Month: January 2008 Page 2 of 3

There is a default mode of thinking with every human being in the world. This thinking permeates the way we all naturally approach relationships at almost every level. And this thinking essentially says, “Someone hurt me, and now they must pay.” Even in our “forgiving” of another person, we only forgive if they ___. This thinking results in bitterness, anger, self-exaltation, conceitedness, and a general “everyone owes me because of what I’ve endured” kind of attitude toward the world, or the victim mentality as it has come to be called.

So how do we really forgive someone from the heart? First of all, before we answer that, we need to ask another question: what is forgiveness? Forgiveness is essentially taking the hurt or pain within yourself that the other person inflicted upon you, putting down your arms, and not seeking revenge. Forgiveness is not so much acting like nothing ever happened, but rather, not seeking revenge in any capacity, either subtly or overtly. This is increasingly difficult the greater the offense.

So how do you forgive someone who caused so much pain? In yourself and your abilities, it is really impossible for you to forgive someone. And even when you do “forgive” someone, there is still a feeling of “they owe me” many times that eats away at the relationship. This is where, practically speaking, the difference between religion and the Gospel becomes blatantly apparent. Within religion, you merit your eternal life and blessings from God, or you lose them. Because of this thinking, we also feel like people merit their relationship with us or they lose it, and vice versa; we feel we either merit relationships or we lose them based on what we do.

In the Gospel though, Christ merited the blessings for you out of love, through belief and trust in Him, because you were incapable of ever meeting God’s infinitely just, holy standards. Or in other words, you offended God on an infinite level by disregarding His name and glory in all you did. Therefore God was rightly and justly angry at you, on an infinite level. This anger results in just eternal punishment, because we are His creatures and He is the Creator. We owe Him, and yet we are unable to pay Him back because the payment is infinite in relation to the one offended. Therefore our due from Him is eternal wrath. We are owed wrath in fact. And no amount of moral or religious toiling can pay Him back for the infinite hurt we have caused Him. Some will object at this point and say, “But God should just take the pain within Himself, like you just said we should do, and pardon everyone.”

Funny you should say that, because, well, Jesus came to do exactly that, if we will believe in and trust Him. Jesus, being God from all eternity, became a man, like us, in order to bridge an infinite gap between us and God. He did this willingly, out of love. Jesus took both the worst man could throw at Him and the worst God had for man, and took the searing pain from both ends in Himself on the cross. Through the work of the cross, Jesus took the blow we were owed by God in Himself, that whoever believes in Him will indeed be forgiven. God has made a way for us to be reconciled. Jesus made a way that was impossible for us to accomplish by ourselves. Jesus’s work on the cross is the ultimate forgiveness.

I submit to you, all of you who harbor bitterness and angst against someone else for how they’ve wronged you, you will in no way be able to forgive them (as defined above) in yourself, your power, will, and ability, because all that comes from us naturally is corrupted. The only way to forgive someone from your heart, in a way in which you seek no revenge upon that person is to have been forgiven yourself of a debt of infinite value. Until you see that your offense against God is an infinite back-slap to God’s name, value and glory, and that it is infinitely greater than the offense inflicted upon you; and that your offense has been forgiven through the work of Christ (i.e. through faith alone, He takes your eternal hell for you on the cross, and gives you His infinitely perfect record), only then will you ever be able to fully forgive the person who hurt you. You must first feel the weight of the debt you’ve incurred by your sin. It is a grievous injury to God’s value and worth. Our due is wrath, not goodness. Sin, great and small, is all an infinite offense against God. He is no one’s debtor, we are not owed anything good, but rather only wrath.

Therefore, to experience this kind of forgiveness, the lifting of such a heavy burden by the work of Christ for how you’ve wronged God when you should have been sent to hell for eternity, is the only way to change from the inside out, in order that you can then truly forgive the person. It is the only way to really forgive someone from the heart. Ask God to help you first feel the weight of your sin and then feel the weight of mercy in the cross. You will then look at the person who injured you and say, “How can I not forgive them after having been forgiven such a greater offense myself?”

“And Jesus went on with his disciples to the villages of Caesarea Philippi. And on the way he asked his disciples, ‘Who do people say that I am?’ And they told him, ‘John the Baptist; and others say, Elijah; and others, one of the prophets.’ And he asked them, ‘But who do you say that I am?’ Peter answered him, ‘You are the Christ.’ And he strictly charged them to tell no one about him.”

Ultimately this is the question everyone needs to ask themselves about who exactly Jesus is. Answers abound in our day just as in the day of Jesus. In the day of Christ, some said he was a prophet, Elijah, or John the Baptist. In our day, people say he was a great teacher, maybe the best of all moral instructors, or that he was merely a man of mystery who changed the course of history. Yet these responses all miss the mark of the only two responses we can have: he was either a lunatic liar or He was exactly who He made Himself out to be, the Christ. Many in our day seem to only read the sermon on the mount when making a conclusion about who Jesus is. Deepak Chopra is one example. He “[carries] the Sermon on the Mount with [him] wherever [he goes] and [tries] to live by it.” Jesus is just a moral example to him. They fail to read all the other instances in which Jesus says things that are extremely hard to hear (concerning election, His judgment of the unbelieving, His exclusive claims of authority over all things), making Himself equal with God even, the supreme authority of the universe. When concluding who Jesus is, you cannot ignore the controversial statements he made.

