The Power of Forgiveness

Mark Dunagan
01/31/16 - Sunday Morning

The Power of Forgiveness

How happy and free the soul who seeks, embraces and offers forgiveness:

• “How blessed is he whose transgression is forgiven, whose sin is covered.  How blessed is the man to whom the Lord does not impute sin” (Psalm 32:1-2).
• “Come now, and let us reason together, says the Lord, ‘Though your sins are as scarlet, they will be as snow; though they are read like crimson, they will be like wool” (Isaiah 1:18).
• “He will again have compassion on us; He will tread our iniquities under foot.  Yes, You will cast all their sins into the depths of the sea” (Micah 7:19).
• “Come to Me, all who are weary and heavy-laden, and I will give you rest” (Matthew 11:28).

Why Be Skeptical?

Why be skeptical or guarded against what God says to be true with regard to forgiveness? How arrogant to deny one needs it, and how faithless to refuse to accept that God would forgive you or I, given His awesome promises on the matter.  Our spiritual enemy wants us to become so use to wallowing in guilt and self-pity that we cannot imagine an identity that has been removed from the familiar feeling that “I am such a loser”.  Others view forgiving oneself for the sins of the past as a state of mind that will only lead to making excuses later for repeated failures, perhaps thinking “If I forgive myself, I will just do it again”.

The same tendency happens when God tells us to forgive others (Matthew 6:12, 14-15; 18:35).  Actually at times we don’t trust that others can handle forgiveness or that we can handle it. 

We may even start thinking, “Wait a minute, if I forgive them, they are only going to abuse my kindness and end up hurting me again”.  Obviously people can abuse anything, including God’s mercy and grace (Jude 4), yet if we are fearful that accepting forgiveness will always lead to a casual attitude toward evil, we are mistaken.  God knew what He was doing when He exhorted us to seek it and give it.  Listen to what David said about his life as long as he refused to acknowledge his sin and go to God for the removal of it.

• “When I kept silent about my sin, my body wasted away though my groaning all day long, for day and night Your hand was heavy upon me; my vitality was drained away as with the fever heat of summer” (Psalm 32:3-4).

Note that while David had a guilty conscience (God’s hand was heavy upon him), that guilt in and of itself did not prompt him, rather he remained stuck, unmotivated and depressed.  It was God's forgiveness that really helped him get back on track.  One writer noted that “Its forgiveness, not guilt, that increases accountability” (The Willpower Instinct, Kelly McGonigal, Ph.D., p. 148).    Guilt is valuable (Psalm 51:3) and useful, for it is impossible to move toward God if you don’t realize the gravity of your sin, a hunger and thirst for righteousness and how very desperately your need your Heavenly Father's help. Yet long term guilt, all by itself, without any hope of forgiveness often, rather than move people toward changes in behavior,  moves people to overeat, overspend, get depressed and wallow in self-pity. Guilt, like many other negative emotions such as anger or fear, is meant to be not a state of mind one "dwells in" long term, but a springboard to propel you and I toward God and better decisions.

When You Have Blown In

Peter blew it, yet becomes one of Jesus’ most faithful followers (Matthew 26:69-75).  On the very same night Judas also blew it and subsequently goes out and takes his own life (Matthew 27:5).  Both men obviously felt guilty (26:75; 27:4 “I have betrayed innocent blood”).  So why does one man come back to God and one man seal his fate even while he is not right with God?

Avoiding The "No Use Trying" Cycle

One of the biggest threats to willpower is the cycle of indulgence, regret, and greater indulgence.  On a small scale this happens with dieters all the time.  They make one mistake when it comes to eating and they have the attitude, “Well, what’s the use, I blew it” and as a result they convince themselves that one mistake means that the entire diet is ruined.  So they start thinking, “Well since I have already blown it in eating that one cupcake, what’s the harm in eating three more?”  On the much more weighty matter of what this means on a spiritual level,  is that we should be aware of the fact that the devil will often seek to convince us that one sin or one spiritual setback indicates we are "past saving", completely hopeless and entirely unsuited to live the Christian life. Thus throwing our hands into the air thinking "I've have already sinned, why not just sin some more?" is right where Satan wants us.

The More Serious Danger

When we yield to sin feel guilty let's determine to avoid the common mistake of sinning even more (lying about or minimizing our sin, encouraging others to condone or join in our sin) to cover our feelings of guilt instead of instantly going to God for forgiveness and feeling better right away (1 John 1:9).  Obviously we should, at all costs, avoid sin (1 John 2:1) and yet we must realize how very much life can get entirely out of control very quickly if after we sin, we don’t immediately seek forgiveness and the refreshment of God’s grace (Acts 3:19), rather than choosing to keep beating ourselves up.

