Sermonstudio

Years ago an evangelist, Dr. Alan Walker, was walking down the center aisle of an auditorium to the stage where he was going to preach. As he walked, someone handed him a note. Backstage before the service began, he opened the note and read, "Dr. Walker, please tell us that God forgives the sin of adultery even by a foolish Christian 31 years of age."

This is the cry of Christians and non-Christians. The basic problem of the world is broken relationships. In various ways, we hurt each other and estrangement follows. We become enemies and we fight, seek revenge, and refuse to talk to each other. Indeed, it is human to err, and consequently those sins separate us from each other and from God. What can restore those relationships? The answer is in the Apostles' Creed: "the forgiveness of sins."

Some people are honest enough to say they do not believe in the forgiveness of sins. A motorcycle gang has the motto: "God forgives, Outlaws don't." In his autobiography Lee Iacocca writes, "Henry Ford made my kids suffer, and for that I'll never forgive him." Simon Wiesenthal spent many years searching for Nazi war criminals who were responsible for the holocaust. When he was a prisoner in a Nazi forced-labor camp, he was ordered to visit an SS trooper who was wounded and dying in a hospital. Knowing he was going to die, he wanted to clear his conscience by confessing his sins of shooting and burning up Jews in the Ukraine. The dying officer begged Wiesenthal, a Jew, to forgive him. Wiesenthal listened, turned, and walked away without a word in reply. After the war Wiesenthal sent the story to 32 leading religious leaders asking them whether he did the right thing. The majority agreed that he did the right thing by not forgiving the Nazi.

Though some do not forgive because they do not believe in forgiving, true Christians do believe in forgiveness. In the Apostles' Creed they confess that they believe in "the forgiveness of sins." What does the forgiveness of sins have to do with the third article of the creed? As we learned earlier, the third article deals with the nature and work of God the Spirit. The Holy Spirit created and preserves the church, and through her the Holy Spirit offers "the forgiveness of sins, the resurrection of the body, and the life everlasting."

Our Need Of Forgiveness
If we believe in the forgiveness of sins, we automatically believe that we need to be forgiven and to forgive. We need to be forgiven because we are sinners. If we do not sin, there is no need for forgiveness. Today there is a tendency to minimize or totally deny sin. Our society has become so sinful that we take sin as the normal way of life. It is what everybody does, so it is claimed. Why then be shocked at a sin? Have you noticed that in almost every case when a criminal is indicted, he/she claims innocence? There is the usual, "I have done nothing wrong," even though the person is caught red-handed in the crime. In some cases even the church has become tolerant of sin. One of the most prominent television preachers in America says he never preaches about sin. In its worship book one of the largest Protestant denominations in America makes the confession of sins optional. Seldom from the pulpit is sin exposed and condemned. Never a word is spoken about the God of justice and his wrath against sin. All is love, love, love. But that is only half of the truth about God.

Therefore, we Christians believe that we are sinners in need of forgiveness so that we can be right with God. This need is not only for Christians but for the whole of humankind. In the early chapters of Romans, Paul concludes that "all, both Jews and Greeks, are under the power of sin," and "All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God." If you need evidence of sin in society, take a look at your daily newspaper, a tabloid of all kinds of sins.

What about Christians? Do they sin also? When Christians are baptized they receive forgiveness. Do Christians sin after baptism? In John's first letter, we read, "If we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us" (1 John 1:8).

This implies that every human being is sinful and in need of forgiveness. No person can claim innocence of wrongdoing. Every person is responsible for his/her life. We choose to sin. Like Adam and Eve we yield to temptation. We cannot dodge responsibility by blaming others, our early training, environment, genes, or whatever! Ever since Adam, we have been blaming someone or something for what we did. After God asked Adam about his sin, he explained, "This woman whom you gave to be with me, she gave me fruit from the tree and I ate" (Genesis 3:12). Sin begins in the heart that is corrupt. Therefore, we pray, "Create in me a clean heart, O God."

