Accident Forgiveness

Accident Forgiveness Psalm 51:1-7 You heard of the car insurance, I think it is Nationwide, that if you have a good record, they will reduce your deductible a certain percentage for every year you don’t have an accident and if and when you do have an accident, they will forgive you the fault and not charge you the expense? Rather nice of them, wouldn’t you say? How many of you are familiar with driving down your local highway in the dead of winter and you see a patch of ice coming up. You grip the wheel and think back to your driver’s ed. class and what you were taught about curve negotiation and braking on slippery surfaces. You hit the ice and go into a slight spin. Okay. Do you hit the brakes or not hit the brakes? Do you turn the wheel in the direction of the skid or in the opposite direction? Too late, you’re into the guardrail and the front end of your car looks like an accordion. Maybe it wasn’t your driving. Those new, expensive snow tires failed to grip the road as they were supposed to. Maybe if that annoying cell phone hadn’t rung. Why didn’t the highway crews get some sand on the roads as they’re supposed to? And the insurance company is going to hang you out to dry, so you think. So, when you go to your mailbox a few weeks later, you’re expecting a letter from your extortion company; and when you open it, you’re expecting that there’s going to be a hefty increase in your premium. Only, there’s not. The letter inexplicably says something like: “Gee, sorry you had an accident. Well, they happen sometimes. No worries, though. We’ll pay the bills and keep your premium the same. Just be more careful next time.” Good news? You bet. That’s what many auto insurance companies are doing these days. It’s called “accident forgiveness,” and it’s the hottest marketing tool in the industry. If you have a clean driving record for an extended period before any accident, that fender bender probably won’t cost you a big hit on your insurance bill. As far as they’re concerned, it never happened … at least this once. It’s a relief to get forgiveness when we have a motor crash and probably don’t deserve it. But if an insurance company can offer grace, imagine what kind of grace God offers when we have a moral crash? And what if that crash isn’t an accident? What happens to us spiritually when our failure to stay on the road God has set for us isn’t an accident at all, but a willful, “at-fault” transgression? What kind of forgiveness, if any, can we expect then? What kind of forgiveness does God offer when our sin isn’t unintentional? 2 2 Samuel 11 is a classic case. When King David viewed Bathsheba bathing on her rooftop, the impending collision in an adulterous affair was no mere moral fender-bender. His deception, attempted coverup, and de facto murder of Bathsheba’s husband Uriah are evidence that David never touched his ethical or spiritual brakes in this situation. His lust clouded his vision to the point that he swerved out of his lane and head-on into oncoming traffic, crashing in the same way his spiritual ancestors Adam and Eve had so many generations before. He preferred to listen to his own voice rather than the voice of God. David was an extraordinary person both in his spirituality and his sensuality. As a spiritual man, he had a heart like one after the heart of God. As a human being, he succumbed to the temptations of the flesh. Yet his sense of separation from God caused his deep anguish and is another mark of the extraordinary nature of the man. Perhaps we are ordinary people, too. Rhythm & Blues singer and songwriter John Legend writes and sings about it in a song that got him eight Grammy nominations. In the song, “Ordinary People,” he writes: We’re just ordinary people; We don’t know which way to go. Cuz we’re ordinary people; Maybe we should take it slow. Can you believe that got eight Grammy nominations? That tells me that it resonates with just everyday folks like you and me. Every day is an opportunity to slow down, to start anew, to take a hesitant and penitent step toward being extra-ordinary. It’s popular in some circles these days to see sin as merely a series of “mistakes” or “accidents” that reflect our human imperfections. Heavens, some sin today is seen as totally acceptable; but I better not go down that rabbit hole for fear of offending someone who thinks their actions are perfectly acceptable… Sin though, biblically speaking, sin is more often about choice. God provides His Word as a means of defining boundaries, and we choose whether or not to violate those boundaries at our own risk. But sin is not merely a legal violation of divine law, like speeding or running a red light. The reason sin is so destructive is that it breaks our relationship with God, and broken relationships aren’t fixed by simply filling out the paperwork and paying the fine. When and as we fail to maintain a right relationship with God, we need nothing less than a completely new beginning; each day, we need God’s forgiveness. 