Forgiveness (Part 2)

Understanding God's Forgiveness

Alexander Pope said that "To err is human; to forgive, divine." Is that really true? Is God really a forgiving God?

To understand God's forgiveness, we first need to understand what forgiveness is. Forgiveness actually has three parts to it. First, there is the hurt, or the harm, that which we experience due to some moral or emotional wrongdoing we have suffered. When forgiving someone, we will usually recognize that there has been an injury to our spirit, and we will experience emotional hurt.

Second, there is a moral or emotional debt involved, that which is charged to the other person against how that person should have treated us. That person owed us the honor of treating us with greater respect, more love, higher dignity, or whatever, and having not treated us in such manner, they are morally indebted to us.

The third element of forgiveness is the act of forgiving itself, the act of canceling the debt. Perhaps it is saying to ourself or to the other person, "I forgive you."

Notice that forgiveness isn't saying, "Oh, it wasn't that bad" or "It didn't hurt that much" or "I know you didn't mean it." That would be excusing the debt by acting as if there never really was a debt.

It's obvious these three aspects of forgiveness apply to our relationships with people. But how well do they apply when it comes to our relationship with God?

Earlier we discussed how clearly the Bible presents our need for forgiveness from God. The idea is that, in our sin and rebellion against God, we have actually harmed or hurt God. We have done damage and injury to His name and His cause on planet Earth. We have done this by neglecting our purpose for being created by Him in the first place to know Him intimately and to glorify Him here on planet Earth through all that we do, say, and think.

And so we owe a debt to God. We have broken His moral standards, and we stand in judgment before Him until we can pay the debt we owe for how we should have lived.

And so it is a very good thing that God is also a forgiving God! How do we know that He really is? Simply because God has done something to cancel our sin! Though God cannot just ignore or excuse our sin, the Bible says that God has done something to it! What has He done? The wonderful story of Christianity is that God came to earth in the form of a man and made "atonement" for our sins. To atone means "to cover." Through Jesus' death on the cross, our sin has been covered. In other words, it has been buried or canceled out. God provided Jesus as a substitute for our sins, to bear the force of our sins, so that we could go free.

This cancellation of sin should result in great rejoicing. We see this in the Bible in the parable of the prodigal son. If you have not read this account in Luke 15, let me encourage you to do so. One thing you will note is that, in this story, there are no excuses offered on either side. The son is straightforward about his sin. And the father doesn't say, "You didn't really mean to do it." Jesus' forgiveness is like that. It deals in a straightforward manner with our sin and cancels it.

Next time we'll look at the iamazing mpact forgiveness can have on others.