This blog deals with the topic of forgiveness, namely God's forgiveness of our sins. This subject is near and dear to me for a specific reason. As a child, I was told that, if I was born again ("had 'accepted' Jesus as my savior") and had sinned, that all I need do to receive His forgiveness is ask Him for it sincerely, and it would be mine. Sounds simple enough, but it wasn't for me, and here's why. Some may say I am overly-analytical, but I see it differently. I cannot stand contradiction. God was loving and forgiving, IF I did my part too? What if I forgot to ask forgiveness for all my daily sins? What if one or two were left out unintentionally? Would they be left unforgiven? When I reached heaven, whether it was tonight or 70 years from now, would there be a stack of unforgiven sins between me and my loving heavenly Father? Would he point to them and say, "Now what are we going to do about these?" It would be too late then to go back and say, "Lord, forgive me for..." Consequently, I worried day in and day out that I was surely going to hell when I died, because there was no way I could meet God's impossible standard of asking His forgiveness in order to complete the cleansing process. Why did Jesus die anyway? Jesus final words, according to John 19:30 were, "It is finished." Why hadn't He just said, "My part is finished. Do yours, and you'll be forgiven."
Yesterday I was at Walmart, and I bought some kitchen towels that said, "Anti-Microbial Protection". These amazing towels would not hold in bacteria that cause bad odors and disease. I imagined cleaning my kitchen worry-free with these amazing towels, and I had to have them. I got them home, and I read the package further before discarding it only to find out, to my dismay and amusement, that I had to "activate" the antimicrobial protection by washing them before use in a certain brand of bleach. Wow... I imagine if I washed regular old kitchen towels thoroughly in bleach before and after each use, they would also repel germs. I had been taken in by the amazing claim not realizing that I had to do something to activate the germ fighting "power" I thought I had already received when I purchased them. I can't help but see the parallel between that anecdote and the idea that in order to activate the forgiving power of the cross, I have to say the "magic" words... "Forgive me, Lord, for..."
Confession and repentance are different issues, mind you. We are absolutely admonished to confess our sins and to turn from them. Forgiveness, however, is a finished work, by God's grace. I don't have to say the "magic words" to activate His life-giving forgiveness. However minor it may seem, saying any words in order to do our part to redeem ourselves gives us a false sense of Savior-ship. The thought being, "I can do my part to save myself."
I heard a statement made today that Jesus died for "original sin", but not for our daily sins. This makes me wonder, "Why am I not without my flesh... original sin?" OR "So, that's great for Adam and Eve and the rest of the OT saints, but what about me?" What exactly does that mean? Hebrews 7:27, 9:12, 9:26, and 10:1-3 all state that Jesus died, "once for all". This made me wonder, does that mean that He died once for all people or once for all sins? Hebrews 7:27 makes it very clear that it was "once for all" SINS. So why do we insist on complicating it? Why do we want to do our part to try to achieve what Jesus already achieved through so much pain and agony? It cheapens Jesus' sacrifice. One might also assume from this philosophy that if he faces a natural consequence of his sin (ie. gets a STD from illicit sex), he has paid for his own sin and Jesus's work in this case is needless.
WORKS:
My children and I have been given the school assignment to do a nature walk each Friday afternoon. We are supposed to make a poster with two sections. "Things God Made" on one side and "Things Man Made" on the other side. I'm astounded at how intricate and lovely the things on the God side of the poster are compared to the Man side. You could compare it to having an accomplished artist's works on one side and a pre-school child's art works on the other. Manmade items have design to be sure but lack the immense care and detail that God's works have.
When I do a search of the Bible for the word "Works", I come up with 67 obvious results. The Lord's works are overwhelmingly GOOD and AMAZING, whereas man's works are overwhelmingly wicked or obligatory. Isaiah 55:8-9 says, "'For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways.' declares the Lord. 'As the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts.'" The obvious conclusion (in my opinion) is that when we try to complete God's finished work, we insult Him and cheapen it. We can make things right with man when we sin (by seeking forgiveness and making restitution if possible), but we were never able to make ourselves right with God. What an amazing gift! If I were to have to pay for my own sins, I would always come up short.
I once had a teacher who belonged devoutly to a Nazarene congregation. She believed firmly that, if a person sinned and had not sought forgiveness for that sin before death, he/she was bound for hell. The poor thief who was crucified next to Jesus! Boy, I bet he had to pray REALLY fast in order to receive the salvation Jesus said he would surely have that day. I have never heard a more blatantly fear-based reason for faith. So many denominations have resorted to fear to keep people on the "straight and narrow". Almost as if the thought is, "If we tell people they have full forgiveness of all the sins they'll ever commit, they'll go have a free-for-all and never stop sinning." Although the truth is, none of us will ever stop sinning until we go to heaven, if a person is using God's grace as an excuse to sin, he was probably never saved in the first place. After all, Romans 2:4 says that it is indeed God's KINDNESS that leads us to repentance. What? Not his wrath? Not impending punishment? Not the lure of everlasting life in paradise? Not the fear-mongering of a relgious establishment?
God had millenia (OT) of obligatory "worship" from people who were afraid of being swallowed up in his wrath. Jesus was the answer to that. Jesus was God's way of showing us that was not what He desired. He wants us to love Him for His kindness, His grace, His forgiveness, His character, His works, His unfailing love, yes, even His justice. He did that by erasing our sins with Jesus's (His own) blood. We are CLEAN, by God's grace when we have repented and received forgiveness of sins. It is finished!
Back to that young girl crying in her room because she could not remember all the sins she had committed that day - the girl who was sure she would go to hell if she died before she woke. The stack of unforgiven sins loomed ominously and, whether real or imagined, separated her from God's deep love for her. She spiraled into a world of sin and depression because she knew she would never measure up to such a standard. Many a sin committed in anger and futility (because she was on the highway to hell anyway) permanently changed her. She wouldn't realize until many years later that Jesus's blood had purchased righteous clothes for her and dressed her in His glory.
My prayer for all God's people is that they would truly experience the freedom of God's grace and forgiveness (the finished work of the cross) and be permanently changed by it.
