Meditationen am Gnadenstuhl: Friday Easter IV - Luke 11:4

Friday Easter IV

Daily Lectionary Readings: Leviticus 18:1-7, 20-19:8; Luke 11:1-13; (Smalcald Articles: 2/2:8-20)

Luke 11:4:

[4] and forgive us our sins,

for we ourselves forgive everyone who is indebted to us. (ESV)

Early on a hot Spring afternoon in the late 80s, on the campus of a small, southern boarding school campus about one-hundred young men who, until that moment, had been enjoying a week of freedom on campus between the end of exams and graduation day, took their seats in the chapel with unrestrained curiosity after being summoned to a special assembly. Usually, such a meeting would be held in the theater auditorium. After the chaplain opened with prayer and the headmaster addressed the assembly, silence fell absolute. It was as though the insects themselves had stopped buzzing to listen. They were told that a first-year student had taken his own life upon returning home at the end of the year. The faculty thought we ought to know. No other news was supplied. No accusations were leveled. No reasons were given. All sat in stunned silence.

He had been a small boy with a big mouth that rubbed many upperclassmen the wrong way. He had no respect for his elder students and little appreciation of traditions that formed generations of men before him, including the subtle and not-so-subtle teasing intended to correct unacceptable behavior, and became more strongly applied as resistance persisted. Today, we would probably call it hazing, not quite bullying, but that is all semantics. He was a troubled boy who acted out as a defense mechanism. His classmates had no clue until that morning. They didn't put the gun in his hand, and they didn't pull the trigger. But they could not help but admit that they contributed to his mental decline, which ended in suicide.

Thirty years later, his story will still come up in conversation. The guilt remains. God has forgiven their sins and forgotten them. God has forgiven you and me countless trespasses. The Psalmist writes: “He does not deal with us according to our sins, nor repay us according to our iniquities. For as high as the heavens are above the earth, so great is his steadfast love toward those who fear him;”1 and, “I acknowledged my sin to you, and I did not cover my iniquity; I said, ‘I will confess my transgressions to the LORD,’ and you forgave the iniquity of my sin.”2 St. Paul assures us, “for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, and are justified by his grace as a gift, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus.”3 So why do we continue to hold on to the guilt? Why can’t we forgive ourselves? Why is it so difficult to listen to the wisdom of St. Peter, “Humble yourselves, therefore, under the mighty hand of God so that at the proper time he may exalt you, casting all your anxieties on him, because he cares for you?”4

We've all heard it said, "You need to forgive yourself." Perhaps you have given another the same advice. I have. It's easy to say! "You need to forgive yourself. Let go of the guilt. You need to move on.” Perhaps such advice has merit. But is it Biblical advice? Is there a single verse of Scripture that speaks about forgiving oneself? Apparently, there is not. God's Word is full of exhortations to forgive, "and forgive us our sins, For we ourselves also forgive everyone who is indebted to us.”5 C. S. Lewis once said that “forgiveness is a lovely idea, until you have something to forgive.”

Perhaps forgiving ourselves is not the most helpful language in these situations, then. What does it mean when we say, "I forgive you?" Forgiveness is a promise and has absolutely nothing to do with how you feel about the other person. When you forgive, you promise not to dwell on whatever it was the other person requires forgiveness of you for. You promise to never bring the situation up again. You promise not to talk about the incident, or gossip about it, with other people. Finally, you promise to not let the event color your relationship with the other party. When someone asks your forgiveness, they seek an acquittal of the punishment or penalty their transgression deserves as judgment. Forgiveness takes two parties: the transgressor and the transgressed.

This is how we understand forgiveness as taught in the Bible. This is how we are to carry out this sacred covenant with one another. It takes two because to forgive and be forgiven is a model in miniature of the way we were first forgiven. We forgive those indebted to us as we have been forgiven. We make a solemn pledge to cancel the debt of another’s sin against us because our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ, first freely offered Himself to our Father in heaven as the price of a debt we could never hope to pay. The life of the Son of God in exchange for your life and mine. The very heart of the Gospel, and therefore the heart of Christian life, is the forgiveness of sins. Jesus said, "A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another: just as I have loved you, you also are to love one another. By this all people will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.”6

Our corrupt human nature does not want to take this commandment to heart. We are naturally inclined, on our own, to evil, not love, condemnation, not forgiveness. Our Lutheran fathers called this tendency "concupiscence.” And no wonder, for it takes two to forgive. God so loved you that He sent His only Son to enter our flesh, live a life utterly devoid of concupiscence, and voluntarily sacrifice Himself on the cross to cancel the debt of your sins. In reaction to the amnesty commuting your death sentence, by the Holy Spirit's power, you are now able to forgive as you have been forgiven. You can now love as you have been loved.

“As it is, I rejoice, not because you were grieved, but because you were grieved into repenting. For you felt a godly grief. [and] godly grief produces a repentance that leads to salvation without regret, whereas worldly grief produces death.”7 What we really mean by forgiving ourselves is actually to stop punishing ourselves. Instead of clinging to our guilt, which will only weigh us down like a man fallen overboard in heavy clothing, we instead clutch the cross of Christ.

Trying to help another or help ourselves by saying, "you have to forgive yourself," is, therefore, like telling a dying person to heal themselves. The healing has to come from outside ourselves. The medicine is not within you; it must be administered to you. Forgiveness comes only by the grace of God for the sake of Christ's death and resurrection for you. It is a baptism in the blood of the Lamb of God for the forgiveness of sins. Which is life itself. It may sound too good to be true. Wallowing in our guilt over sins, which we think are unforgivable by others, and most of all by ourselves, is self-destructive because it is focused, in the end, only upon ourselves. It is a denial of faith and a rejection of the efficacy of Jesus' death for you.

It is such a foreign concept that St. Paul well spoke when he said, “Oh, the depth of the riches and wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable are his judgments and how inscrutable his ways! ‘For who has known the mind of the Lord, or who has been his counselor?’ ‘Or who has given a gift to him that he might be repaid?’”8 Our sin, therefore, is not that we cannot forgive ourselves. It is the arrogance in believing that we cannot be forgiven – that somehow our sins are so uniquely monstrous that they are beyond Jesus' ability to drown and bury them. We want to stand condemned by our own reason instead of trusting that, yes, even a sinner like you or me can be so loved that our debt has indeed been paid in full.

“There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. For the law of the Spirit of life has set you free in Christ Jesus from the law of sin and death. For God has done what the law, weakened by the flesh, could not do. By sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh and for sin, he condemned sin in the flesh, in order that the righteous requirement of the law might be fulfilled in us, who walk not according to the flesh but according to the Spirit.”9

Rejoice in the Lord and give thanks for this gift beyond description! You really are loved that much by your creator. There is no stain on your soul that Jesus cannot wash out. No, not a single one. The love of God penetrates your guilt, drills down into the heart of you, and remakes you from the inside out! “Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away; behold, the new has come. All this is from God, who through Christ reconciled us to himself and gave us the ministry of reconciliation.”10

If God can love you so mightily – if He can rebuild you as good as new, you can also forgive your neighbor. After all, what sin can your brother commit against you that God cannot Himself forgive? And if God can so forgive them, what is stopping you from doing the same?

1Psalm 103:10-11 (ESV).

2Psalm 32:5 (ESV).

3Romans 3:23-24 (ESV).

41 Peter 5:6-7 (ESV).

5Luke 10:4 (NASB).

6John 13:34-35 (ESV).

72 Corinthians 7:9-10 (ESV).

8Romans 11:33–35 (ESV).

9Romans 8:1-4 (ESV).

102 Corinthians 5:17-18 (ESV).