Faith and Forgiveness
Notes
Transcript
Introduction
Introduction
The Brothers’ Fear
The Brothers’ Fear
Seventeen years after coming to Egypt, Jacob had finally died and an unfortunate truth comes to the forefront: the reconciliation between Joseph and his brothers had not been fully realized. This is not because of a lack of willingness and forgiveness on Joseph’s part, but rather due to a lack of faith on the brothers’ part.
Why is this a lack of faith?
They do not trust Joseph to be conformed to godly love, or the goodwill he’s shown to them.
They do not believe that forgiveness is possible, and so manipulation must be used.
They do not trust God to preserve his people with the blessings and promises given to their forefathers.
They do not trust God’s sovereign providence. Joseph had told them in
And now do not be distressed or angry with yourselves because you sold me here, for God sent me before you to preserve life.
Joseph had based his forgiveness, not on their actions, but on God’s providence. He then told the brothers not to be distressed or angry with themselves for the same reason, that God had been victorious over their sin and thus, following their repentance and reconciliation with Joseph, they no longer need to feel the shame of their sin. However, they did not adopt Joseph’s view of providence and so the shame of their sin has remained all these years, and true reconciliation has not happened because of their unbelief.
Without an understanding of godly love and forgiveness, the brother’s are unable to let go of their shame and so continue to be controlled by sin. Particularly, the deception and manipulation that their father often exhibited when he lacked faith.
There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear. For fear has to do with punishment, and whoever fears has not been perfected in love.
It’s not that the brothers have not been shown love, but the covenant love of God has not changed their hearts to the extent it needs to be for full reconciliation to happen. Instead, fear remains in their hearts. They do not know love so they are in fear of punishment. If they did know love, as Joseph does, they would have no fear of judgement.
The need clearly seen here in the need for the Holy Spirit of God to teach them love. For although they have a good example of love in Joseph, they need one who can show perfect love and also show their hearts that love so that fear can be cast off.
As Christians, it is important to let the magnitude of our sins sink into our hearts. James tells us to be wretched and mourn and weep when we find ourselves exhibiting worldly behaviour or submitting to worldly feelings rather than godly ones. However, this grief is meant to lead us repentance with the promise that God will exalt us when we are humbled in this way. Shame, on the other hand, is not a repenting sorrow, but a submission to sin and its power. Shame never leads to repentance, it only motivates us to escape our sin or hide it. Godly sorrow has us confront our sin, confessing it to God and to other Christians. It causes us to trust in the power of Christ and the godly love displayed on the cross to destroy all the power and shame of that sin and to raise us up as righteous in the sight of God in the righteousness of Christ. The only people that need to hide their sin or manipulate their way out of its consequences are those who have not embraced the love of God in faith. This is what Luther meant in his famous and commonly misunderstood quote, “sin boldly.”
Joseph’s Grief
Joseph’s Grief
Now let us look at Joseph’s response to the brother’s manipulative lie. It is grief, Joseph’s heart is broken to hear his brothers’ express clear evidence that they still carry around shame that keep their relationship from being what it should be in a covenant of love. When he starts crying, they go further with their manipulation by offering themselves as slaves. While there certainly is a semblance of humility in this action, it comes without an understanding of covenant love, something that Joseph had hoped they understood by now.
Joseph mourns their lack of faith because:
They had not learned love. Love cannot exist with fear. Joseph had a great love for his brothers that overcame any resentment he may have been tempted to feel. Love also overcomes shame a guilt. You cannot freely love someone when you feel condemnation around them. While guilt may come for a season, with repentance and reconciliation it can be left in the past with no strings attached. However, if reconciliation has not really happened and the burden of shame remains, you cannot love. Sins of the distant past will be a barrier limiting love, even if those sins are only brought up in your own mind. This also makes it impossible to love others in a godly way. If you have not learned the power of love through the forgiveness of your own sins, you will not be able to show Godly love to others. Here there is an inconsistancy in the brothers, for although they had shown godly love towards Benjamin by offering themselves in his place, they have not fully learned that love that can forgive any sin. Thus, they would be unable to love freely those who had sinned against them.
Love has not been recognized. Joseph is grieved because his love for his brothers was interpreted as being a self-serving move to see his father again rather than motivated by true forgiveness. This is truly devastating for someone who has gone through so much and forgiven so much. Joseph had freed them from their sins, but they had not. If we are unwilling to accept that our sins have been forgiven in Christ we will not truly know the love of Christ.
So we see that Joseph’s grief comes from the reconciliation with his brothers being imperfect due to a remaining shame in his brothers. Shame is a dangerous thing to remain in the heart of believers.
Shame can easily be mistaken for legitimate, godly sorrow and guilt. Although we’ve talked about this recently, lets review the differences:
Godly sorrow is willing to expose sin, shame hides it.
Godly sorrow is based on how our sin interferes with our relationship with God and tears down his glory, shame is based on the physical or emotional fallout of sin. While Godly sorrow is focused on how sin affects God, worldly sorrow, or shame, is focused on how our sin affects us.
Godly sorrow leads to repentance and destroys sin, shame leads to behavioral change to manages manage.
Shame seeks forgiveness, but not reconciliation. The relationship we are created to have with Christ is one of love and thus reconciliation is necessary as well as forgiveness. When we have shame we want the negative effects, the condemnation, and the emotional turmoil caused by our sin to go away, but it does not give us any desire to submit to Christ, love Christ, or give up everything for Christ.
Shame is not enough to save us from the deceitfulness of sin, rather it deceives us into thinking we are fighting sin. Instead of mortifying sin, it hides it, whitewashes it, makes excuses for it, and drives us back to it. Someone who is full of shame is likely to deal with that shame by turning to sin or cheering their flesh.
