16 Forgiveness of Sins
Forgiveness of Sins
What are sins? Sin, says the Westminster Shorter Catechism, is “any want of conformity unto, or transgression of, the law of God.” This echoes 1 John 3:4, “sin is lawlessness.” It has other aspects too. It is lawlessness in relation to God as lawgiver, rebellion in relation to God as rightful ruler, missing the mark in relation to God as our designer, guilt in relation to God as judge, and uncleanness in relation to God as the Holy One.
Sin is a perversity touching each one of us at every point in our lives. Apart from Jesus Christ, no human being has ever been free of its infection. It appears in desires as well as deeds, and motives as well as actions. The Anglican Prayer Book rightly teaches that: “We have followed too much the devices and desires of our own hearts . . . We have left undone those things which we ought to have done, and we have done those things which we ought not to have done, and (spiritually) there is no health in us.”
Sin is everybody’s problem in the sight of God, for he is “of purer eyes than to behold evil,” and cannot “look on wrong” (Habakkuk 1:13). But we find life to be a moral minefield for us; and the harder we try to avoid sin the more often we find—too late—that we have stepped where we shouldn’t, and been blown to pieces so far as the required love of God and our neighbor is con cerned. And where does that leave us?—“for the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and wickedness of men” (Romans 1:18).
The good news, however, is this—sins can be forgiven. Central to the gospel is the glorious “but” of Psalm 130:4—”If thou, O Lord, shouldst mark iniquities, Lord, who could stand? But there is forgiveness with thee, that thou mayest be feared”—that is, worshipped with loyalty (for that is what fear of God means).
Vital and Real
Forgiveness is pardon in a personal setting. It is taking back into friendship those who went against you, hurt you, and put themselves in the wrong with you. It is compassionate (showing unmerited kindness to the wrongdoer), creative (renewing the spoiled relationship)—and, inevitably, costly. God’s forgiveness is the supreme instance of this, for it is God in love restoring fellowship at the cost of the cross.
If our sins were unforgivable, where should we be? A bad conscience is the most universal experience—and the most wretched. No outward change relieves it; you carry it with you all your waking hours. The more conscientious you are, the more your knowledge of having failed others, and God too, will haunt you. Without forgiveness you will have no peace. A bad conscience delivering at full strength, tearing you to pieces in the name of God, is hell indeed, both here and hereafter.
Luther Knew It
A man distressed about sin wrote to Luther. The Reformer, who himself had suffered long agonies over this problem, replied: “Learn to know Christ and him crucified. Learn to sing to him and say—Lord Jesus, you are my righteousness, I am your sin. You took on you what was mine; you set on me what was yours. You became what you were not that I might become what I was not.” Compare Paul: “For our sake [God] made [Christ] to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God” (2 Corinthians 5:21). Link up with Jesus, the living Lord, by faith, and the great exchange is fulfilled. Through Jesus’ atoning death God accepts you as righteous, and cancels your sins. This is justification, forgiveness, and peace.
Paul in Romans and Galatians, and the Reformers after him, spoke of justification rather than of forgiveness. This is because justification is forgiveness plus; it signifies not only a washing out of the past, but also acceptance and the gift of a righteous man’s status for the future. Also, justification is final, being a decision on which God will never go back, and so it is the basis of assurance, whereas present forgiveness does not necessarily argue more than temporary forbearance. So justification—public acquittal and reinstatement before God’s judgment-seat—is actually the richer concept.
By Faith Only
In the past (things are less clear-cut today) Roman Catholics did not grasp the decisiveness of present justification, nor see that Christ’s righteousness (“my Savior’s obedience and blood,” as Toplady put it) is its whole ground, nor realize that our part is to stop trying to earn it, and simply take it as God’s free gift of grace. So they insisted that sacraments, “good works,” and purgatorial pains hereafter were all necessary means of final acceptance, because they were among the grounds on which that acceptance was based. But the Reformers preached, as Paul did, full and final acceptance through a decisive act of forgiveness here and now; and this, they said, is by faith only.
Why faith only? Because Christ’s righteousness only is the basis of pardon and peace, and Christ and his gifts are received only by faith’s embrace. Faith means not only believing God’s truth, but trusting Christ, taking what he offers, and then triumphing in the knowledge of what is now yours.
Is God’s gift of forgiveness by faith yours yet? It is easily missed. The Jews missed it, said Paul; their tragedy was that their zeal for God led them to try to establish their own righteousness (i.e., earn his acceptance), and “they did not submit to God’s righteousness” (i.e., to his way of forgiving and justifying, by faith in Christ only): see Romans 10:2ff. The pathetic truth is that we sinners are self-righteous to the core, and we are constantly justifying ourselves, and we hate admitting that there is anything seriously wrong with us, anything that God or man might seriously hold against us; and we have to do violence to our own perverted instincts at this point before faith is possible for us. God save us all from repeating the tragedy of the Jews in our own lives.
Further Bible Study
Justification through Christ by faith apart from works:
Romans 5; 10:1-13
Galatians 2:15—3:29
Philippians 3:4-16
Questions for Thought and Discussion
What is forgiveness, and what does it do for the forgiven on a personal level?
What did Luther mean by saying, “You became what you were not that I might become what I was not”?
Why is it that forgiveness comes through faith only?