Forgiven. Really?

 

Today is the second Sunday of Lent. Like the celebrations God gave Israel in the Old Testament – such as Passover, Pentecost, and the Feast of the Ingathering – the Church, nearly since its inception in the first century, has also given us ‘seasons’ to celebrate the goodness and mercy and compassion of our God.

 

During Lent, as I have mentioned before, we who participate in the seasonal celebration give special attention to preparing ourselves for the celebration of Easter Sunday – which many call Resurrection Sunday. Our Lenten preparation focuses on penitence and fasting.

 

Today – perhaps especially because we will celebrate Holy Communion after the message – today I will focus our attention NOT on penitence, the act of repentance before God for our sins. Why?

 

I’ve spoken hundreds of times about a life-long and year-round lifestyle of repentance. So today, dovetailing closely with repentance, I will focus our attention on God’s PROMISE of forgiveness to the penitent, a promise which many Christians have enormous difficulty in fully accepting as true for them and for their particular circumstances.

 

It was no accident that the Lord Jesus said to His disciples: “Be on your guard! If your brother sins, rebuke him; and if he repents, forgive him. And if he sins against you seven times a day, and returns to you seven times, saying, ‘I repent,’ forgive him.” (Luke 17:3-4)

 

My brothers and sisters, BE ON YOUR GUARD. Don’t let the devil rob you of your joy in God’s forgiveness. Think of it a moment: If God commands US to forgive others who sin against us – even multiple times each day the same sin, and repents each time – do you think God is will not Himself do what He commands US to do? Of course not.

 

But – some might argue – “You don’t know what I’ve done.”  And they would be right. I do not know what they’ve done. But what I DO know is God's word, and what God Himself tells us through His love letters to us – all of which are found between the covers of the book we call the Bible – I do know what He says to us about repentance and forgiveness.

 

But I can only give you information about what God says about them. Only God can give you REVELATION. He alone, by the Holy Spirit, can sink that information into the very depths of our souls.

 

Let’s look at only a few of the scores of well-known saints of Scripture and history that demonstrate the point about God's forgiveness. I’ve used them as examples in the past, and it is good to bring them back to our minds today because THEIR sins for which God not only forgave but remitted – their sins provide us evidence of what God HAS DONE for you and me after our confession and repentance. He has cast those sins from us as far as east is from west, to NEVER AGAIN be remembered by Him, even our most egregious sins. Our heavenly Father has PROMISED us through the Old and New Testament writers that the sins for which we have repented will never, ever, be remembered by Him either in this life or after we die.

 

The first of many people we can speak of from Holy Scripture is the former Pharisee, Saul of Tarsus. Here is how Luke describes Saul: “Now Saul, still breathing threats and murder against the disciples of the Lord, went to the high priest, and asked for letters from him to the synagogues at Damascus, so that if he found any belonging to the Way, both men and women, he might bring them bound to Jerusalem.” (Acts 9:1-2)

 

Here is how Saul – now known as Paul the apostle -- described himself in Acts 26:9-11 as he stood before King Agrippa and the Roman Court: “So then, I thought to myself that I had to do many things hostile to the name of Jesus of Nazareth. And this is just what I did in Jerusalem; not only did I lock up many of the saints in prisons, having received authority from the chief priests, but also when they were being put to death, I cast my vote against them. And as I punished them often in all the synagogues, I tried to force them to blaspheme; and being furiously enraged at them, I kept pursuing them even to foreign cities.”

 

But then Saul met Jesus on that road to Damascus. Three days later, God sent a disciple named Ananias with a message and a commission from God (Acts 9).

 

We know the rest of the story of how Saul, now called Paul, convinced that God had forgiven him, laid aside his self-condemnation and got busy doing the work God called him to do.