Motivation to Seek Forgiveness

• Be Good to The Future You:  Acts 2:40

“The future you is the person you imagine when you wonder whether you should clean the closet today or leave it to your future self.  Future you is the person who will be much more enthusiastic about exercising than you are right now.  Future you is the person who will order the healthiest item on the fast-food menu.  Future you always has more time, more energy, and more willpower than present you.  At least that’s the story we tell ourselves when we think about our future selves.  It is one of the most puzzling but predictable mental errors humans make:  We think about our future selves like different people.  We often idealize them, expecting our future selves to do what our present selves cannot manage.  Sometimes we mistreat them, burdening them with the consequences of our present selves’ decisions.  Sometimes we simply misunderstand them, failing to realize that they will have the same thoughts and feelings as our present selves.  However we think of our future selves rarely do we see them as fully us” (The Willpower Instinct, Kelly McGonigal, Ph. D., pp. 171,172).

• So seek and embrace God’s forgiveness.  Your future self will be so very glad you did.
• Avoid burdening the future you will years and years of guilt, bitterness and heavy consequences because you were not willing to forgive or be forgiven.

Let God Define Who You Are

All of us (including the Apostle Paul 1 Corinthians 9:27) have struggles and temptations we need to battle.  Too many of us define ourselves by these struggles.  You will hear things all the time like…

• “I’m obsessive compulsive”
•  “I’m not a happy person”
• “I’m an addict”
• “I wish I was more like so and so”
• “I have an addictive personality”
• “I am not a people person”

Yet God defines us as “saints”, “children of God”, “blameless”, “chosen”, “God’s special possession”, “priests”, “righteous”, and “faithful”.  Yes we still sin as Christians (1 John 1:9), yet sin is no longer what defines us.  How do you currently define yourself?  What is your real identity?  May we never forget that when you and I are forgiven by the blood of Christ, we are new creatures (2 Corinthians 5:17).   All the sins of the past are a thing of the past (1 Corinthians 6:9-11).  Writer Andree Seu Peterson puts it this way:

"He gives us two things we cannot measure—the distance of heaven from earth and the tail-chasing distance of east from west...—to convey the idea of a mercy that is beyond our experience in other human relationships, a love that “no eye has seen, nor ear heard, nor the heart of man imagined” (1 Corinthians 2:9). Literally, the sky is the limit when it comes to God’s mercy. No request that is made from a good motive is outrageous. Let me not limit my prayers to what men say is possible.

But if God’s love is so big—and He is so earnest to communicate how big it is—How can I insult Him so? Do I think so highly of myself as to imagine that I’m the only person on earth that the gospel isn’t going to work for? I’ve finally done it: I’ve finally committed a sin that’s more powerful than Jesus’ blood!

The Christians I admire most—and I know precious few of them—are those whom I can see are so confident of God’s undeserved love that they are not constantly revisiting their sin or crime, but they have moved on with their lives and have peace and joy. Oh, if the matter of their past comes up, they will not deny it, and will be the first to call it evil. But you will not suck them into a morbid dwelling on it... “. . . as far as the east is from the west, so far does he remove our transgressions from us.”

How far is east from west? About as far as yes is from no, I suppose, or guilty from innocent. Or as far as future is from past. They can give each other a good chase, but they will never catch each other.

If you were trying to encourage a fearful soul to understand that he is forgiven, if you were dealing with someone given to serial relapses into self-incrimination, what would you say to him? God bends over backwards; He multiplies metaphors till one of them works for you: Your sin is so forgiven that only if the east could become west would you become unforgiven.

Don’t like that one? Then how about this: Your sin is so forgiven that it is like the goat whose head the high priest Aaron laid both his hands on it and confessed over it everything he could think of, transmitting all the vileness of his person and his people onto the animal. And then he took the sin-ridden beast to another man, who led it into the wilderness, never to return (Leviticus 16:20-28).

That one doesn’t do it for you, either? Try this: Your sin is like the curtain between the Holy Place and the Holy of Holies (don’t picture your mother’s drapes but more like an iron curtain) that was ripped clean from top to bottom in the hour that Jesus, the archetypal scapegoat, took on our sins (Mark 15:38).

Or if it helps, picture yourself standing before God, covered in human excrement (that’s the actual word in Zechariah 3), with Satan accusing you—and making a very good case. And the Angel of the Lord rebukes Satan instead of you and calls for the filthy garments to be taken away and brand new, pure garments put on you..."

Your Amazing Journey

As a Christian I am in the process of becoming holy (1 Peter 1:14) as God is holy.  I am in the process of becoming pure in spirit and flesh (2 Corinthians 7:1).  I am in the process of becoming blameless (Philippians 2:15).  Every day, is another exciting day on an amazing journey toward our true identity as a child of God.  We were once in darkness, but from now on we are walking as children of light (Ephesians 5:8).

Mark Dunagan | mdunagan@frontier.net
Beaverton Church of Christ | 503-644-9017
www.beavertonchurchofchrist.net