Attributes of God: Forgiveness
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We have been looking at the attributes of God,
specifically the attributes he ascribes to himself
The Lord passed before him and proclaimed, “The Lord, the Lord, a God merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness, keeping steadfast love for thousands, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin, but who will by no means clear the guilty, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children and the children’s children, to the third and the fourth generation.”
We have looked at God’s Mercy and Grace
Having mercy on the repentant
and Giving grace to those who follow him
We have looked at God’s slowness to anger
Or long nostrils
Patient before dealing justice
We have looked at God’s steadfast Love
A Covenantal agreement
that lasts for thousands of generations
We have looked at God’s Faithfulness
All He says is true,
and our response to his trust is Amen
Today we will look at God’s attribute of Forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin.
Each of those terms has a completely different meaning, though there is some overlap, And i want to look at them one by one
Iniquity - Avon in Hebrew, usually connotates guilt, sins that leave you feeling guilty or deserving of punishment
The root of the word means twisted or bent, or perverted, crooked,
The idea is that when you do something wrong, it twists things out of shape,
including your own soul.
Iniquity or guilt in the Bible is not the sin per say, but the result of it,
It is the twisting of your soul into something crooked.
Quote CS Lewis:
Every time you make a choice you are turning the central part of you, the part of you that chooses, into something a little different than it was before. And taking your life as a whole, with all your innumerable choices, all your life long you are slowly turning this central thing into a heavenly creature or a hellish creature: either into a creature that is in harmony with God, and with other creatures, and with itself, or else into one that is in a state of war and hatred with God, and with its fellow creatures, and with itself.
It first usage in the Bible is alongside the first murder.
Cain spoke to Abel his brother. And when they were in the field, Cain rose up against his brother Abel and killed him. Then the Lord said to Cain, “Where is Abel your brother?” He said, “I do not know; am I my brother’s keeper?” And the Lord said, “What have you done? The voice of your brother’s blood is crying to me from the ground. And now you are cursed from the ground, which has opened its mouth to receive your brother’s blood from your hand. When you work the ground, it shall no longer yield to you its strength. You shall be a fugitive and a wanderer on the earth.” Cain said to the Lord, “My punishment is greater than I can bear. Behold, you have driven me today away from the ground, and from your face I shall be hidden. I shall be a fugitive and a wanderer on the earth, and whoever finds me will kill me.”
Cain kills his brother, and when God calls Cain out and declares judgment Cain says “My punishment/Guilt/iniquity is more than I can bear.”
Almost all English translations say that Cain said this punishment is too much, when really he might be saying “my guilt is too much for me.”
As if his soul has now been twisted by the guilt of killing his brother.
And now he’s not sure if he can ever straighten it out again.
It is easy to twist straight things into crooked shapes, its a lot harder to make crooked shapes straight.
Transgression - Pesha in Hebrew, is literally translated as Crimes, or rebellion,
its root means to break, such as breaking a law, or breaking God’s covenant, or breaking confidence with another person.
The Prime example here is what happened with the Golden calf
When the people saw that Moses delayed to come down from the mountain, the people gathered themselves together to Aaron and said to him, “Up, make us gods who shall go before us. As for this Moses, the man who brought us up out of the land of Egypt, we do not know what has become of him.” So Aaron said to them, “Take off the rings of gold that are in the ears of your wives, your sons, and your daughters, and bring them to me.” So all the people took off the rings of gold that were in their ears and brought them to Aaron. And he received the gold from their hand and fashioned it with a graving tool and made a golden calf. And they said, “These are your gods, O Israel, who brought you up out of the land of Egypt!”
When The Israelites were waiting for moses to come down from the mountain, waiting for 40 days, they assumed he was dead, and they had Aaron make them an Idol to worship.
Nevermind that just 40 days earlier they made a covenant with God where they agreed to the Ten Commandments, after Hearing God Himself give them.
The First 2 of which are Don’t worship any other Gods, and Dont make any idols to worship.
So they have broken their agreement with God,
And God is not happy
And the Lord said to Moses, “Go down, for your people, whom you brought up out of the land of Egypt, have corrupted themselves. They have turned aside quickly out of the way that I commanded them. They have made for themselves a golden calf and have worshiped it and sacrificed to it and said, ‘These are your gods, O Israel, who brought you up out of the land of Egypt!’ ”
Notice God’s language here,
Go down to YOUR people, who YOU brought out of Egypt
he’s pinning it all on Moses.