Is It A Sin?
What does the Bible say sin is? In the Old Testament sin is described 220 times as "iniquity," which is a distortion or perversion of what is right. Sin is considered rebellion against God leading to wickedness. "All wrongdoing is sin" (1 John 5:17). Sin is also transgression, and so we pray, "Forgive us our trespasses." We sin when we trespass on another person's person or property. As John says, "Sin is lawlessness" (1 John 3:4). This lawlessness results from disobedience to God's will and laws. The most central concept of sin in Old and New Testaments is the Greek word Hamartia, meaning "missing the mark." It occurs 170 times in the New Testament. To miss the mark is not to measure up to what God expects us to be and do. As the arrow fails to hit the bull's-eye, we miss the mark of holiness, purity, and righteousness. A Christian is called to be Christlike in every way: thought, word, and deed. Shortly before George Bernard Shaw died, a reporter asked him, "If you could live your life over again and be anybody you've known or any person from history, who would you be?" "I would choose," replied Shaw, "to be the man George Bernard Shaw could have been but never was." Is he not saying that his life missed the mark?

Sin then is more than a thought, word, or act. It is a condition in which we were born. We call it original sin. It is a fatal weakness in our nature that causes us to oppose God, as a rebel, and to violate his will. We come into the world under the power of sin. "In sin did my mother conceive me" (Psalm 51:5). With this proclivity toward sin I cannot but sin. Sin (with a capital letter) produces sins. The cause is Sin and the fruit of Sin is sins.

Kinds Of Sins
There is a variety of sins. There are personal sins which all commit. Among these are pride, selfishness, hatred, and jealousy. Also we commit corporate sins. The church commits sin in terms of bigotry and hypocrisy. A club may indulge in sin by refusing membership to another race or religion. The state can perform horrible sins as the holocaust or in the massacre of thousands in Russia, China, Bosnia, Rwanda, and elsewhere.

In addition, there are sins of commission and omission. Both types of sin are equally serious. It is not only what we do but what we don't do. It is our refusal to help when our help is needed. The priest and the Levite in the Good Samaritan parable and the rich man, Dives, in the parable were guilty of sins of omission. It is the gift we do not give, the service we do not render, the kindness not extended. It is the sin primarily of "good" people who do nothing to resist evil. On her 75th birthday Clare Boothe Luce was asked, "Do you have any regrets?" She answered, "Yes, I should have been a better person. Kinder. More tolerant. Sometimes I wake up in the middle of the night and I remember a girlhood friend of mine who had a brain tumor and called me three times to come and see her. I was always too busy, and when she died I was profoundly ashamed. I remember that after 56 years."

And then there are sins against God and people. Little do we realize that all sins are against God. To sin against a neighbor is to sin against God. The Ten Commandments were written on two tablets of stone by God, one with our duties to God and the other with our duties to our neighbors. To kill, commit adultery, steal, lie, and covet is to break God's laws. When we cheat, lie, steal, murder, or do anything to hurt our neighbor, we sin not only against human beings but against the divine Lawgiver. When Nathan brought David's attention to his sin against Uriah and Bathsheba by murder and adultery, David confessed, "I have sinned against the Lord" (2 Samuel 12:13). How so? Didn't David sin against Uriah and Bathsheba? But David rightly realized that his acts of murder and adultery were sins against Yahweh. Thus, when we break the laws of society and church, we at the same time sin against God. This means that a lawbreaker one day must give an account to God the Judge. If society fails to enact justice, there is still God's judgment to be faced. This truth implies that the laws of state and church must harmonize as far as possible with God's laws. If they do not harmonize and are opposed to God's laws, Christians have every right to disobey them, for they must obey God rather than men (Acts 5:29).

Consequences Of Sin
Sin now and pay later! In the game of life, the breaking of the rules always results in a penalty. This is illustrated in a football game. When a rule is violated, such as being offsides or grasping a face mask, the team is penalized by the loss of a certain number of yards. Break God's laws and the consequences are horrible and inescapable.

