I Believe | Our Forgiveness

I’m so thankful to be part of a Love Your Neighbor church like Christ Journey — we are one church with many campuses meeting together in real time every Sunday with a ‘High tech, high touch,’ reaching all across our county and the world, together!

We are joined at the heart by our vision and joined at the hip by our technology, sharing Christ’s hope as we journey together!

Let us pray—Gables campus, Kendall campus, church online campus, all of those streaming live with us now—for the Miami Beach launch party taking place as we speak!

Father, for your grace and mercy, for your forgiveness, we ask that your presence fill the lives of those who live on the beach! May the power of your Spirit dwell in those who make up your church, and through them, may so many others come to know your love and goodness… in the name of Jesus Christ we make our prayer! Amen!

Today, we meet the Creed in the most vulnerable and visible place of our lives: the forgiveness of sins.

Now, on the most practical, real life level, forgiveness may be the most extraordinarily difficult act that any one of us may ever experience in our lives, no matter what side of the forgiving equation in which we find ourselves.

On the one hand, forgiveness is essential for life. We need it like we need breath in our lungs.

Yet, on the other hand, forgiveness also confronts our faith and forces us to ask ourselves: do I really believe in this God who claims to wholly forgive me and then calls me to do the same with others?

Hence why pastors and theologians across the centuries have called Jesus’ forgiving sacrifice on the cross: scandalous. Do you know what scandalous means? It means an offense against morality.

Forgiveness offends our sense of right and wrong.

Karma makes moral sense. Good people get the goods things that they deserve, and bad people get the bad things that they deserve.

Vengeance makes moral sense. Vengeance inflicts exact punishment for a wrong. If someone harms you, then vengeance exacts that same harm back to them.

That’s why we love movies like Gladiator and Braveheart. The protagonists impose exact revenge against those who harmed the ones they loved. Movies like these affirm our sense of right and wrong.

Unlike my dear friend, Bob, who forgave the drunk driver that killed his wife. At the sentencing hearing, my friend, Bob, even asked for a lower sentence because—and to quote Bob—“he didn’t want to see another life lost in this tragedy.”

Now, that’s scandalous. Some of Bob’s friends criticized him for not asking the judge to issue the fullest sentence allowed by law. To some, what Bob did was immoral.

Though a moral God created us in his image, our fallen morality seeks to judge in God’s place. All of us fall for the lie that we are god, and able to declare right and wrong without ever seeking God’s will on these matters.

Forgiveness offends our sense of right and wrong, but not God’s.

No wonder so many religious, moral, do-gooders found Jesus so deeply offensive during his public ministry. He forgave people of their sins, rather than exacting the fullest punishment of the law upon them. Most of all, Jesus offended the pharisees, religious leaders, who observed the strictest adherence to the religious law. In fact, the Pharisees wanted to kill Jesus because the forgiveness that he offered upended their entire moral system.

Forgiveness offends our sensibilities. It contradicts those deepest desires within all of us that seek to control and preserve our moral superiority.

***Now, this kind of moral superiority ought not be confused with those who are called to bring order and justice, such as law enforcement, firefighters, military, lawyers, government officials, and others who faithfully serve in order to see these virtues of God’s heart come alive in our world. That’s different than those who refuse to forgive because they want to maintain some sense of control or self-preservation.

Forgiveness always costs something of the forgiver, regardless of the size of the offense. By definition, forgiveness of any kind means that the offended assumes the offender’s debt.

Forgiveness always comes with a price tag. Debts don’t just disappear. Whether they be financial, emotional, or physical, we live in a world where the ledgers of our hearts need to zero out.

One theologian wrote on forgiveness, saying, “Forgiveness seems almost unnatural. Our sense of fairness says that people should pay for the wrong they do. But forgiving is love’s power to break nature’s rule.” Lewis B. Smedes, Forgive and Forget, xvi

Think about that: Forgiveness is so offensive that it breaks the rules of nature.

Grudges, revenge, resentment, harsh words, neglect, gossip…. These are natural responses to the broken world in which we live, but in Christ Jesus, forgiveness is love’s power to break our fallen nature’s bent toward moral superiority.

The Apostle Paul described the extent to which Jesus demonstrated God’s love power for you and me in his letter to the church in Colossae. Paul wrote: For he - meaning God the Father almighty, creator of heaven and earth… has rescued us from the dominion of darkness and brought us into the kingdom of the Son he loves, in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins. Colossians 1:13-14

Really, what an extraordinary gift!

