As the crowd feels you push through them, they hear you mutter the words, “Excuse me…” and “Pardon me…” and they instinctively know, as well as you do, that you don’t mean a word of it.
We ask for forgiveness, but it is more of a heads-up than anything else, isn’t it? “Pardon me…” we say, but we could just as well say, “Make way, coming through.” We don’t mean it. Tinged with sarcasm, we say it to a family member who has just accused us of eating the last everything bagel. We raise our voices a little and apologize for existing - “Excuse me for living.”
What if we meant it? “Excuse me for living… my whole life is in desperate need of pardoning.” Old Job wrote, “My breath is offensive to my wife.” For us, literally breathing is an offense. Our lives invade other lives every second of the day. Jesus’ disciples asked him how often they should forgive someone and he figuratively said, not seven times, but seventy times seven. If he only meant 490 times, then we would have all run out of forgiveness in diapers.
Helmets, shoulder-pads and the rest should be our uniforms, because we are on the offensive. We storm and lay siege to one another, whether it is through emotional-blackmail or using people as welcome mats to wipe our dirty feet. We’re in bad shape. Poor form. We need forgiveness. Without even considering what we may have done to the God who lovingly made us, we are still crying out for a clean-slate.
Deserving retribution, we so often get mercy. It happens so frequently that it becomes something expected. You let a driver squeeze into the spot in front of you and you get no wave. You hold a door open for an old lady and get no time of day. Even in the face of forgiveness, we offend. Did I say we are in poor shape? There is no geometric description for us.
Forgiveness is not just a spiritual or religious concept. Pick up your copy of Whatever Magazine and find out that being a better you involves being a forgiving person. No rocket-scientist performing brain surgery there. Simple. People who cannot forgive become these caustic personalities with permafrost of the heart. Put any two humans together and watch as the reasons for the need to overlook offenses pile up like rugby players on a ball.
Alright. Enough in that direction. I will make an assumption at this point, and place some faith in the fact that we are all well aware of our offensive qualities. If you are unsure of whether or not this is a sound thing to do, ask anyone who knows you at all to verify it. Better yet, use the short list of people you could ask as proof of this. It’s a given, then, that without pardoning, our grating little lives would spin off from one another into seclusion. Being alive is often being that gift people reluctantly accept in the hope that it might make a good door-stop or dog-blanket.
“The parade has been cancelled due to rain.” “The ribbon-cutting ceremony has been postponed due to the scissors being used in a crime.” The bad news is in. But what if there is more? Could it be worse? Yes. It could be, and is. If it isn’t bad enough that we offend just by living, the moral to the story is that forgiveness will not solve our problem. Forgiveness is like lubricant that keeps an engine from seizing, but it will not replace the worn-out parts. Something needs to be replaced.
As a young Christian, I remember being mystified by the whole concept of the Unforgivable Sin. What is it? Have I done it? I have since come to the realization that the unforgivable sin is simply a sin sinned by a sinner who doesn’t want forgiveness. You have to want it to get it. Forgiveness cannot be forced on another. By it’s very nature it must be received – accepted. You can offer it, but it can be turned down. This gets us back to the bad news - that just got worse. There is something about us that neither wants forgiveness, nor can even be forgiven. Sin actually is unforgivable.
Wait a second… Aren’t sins the reason for forgiveness in the first place? Ah – but I didn’t say “sins”. I said “Sin” – singular, not plural. There is a big difference. We normally think of sins as verbs, but what I’m talking about here is a noun. The first time sin is mentioned in the Bible is way back in Genesis, where God had to have a little talk with Cain about his attitude. He said to him, “If you do well, will you not be accepted? And if you do not do well, sin lies at the door. And its desire is for you, but you should rule over it.” Sin is spoken of as “it”. Sins are one thing, but Sin is quite another.