One of the penalties of sin is bondage. He who commits sin is the slave of sin. When Scrooge's partner in Dickens' A Christmas Carol returned from the dead, he was wrapped in chains of selfishness and stinginess. Today we call this bondage an addiction which we cannot break: smoking, drinking, drugs, sex, overeating, and so forth.

Another penalty is suffering. The sinner as well as the victim suffers. Often the victim is an innocent sufferer. Jesus is the prime example of innocent suffering at the hands of wicked men. For six years a young Chicagoan was in jail for a rape he did not commit. Only when the girl confessed that she lied was the man released.

The ultimate penalty is death. In the biblical sense, death is separation from God. And that is what hell is -- separation from God. Since God is love, sin causes separation from love, and this means hatred. God is life, and to be separated from life is death. Sin breaks the relationship with God. For this reason Christ died for us that we might be reconciled with the Father. Separation from God is the human's most basic predicament, and the renewal of the relationship is the chief work of Christ.

Nothing good can be said about sin. It is always a sad story of defeat, tragedy, suffering, death, and hell. It needs to be remembered that, though we repent and are forgiven, the penalty of our sin remains, because we are not punished for our sins but by our sins. Though David was forgiven his sins of murder and adultery, he still had to pay the penalty of the loss of his child. Though the repentant thief on the cross was forgiven, the thief had to remain on the cross and die. When Pope John Paul II went to a prison in Rome to forgive his attempted assassin, Acga still had to pay the price of life in jail. Forgiveness is like pulling a nail out of a Chippendale chair. The scar remains.

The God Who Forgives
A Roman Catholic priest was teaching his congregation the new Vatican II liturgy. He explained, "When I say, 'The Lord be with you,' you respond, 'And also with you.' " The microphone he was using did not seem to be working and so he commented, "Something is wrong with this mike." Immediately the people replied, "And also with you." We have just learned that there is something wrong with everyone of us and that everything wrong we do is against God. That leads us to ask whether our God is the one who forgives.

When we confess in the Apostles' Creed that we believe in "the forgiveness of sins," we are saying that we believe in that kind of God who forgives. The Bible is full of statements that God is merciful and forgives sinners. A Psalmist sings, "For as the heavens are high above the earth, so great is his steadfast love toward those who fear him; as far as the east is from the west, so far does he remove our transgressions from us" (Psalm 103:11-12). Isaiah tells us, "Let him return to the Lord, that he may have mercy on him, and to our God, for he will abundantly pardon" (Isaiah 55:7). God's Son repeatedly forgave: "Your sins are forgiven" (Mark 2:5). The apostles preached, "If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just, and will forgive our sins and cleanse us from all unrighteousness."

Since we believe in the God who forgives, what does forgive-ness mean? In the Bible, forgiveness is described and defined in various ways. When God forgives us, he hides our sins from himself so that he does not see them. Or God sends away the sins in terms of liberation from a debt. Another term for forgiveness is the blotting out of the sin by absorbing the sin and its consequences. Another way of expressing it is to wash away sins as happens in baptism. Sin may be expiated. Or it may be propitiated, covered up by the robe of Christ's righteousness. The forgiveness of God is demonstrated in Justification when, for Jesus' sake and on the basis of our faith in Jesus, the sinner is pronounced forgiven and is accepted as a child of God. Another meaningful term for forgiveness is reconciliation when there is no longer anything between God and the sinner. The gospel which the church preaches is that God is a forgiving God and that reconciliation with God is possible by faith in Christ.