“Who do you say that I am?” This question is very important for believers and unbelievers. For unbelievers, who you say Jesus is determines your eternal fate. If he is just a moral example, as with Chopra, then he is no different than any other person in the world and has no power to deliver you. He’s just an ideal, not one who bore the wrath you deserve on your behalf, not one who redeemed you from certain eternal death. Yet He is the Christ, the supreme commander of the universe, and on that day of final judgment, Jesus will say to you who reject Him, “I never knew you.” That is a frightening prospect if He is the great commander of the universe. For believers, who you say Jesus is today has everything to do with personal holiness and conformity to Him. For example, though you may confess Christ as your Lord and Savior and indeed be saved, does He have any bearing on decisions you make throughout the day, from small to large ones? If not, then in your heart, you are not regarding Christ as the King of the universe. But if He is the center of your world, then He reigns supreme and directs you in the way you should go, to His glory.

Just consider this question: who do you say Jesus is? And then turn to the Scriptures, ask God to reveal Christ to your heart through what you read, and seek God to grant you greater love for Christ.

“And by this we know that we have come to know him, if we keep his commandments.” 1 John 2:3

Do you love holiness and the law of God? That question is hard because I do at times as a result of Christ’s work in me and at other times I don’t because of remaining sin. Two competing desires, one of them waging war against what the other desires. This verse rings in my ears sometimes and I become fearful, because, well, I so often do not keep His commandments. You could phrase the verse like this: if you keep His commandments you can know you have come to truly know Christ. That’s scary. It makes me think of the verse in Philippians 2:12-13, “Work out your own salvation with fear and trembling, for it is God who works in you, both to will and to work for his good pleasure.” This “knowing” of Christ is not just knowing facts about Christ or giving mental, intellectual assent to Him as a good moral teacher, but loving Him intimately as the supreme being of the universe, because He first loved us through the cross.

I’m the worst sinner I know though. I’m petty, idolatrous, deceitful, evil, fearful, distrusting of God, easily angered and irritable, passive, and just plain rebellious toward God many times. All of these things display ways in which I have not believed the Gospel deeply enough and they expose areas in which there is unbelief in Christ in my heart. May God have mercy on me, a depraved sinner. But is John saying that we keep His commandments perfectly in order to be accepted by God? That is so often how a verse like this is interpreted by people. They’ll say, “Yeah, yeah, be good, obey God, and then he will like you.” Not at all! Rather it is the reverse for those who love Christ. For believer’s who have trusted Christ alone to be their righteousness replacement, God has accepted them fully, and therefore, as a result of that love shown to them, with a renewed nature they seek to bring Him honor through adherence to His law, because now they actually love to do it, it is no longer a burden as before. And yet many times I don’t. I find this fight going on within me, a desire to love God and a desire to turn to sin. Paul displays this struggle within believers in Romans 7. It is God alone who is holding me back from pursuing the depths of sin because, as Jonathan Edwards says (paraphrase), our straying hearts are pressing with great heaviness toward hell and it is only by His grace He does not let us to pursue it. Lord, bind my wandering heart to Thee!

Earlier in verse one of the same chapter, John says, “But if anyone does sin, we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous.” So John assumes we will commit sin and offers the remedy for restoration to God in order that we may not continue in it: the precious blood of Christ. This is extremely comforting for me when I consider the weight of my sin and His love for me to save me from His wrath due to me for that sin. I must not find my comfort so much in adherence to the law, but rather in Christ alone and His work on my behalf, and then seeing that work itself out in my life through His continual regeneration to become like Him which brings assurance of salvation. I am utterly dependent upon Him to change me and must pursue Him pleading with Him to work in me greater holiness. “For it is God who is at work in you to will and to work for His good pleasure.”

If you have come to truly know Christ, you would also confess that He has supernaturally entered your heart by the Holy Spirit and made you new from the inside out, having poured out His love into your heart. Since believers are those that now possess a regenerated nature, we also have new desires and a restored will, to praise God in all we do, whereas before, we could have cared less. It is no longer a burden to obey God’s law (like it was before conversion when we thought we had to adhere to it in order to be saved), but now it is a delight, it is life, health to our souls, and most of all, glorifying to God. We are not trying to pay Him back for what He has done for us through the cross, but are simply enamored by the love He has so clearly shown us in the cross itself, that in it He rescued us from God Himself and His deserved wrath. We are freed to obey Christ because of His accomplishment!

So the times I consider this verse, as soon as I become afraid and fearful because of my sin, I must run to the cross where my Savior bled and died, in order that I may be assured of His love and become conformed to His image, that by His power alone, I may be progressively changed and sanctified, increasingly turning away from sin. We should all be questioning the authenticity of our faith in light of Scripture and if you love the world and your sin so much that Christ isn’t really a thought in your mind (but you just give lip service to Him), you have good reason to question your faith and thus your salvation. How is it we know we know Him? How do we have assurance? We do what He commands out of love for Him, in faith, not out of duty (which doesn’t last). Beg God to grant you eyes to see the value of Christ and cast your cares upon Him that you may be saved.

And for those who love Christ, who struggle with sin (which who doesn’t?), and who are afraid when they read a verse like the one at the beginning of this entry, be comforted. Only by returning to the cross can you find forgiveness, cleansing by His blood, restoration to God, and assurance that you are saved. This is what John means in chapter one of first John when he talks about walking in the light as He is in the light: coming to Christ to be washed clean and being exposed before Him, with all of your nastiness that you may be cleaned up. And as John says at the beginning of chapter two, “I am writing these things to you so that you may not sin. But if anyone does sin, we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous.”