 

Here is what he said of himself in his letter to Timothy – and this is a critically important lesson for us here in this room who might struggle with on-going self-recrimination: “It is a trustworthy statement, deserving full acceptance, that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners, among whom I am foremost of all.  Yet for this reason I found mercy, so that in me as the foremost, Jesus Christ might demonstrate His perfect patience as an example for those who would believe in Him for eternal life. (1 Tim 1:15-16)  

 

I hope you caught those words: Sinner, mercy, and patience.  Who here does not need God’s mercy, grace, patience, and forgiveness?

 

“Amazing grace,” John Newton wrote, “how sweet the sound, that saved a wretch like me.”  Many of you know the story of that one-time malicious slave-trader. When men and women, crammed together in the holds of his slave ships died from disease and hunger, he had their bodies thrown overboard to feed the sharks. As far as he was concerned, their deaths were simply a cost of doing business.

 

But like God got hold of Saul of Tarsus, God got hold of John Newton. And Newton, like Saul, believed God's promise – God's VOW to not only forgive but to never again remember their confessed sins – Newton penned the words of that hymn sung around the world. And NOT AT ALL ironically, those words are sung even today by the descendants of the slaves who survived that ocean voyage.

 

Saul of Tarsus left his past in the past where it belonged, covered and washed away by the atoning blood of Jesus.  That’s one reason he wrote to the Christians at Colossae: “When you were dead in your transgressions and the uncircumcision of your flesh, He made you alive together with Him, having forgiven us all our transgressions, having canceled (Greek: obliterate, wipe out) out the certificate of debt consisting of decrees against us, which was hostile to us; and He has taken it out of the way, having nailed it to the cross.”

 

I will repeat that text again – God, through the blood of Jesus, has obliterated – OBLITERATED – your confessed sin. It no longer exists in God's memory.

 

It. Is. Gone.

 

Let’s now look at another man from Biblical history who could have easily dropped off the salvation map. He could have easily fallen prey to the devil’s lies just as perhaps some of you here may have fallen prey to those lies. I’m talking about Peter, the one known to us as Saint Peter.

 

If anyone could have wallowed in self-condemnation and self-recrimination, it was this man. And he did wallow for a while, paralyzed by his own regret and inability to forgive himself for what he had done.

 

Surely Peter remembered the words of his Lord recorded in Mark’s gospel “For whoever wishes to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for My sake and the gospel’s will save it. For what does it profit a man to gain the whole world, and forfeit his soul? For what will a man give in exchange for his soul? For whoever is ashamed of Me and My words in this adulterous and sinful generation, the Son of Man will also be ashamed of him when He comes in the glory of His Father with the holy angels.” (Mark 8:35-38). And now here he was, shortly after he vehemently denied his Lord – not once, but three times – even swearing “I do not know the Man.”

 

Have YOU ever denied the Lord, either by words or by actions or inactions? If Peter’s story ended with his denial, he’d have been lost to history.

 

But it didn’t end there. 

 

The New Testament writers used two words for “love” – phileo and agape. Phileo (fil-EH-oh) carries the idea of a close fraternal affection. The special friendship of David and Jonathan is an example of phileo love – great affection between two people. (see 1 Samuel 18:1-3)

 

Agape love, on the other hand, is often used to describe God's unconditional, merciful, and enduring love for you and me. One of the definitions of Agape is this: To prize the object of that love above all other things, to be unwilling to abandon the object of that love.

So, my point? Let’s look at the twenty-first chapter of St. John’s gospel, specifically verses 15-17. The margin of some Bibles will include the two Greek words used for “love” in this passage.

Beginning with verse 15 we read this: When they had finished breakfast, Jesus said to Simon Peter, "Simon, son of John, do you love (agape) me more than these?” He said to him, "Yes, Lord, you know that I love (phileo) you.” He said to him, "Feed my lambs.”

He then said to him a second time, "Simon, son of John, do you love (agape) me?” He said to him, "Yes, Lord, you know that I love (phileo) you." He said to him, "Tend my sheep.”

He said to him the third time, "Simon, son of John, do you love (phileo) me?” Peter was distressed that he had said to him a third time, "Do you love (phileo) me?” and he said to him, "Lord, you know everything; you know that I love (phileo) you.” (Jesus) said to him, "Feed my sheep.”

