We Believe: In the Forgiveness of Sins

We live in a world deeply in need of restoration. A friend said to me this week, “I’ve just turned off the news. Fire in the West, water in the East, Covid everywhere.” And that’s just the natural disasters currently plaguing our nation. There are humanitarian disasters, political injustice, oppression, aggression, division…we live in a world deeply in need of healing. The current symptoms are new, but the disease is not.

What happened? In the passage that Lance read this morning, Genesis explains that Eve and Adam ate of the apple and believed they should be ashamed, so they hid from God. Now, our world and our lives are permeated by sin. This is what John Calvin meant by total depravity. There is no part of us that is not deformed by sin. We are made in God’s image and yet not even God’s image within us is without distortion.

Several years ago, a gentleman in planning his wife’s funeral was adamant that “Amazing Grace” was not to be played. His wife was not a sinner, he said. To be fair, she was a really nice lady, who I doubt seriously ever intentionally set out to commit sin. But, she was a sinner. We all are. The word, “sinner” in the New Testament is hamartia. It is the word used in target shooting for you missed. It means “missed the mark.” We all miss the mark of perfection. So, when we sing “Amazing grace, how sweet the sound that saved a wretch like me…” we aren’t singing it about someone else. We aren’t singing about some other wretch, some other blind man, some other prodigal. You are wretched, a good-for-nothing, and I am too. We all fall short of the glory of God. We all miss the mark. We are all sinners.

And yet, Genesis tells us that God comes looking in the garden, “Where are you?” Jesus tells us that God stands at the window awaiting our return and runs to meet us as soon as our figure appears on the horizon.

Amazing grace. This is what we mean when we say, “I believe in the forgiveness of sins.” We are saying, “I believe God is searching for me even though I am a sinner. I believe God is watching and waiting and eager to welcome me home when I realize how lost I have been.” We believe in the forgiveness of sins because we know what it is to be forgiven, for God to release us from what we deserve and grace us with what we don’t.

But that is not all that we mean when we say, “I believe in the forgiveness of sins.” We are saying, I am the older brother too, and “I believe God calls me to come inside and join the party.” We are affirming that God is searching for “them” – whoever they is in our lives, whoever has hurt us, whoever lives on the other side our divide – even though they are sinners, God is watching and waiting and eager to welcome “them” home, too, no matter how lost they have been. And God calls us to come inside, and sit down at the table, and feast…with them.

And, like the older brother, we may have trouble letting go of the hurt, the bitterness, and the anger to come inside, much less to party.

I think some of our reluctance comes from false ideas about what forgiveness really is.

Forgiveness is not forgetting. Forgiveness is not placing yourself back in a harmful situation or continuing an abusive relationship. Forgiveness is not excusing. Real forgiveness does not avert attention away from the reality of the sin, instead real forgiveness looks at the sin after all the excuses have been cleared away, all the allowances have been made, and sees it in all its horror, dirt, and meanness, and nevertheless releases the bitterness, lets go of the anger, relinquishes the expectation of punishment, and surrenders the desire for retribution.

-Forgiveness is letting go of the past that you wanted to be and wasn’t.

Here are some definitions of forgiveness from some writer/pastor/theologians:

-Forgiveness is to set a prisoner free, and discover that the prisoner was you. – Louis B. Smedes

-Forgiveness is a door to peace and happiness. It is a small, narrow door, and cannot be entered without stooping. – Johann C. Arnold

-Forgiveness is what happens when the victim of some hurtful action freely chooses to release the perpretrator of that action from the bondage of guilt, gives up his or her own feelings of ill will, and surrenders any attempt to hurt or damage the perpetrator in return, thus clearing the way for reconciliation and restoration of relationship. – Anthony Bloom

-Failing to forgive, says Nadia Bolz-Weber, is like drinking poison and hoping the other person dies.

– Frederic Luskin is co-founder of Stanford University’s “Forgiveness Project.” He and his team of researchers have long made it their business to study forgiveness — especially the effect it has on the person doing the forgiving.

Forgiveness, Luskin says, is good medicine. It “reduces anger, hurt, depression and stress and leads to greater feelings of optimism, hope, compassion and self-confidence.” The simple and beautiful truth, recognized by psychologists and theologians alike, is that forgiveness frees us — us, the ones offering forgiveness — as much, or even more so, than the neighbors we’re forgiving.

-Forgiveness is not an emotion, or a feeling, though. Forgiveness is an act of the will. We must choose to forgive. God won’t make us come into the party, but God will invite us in and help us let go of the pain and the hurt.

I think I have shared part of Corrie Ten Boom’s story with you before. You remember she and her family were arrested and sent to concentration camps during WWII for sheltering Jewish refugees. She saw many cruelties, inhumane treatment by the guards, she watched her sister get sick and die, and then inexplicably was released two weeks later. Then a week after her release, all the other prisoners in her age group were sent to the gas chamber.

Years later, she had written a bestselling book about her wartime experiences, her faith, her journey to forgiveness. One day, she was speaking at a church service, teaching about the overwhelming grace of God. After the service, she saw an old man approaching her. Many years had passed, but she knew him immediately. He was one of the concentration camp guards — a man who’d been especially cruel to all the inmates.

“How grateful I am for your message, Fraulein,” he said — a big smile on his face. “To think that, as you say, he has washed my sins away!”

The man put out his hand to shake hers, and Corrie froze. She found it hard to return the gesture. Rage boiled up inside her. Silently — desperately — she said a prayer: “Jesus, I cannot forgive him. Give me your forgiveness.”

Immediately, through a power not her own, Corrie watched as her hand went up and she extended it: to shake the hand of this man who had caused her and her sister such misery. Later, she wrote these words about what happened next:

“From my shoulder along my arm and through my hand a current seemed to pass from me to him, while into my heart sprang a love for this stranger that almost overwhelmed me. And so I discovered that it is not on our forgiveness any more than on our goodness that the world’s healing hinges, but on His. When he tells us to love our enemies, He gives, along with the command, the love itself.” [The Hiding Place (Bantam, 1977), 238.]

I believe in the forgiveness of sins. It is not something we can accomplish on our own, but it is also not something God can help us with if we don’t ask. If there is a person or a situation that you have a difficult time forgiving, begin to pray for that person or that situation by name. Lord, help me forgive him. Help me forgive her. And free me from the pain that he or she has caused continuing to hurt me, continuing to make me bitter, continuing to cause my heart to race and my blood pressure to rise.

When we come to this Table, we are gathered with all whom Christ has invited. All who have been forgiven and welcomed home. Is there someone you would rather not sit beside? Then, work on it so that you are able to eagerly join the party, look, this son of mine was dead and is alive again, he was lost and is found. I believe in amazing grace – how sweet the sound! Amen.

Story of Corrie Ten Boom adapted from the telling by Rev. Carl Wilton of Point Pleasant Presbyterian Church in “Forgiveness is Not a Feeling”