11/20/2023
Do you see God the Father as a gentle old grey haired man who forgives you regardless of what you do and without regard or memory of what, or who, you are? Well that isn’t so. Without the horrific and yet wonderful sacrifice of His Son Jesus Christ we would be lost, because God’s very nature would prohibit His overlooking our sins. Our forgiveness is a supernatural event without precedent, which cleanses us of the once permanent stain of sin.
“In him we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of our trespasses, according to the riches of his grace, which he lavished upon us, in all wisdom and insight making known to us the mystery of his will, according to his purpose, which he set forth in Christ as a plan for the fullness of time, to unite all things in him, things in heaven and things on earth.”
Ephesians 1:7-10 ESV
My wife has a younger brother that she loves dearly, but when they were children she would dress him in various outfits as they played and in her eyes he would assume the identity of some playmate she imagined. However, he was never truly that person. Despite the dress she might put on him, he was still a boy who would grow to manhood and exhibit all the traits of a man. She could imagine him as someone else, but that changed nothing.
“He has delivered us from the domain of darkness and transferred us to the kingdom of his beloved Son, in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins.”
Colossians 1:13-14 ESV
We tend to look at God as my wife looked at her little brother. We dress Him up like a big sister dresses up her little brother, and pretend that He is something He is not, but for all our efforts... He remains God. He remains unable to forgive our sins without the application of Jesus Christ’s supernatural cure and cleansing. Despite our imagined and longed for forgiveness, it doesn’t become real without the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus... the Son of God.
Oswald Chambers wrote of this inability for God to change who He is when he wrote these words...
“Forgiveness is the divine miracle of grace; it cost God the Cross of Jesus Christ before He could forgive sin and remain Holy God. Never accept the Fatherhood of God if it blots out the atonement. The revelation of God is that He cannot forgive; He would contradict His nature if He did. The only way we can be forgiven is by being brought back to God by the atonement.” - Oswald Chambers
Sin is not some minor infraction; it is not a little mistreatment or slight wrong we might perpetuate against one another. It is the unforgivable... that is, it is unforgivable because it would mean that God would have to change who He is for that to happen. So something amazing and outside our ability to fully understand had to happen before He could forgive us... a supernatural atonement was required. Sin is an evil that only God can forgive us of, and is nothing like the ills (regardless of how great we view them) that we forgive each other of.
“Against you, you only, have I sinned and done what is evil in your sight, so that you may be justified in your words and blameless in your judgment.”
Psalms 51:4 ESV
We don’t sin against one another... only God. This is further represented by the use of very different words when we pray the Lord’s Prayer. Some translations use the word “debt”, and others say “trespasses” but not sin.
“and forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors.”
Matthew 6:12 ESV
My brother-in-law could forgive his sister for dressing him up in a girl’s dress and pretending that he was her little tea partner, because this didn’t change who he was when he did so... only how he felt. God, on the other hand, is perfect and cannot accept sin without becoming imperfect. Are you beginning to see the difference?
So something incredible had to occur. Jesus Christ had to become our Redeemer; He had to take on the sins of the world in order to erase them from us. As He hung on the cross an amazing and complete act of love and redemption occurred. This act of sacrifice assumed supernatural proportion and in a way we can only begin to understand, He made concession for us, and yet maintained intact the true nature of God as He did so. This is a divine mystery that we wonder at, and are thankful for, but that we can’t possibly understand without accepting it as an unprovable truth... an equation that is beyond our ability to calculate. It is quantum mathematics to an infant... true, but beyond its ability to fathom.
So, as my wife and her little brother are now reconciled by his very human forgiveness of her, and we are somehow reconciled to God by His divine forgiveness of us. The simple act of human forgiveness that transpired between a brother and sister has manifested itself between man and God on a cosmic and divine scale that defies our ability to understand. The life, death, and resurrection of God’s Son Jesus has made way for our reconciliation with our Heavenly Father… God. It reveals to us that our giving of thanks is inadequate and pales in comparison with His effort, and yet we continue to thank our Father because these words are all we have. In this way we allow our spirit to praise Him as we further cross the narrow bridge into the supernatural... the divine kingdom of God.
Prayer:
Father, I thank you in words, and in the groaning of my spirit, as I reach out in loving appreciation for the forgiveness that you made possible for my sins. I thank you Lord for choosing not to remember the sins I have committed and for remaining true to your nature in the process. You are greater than my ability to express, and by heart leaps from my chest as I long for your presence in worship and adoration. Hear me Holy Father, and know that in my simple way, I am giving you all that I have within me as I obey and thank you each day. I thank you Father for your Son Jesus Christ who was nailed to a cross, died, rose from the dead, descended into hell, defeated sin, and now sits at your right hand. I thank you for the suffering He underwent that I might be washed clean, and reconciled to you. I don’t understand how this was made possible, but I praise you for your divine solution to sin. You are my Holy Father, and I will praise you always for your goodness, mercy, and grace.
Rich Forbes