This one essentially boils down in sermonic style key theological ideas I wove into a paper that I presented at a Dorothy L. Sayers Society convention some years ago. There I spoke on an article Sayers wrote, “On Forgiveness”, during WWII. That paper wove together Sayers’s views with thoughts from Charles Williams, William Blake, C.S. Lewis and others. Oh yes, and me. My small contribution there is distilled into the sermon here.
(Read Ephesians 4:32)
The apostle Paul tells us to forgive one another just as God has forgiven us in Christ. That naturally raises the question: how has God forgiven us in Christ? The better we understand that, the better we can forgive one another like God has forgiven us! We find a very helpful clue in Matthew 26:28 (read).
So, God in Christ has forgiven us by suffering and dying, spilling His own blood for the “remission of sins”. That word “remission” means “putting away”, getting rid of them, making them gone, like they never existed to begin with.
This raises two difficult questions, and in essence my whole sermon will circle around these questions.
The first question: If we must forgive similar to how God in Christ forgave us, does this mean we must suffer and die every time we forgive?
The second question: If not, and if we forgive simply by not blaming the one who offended us, and saying, “I forgive you”, then why was God not able to forgive the same simple way? Why the cross, the suffering, the blood and death?
Two difficult questions. But in my opinion the answers to these questions happen to disclose the very essence of our faith. If we ignore these questions, we allow the very meaning of forgiveness and the sacrifice of Christ to slip out of sight.
I will discuss these two questions in reverse order, because the first one will remain unclear until we figure out the second. So again, the second question went “If we forgive simply by not blaming the one who offended us and by saying ‘I forgive you’, then how come God couldn’t forgive the same simply way, without the cross, the suffering, the spilling of blood and death?
An important question!
It will help us to look at Matthew 6:12, very familiar words in the context of the “Our Father” (read).
“Debts”. The key word is “debts”: “Forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors.”
What do we owe God, by rights? By rights, we owe Him our life , and all that is in it. This is love, faithfulness, holiness, truth, obedience, worship—that’s what Man owes God, since the very creation of the world! For all his belongs to God; it is all from Him and for Him.
But what is sin? Sin is the violation of this order, the order in which we freely pay our debt of life to God with joy—sin ruins that order. When Man first sinned, he stole from God what belonged to God, which is life itself and everything in it, as I already listed—love, obedience, faithfulness, etc. Here’s a paradox-question for you: Can you steal from yourself? Can you steal from your own self what belongs to you? Can I steal my glasses from myself? As a rule the answer is no. But here’s the paradox: when Man sinned, he stole his own life! His life was his but he stole it. Stole it from whom? Stole it from God, because ultimately everything belongs to God. But not only from God, because Man couldn't steal his life from God without also stealing it from himself—depriving himself of it, forfeiting it.
(Read Genesis 2:17)
From his very creation, Man was a debtor to God for his life—for the life that came from God. And interestingly, there were two ways to repay God this debt: either to live, literally live this life for God, in love and the knowledge of Him, or to die, to forfeit the life that he couldn’t properly manage for God. In any case, life belongs to God and exists only for His glory’s sake.
And so I return to the second question: Why couldn’t God simply say “I forgive” without requiring the suffering and death of Christ?
I think the answer will be easier to understand, now that we’ve talked about “debts”.
By not demanding from us the life we owed Him, God essentially relinquished the life that was owed Him, that belonged to Him. And this reality concretely materialized in the sacrifice of Jesus Christ. Because, you know, forgiveness doesn’t consist of words alone. Forgiveness is an act. Moreover, it is an act of forfeiture, of loss.
If you owe me five dollars and I forgive you the debt, that’s all very well and good for you, of course—but I’ve lost! What have I lost? Five dollars, of course!
Even if someone offended me in a more abstract way—let’s say it’s not money we’re talking about; let’s say someone was spreading gossip about me. If I forgive that person, what do I lose? I lose the right to expect moral compensation, to expect that he will somehow undo what was done, rewind time itself to make it so that the wrong never happened. By the way, who can pay off a debt like that? Who can rewind time? Nobody! And so it turns out that, by forgiving, I am actually liberating myself from the expectation of the impossible!
And do you know how that expectation of the impossible manifests itself in life, what it’s called? Bitterness. Or, as one lady responded in a church where I asked that question: “Torture!” That’s right. It is. It’s bitterness and torture absolutely worth getting free of, because that’s just no way to live.
And so, forgiveness is an act of forfeiture. Even if such forfeiture liberates the forgiver, all the same it's a loss. Forgiving us the life we owed Him, God Himself lost. He gave up, in the very Person of Christ, the life that was His by right, the life we owed Him. He carried Himself the full weight of the offense that no one could possibly have made up to Him.
And there’s the answer to the second question. God so loved us that He gave His own life in Christ, to make up our debt, and this is forgiveness. That's "why" the cross, the suffering, the death....
And now I think we can very briefly and simply answer the first question, which went: “If we must forgive one another similarly to how God forgave us in Christ, does it mean we also must suffer and die in order to forgive?”
The answer is... “Yes”.
Maybe not literally, and of course not to the salvation of the whole world, inasmuch as it’s not against us the whole world sinned or to us the whole world owes life itself. But, inasmuch as our Savior materialized all forgiveness and the source of forgiveness Himself, by His death, in love, and made us (as the apostle Peter says) “partakers in the divine nature by the power of His resurrection”, we have power—yes, and a debt!—to forgive in imitation of His forgiveness: by relinquishing, giving up, what’s ours by right and not expecting impossible recompense, by carrying, absorbing, the whole brunt of the offense and loss and so extinguishing it, and by trusting everything, with thankfulness and total release, into the hands of Him who is faithful.
Doing that, we liberate ourselves from the debts of our debtors; by the power of the Risen Life of Jesus Christ we die to the offense and live to God, in the freedom of forgiveness. Forgiveness frees the forgiver. That’s the great secret of forgiveness, and what a tragedy that it is a secret! Forgiveness frees the forgiver—yes, even God! God who’s forgiven us is now free to love His children without ever again recalling the sins that He has put away: “...This is my blood, shed for the remission.. the putting away... of sins....”
So let us likewise free ourselves through forgiveness from every wrong done to us, in imitation of our God and Savior.
(Read Ephesians 4:32-5:2).