Paul’s reference here to Jesus’ Kingdom was first mentioned by the Evangelist, Luke, who recorded Jesus quoting the prophet Isaiah in chapter 61, saying:

***“The Spirit of the Lord is on me, because he has anointed me to proclaim good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners and recovery of sight for the blind, to set the oppressed free, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.” Luke 4:18-19

Here in this statement, Jesus identified himself as God’s Messiah, who would one day restore the world back to rights and bring the Year of the Lord’s favor. This refers to the Year of Jubilee from Numbers chapter 25. Here, Yahweh God decreed the law that Israel would practice a Sabbath year, every 50th year, in order to rest in the Lord’s favor and celebrate his goodness and plenty. During this year, all debts would be forgiven, all slaves would be set free, and the land would rest from 49 years of work.

But in actuality, Israel never obeyed this law. Can you understand why? Because Forgiveness is hard! Canceling debts and taking them on as your own is hard! Israel obeyed many laws, but they couldn’t follow this one.

Even still, though, God desires for his people to experience this kind of freedom come true in their lives. The year of Jubilee is essential to God's character.

In Christ, your Heavenly Father proclaimed the year of Jubilee on our lives by forgiving us of our sins. On the cross, Jesus canceled our debt and paid it by his sacrifice.

Thus why Paul stated, in whom - our Messiah, Jesus Christ - we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins. Colossians 1:14

Paul links these two words together - redemption and forgiveness - for a very specific reason.

***In the original Greek, the word from which we derive the English word ‘forgiveness’ (Colossians 1) is the same word that Luke used for the word ‘freedom’ in reference to the prisoners (Luke 4).

Other translations use the word deliverance. For those of you who grew up reading the King James Version of the Bible, then you may be familiar with the word ‘remission,’ which literally means the “cancelation of debt.”

***Either way, the Greek word ‘aphesin’ literally means: a sending away, a letting go, a release, pardon, complete forgiveness.

In the Colossians passage, Paul used these two words in order to cue the first century ear to remember the Exodus narrative.

Just like if I say the words, “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness,” together in the same sentence, then I am cueing you to think about… the Declaration of Independence.

Listen…

When Paul speaks of God rescuing people from one kingdom and giving them another kingdom in the son whom he loves, and of ‘redemption’ and ‘forgiveness’ as the central themes of that rescue operation, [[[what Paul is doing is]]] Paul is writing with the Exodus from Egypt in mind, which would have been the central heartbeat and hope of every Jewish person of God during the 1st century.

All of God’s people longed for the day when a new Moses, the new Messiah, would lead them into the fullness of their relationship with God.

In this passage, Paul identified Jesus as the new Moses! In Christ, God came all the way down to us in order to deliver all of God’s people from the bonds of slavery to sin, which Paul identified as one kingdom, a dark and evil kingdom, into Christ’s kingdom, a kingdom defined by love, and marked by the forgiveness of sins!

What God has done in Jesus, and is now doing for every person who places his or her trust in him, is the new Exodus!

On the cross, Jesus set free our hearts from sin, forgave us, raised again for us, and ascended to the right hand of the Father for us, so that we may gratefully follow him all the way into freedom.

***Following Jesus means leaving the Egypt of our sin and, instead, entering into the promised land of eternal life!

Forgiveness and Redemption smashed into each other on the cross. Jesus paid the ransom of our sin by dying the death that we deserved, assumed our sin as his own, forgave us for choosing our own way, and freed us from living hopelessly chained to our sinful desires.

Hence why Paul wrote elsewhere:

We know that our old sinful selves were crucified with Christ so that sin might lose its power in our lives. We are no longer slaves to sin. Romans 6:6

On the cross, quite simply, Jesus redeemed our lives back to God and forgave us of our eternal debt.

Forgiveness results from both grace and mercy at work in a person’s life. At once, I am receiving something that I do not deserve, while also not receiving what I do deserve.

Quite literally, redemption means to “buy back.’

On the cross, Jesus bought us back from death. Sin once owned our lives! But God forgave and paid death’s ransom on our behalf. A life for life, Jesus Jesus gave his for ours.

Forgiveness always costs the forgiver.