Shame is a rot in the church.
It makes love for one another shallow.
It makes the Biblical practice of confession to one another non-existent.
It breeds an atmosphere of condemnation rather than gentle restoration. Those who harbour shame for their sin are more likely to judge others for theirs. This is part of our fleshes way to satiating the guilt, by convincing us we are holy compared to others rather than exposing our sins in humility.
It makes a church more tolerant of sin. It does this because someone motivated by shame is more likely to change their ethics than expose their sin.
It removes any solid confidence in Christ.
It allows those living in sin to fester in the church without challenge. A church full of shameful people are hard on certain outward sins, but permissive of other, more subtle sins. These are allowed to grow without church discipline and tear down the church.
Shame eats away at the Gospel. Rather than bringing our sins openly to Christ, shame embraces a works righteousness that seeks to outweigh our heavy consciences. While the Gospel will expose our sins in order to destroy them by the power of the cross, works righteousness hides sin under a cloak of morality.
Providence, Faith, and Forgiveness
Providence, Faith, and Forgiveness
Next, instead of adding to the shame of the brothers by rebuking them harshly, Joseph again tries to show them the foundation of his forgiveness and their reconciliation: the power and providence of God. Their shame is defeated because their sin was defeated. What they sinfully intended for evil, God used for good. If they have repented and united themselves with their brother, the memoury of their sin need not remain. Joseph makes two arguments as to why they should not fear retribution from him:
He is not in the place of God. The brothers are giving Joseph more authority than he actually has. Revenge is wrong because it puts us in the place of God to decide what is right. The brothers are inadvertently mistaking Joseph’s authority as divine, when it is not. He has no authority to exact revenge, and so he wouldn’t even if he wanted to.
But that’s just the thing, he doesn’t want to. Joseph sees, and wants his brothers to see, that God defeated their sin through their sinful actions. That is, while their actions were motivated by evil to promote evil, God defeated that evil by using their evil actions to promote good. Thus, Joseph feels no bitterness towards them, for if God has defeated their sin through his providence there is no need to remain angry.
This becomes the basis of Joseph’s forgiveness of and kindness towards his brothers. God had defeated their sin through providence and so he will live in that victory. This is what Paul meant when he told the Roman Church
Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good.
God’s no-so-secret weapon through which he combats evil is good.
And we know that for those who love God all things work together for good, for those who are called according to his purpose.
The greatest example of this is, of course, in the suffering and death of Jesus Christ. Joseph is, in fact, a type of Christ, one who foreshadowed his suffering and the salvation of God’s people through his exaltation. Jesus, who did have the authority to enact revenge on his enemies, did not show even a semblance of vengeance, but instead forgiveness
And Jesus said, “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.” And they cast lots to divide his garments.
and on the cross, Christ defeated sin through the sin of those who crucified them. Although Judas, the Pharisees, the High Priests, the Jewish crowd, and the Romans meant it for evil, God meant it for good. The greatest sin ever commited produced the greatest and final victory over sin.
There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.
There is no place for shame because God has defeated our sin and stolen its power entirely. Christ has shown himself as great and your rebellion as weak, and so there is no need to hide it, no need to fear his judgement, and no slavery to sin left. God defeated your sin, just like God defeated the brothers’ jealousy and hatred.
This is where faith, providence, and forgiveness converge. Because of God’s victorious providence sin has no power or victory. This makes forgiveness a logical actions, because to forgive is nothing less than to declare that sin has lost and God’s powerful grace has won. When this is embraced by the people of God with faith, it removes sin, shame, bitterness, and division and sustains holiness, purity, forgiveness, reconciliation, and love.
Victory over shame and sin in the church
Victory over shame and sin in the church
As the people of God, we are assured of Christ’s great victory over sin by faith in his death and resurrection, and so not only are we victors over our sin, but also over the sins of others. No Christian has an excuse to live either in bitterness or shame. This affects the people of God in these ways:
1. It gives us the confidence to bring our sin out of the darkness and into the light of God’s victorious grace, so that it’s power may be dissolved, it’s shame may be quieted, and Christ’s victory may be made known in our lives.
2. It gives us hope that even the sins we have committed in the past which have hurt us or hurt others in very tangible ways will be turned around for good in God’s providence.
3. It encourages repentance and a putting off of all sin because of the victory we have in Christ
Therefore, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us also lay aside every weight, and sin which clings so closely, and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us, looking to Jesus, the founder and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, despising the shame, and is seated at the right hand of the throne of God.
4. It encourages a gentle yet firm church discipline where the goal is not to punish sin or shame our brothers and sisters, but to help lead them into the victory of Christ over sin.
Brothers, if anyone is caught in any transgression, you who are spiritual should restore him in a spirit of gentleness. Keep watch on yourself, lest you too be tempted. Bear one another’s burdens, and so fulfill the law of Christ.
5. It powers reconciliation between Christians. In the victory of Christ, men have become close friends with their father’s murderer (as in the case of Steve Saint, son of Nate Saint) or their child’s kidnapper (as in the case of Krishna Pal, William Carey’s first convert). There is no case of sin where reconciliation cannot happen in the church because all sin has been defeated on the cross. While the sin, when committed, was intended for evil, God works all things for good in his Kingdom. Reconciliation is a way of expressing faith and trust in God’s providence, both in our own sin and in the sins committed against us.
It shows the world around us the power of the cross. We worship the victor over sin and shame, and the power of the victorious Christ dwells with us in the Holy Spirit. In this way, God shows the world his providence and love through us. With this in mind, how great should be our effort to throw off our sins, forgive the sins of others, and pursue our victorious God.
Conclusion
Conclusion