offense; then when he relinquishes his right for that restorative compensation that justly is due to him from the offending party. It is precisely our apprehension of this double loss that the one who forgives endures that makes us at least to some degree reluctant to forgive others.
However, our Lord does not begin by directing us to forgive others. Rather, Jesus encourages us to ask God for forgiveness before He mentions anything about our forgiving others. Here we find ourselves brought to the lesson of the parable of the unmerciful servant, where that servant was forgiven his enormous debt by his master, but then went out himself mercilessly to demand full payment of the pittance owed to him by one of his own debtors (Mt. 18:21-35).
The magnificent grace of God shines through the fact that the Son of God teaches us to petition His heavenly Father and ours for His forgiveness of our sins against Him. The fact that Jesus tells us to address this offended God as our Father alerts us to the loving and compassionate readiness of our offended God to relinquish His right to punish us for our original sin as well as our many and heinous actual sins. We are taught further to ask such forgiveness because we have not the slightest hope of accomplishing our own satisfaction of the infinite debt we owe to God’s justice on account of our sinning against His infinite and eternal Person and His holy and righteous Law. Nor are we urged to ask for a partial forgiveness, but rather a full freedom from all of the guilt, penalty, and punishment of our sins. Such forgiveness does not simply release us from these negative things, it also entails our being accepted by God in His beloved Son, and our possessing peace and joy in ever increasing measure as the justified and adopted children of God.
While all of these blessings of divine forgiveness issue from the merciful compassion of our God, that compassion is infinitely more than a benevolent and magnanimous attitude on the part of God. The forgiving compassion of God has not only inclined Him to forgo His justly due payment of our punishment for our sins against Him, it has also entailed God assuming that payment Himself through the giving of His Son to bear our sins. God has given His only begotten and beloved Son to endure for us the full measure of our due punishment to the satisfaction of divine justice, while the perfect righteousness of Christ our Redeemer is accounted as being ours. In place of our infinite debt, we have infinite merit for the asking.
In comparison with the infinitely lavish nature of this divine forgiveness, what is our forgiving others of their sins against us? We are not holy like God, but are sinners who justly deserve eternal divine punishment, not to mention momentary, light affliction from men. Nor have we suffered the depth and degree of offense in the sins that others have committed against us as our God has in our sins against Him. So the forgiveness we are to offer others is but a faint reflection of that forgiveness lavished upon us by our great, glorious, and gracious God.
Yet, we are not to forgive only upon our consideration of how infinitely greater the Lord’s forgiveness is to ours. As God forgives us on the basis of Christ’s perfect satisfaction for our offense, so when we forgive others, we are also offering that forgiveness on the basis of the infinitely rich and objectively potent satisfaction that Christ has rendered even for the sins of others against us (Eph. 4: 32). Why should we feel and act as though we are moral and merciless paupers in desperate need and heartless desire for the punishment of those who have sinned against us, when we have the incalculable treasury of Christ’s satisfaction for sin that includes the making right of all wrongs, the healing of all wounds, the extinguishing of all enmity, the reconciling in love of erstwhile offending and offended parties? True forgiveness is no mere generous feeling that lets others off easy. It is based, instead, upon the costly work of Christ’s atoning sacrifice. When asked and given, it effects reconciliation between alienated parties that is more strong, loving, and effecting of joyful restoration than what had obtained between those parties before the offense that separated them was ever committed. Where forgiveness is given and received, parties once at enmity due to sin are reconciled, and they feed no longer on the bitterness of guilty offense given and painful offense received. Instead, they together feed upon the sweet and satisfying heavenly manna that is the mercifully forgiving love of God in Christ.
Yours, a forgiven and forgiving sinner,
William Harrell
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Sunday
Morning Worship 10:30 AM
Evening Worship
6:30 PM
Wednesday
Christian Education
7:00 PM
Saturday
Congregational Prayer Meeting
7:00 PM |