Then Moses turned and went down from the mountain with the two tablets of the testimony in his hand, tablets that were written on both sides; on the front and on the back they were written. The tablets were the work of God, and the writing was the writing of God, engraved on the tablets. When Joshua heard the noise of the people as they shouted, he said to Moses, “There is a noise of war in the camp.” But he said, “It is not the sound of shouting for victory, or the sound of the cry of defeat, but the sound of singing that I hear.” And as soon as he came near the camp and saw the calf and the dancing, Moses’ anger burned hot, and he threw the tablets out of his hands and broke them at the foot of the mountain. He took the calf that they had made and burned it with fire and ground it to powder and scattered it on the water and made the people of Israel drink it.
Moses takes the tablets with the ten commandments on them, carved by the finger of God, and when he sees that the israelites have broken, transgressed, the law, he breaks the tablets to show what they have done.
But when you transgress something, you break trust, or break a law, or break an agreement,
broken things are hard to fix
Moses has to go Back up the mountain and carve new tablets himself, that’s part of what he is doing when God tells him these attributes that we have been studying.
And as you read the old testament you see that what tends to happen is that the Israelites break God’s rules, when they ask for forgiveness God offers it, but it usually comes with more rules, and that just leaves more rules to be broken.
The Third word, sin or Chatah in hebrew, is an archery term. it means to Miss the mark, to fall short, or to fail.
It is the broadest of the three terms as it can include moral failings, mistakes, and accidents.
It is everything that separates us from God
It is a reminder that we are not perfect.
That is why the Bible can say Romans 3:23
for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God,
Because only God is perfect. Only God can measure up to God’s standards.
It is so pervasive that i do not think i can choose just one example to illustrate what sin is.
So whoever knows the right thing to do and fails to do it, for him it is sin.
But God says he is they type of God who forgives all of these.
But How?
How can a just God ignore things that are twisted and broken and failing to meet his standards?
He speaks of a way in Isaiah 53:4-6
Surely he has borne our griefs and carried our sorrows; yet we esteemed him stricken, smitten by God, and afflicted. But he was pierced for our transgressions; he was crushed for our iniquities; upon him was the chastisement that brought us peace, and with his wounds we are healed. All we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned—every one—to his own way; and the Lord has laid on him the iniquity of us all.
He was Pierced, cut through, for our transgressions,
Or he was broken for the times we broke God’s law
He was Crushed, beaten out of shape for our iniquities
Or he was bent for our crooked guilt.
And the lord laid on him all our iniquities
He carried all our guilt.
This is of course referring to Jesus.
And Jesus when he walked the Earth made it clear in no uncertain terms that he could forgive sins.
And when he returned to Capernaum after some days, it was reported that he was at home. And many were gathered together, so that there was no more room, not even at the door. And he was preaching the word to them. And they came, bringing to him a paralytic carried by four men. And when they could not get near him because of the crowd, they removed the roof above him, and when they had made an opening, they let down the bed on which the paralytic lay. And when Jesus saw their faith, he said to the paralytic, “Son, your sins are forgiven.” Now some of the scribes were sitting there, questioning in their hearts, “Why does this man speak like that? He is blaspheming! Who can forgive sins but God alone?” And immediately Jesus, perceiving in his spirit that they thus questioned within themselves, said to them, “Why do you question these things in your hearts? Which is easier, to say to the paralytic, ‘Your sins are forgiven,’ or to say, ‘Rise, take up your bed and walk’? But that you may know that the Son of Man has authority on earth to forgive sins”—he said to the paralytic— “I say to you, rise, pick up your bed, and go home.” And he rose and immediately picked up his bed and went out before them all, so that they were all amazed and glorified God, saying, “We never saw anything like this!”
We love this story, how a man’s friends believed in Jesus so much that they were willing to do property damage to get the man to Jesus,
But when he gets there Jesus doesn’t say “rise and walk” he says “your sins are forgiven, - or your imperfections are removed.
Because he want those in the crowd to hear that he has the authority to forgive sins.
Which is easier to say?
Neither! you can’t tell a lame man to pick up his mat and walk
You can’t tell a man his failures are forgiven.
But Jesus can, and he does both.
Why? Because He came and died to buy forgiveness for our sins.
And when he died
And Jesus uttered a loud cry and breathed his last. And the curtain of the temple was torn in two, from top to bottom. And when the centurion, who stood facing him, saw that in this way he breathed his last, he said, “Truly this man was the Son of God!”
The temple veil was torn in two, the curtain that separated mankind from God, was removed because all our crookedness, all our rule breaking, all of our failures that separated us from God were also removed.
as far as the east is from the west, so far does he remove our transgressions from us.
Church we have all fallen short of God’s perfect will.
We have all broken the trust of someone else, and broken God’s law.
We have all been twisted by our choices and a our guilt.
Jesus came and died to free us from all of this.