Consider for a moment a strung-out drug-addict. It started small, but very soon became unmanageable. Friends were pilfered and shops were lifted to keep the habit healthy. Soon he became even a scourge to his own family. His father loved him though. He put up with much. Forgiveness was doled out without a grudge. You see, this father remembered pushing his little boy on the swing out back and fixing up his bike. This father dug deep to pull memories to the forefront about fishing and answering endless questions about why what is what. He looked at his son now and hated the poison that ran through his veins. He hated what it had turned his little boy into. He forgave the stealing and lying and the things his son said while under the influence. But the addiction? There would be no forgiveness for that. It would be hunted down, smoked out, and summarily executed. It’s called rehab. Cutting off contact with the chemical would be the only way to get his boy back.
You have just heard your story – and mine. Sin is our addiction. It is a poison that has infected our souls. We are not sinners because we sin, we sin because we are sin-factories, pumping out the stuff from an endless supply of raw materials. Those sins are a problem. Forgiveness keeps things running smoothly, but what we really need is someone to throw a wrench in the gears. Jesus illustrated this perfectly when he gave the very practical advice of gouging out your eye if it causes you to sin. He also advised cutting off a hand or foot for the same reason. He meant for us to see where this was headed, and to realize that heart-ectomies should be scheduled for later today. Is there anything in us that does not cause us to sin? It’s rampant, infectious, and it doesn’t want forgiveness.
The sin nature that we all receive as a door prize for entering the world would actually love for us to think that forgiveness is enough. If we believe that it can be forgiven, then it can surreptitiously continue getting sin out through every crevice of our lives. This is not to underemphasize our need for pardoning. Going back to our engine metaphor, you have to have lubricant or it won’t work. But no mechanic thinks that a blown head-gasket can be fixed by pouring 10w30 all over it. The only fix is a new one. It’s not really a fix at all. New wine for new wineskins, Jesus said.
So, there we have it. Sin has set up shop in our lives and it likes it fine just where it is. It laughs at forgiveness and hopes that we think a pardon is good enough to keep it under control. But Jesus is not fooled. He knows the very day and hour sin came to town. He remembers the day Adam died. He looked down from his vantage point in eternity and saw the future of Adam’s sin-cursed race and said, “I’ll go, send me.” Jesus Christ came to do business with sin. Forgiveness is necessary, but that’s not enough to satisfy the kind of love we’re talking about here. The father we were thinking about earlier who loved his son enough to get him into rehabilitation, is just a drop in the ocean compared to the love of Christ for sinners. He came to stop sin dead in its tracks – and that’s exactly what he did.
How did Jesus do it? Why do I still sin? Those two questions need answering. Maybe you’re at the place in your life where you don’t want to be forgiven anymore because you can’t stand thinking about having to ask for it again. Maybe you’re tired of coming to God with the same sins time and time again, and you feel like He’s tired of it too. Most Christians are aware of the sin-repent-sin cycle. It’s not a washing machine option, but it does make you feel like you’ve been through one.
I’ve backed up the truck and dumped a whole lot of bad news so far, but I can’t wait to unzip the sky and let loose the good news for you. It’s so good. Jesus is good news. It’s exclusive too. I’m not about to give you another promise with a flat tire, offering a Jesus-plus-something-else. It’s Jesus-plus-nothing, here. I’ve been given the goods on Christ. So have you. It’s called, your Bible.
I’m writing all this because someone listened to me. He really listened. I went on about how I thought I was living the life the Lord had for me, but this guy knew I was missing out. He knew I didn’t know the whole story. I had half of it, but try riding a unicycle with half a wheel. Try running with one leg. Try asking God to do something that He’s already done and wonder why He doesn’t seem to be answering your prayer. That was my life. I didn’t think Jesus was enough. The guy that listened to me? He told me to read my Bible. He told me to read those hard places that I usually skipped over. I read them. I heard the sky unzip.
I hope you will pardon me for sounding holier-than-thou, but due to the fact that I so seldom hear what I’m going to spend the next - I don’t know how many pages - trying to get through to you, I can’t help talking like you are my little blacksmith in training. So I’m going to use the small hammer to give the sword on the anvil a tap, so that you know where to swing your big one. You have to come down on it with all your weight. You have to come to rest on it. The sword – you know – “every word that comes from the mouth of God.” The only living I’ve ever known is from leaning hard on God’s word. He expects me to. He expects you to too. He’ll forgive you for not doing it. He forgives sins – just not Sin.