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Forgiveness – Core to the Gospel

As we shall see in these reflections, forgiveness is core to the Gospel, the Lord’s Prayer, Relationships, the Release of Debts/Sins, and the Authority of the Apostolic Church. It may be hard to suggest a more important matter regarding our relationship with God and others. The apostle Paul stated unequivocally, “For I handed on to you as of first importance what I in turn had received: that Christ died for our sins in accordance with the scriptures …” 1 Corinthians 15.3. The obvious corollary of this scripture is that the death of Jesus for our sins bought forgiveness from God for all humankind. This is the Good News!

At the heart of God’s action in Christ was the clearing of the unpayable debt of sin and rebellion—a debt we can never hope to pay. It was paid for us in the substitutionary death of Jesus at Calvary Hill. This act declares like no other that God loves and forgives—His forgiveness knows no bounds.

If God, through God, has forgiven us, we are truly free – free from the penalty of sin, free from crippling guilt and fear, and free to forgive and love as we have been forgiven and loved. The forgiveness we are to show others is premised on our being forgiven. No one will ever owe us what we owe a holy God. The forgiveness we are to extend to others is only possible because of the freedom Christ won for us by dying for us. If he hasn’t, we can’t.

Forgiving others is vital for salvation to have its relational way, and it would be asking too much to insist we forgive when sinned against if we were not aware of being forgiven. This is a dilemma addressed in Simon Wiesenthal’s remarkable book The Sunflower. He suffered the cruel indignities of concentration camps in WWII, at one of which he was asked to speak to a German SS soldier dying of terrible burns. The officer begged his forgiveness for all the wickedness he had done to Jewish people. In the end, Simon Wiesenthal remained silent whilst the soldier died, not forgiving him because he didn’t think he had the moral right to do so. The book then explores this dilemma from the perspective of various religious traditions. The Christian contributors are the only ones (if memory serves me) who felt the soldier could and should have been forgiven. Likely, they thought so because they had experienced the love of God in Christ, forgiving their sins, whereas other traditions don’t even believe in the reality of sin and the need for forgiveness.

“Be kind to one another, tender hearted, forgiving one another, as God in Christ has forgiven you.” Ephesians 4.32