3 But first we need to be clear about what forgiveness means. In their book, The Faces of Forgiveness, LeRon Shults and Steven Sandage identify at least three different ways that we can define forgiveness. One definition is “forensic” or “legal” forgiveness — the kind that your insurance company wants to give you, or the kind that involves having a debt erased. This kind of forgiveness is a “transaction” … in which one party agrees not to exact what the law requires. This kind of forgiveness is situational and may be limited to one particular incident. Your insurance company forgives your momentary lapse in driving skill, for example, and won’t raise your rates — this time. Back into your neighbor’s car the next month and you’ll see that the whole “seventy times seven” forgiveness thing that Jesus talked about isn’t written in your policy. Legal forgiveness can often only be a one-shot deal. In vehicular terms, habitual sin, even when it’s unintentional, can be expensive! A second definition of forgiveness connects it with a therapeutic benefit. Forgiveness in this sense is a process by which the offended party is motivated to become “less vengeful and more benevolent” toward the wrongdoer. Forgiveness in this context does not condone the offense or forget about it. Forgiveness is about releasing claim over the offender and moving forward in another direction. This kind of forgiveness, like the legal definition, is also limited. It doesn’t necessarily bring about reconciliation and restoration of a broken relationship. That requires a whole different level of forgiveness — the kind that only God can fully offer. Psalm 51 is attributed to David as having been written after his affair with Bathsheba. David’s heartfelt cry in this Psalm reflects his agony in those days after his failure. He wasn’t seeking a mere free pass for a mistake that he made, nor did he just want God to withhold righteous anger and judgment while he, the king, and his God went their separate ways. David was seeking nothing less than a restoration of the most important relationship in his life. He was seeking redemptive forgiveness. When David was confronted by the prophet Nathan in 2 Samuel 12, David comes to the heartbreaking realization that his sin was “against the Lord” — a realization echoed in Psalm 51:4. That doesn’t minimize the hurt that he had caused to the other people involved in the situation, including Bathsheba, whom he used, and Uriah, whom he killed. It was simply a recognition that all sin moves us away from God. The Psalm, then, is 4 focused on taking steps toward reconciliation with God, counting on God’s “steadfast love” and “mercy” to restore the relationship (51:1). Your insurance company has a long memory when it comes to your last fender-bender. The psalmist asks God to not just forget this one incident, but to wipe the slate clean altogether. This is the difference between the “good hands” people and the hand of God: The insurance company does look at your driving record — is it good or bad? God doesn’t look at the record. God knows it’s not good. That’s why the plea to “blot out my transgressions” and the repeated references to cleansing throughout the Psalm are evidence of the assurance that God’s redemptive forgiveness extends far beyond our last sinful act. When we come to God in confession and repentance, we know that God’s primary concern is to reconcile the relationship. God is no divine claims adjuster who raises the cost of our sin with each incident, but instead God will “hide His face from our sins” (v. 9). They are dumped in the circular file and deleted from the database. We have to recognize, though, that the purpose of God’s forgiveness is not simple absolution, awaiting the next time we sin. Redemptive forgiveness is about clearing the way for a renewed relationship to take place, a relationship where the “joy of God’s salvation” wins out over the self-serving pleasures of sin (v. 12). We receive God’s grace not as a license to sin even more, knowing that we will be forgiven. Grace and forgiveness are about transformation — about a “willing spirit” to change and a “broken spirit” that recognizes constant dependence upon God (vv. 12, 17). Redemptive forgiveness enables us to move in a new direction where sin is not in the driver’s seat of our lives. Every day is the perfect time to knock out the dings and dents we’ve received as the result of our reckless living. Every day we should hear Carrie Underwood sing, “Jesus take the wheel,” and humbly place God in the driver’s seat, and to work on the disciplines that help us grow in our relationship with God. Every day is a time for confession, for repentance, for asking God to redeem us. And every day is also the time to offer God’s redemptive forgiveness to others as we “sing aloud of God’s deliverance” in our own lives (v. 14). God’s grace is not a one-shot deal but an offer of lifelong salvation. Is there any better news you can get than that? One day a young nun approached Saint Teresa and confessed to a plenitude of spiritual tribulations 5 and terrible sins. Having listened for some time, Saint Teresa offered a word of advice: “We know, sister, that none of us is perfect. Just take care that your sins don’t turn into bad habits.”