A modern version of the conversation might sound something like this:

“Peter, do you love me with all your heart?”
“Lord, I have great affection for you.”
“Feed My lambs.”
“Peter, do you really love me?”
“Lord, I think you are wonderful.”
“Then tend My sheep.”
“Peter, do you have great affection for me?”
“Lord, you know I do.”
“Feed My sheep.”

I hope two things catch our attention in this exchange between the Lord and Peter. First, Peter felt despondent about his multiple denials of his best friend and Lord. Despondent, miserable, and self-condemned. But we need to notice our Savior tried to help Peter move beyond his guilt. When Peter wouldn't say – couldn’t say – he loved Jesus, the Lord came down to his level: “Okay, my friend. Do you have affection for me?”

How like Christ to be so gentle to our wounded spirits.

The second thing we should notice here – and this is equally important – after each agape/phileo exchange the Lord’s charge to Peter was essentially the same: “Feed My sheep.”

In other words, “Peter, I know you feel guilty, but your repentance has completely restored our relationship. Your sorrow and guilt are unnecessary. Don’t let them keep you from your task to tend My flock."

How like the merciful Christ to call us out of our sorrow. How like Him to renew our relationship – vessels of clay that we are – and set us about the work He’s given us to do.

I need that gentleness and mercy. And I imagine you can probably use a dose of it yourself. And don’t think for a moment that I do not have times in which I say to the Lord in utter hopelessness – yes, that is the correct word: “How can I say I love you when I keep doing the things that I do?”

 

And then He brings me to this dialogue between Peter and Himself.

When we feel unable to tell Him, “I love You,” the Savior tells us it’s okay if we just like Him a lot. When our sorrow over our sins overwhelms us, the Shepherd comes alongside, puts His arm across our shoulders and tells us, "I agape you."  “I love you very, very much. I prize you. I do not want to be without you.”

 

Wow.

Scripture, as well as Church history, is full of the stories of people who let God down, people who at first rejected God’s grace, and whom God received their repentance and then sent them into His service.

 

But they first needed to accept his forgiveness. They needed to put aside their own remorse which only serves to paralyze them and place them in the chains set for them by the devil. 

 

Listen! We cannot serve God while we indulge our wounded conscience. CS Lewis said it very well, “I think that if God forgives us we must forgive ourselves. Otherwise, it is almost like setting up ourselves as a higher tribunal (a higher court) than Him.”

Let me say it kindly, patiently, but also unmistakably: How dare we sit in the corner nursing our guilty conscience when God tells the truly penitent: “I forgive you. You sin is GONE”?

What our Lord Jesus asked of Peter, He asks of me and you: “Do you love me?”  And even if we are unable to tell Him that we deeply love Him, STILL Jesus says to us, “You are forgiven. Now feed My sheep. Tend to my lambs.”

 

Paul called himself the CHIEF of sinners, yet God demonstrated His perfect patience through Paul, as an example of God’s loving patience with ALL who believe in Him for eternal life.

 

Hear this one last time at the end of this message on the second Sunday of Lent: If your self-recrimination and self-condemnation is holding you back from getting out there and doing God’s work – now is the time to place your lingering guilt at the foot of the cross and get about doing the work God has called you to do.

 

Time is too short to waste on the unnecessary and paralyzing remorse many of us have over sins that God has already forgiven and completely obliterated from His memory. As St John writes in his 1^st epistle: “[B]ut if we walk in the Light as He Himself is in the Light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus His Son cleanses us [Greek: Purges, purifies] from all sin. ⁸ If we say that we have no sin, we are deceiving ourselves and the truth is not in us. ⁹ If we confess our sins, He is faithful and righteous to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us [there’s that word again – purges, purify] from all unrighteousness.” (1 John 1:7-9)

 

If you think you’re not forgiven for whatever it is you have confessed and turned – won’t you just accept God's view of you, and get to work for the Master?