Why does God forgive us? Certainly in no way do we sinners deserve forgiveness. Because of our idolatry, selfishness, and disobedience, we merit nothing but suffering, death, and hell. Why God forgives us is in his dual nature: love and justice. According to the Bible, God is love. This love prompted him to give his only Son that sinners might not perish but have everlasting life (John 3:16). In the beginning, this God of love created humans that he might have someone to love and to be loved. Sticks, stones, and stars cannot love. Thus, God made humans in his own image as spiritual beings capable of giving and receiving love. From the time of the first sin, God has been trying desperately to get people to return to him and live with him in love. Through priests, prophets, and patriarchs, God has been appealing to his people to stop sinning and return to him. In utmost desperation he sent his only Son to demonstrate, once and for all time, that he loves us. There is no greater proof of love than when one dies for another, especially when that one is not worthy to be died for. One time a stranger saved a small boy from drowning. After artificial respiration the lad came to, looked into the face of the man that saved him and said, "Thank you, sir, for saving my life." To this the man replied, "That's all right, son. Glad to do it. But see to it that you're worth saving."

God forgives also because of his nature of justice. He is a holy and just God, who cannot tolerate sin. Justice must be satisfied. Wrongs must be righted. Sin demands death. How can a human make it up to God? There is no way! Therefore, God in his mercy decided to do for humankind what people cannot do for themselves. To be pleasing to God, one would have to obey all of God's laws perfectly. Who can do this? In his steadfast mercy, God sent his Son to obey perfectly all the laws in humanity's behalf. Not only that, he paid the penalty of death, even death on a cross. He did this even while we were yet sinners (Romans 5:8). Jesus died in our place, and as High Priest he sacrificed himself as a lamb of God on God's altar.

This does not mean that the cross changed God's mind from wrath to mercy. From the foundation of the world, God has loved his creation and sought in various ways to reconcile the world to himself. God loved us enough to pay for us the price of our sin, and the price was Calvary. Not knowing the extent of God's love and realizing that the justice of God was satisfied on the cross, we are persuaded and drawn by that love to return to him for forgiveness.

Forgiveness Made Personal
It is good to know that there is forgiveness with God. But how do we know we have been forgiven? How does it become a personal possession? Before a gift can be received, the person must want to receive the gift. God offers forgiveness as a gift, but are we receptive? God does not say, "Fulfill these conditions and then I will forgive you." No, he already for Jesus' sake has forgiven us and now offers it to us. To receive it we must be in a receptive condition. Here are steps to be taken before we will receive forgiveness:

1. Consciousness of sin. If we have no awareness of our sin, we will not desire forgiveness. Why should we? We have nothing for which to be forgiven. Because for some sin is a normal way of life, they do not acknowledge they are sinners. We see everybody sinning, so why shouldn't we? Or we say that it is human to err, and we are only being human. How can we get to see ourselves as sinners? One way is to look into the mirror of God's laws, the Decalogue. Then you will see that you have broken every one of the ten. Or look at the purity and perfection of Jesus, as Peter did one time, and you will say with him, "Depart from me, Lord, for I am a sinful man" (Luke 5:8). Next, see the sin in other people and you will see your own. Nathan enabled David to see his sin against Uriah and Bathsheba by telling him a story of a poor man and his pet lamb. David could see the sin of the rich man, and then he saw his own sin by doing the same. Also, a vision of God's holiness will bring us to a realization of our sin. In Isaiah 6, he tells of his vision of the holiness of God and then he cries, "Woe is me, for I am a man of unclean lips."

2. Contrition. We may know that we have done wrong. So what? Who cares? Contrition means to be sorry, humiliated, and ashamed for those sins. Judas Iscariot was sorry he betrayed Jesus. He returned the thirty pieces of silver and admitted, "I have betrayed innocent blood." Being sorry for sins is not enough, but it is necessary for forgiveness. When two teenagers were arrested for theft, they were taken in a police car to the police station. A television camera showed them laughing and cutting up as though they had done nothing.

3. Confession. Are we sorry enough to confess our sins? We may know in our own minds and hearts that we are guilty but we will never admit it. Saint John shows us that confession is a prelude to forgiveness: "If we confess our sins, he will forgive ..." (1 John 1:9). If we do not confess, the sin begins to fester in us and may cause emotional and mental distress. The solution to guilt is forgiveness. The church provides us with an opportunity to confess either in public worship or in private pastoral counseling in a pastor's study. If we have nothing to confess, there is no need for forgiveness.