Reminds me of the old hymn that I grew up singing as a kid:

“Jesus paid it all,

All to Him I owe

Sin had left a crimson stain,

He washed it white as snow”

When we sing the phrase, “All to him I owe,” this means that in Jesus’ forgiveness of our sins and redemption of our lives, our Heavenly Father now holds our lives permanently with him.

—————

This year, my daughter started kindergarten. Any new kindergarten parents here today? I’m not sure which life change was more dramatic: a newborn, or the start of kindergarten. Both of them required about the same amount of preparation!

In an effort not to lose everything that we send to school with her, my wife has labeled literally… everything, including the crayons in her box! ... I love my wife’s attention to detail! She’s the greatest compliment to my absent-mindedness that I could ever imagine!

Now, imagine God doing the same with you, writing on every part of your life: ‘Property of Jesus Christ.” This heart belongs to (underline) Jesus Christ! This mind belongs to (underline) Jesus Christ! These hands, these feet, this body, every part of you, belongs to (underline) Jesus Christ! This situation, even, belongs to Jesus. This is my property, God says, and you belong to the Good God, who made you, and created every part of you.

Don’t you realize that your body is the temple of the Holy Spirit, who lives in you and was given to you by God? You do not belong to yourself, for God bought you with a high price. So you must honor God with your body. 1 Corinthians 6:19-20

As a result Jesus buying us back for himself, our lives no longer belong to us. In fact, they never did. God redeemed us, paid our ransom in full, and once again, as God originally intended, we belong to him. Every breath, word, and deed, every beat of our heart, happens by the grace and mercy of our Heavenly Father.

Forgiveness is love’s power to break nature’s rule.

Though nature’s rule ensures a sense of fairness, what it does not do is satisfy. Fairness appeases, but it does not satisfy.

Our society needs fairness and balance. As a people, we need the rule of law to govern and sustain us. But our hearts and our relationships need satisfaction! We need fulfillment. Are you satisfied with appeasement? Is fairness your chief aim in life?

I certainly hope not, for if we truly lived by the fairness principle, then none of us would deserve anything because we are all offenders! Daily, we live on both sides of the equation! Freedom comes as we follow Jesus into forgiveness, praying as Jesus taught:

Forgive us our sins, as we have forgiven those who sin against us. Matthew 6:12

That’s true freedom: to forgive those who have sinned against you, and that’s exactly what Jesus calls us to remember every time we share the Lord’s supper together:

“Then he took a cup, and when he had given thanks, he gave it to them, saying, “Drink from it, all of you. This is my blood of the covenant, which is poured out for many for the forgiveness of sins.

In his death, Jesus made a new promise to us: to forgive our sins. This promise is a gift that we receive by faith, over and over again. It’s not a one and done. It’s a daily renewal, which begins each time with confession.

If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness. 1 John 1:9

Though this word might make you cringe, confession is like sweet honey for the soul.

Let me acknowledge what confessions isn’t… Confession isn’t speaking with a darkened shadow in a closed booth every couple of years. Nor is confession about speaking a bunch of words into the air, wishing for everything to magically disappear! Those may be some images that conjure up in your mind whenever you think about confession, but the word ***confession Literally means, ‘same word; to speak the same language; to agree.”

Jesus said, the thief--your sin-- will steal, kill, and destroy you.

Confession says, “Yeah, Jesus, I agree with you! My sin is killing my heart, hurting others, and harming my witness to you. Lord, I hate this. This is killing me. I can’t fix all of my wrongs, but I can give my life to you, Jesus, and trust for your forgiveness of my sins. I want your will to be done in my life, so please give me the courage to reconcile with those whom I hurt, including also, with myself.”

That’s confession.

Sometimes, the most difficult person to forgive is the one on the other side of the mirror, staring at you, wondering if God could ever love you or forgive you for what you did… but hear the good news: Jesus died for that person, too, on the other side of the mirror and desires to forgive you no matter what…

No matter how unforgivable it seems, or

How bad the pain feels, or

How much time has gone by…

When Jesus said, This is my blood of the covenant, which is poured out for many for the forgiveness of sins,’ Jesus meant every single one.

Likewise, Jesus also died for the person that you want to see burn. Jesus also thought about that person in his heart, as he hung on the cross to forgive that person’s sins.

Writer, Anne Lamott, once wrote, “not forgiving is like drinking poison and then waiting for the rat to die.“

Forgiveness keeps us alive. When all seems unfair and lost and broken and in despair, forgiveness opens the door for love to break nature’s rules and receive Christ’s Healing Spirit on you.

