The Problem of Forgiveness
My two four year old kids are learning about forgiveness. They often act selfishly against each other, offending each other and we are teaching them to apologize and forgive. It is often a rote catch phrase they quickly spout off, knowing that it is an appropriate practice in life and relationships. They often throw the phrase into situations of conflict, knowing that it is important, but not always grasping the concepts of offense, forgiveness and the resulting reconciliation that forgiveness is intended to accomplish. Why doesn't God simply forgive us with words of forgiveness like I require of my kids? Why should our forgiveness depend on Christ's death on the cross? As one French cynic once said, "Why can't God practice what he preaches and be equally generous [to us]? Nobody's death is necessary before we forgive each other. Why then does God make so much fuss about forgiving us and even declare it impossible without his Son's "sacrifice for sin"? It sounds like a primitive superstition which modern people should [have] long since discarded" (as referenced in the Cross of Christ by John Stott).
Central to this idea of forgiveness before God is the idea of sin and sinning against God. There was a time in our culture when there were many social norms that everyone agreed upon, because there was a clear understanding of right and wrong. In his book, "Whatever Became of Sin?", Karl Menninger writes about the disappearance of sin and its gravity and why the concept of sin has disappeared. He lists several reasons...
1. There are crimes against the government, but no crimes against God. It stating this, there is a clear understanding of violating government laws and ordinances, but the idea that we have violated God's ordinances and laws is completely lost. Sinning against God is an invisible concept.
2. Sin has been replaced by sickness, in which case all wrong doing is merely treated with therapy. What was once punished is now been replaced by treatment.
3. Sin has been replaced by 'collective irresponsibility'. What was once treated as wrong behavior is transferred from individuals to society as a whole or one of its many groupings. "It was not his fault, society has let him down."
Menninger takes preachers to task for soft pedalling sin and offer a corrective..."instead we should understand sin as a willful, defiant or disloyalty to God, where God is defied, offended and hurt."
Where our sins against one another can be atoned by words, the gravity of sin against a holy God requires justice. This is the glory of the Cross of Jesus Christ. That the punishment for sin that we deserved, instead fell on the person of Jesus Christ at the Cross. John Stott, in his book The Cross of Christ calls this the "self-substitution of God". In writing on this topic, Stott writes, "The concept of substitution may be said, then, to lie at the heart of both sin and salvation. For the essence of sin is man substituting himself for God, while the essence of salvation is God substituting himself for man. Man asserts himself against God and puts himself where only God deserves to be; God sacrifices himself for man and puts himself where only man deserves to be. Man claims prerogatives which belong to God alone; God accepts penalties which belong to man alone."
This is the love of God in Christ at the cross. Embracing the sinfulness of sin, but the loveliness of love expressed in Christ's self giving love through his shed blood. In God's economy, there is a problem of forgiveness, but the problem is solved through his plan. Belief in Christ's self substituting sacrifice on the cross is the hope of eternal life found in Jesus Christ.
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