4. Repentance. It is not enough to confess you have sinned and are sorry for it. Following confession comes repentance. This calls for a change of mind as in metanoia, a Greek word meaning a change of mind. It calls for a radical turning from evil to good, from Satan to Christ. It means a radical internal revolution. It calls for a new heart and a new person. As John the Baptist preached, we must bring forth the fruit of repentance in terms of a changed life.

5. Forgiveness. According to Jesus, to be forgiven we must forgive others. In his prayer he taught us to say, "Forgive us ... as we forgive." He went further by saying that unless we forgive others, we cannot be forgiven by God. An unforgiving heart is a closed heart, and God cannot give forgiveness to a closed heart. Jesus taught us that if we have anything against a person and have a gift for God, we should leave the gift at the altar and go get right with the person in need of forgiveness. Then our gift will be acceptable.

6. Restitution. Christ expects us to undo, if possible, the harm we have done. When he came to Zacchaeus' home for dinner, Zacchaeus told Jesus that he would give half of his wealth to the poor and would restore fourfold what he had stolen. Likewise, we need to fix what we have broken, restore what we have stolen, and make amends for anything that hurt our neighbor.

In light of these conditions, we can see that forgiveness is a costly matter. To forgive truly is the hardest thing in the world to do. One time Jesus asked, "Which is easier to say, 'Your sins are forgiven' or 'Rise, take up your pallet and walk'?" It takes a miracle to forgive. That is why it is divine to forgive.

Doing Forgiveness
When in the Apostles' Creed we say that we believe in "the forgiveness of sins," we are saying that we believe that we ought to forgive those who sin against us just as God forgives us. If we are sincere in saying this, we need to practice it.

At the outset, we must admit that it is not easy to forgive some things that people do to us. For some the price of forgiving may be too much to pay. Corrie ten Boom was a prisoner in a Nazi concentration camp during the war years. She and others were degraded as human beings. Male guards would ogle women when they were compelled to take delousing showers. She made it through that hell. When the war was over and she was free again, she finally brought herself to where she could forgive her tormentors and to preach forgiveness. After a sermon in Munich, a man came to her with an outstretched hand and said, "Yes, it is wonderful that Jesus forgives us all our sins, just as you have preached." Then she remembered his face as one of the SS guards at the shower stalls. Her hand froze at her side and she could not forgive him. She prayed, "Lord, forgive me. I cannot forgive." In answer to her prayer, her hand was unfrozen. The ice of hatred melted. She shook hands with him in token of her forgiveness. She forgave but it was not easy.

There are other experiences of forgiving others. Jacob sinned against his brother Esau; he stole Esau's birthright and his dying father's blessing. There was so much hatred as a result that Jacob had to flee to his uncle, Laban. The time came for Jacob to return. On the way, Jacob learned that Esau with 300 followers were on the way to him and he was scared of being killed. But Esau came with forgiveness so that Jacob said to Esau, "For truly to see your face is like seeing the face of God, with such favor have you received me" (Genesis 33:10). Likewise, Joseph brought his father and brothers to Egypt. When Jacob died, Joseph's brothers feared that Joseph would take revenge. But Joseph, with forgiveness, said to them, "You meant evil against me, but God meant it for good" (Genesis 50:17, 20).

How then can we bring ourselves to forgive? Consider these reasons:
1. Obedience. As Christians we are commanded to forgive: "As the Lord has forgiven you, so you also must forgive" (Colossians 3:13). Jesus gave us the example to follow when he prayed for his persecutors on the cross, "Father, forgive them ..." If we are faithful followers of Christ, we have no choice in the matter. Not to forgive is a sin of disobedience.

2. Necessity. Jesus made it clear that if we do not forgive, we cannot be forgiven. In the Sermon on the Mount Jesus said, "If you do not forgive men their trespasses, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses" (Matthew 6:15). Jesus is saying, forgive first and then I will forgive you. In other words, a forgiving person is forgiven.