Now, here is an appropriate place for me to acknowledge that, in this message, I’m not addressing the consequences of people’s actions who harm us. That’s for a different time. Today, I’m focusing solely on Jesus' forgiveness of our sins and his call to all of us who follow him to do likewise, to forgive.

Jesus’ calling isn’t easy, friends.

Vengeance is easy; Forgiveness is the harder way.

Like you, I’ve done this with people in my life, and every time—no matter what the offense was—forgiveness always felt unnatural to me. Of course, I want to see my offender receive the maximum penalty! Don’t we all!? Until, at some point, we come to realize that in wanting vengeance, we inadvertently place ourselves in a prison of our own making, for ultimately, vengeance and moral superiority never, ever satisfy!

But...

Forgiveness slowly dissipates the pain and sets our hearts free to live in an imperfect world that anticipates a new kingdom to come!

Now, I also need to say that Confession isn’t about shame or feeling bad. Our emotions are complex, and sometimes, we don’t always feel what we might expect or should, so take caution about waiting to feel the right thing before you confess your sins.

Remember, confession means agreement. Can you agree that your sin is killing you, before you feel that way? … Well, yeah, I can.

Ok, then confess your sins, agree with God, align your will to God, and then be healed. Don’t wait until you feel bad; instead, agree with God! For many of us, transformation often begins, first, here [[[point to head]]] by the renewing of our minds before the renewing of our emotions.

Now, what about when a social indiscretion arises or a rude interaction takes place? Perhaps, someone wasn’t as thoughtful as they should have been to you. Sometimes, these people may be strangers or drivers on the road.

Before you spill your emotions all over those around you and spew words of hatred and moral superiority, which we’re all prone to do… instead, follow the Holy Spirit into another facet of forgiveness called forbearance.

Forbearance is front-loaded forgiveness. Forbearance is like putting some forgiveness in the barrel, locked and loaded for when you need it. :)

Forbearance prepares your heart and mind to forgive before the offense ever arises. Offenses always come up, but they don’t need to steal your day or rob you of your joy! Someone else’s wrong done to you - or someone else’s bad day - doesn’t need to dictate and define your mental and emotional state. It is specially shouldn’t give you a reason to sin.

In the same way that all of us get rid of the palm fronds in our yard before a storm, a Christ-follower living on the EDGE does similar kind of ‘heart’ clean up work before life’s storms hit. Then, when offenses do come our direction, they won’t whip us around and cause a bunch of damage. Rather, they just blow out to sea, and water the grass, and bring us into a new found faith that very few people ever experience, but is nonetheless possible for any Jesus follower. It’s just that, well, feeling angry and morally superior feels a lot better, doesn’t it, at least for a while, until the rat poison kicks in.

(Stand Still!)

Instead Forgiveness:

Resists thoughts of revenge: Romans 12:19, “Dear friends, never take revenge."

Doesn’t seek to do the offender harm: 1 Thessalonians 5:15, "See that no one pays back evil for evil, but always try to do good to each other and to all people.”

Wishes your offender well: Luke 6:28, "Bless those who curse you. Pray for those who hurt you."

Grieves at their calamities: Proverbs 24:17, "Don’t rejoice when your enemies fall; don’t be happy when they stumble."

Prays for them: Matthew 5:44, "But I say, love your enemies! Pray for those who persecute you!”

Seeks reconciliation with them: Romans 12:18, "Do all that you can to live in peace with everyone."

***And it always willing to come to their help: Ephesians 4:28, "Use your hands for good hard work, and then give generously to others in need."

Friends, Jesus doesn’t give us the option to forgive. Jesus plainly tells us to forgive.

His earliest disciples thought it most essential to our faith by including the ‘forgiveness of sins’ into the earliest teachings of the church. Forgiveness is scandalous, which makes it one of our greatest witnesses to the presence of Jesus in our lives!

Friends, the only reason why we forgive is because we have been forgiven! And since we have been forgiven of everything that we have or will ever do, then by the power of God’s Spirit alive in us, we can forgive others of whatever they do. Let’s follow Jesus into the promised land of eternal life! Agree with God. Take courage and be healed. Let’s be a church who lives on the EDGE together, forgiving one another, just as in Christ, God has forgiven you!