by John R. W. Stott<\/i><\/p>\n
Our insistence that according to the Gospel the cross of Christ is the only ground on which God forgives sins bewilders many people. \u201cWhy should our forgiveness depend on Christ\u2019s death?\u201d they ask. \u201cWhy does God not simply forgive us, without the necessity of the Cross?\u201d As the French cynic put it, \u201cThe good God will forgive me; that\u2019s His job (or His speciality).\u201d \u201cAfter all,\u201d the objector may continue, \u201cif we sin against one another, we are required to forgive one another. We are even warned of dire consequences if we refuse. Why can\u2019t God practice what He preaches and be equally generous? Nobody\u2019s death is necessary before we forgive each other. Why does God make so much fuss about forgiving us and even declare it impossible without His Son\u2019s \u2018sacrifice for sin\u2019? It sounds like a primitive superstition which modern people should long since have discarded.\u201d<\/p>\n
It is essential to ask and to face these questions. Two answers may be given to them immediately. The first was supplied by Archbishop Anselm in his great book Cur Deus Homo<\/i>?<\/i> at the end of the eleventh century. If anybody imagines, he wrote, that God can simply forgive us as we forgive others, that person has \u201cnot yet considered the seriousness of sin,\u201d or literally \u201cwhat a heavy weight sin is\u201d (i.xxi). The second answer might be expressed similarly: \u201cYou have not yet considered the majesty of God.\u201d It is when our perception of God and man, or of holiness and sin, are askew that our understanding of the Atonement is bound to be askew also.<\/p>\n
The fact is that the analogy between our forgiveness and God\u2019s is far from being exact. True, Jesus taught us to pray: \u201cForgive us our sins, as we forgive those who sin against us.\u201d But He was teaching the impossibility of the unforgiving being forgiven, and so the obligation of the forgiven to forgive, as is clear from the Parable of the Unmerciful Servant; He was not drawing any parallel between God and us in relation to the basis<\/i> of forgiveness. For us to argue \u201cwe forgive each other unconditionally, let God do the same to us\u201d betrays not sophistication but shallowness, since it overlooks the elementary fact that we are not God. We are private individuals, and other people\u2019s misdemeanors are personal injuries. God is not a private individual, however, nor is sin just a personal injury. On the contrary, God is Himself the maker of the laws we break, and sin is rebellion against Him.<\/p>\n
The crucial question we should ask, therefore, is a different one. It is not why God finds it difficult<\/i> to forgive, but how He finds it possible<\/i> to do so at all. In the words of Carnegie Simpson, \u201cforgiveness is to man the plainest of duties; to God it is the profoundest of problems.\u201d<\/p>\n
The problem of forgiveness is constituted by the inevitable collision between divine perfection and human rebellion, between God as He is and us as we are. The obstacle to forgiveness is neither our sin alone, nor our guilt alone, but also the divine reaction in love and wrath toward guilty sinners. For, although indeed \u201cGod is love,\u201d yet we have to remember that His love is \u201choly love,\u201d love which yearns over sinners while at the same time refusing to condone their sin. How, then, could God express His holy love?\u2014His love in forgiving sinners without compromising His holiness, and His holiness in judging sinners without frustrating His love?<\/p>\n
At the Cross in holy love God through Christ paid the full penalty of our disobedience Himself. He bore the judgment we deserve in order to bring us the forgiveness we do not deserve. On the Cross divine mercy and justice were equally expressed and eternally reconciled. God\u2019s holy love was \u201csatisfied.\u201d<\/p>\n
All inadequate doctrines of the Atonement are due to inadequate doctrines of God and man. If we bring God down to our level and raise ourselves to His, then of course we see no need for a radical salvation, let alone for a radical atonement to secure it. When, on the other hand, we have glimpsed the blinding glory of the holiness of God, and have been so convicted of our sin by the Holy Spirit that we tremble before God and acknowledge what we are, namely \u201chell-deserving sinners,\u201d then and only then does the necessity of the Cross appear so obvious that we are astonished we never saw it before.<\/p>\n
The essential background to the Cross, therefore, is a balanced understanding of the gravity of sin and the majesty of God. If we diminish either, we thereby diminish the Cross. If we reinterpret sin as a lapse instead of a rebellion, and God as indulgent instead of indignant, then naturally the Cross appears superfluous. But to dethrone God and enthrone ourselves not only dispenses with the Cross; it also degrades both God and man. A biblical view of God and ourselves, however, that is, of our sin and of God\u2019s wrath, honors both. ■<\/p>\n
John Stott is rector emeritus of All Souls Church in London and is currently director of the London Institute for Contemporary Christianity. This article is taken from his book<\/i> The Cross of Christ (\u00a9 1986), used by permission of InterVarsity Press, Downer\u2019s Grove, Ill. (Style changed for consistency.)<\/i><\/p>\n
monday<\/p>\n
june<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
by John R. W. Stott Our insistence that according to the Gospel the cross of Christ is the only ground on which God forgives sins bewilders many people. \u201cWhy should our forgiveness depend on Christ\u2019s death?\u201d they ask. \u201cWhy does God not simply forgive us, without the necessity of the Cross?\u201d As the French cynic … Continue reading “THE PROBLEM OF FORGIVENESS”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10970","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-sermons"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.biblia.work\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10970","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.biblia.work\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.biblia.work\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.biblia.work\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.biblia.work\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10970"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.biblia.work\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10970\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.biblia.work\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10970"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.biblia.work\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10970"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.biblia.work\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10970"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}