The wonder of God's Forgiveness
A few weeks ago I took a small class of Bible students in a Baptist church in Swansea. We spent the day going through the book of Revelation together, and there I met a girl called Leila. Her father is a converted Muslim, in fact he had spoken at our church at a Christmas Supper a few months ago. Leila grew up in that religious home rather resentful about Christianity, and at one period in her teens she set out to prove from the Bible that there was no God, but one by one all her questions were answered. This is what she said, ‘My interest in God grew as I began to question the meaning of life; why are we here? Why do we die? Where do morals come from? As I listened to sermons and learned more about Jesus Christ everything became clear. I knew I needed forgiveness for ignoring God, who loves me and made me, and that the only way I can be forgiven is through Jesus. So I asked Jesus to forgive me and save me, and he did.’ Her concern, you notice, was to be personally forgiven for her sins.
What actually happened when God forgave Leila? It is obvious that God himself did something. He didn’t just have nice feelings towards her, in fact God goes on record and he says to her, ‘From now on I won’t remember your sins, Leila’ (Isaiah 43:25). How remarkable is the divine forgiveness. God wants Leila to know that he’ll no longer hold her sins against her. She made fun of Christianity, was bored with church and criticised her mother and father for being too religious, but when she sincerely asked God to forgive her he assured her that from that moment on he wasn’t charging her with any of those sins. God made her a promise that henceforth he wouldn’t remember them. I am saying that forgiveness is not a feeling; forgiveness is a promise.
‘How is this possible?’ you ask. ‘Surely God remembers everything. He knows all our past and present and future. He has a book in which all my life is written. You have said that he has seen the video of my life, so how can God become forgetful about all the things I’ve done wrong?’
God doesn’t. He doesn’t say that he’ll forget our sins. He says that he won’t remember them. He will choose to cast them deep down into the sea of his forgetfulness. He will choose to remove them from you as far as the east is from the west, continually going further and further from you. ‘I will not remember your sins,’ says God. In other words, ‘I am determined not to hold your sins against you. I’ll never ever bring them up. I wont rub your noses in them during your life, and when you stand before me in the day of judgment there’ll not be a single sin that I will lay to your charge, and when we spend eternity in heaven together I’m never going to spoil it by suddenly saying something like, "You remember what you did when you were 17?" I have sent them all far away, for ever and ever, Amen. I have buried them very, very deep. I am not going to allow any archaeological crew to exhume your old sins. Digging up your past life is forbidden. Those old remains will remain buried and forgotten for evermore.’
There will never be an occasion in our entire future in which God is going to use our sins against us. They are eternally forgiven.
Once Martin Luther was asked if he felt that his sins were forgiven, and he said, ‘No, I don't feel they are forgiven, I know they are forgiven because God has said so in his Word.’ God has forgiven us in Christ, or for Christ’s sake. Again it is through something that has been achieved by the Son of God that he can offer forgiveness to us. It is not through pleasant feelings that flow from his love that he forgives. It is because of what his only begotten Son has achieved that justice requires forgiveness.
If sin offends us then how much more does it offend the God in whose image we are made? That offence has to be confronted. We tremble at the measure of God’s righteous indignation at a crime like that. He is no Buddha, unperturbed by whatever happens. He burns in indignation at what he sees, the cries of the torture victim and the sobs of the little girl prostitutes, and the weeping of the widow whose husband has been stabbed to death by a mugger; all that pain rises to heaven and the wrath of God is targetted against all such unrighteousness of man. God is angry with the wicked every day.
Forgiveness then is costly for God. In fact he does something so radical in order to pardon our sins that the very angels are amazed. He gives his only begotten Son to make atonement for sin. Can you see the angels looking on in amazement? What is their Lord doing carrying a cross out of Jerusalem? Imagine the whispers in paradise, ‘Have you heard what is happening on Golgotha? The Lord is bearing man’s sin. His blood has been shed - the blood of the Son of God. He has died and now they’re taking him down and burying him.’ The eternally beloved and sinless Son of God receives the wages of sin. He becomes the sin of his people. He is identified with their crimes and made liable to their punishment. There is no mitigation of the just anger of God because the Lamb happens to be his own dear Son. He is made totally vulnerable to all the demands of a just and sin-hating God.
Only thus can God forgive us our sins because our disobedience has been completely covered over by the obedience of the Son of God. God had something against us, just like those parents have something against the felon who stabbed their dear daughter. God has sin against us, and this sin really matters. Only the Son of God volunteering to become our substitute sin-bearer can obtain divine forgiveness. Only when in my place condemned Jesus stood am I pardoned. Only when he answers for my guilt can I be forgiven. When I ask God for forgiveness I don’t appeal to the divine pity but to the divine righteousness. Through the work of Christ God is henceforth faithful and just to forgive every repentant sinner their sins. Christ’s blood demands forgiveness for us. His five bleeding wounds all insist on our pardon because our sins have all been dealt with and we are clothed in the righteousness of Christ. There is now only forgiveness for those who are in Christ Jesus. There is no condemnation. God has nothing whatever against us. All he had against us has been dealt with by himself and his Son in a way we can never understand. God the just is completely satisfied in looking on Christ and forgiving me. I am completely forgiven, as if I had never done anything wrong.
So what must I do? I must make a journey to Christ and ask for forgiveness through him. Just like this student in Swansea had to set off to God and speak with him, so must you. You must ask God to pardon you. You must make that journey. It is nothing compared to the journey Jesus made to obtain your forgiveness. He left the presence of an adoring company of angels. He left the eternal love of his Father. He left the sinless joy of heaven and down he came, down and down into this groaning sick world. To the womb of Mary, to confinement within the speck of a cell, to the birth in a stable, to the obscurity of Nazareth, to the rude gaze of Jewish peasants and aristocrats, then the lashing and the cross and the tomb. That was the journey he made to buy our forgiveness, while our journey is so slight. I make my journey to him, just as I am without one plea but that he shed his blood for me. Once my journey is over and I am at the feet of Christ then I am safe; I am pardoned and forgiven. In Christ I am justified. In him I am complete. Have you made that journey?