| Forgiveness and the gospel. |
Three men agreed to live together as roommates. One of the room mates had an extensive and costly wardrobe. Coming home one day this same roommate discovered his other two roommates robed in clothes from his collection. Being a kind and forgiving man, he offered forgiveness to both.
The first roommate when he realized that what he had done was wrong and wanting to restore the broken relationship, immediately removed the clothes, returned them, and finally asked to be forgiven. Note again: the purpose of his asking for his roommates forgiveness was to restore a broken relationship. He sought restoration through forgiveness.
The second roommate, feeling guilty at having been caught red handed, wanted to escape any sour consequences his transgression might have brought upon him. Knowing his roommate to be a kind and generous man, he also asked for forgiveness - but wasn't concerned about restoring a relationship, he just to avoid any unpleasant consequences.
Both men asked for forgiveness, but their separate requests [1] arose from entirely different motives, and [2] produced entirely different effects.
The first fellow having sought to be restored through forgiveness received just that: restoration through forgiveness. But not so with the other fellow. To use bible sounding language, "even what he thought he had was taken away from him." He didn't understand that the offer of forgiveness is an offer of reconciliation - he thought the offer had to do with getting out of the consequences. So when he was asking for "forgiveness" it wasn't actual forgiveness that he desired, his desire was simply to escape the just outcome of his unjust acts.
Consider how Peter preached the gospel to those religious Jews who were gathered in Jerusalem on Pentecost morning (c.f. Acts 3:19), "repent and return, so that your sins may be wiped away" The gospel message is not Come to Jesus and He will deliver you from the consequences of your sin. The gospel is that Jesus died to reconcile men to God, and that anyone who believes that God has set Christ on earth for that purpose, and calls on God to be reconciled to Him - the same will be reconciled to God.
The gospel makes no allowance for those who imagine they can be saved without being reconciled. There is no salvation apart from reconciliation - and anyone who is reconciled will not go on sinning like they used to, for God will send His Holy Spirit into that "saved" person - and He will begin to sanctify them starting on that day, and on every day thereafter.
There are a few voices that reject the idea of repentance as being a necessary component of salvific faith. They try and dice up faith so that your faith is nothing more than an assent to certain truths, and if you believe those truths, you are "saved" - whether or not you repent. But such a notion betrays a rather naive comprehension of what our faith is in - our trust is in the reconciliation provided, and not in the benefits of that reconciliation. We either come to Christ for reconciliation, or we haven't yet at all - regardless of how much we believe such and such.
That's how I see it at least. We are not saved by exercising some generic faith in some arbitrary thing - we are saved by placing our faith in God to accept Christ's death in our stead for the purpose of once again bringing us into a right relationship with God. To imagine that we can reap the benefits of that relationship without ever desiring or pursuing it, both prior to, and after our "confession of faith" is (IMO) an eternally deadly mistake to make.
We don't become sinless upon our salvation, but we sure want to become sinless. Listen: Saving faith is a repentant faith - a faith that begins with a focus on reconciliation, as opposed to focused on avoiding consequences.Labels: forgive, gospel |
posted by Daniel @
9:30 AM
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