3. Expediency. It does us more harm not to forgive than we can possibly do to our enemy. Hatred keeps us from forgiving. Hatred is an acid in the soul that corrodes our spirits and makes us miserable. For the sake of our own well-being, we need to cleanse our hearts of hatred and let love prevail. An unforgiving person is never at peace with him/herself. The sin is relived time after time and each time the pain gets worse. If for no other reason, we should forgive for our own well-being.

4. Love. This is the ultimate and best reason to forgive. Jesus urged us to love our enemies. This love will not return evil for evil but good for evil. The best way to get rid of an enemy is to kill the person with kindness. When a pious old man was repeatedly told by his enemy that some day he would get even, the old man replied, "I'm going to kill him." His enemy laughingly replied, "He's a harmless old fool. I'm not afraid of him." In the following weeks the old man seized every opportunity to do good for his enemy. He prayed for him and sought opportunities to do him a good turn. One day the old man risked his life to save his enemy's child. "Well, you've done it! You have killed me, at least you killed the man I once was. Now let's be friends. What can I do for you?"

For all the good that forgiveness brings in our relationship with God and our fellow men, we emphatically say in the creed, I believe in "the forgiveness of sins."



Study Guide

The Forgiveness Of Sins
What does the Holy Spirit have to do with the forgiveness of sins? Doesn't God forgive sins? The Holy Spirit is God who forgives through the church. Jesus gave this authority when after the resurrection he said to the disciples, "Receive the Holy Spirit. If you forgive people's sins, they are forgiven" (John 20:22-23).

Forgiveness implies that we are sinners. What is a sin? There is disagreement as to what is or is not a sin. What do you think? Answer "Yes" or "No" to the following:

1. ___ Is it a sin if both parties consent?

2. ___ Is it a sin if a person feels good about it?

3. ___ Is it a sin if one thinks it is not wrong?

4. ___ Is it a sin if nobody knows about it?

5. ___ Is it a sin if society approves of it?

6. ___ Is it a sin if there is no law prohibiting it?

7. ___ Is it a sin if nobody is hurt by the sin?

Degrees Of Sin
Are some sins more serious than others? A poll shows that people vary in their estimate of a sin's seriousness:

1. Coveting a neighbor's spouse -- major sin = 83% -- minor sin = 8% -- not a sin = 2%

2. Extramarital sex -- major sin = 83% -- minor sin = 11% -- not a sin = 3%

3. Premarital sex -- major sin = 47% -- minor sin = 33% -- not a sin = 17%

4. Lying -- major sin = 61% -- minor sin = 31% -- not a sin = 6%

5. Swearing -- major sin = 23% -- minor sin = 57% -- not a sin = 19%

6. Gambling -- major sin = 7% -- minor sin = 29% -- not a sin = 62%

7. Sunday shopping -- major sin = 3% -- minor sin = 33% -- not a sin = 63%

Who Can Forgive Sins?
Check your answer:
1. ___ Only God can forgive.

2. ___ Only an ordained pastor can pronounce forgiveness.

3. ___ A Spirit-filled lay person can forgive one's sins.

4. ___ The church can forgive sins.

5. ___ The Holy Spirit forgives through the Word and Sacraments as proclaimed by a pastor.

What Is Forgiveness?
Write "Yes" or "No."
1. ___ Forgiveness is pretending nothing has happened.

2. ___ Forgiveness is pretending that what was done to you did not hurt.

3. ___ Forgiveness is forgetting what happened.

4. ___ Forgiveness depends upon the offender's apology.

5. ___ Forgiveness is saying that the person was not to blame for the harm done.

6. ___ Forgiveness is a new relationship in which "there is nothing between us."

7. ___ Forgiveness is forgiving but never forgetting the sin.

Steps To Forgiveness
Which of these steps to forgiveness comes first, second, and so forth?
1. ___ Restitution

2. ___ Consciousness of sin

3. ___ Forgiving

4. ___ Contrition

5. ___ Repentance

6. ___ Confession