Forgiveness from a Cross

Mitchell, Brody, Shannon, and Shelby,

Jesus died on a Friday.  Many of His closest companions said that they would never turn their backs to Him, and yet that's exactly what they did when He entered into His darkest hour.  It's a pretty grim story.  For some reason, we make that the banner for our faith, as counter-intuitive as that seems.

For as long as I can remember, the main tenant of my faith, as taught by both my Catholic mother and Reformed father, was "God forgives."  That was the entire Gospel, all there in just two words.  Many might think that it was insufficient, but after hearing those two words to describe my faith over and over and over again, it was all I needed.  I believe in God.  I also believe in forgiveness.

Someone else will try to butt in and introduce their own buzzwords.  "We are righteous for God."  "Praise God from Whom all blessing flow."  "There is a God and you must be baptized in the Holy Spirit as evidenced through speaking in tongues."  "You have no need to worry for the future if you just trust God."  "Love the Lord your God with all your heart and all your mind and all your soul, and love your neighbor as yourself."

Interesting pieces of wisdom, but what about forgiveness?  When I speak of Grace, I'm always referring to forgiveness.  Forgiveness is absolutely central to our salvation.  It's nothing that we do.  It's merely accepting forgiveness for our past, present, and future iniquities.

But what is forgiveness?  It isn't necessarily just ignoring sin.  If anything, that's apathy.  God had pretty strong words to say about apathy.  He would rather us either to be hot or cold, but apathy is so dangerous that he spits lukewarm Christians out of his mouth.

Forgiveness isn't moving past the sin.  Forgiveness is dealing with that sin.

In the parable of the unmerciful servant, people always seem to end on the note that the servant should have pardoned his debtor just as his master pardoned him.  I never saw it that way; why didn't the servant go to his master and ask for him to help with the additional debt?  After all, the servant had already been pardoned of quite a huge debt himself, a few small silver coins shouldn't shouldn't make much of a difference to the master.

Think about this: The servant was not only in debt, but I'm just assuming that a significant portion of what money he did have he had lent out.  So even though he was no longer in debt, he was still in a financially precarious situation.  He was short on money.  Sure, he could have forgiven his debtor, but that would have meant accepting that he could never have again what was rightfully his.  It might be a noble sacrifice, but it's still altogether unjust.  We shouldn't have to be merciful at the expense of being just, because there will still be something unbalanced in the relationship.

So I just wonder why he didn't ask the master to pay the second debt.

The moral of the parable, for me, looks like this: "If you can trust me to forgive you of an unpayable debt (which, I know, looks too good to be true), then you can trust me to remedy the debt that someone else owes you."  I think that this faith requires some eschatological hope, since in the real world I can forgive someone for hurting me, but that hurt will still be there.  It won't, however, continue to be there when the Kingdom of Heaven arrives.

So when it comes to forgiveness, I'm going to be honest.  I'm not in the financial situation, spiritually speaking, to pay off any debts owed me.  I can't fix a relationship that's been broken, because I can't die for someone else's sins.

Because that's what forgiveness requires.  Forgiveness requires death, even death on a cross.

Which is why it's all the more of a relief to know that we have been forgiven!  You didn't think that Jesus would go all that way only to leave the job half finished, did you?

Sincerely,
John Hooyer