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Colossians 2:13 And when you were dead in
trespasses and the uncircumcision of your flesh, God made you alive together
with him, when he forgave us all our trespasses, 14 erasing the
record that stood against us with its legal demands. He set this aside, nailing
it to the cross.
The writer of this
scripture starts our understanding with the idea that we had already died. We
are dead to our sins and lust of our flesh, which is a way of saying we had
bought into the culture way of understanding our lives are determined by the
amount of wealth and possession we have accumulated. When our lives worth is
determined by those measures, then we truly have already died. Sound just a
little dismal? That has been the cry of the prophet from the beginning of time.
Deny God and die!
Adam had one rule
to follow and all of paradise to enjoy as a consequence of following that one
rule. Perfect love has no binds, no strings and offers a choice to love back or
not, something we Wesleyan folk call free will. Free will means that we can
choose to love one another and love God or simply love ourselves. I know people
like that. I know people who measure their worth by the kind of car they have,
the neighborhood they live in and the amount of money they have in the bank. Therefore,
Adam having all of paradise to enjoy chose to disobey God’s one rule. Why? We
could certainly argue that it was simply human nature that caused him to break
the rule. My guess would be that it was for a simple moment of pleasure.
So what is the
inherent nature of sin? It is really a simple concept. Sin is simply
disobedience to God. There is no hierarchy, as we like to attach to it. To God,
sin is sin. Disobedience can be as simple as desiring someone else’s sandwich
to the point of figuring out how to take it from them or it could be as
complicated as working through the murder of someone for your own personal
gain. It could be allowing envy for what someone else has and your desire to
obtain it at any cost to put in motion a plan to get it. Disobedience is as old
as the fall for paradise when Adam put something in front of his relationship
with God. In Noah’s day, the whole world
had simply forgotten God. How is that possible you ask? My dear friend Rabbi
Bruce reminds us through the story of the worship and prayer in the woods. Once
there was a people who worshipped God by preparing a celebration in the woods.
They would enter the woods to a clearing, begin to prayer to God, tell the
story of God and then worship God in that place. As time went on, people began
to forget what the celebration was about and the story of God stopped being
told, so they followed what they remembered. At first they simply came into the
woods to the clearing, some remembered to pray but they could not remember what
they were praying for. The worship stopped. More time went by and they would
once a year come to the edge of the woods but they could not remember why they
came or what they were supposed to do. All of this because they stopped telling
the story. In Noah’s day, the stopped telling the story of God so they forgot
God.
As the people we
call the Jewish people today began to remember the story, they embellished the
telling over and over again. In fact, they remembered the decree that God had
laid down that in order to seek forgiveness, they must sacrifice. So they
learned how to sacrifice birds and animals in lofty places, built temples for
the sole purpose of sacrifice as they came for redemption from God. Then an
interesting thing began to happen. They began to modify the rules of redemption
so that human beings became center not God. They adapted the rules of living so
that a person could achieve redemption without having to acknowledge or pray to
God. So a person simply had to live out their lives in certain ways, dress in
certain ways and eat in certain ways at certain times of the week, month and
year to obtain this promise of paradise. At least that is what they thought.
You see God had decreed 10 basic principles or rules known as the Mosaic Law to
be followed. They believed that it had to be more complicated than that so the
ten rules became a hundred, then a thousand and by the time Jesus arrived there
were more than 4 thousand rules to be followed if you hoped for redemption and
paradise. The main emphasis here though needs to be on the idea of sacrifice as
a means to claim redemption for sin.
Into this world
comes Jesus, God incarnate, God’s answer to the redemption issue and challenge.
As you have heard me say on many occasions, this is the not the sole purpose
for Jesus but it is one of the significant reasons for his life. Jesus begins a
ministry of redemption, healing and restoration. He begins His teaching to let
us know what it takes on our part to receive the wonderful gift that God has
already made available for us. Jesus wants us to know that forgiveness is as
simple as a prayer away for all of us.
So what does he say about sin and forgiveness?
In Matthew 6 Jesus
tells us that if we forgive those who sin against us then God will forgive our
sins. In Luke 17 Jesus tells us that if a person sins against us seven times in
a day and asks for repentance all seven times we are to forgive them. In
Matthew 18 when Peter asks Jesus how many times we must forgive, Jesus replies
to him not seven times but seventy times seven times. The Psalmist in Psalm 103
reminds us that God forgives as far as the east to the west. Jesus came to
share with us the desire by God to learn about love for one another and that we
are to forgive one another. That does not mean that we can pick and choose what
is forgivable and what is not, rather we are to forgive.
So why was Jesus
death necessary in this forgiveness thing? God had determined that sin required
sacrifice to be atoned. Repentance alone cannot do it. Our own desire to be a
better person cannot do it. Nothing we can do allows us to make up the falling
short of the glory of God that we all do. I have also often shared that sin is
inherent to our natural makeup. We want to be in control, we desire to decide
things for us and we do not want rules that are hard. We all share in those
favorite words of a two-year, me, mine and no. Since that inherent nature is a
part of who we are, we could argue that it is a part of creation. Only God can
fix creation. So God sent us Jesus to do just that. Jesus death shows us how
much God loves us. Jesus willingness to go to the cross for you and me shows us
how much love God really has for us. Jesus becomes the sacrifice to fix the
inherent nature so that we can share in relationship with God without fear of
death. Jesus resurrection reminds us that we have the promise of paradise in
front of us. Will we sin each and every day? Sure, we will. Can we ask for
forgiveness seven times in a day and receive it? Luke 17 tells us so.
Here is the hard
part my friends. Jesus came with a forgiving heart so that we could see what
that looks like. Jesus showed us how to forgive, how to share healing and how
to restore people in relationship. Can we do anything less? Our task in front
of us is to learn how to forgive one another not once, not seven times but
seventy times seven. Our task is to find a way to share God’s love with each
other and to learn to accept that we all make mistakes and need to be forgiven
from time to time. Must we forgive the serial killer who took a child? Yes!
Must we forgive the young man who took lives in Florida? Yes! Must we forgive
the terrorists who destroyed the Twin Towers? Yes!
I want to share
with you that we have a God with a forgiving heart and God expects us to learn
how to use our own power of forgiveness in the world around us. Is it hard? You
bet it is! Does forgiveness mean reconciliation? Sometimes yes and sometimes
no. God does not expect us to stay in abusive situations nor does God expect one-sided
relationships. But God does expect us to forgive. Let me share it another way.
Floris Wuellner in her book, Forgiveness the Passionate Journey, reminds
us that forgiveness is so that we may be healed, that we may shed the burden of
pain and suffering brought on us by others so that we may be free to live our
lives.
Jesus has a
forgiving heart. Jesus constantly is forgiving us for our iniquities, our
screw-ups, our failures and our humanly desires to be disobedient. We are
forgiven people. Isn’t great to know that we have a God who loves us so much
that when we make mistakes the slate can be wiped clean? What God asks in
return is that we love God and love one another. That we share that heart of
forgiveness with our fellow human beings. That we start to live and love like
there is no tomorrow even when we know there is an eternity ahead of us.
Forgiveness – a heart to be shared.
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