SPIRIT OF SPRINGTIME RENEWAL
If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness. (1 John 1:9)
The Sabbath school teacher’s lesson for the day was forgiveness. She began with a question: “What do you have to do in order to be forgiven?” One little hand shot up. This boy was certain he had the answer. He said, “In order to be forgiven, you’ve got to sin!”
Sin is a word that dominates the Bible. The Bible’s first eleven chapters try to explain why the world is in such a mess. These chapters of Genesis trace the trouble to sin. Sin is the common condition of humans in every age. We all do wrong and fail to do right, whether we intend it or not, and we must find a way to deal with our sin.
The good news of the gospel is that with God, forgiveness is overflowing. Forgiveness is basic to God’s nature and is a mighty fountain from which all of us are invited to drink.
Jesus’ ministry was strongly centered on forgiveness. Forgiveness is a common theme in Jesus’ teachings. When He taught His disciples how to pray, He wants us to voice forgiveness in our prayers, “and forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors” (Matt. 6:12). The New International Version – And forgive us our debts as we also have forgiven our debtors. Unfortunately, in practice, we ignore the last phrase.
The parable of Jesus in Matt. 18:21-35 works by using extravagant contrasts. A slave owes his king ten thousand talents. This is such an astronomical amount of money as to be an inconceivable debt. Amazingly, the king snaps his fingers and forgives the debt completely! That forgiven slave then refuses to forgive a very small debt that a fellow slave owes him. How small? He refuses to forgive a debt that’s five hundred thousand times smaller than the amount he owed the king! Jesus’ point is clear. God is forever merciful to us. We should be grateful for that mercy, internalize it, and model it in our behavior toward others. To do less is to dishonor God’s forgiveness.
Forgiveness is not natural for human beings. It is very difficult for people to forgive those who wronged or hurt them.
When Elizabeth Barrett Browning, English poet of the Romantic movement, married Robert (six years her junior), her parents disapproved so strongly that they disowned her. For ten years Elizabeth wrote letters to her parents almost weekly. In the letters she expressed her love for them and asked for reconciliation. They never replied. Then one day Elizabeth received a large box in the mail. To her enormous heartbreak, it contained all of her letters. Not one of them had been opened. Today those letters are considered to be among the most beautiful love letters in the English language. Had her parents read only a couple of them, their relationship with their daughter might very well have been mended. They missed out on one of the world’s greatest treasures and never even knew it; but more tragically, they missed out on an even bigger treasure: their daughter!
There was a family that lived in the mountains of the West. The son had married a young Native American woman. His parents were against the marriage and shut out their daughter-in-law. One night during a raging blizzard the young man appeared at his parents’ door to say that his wife is in labor. He needed help to get her to the closest hospital. His father refused to help.
The child died because the mother couldn’t get medical help in time. When the father of the young man heard the news, the enormity of his guilt overwhelmed him. He knew that somehow; he must go to the hospital to beg the forgiveness of his son’s wife. Holding a little bouquet of flowers in one hand and his hat in the other, he unexpectedly appeared in the doorway of the hospital room. He wanted to say the right thing, but words won’t come. Finally, with tears in his eyes, all he can manage to say was, “Spring is coming.”
The good news of the gospel is that spring is coming! Spring is coming for God’s children whenever they face one another to attend to the brokenness in their relationships. The hardest words any of us can speak are the words by which we ask and grant forgiveness. But they are the most necessary words—because without them we all perish. Let us engage in the spirit of springtime renewal, forgive!