It may be the most frightening command in all of Scripture. We are told by our Lord to pray, and to pray these words, “Forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors.” If you fail to pray this way, you invite the judgment of God for your disobedience in prayer. If you succeed in praying this way, you invite the judgment of God for your disobedience in forgiveness. Now you’re stuck between a rock and a hot place.
What we need is some context. This prayer, after all, isn’t given universally to the human race. It is given instead to the children of God. We begin with “Our Father, who art in heaven…” Only the redeemed have any business praying this prayer. And only the redeemed can pray this with confidence. The relationship between forgiving and being forgiven, in God’s economy, works backwards. That is, Jesus isn’t teaching a doctrine of justification by forgiving alone. We are not forgiven because we forgive. Instead, we forgive because we are forgiven. If we are His children, we became such because we were, by the sovereign power of His Spirit, made aware of our sins. We confessed our sins. We clung to the cross of Christ. We come out the other side of this process not just forgiven, but changed.
We know what we were. We know something of the cost it took that we might be forgiven. Now, how can we do anything else but forgive others? We don’t forgive others out of fear of being not forgiven ourselves. We forgive others out of joy at being forgiven ourselves. This, in turn, is how the world knows that we are His. Our love one for another is the sweet fruit of forgiveness. Saints and sinners alike not only sin, but sin against each other. The difference is two-fold. Saints repent, and saints forgive. Pray boldly, and keep going back to the heart of the matter.
It’s about forgiveness, forgiveness.
We will once again be sharing our home Bible study through Facebook Live this evening, 7 eastern. Those who would like to meet face to face, you’re also invited for dinner at our home at 6:15. Tonight we consider our calling to believe II Timothy 3:16.
Join us, one way or the other, and we pray your faith will be strengthened.
It’s a common question, and understandably so. What Christian parents wouldn’t want to do this? Which is why I’m so happy to present this sure-fire method to you all. Please feel free to share it far and wide. Here’s what you need to do. First, gather you’re whole family together. Make sure you don’t leave any behind. Now, lead them to any door that leads outside of the house. Open the door. At this point what you do is walk through the door, you and the rest of the family. As the last person passes through they should reach back, grasp the handle and pull the door shut. Now your home is pure from negative spiritual influences.
It is certainly true enough that bad company can corrupt good morals, that the people we spend time with can have a profound influence on us. I’m not arguing that wise parenting involves surrounding our children with the worst sinners imaginable. I am, however, suggesting that it is quite possible to wisely remember the importance of sheltering our families from the influences of the world and at the same time remember that we’ve already failed and worse still, we are, each one of us, a negative influence. The counter argument to sheltering in the extreme is not “Jesus hung out with sinners” but “Jesus hangs out with me, a sinner.” A perfect environment does not make for perfect behavior. Our first parents demonstrated that. The problem isn’t ultimately the world out there so much as it is the sin in here.
When we teach our children, explicitly, or more likely, implicitly, that they are the pure ones and those on the outside, or worse still, those believers who have been widely shaped by the world the impure ones, we teach them the worst possible lie, that they don’t need Jesus. We raise them up to pray, “I thank you Lord that I am not like other men…” rather than, “Lord, be merciful to me, a sinner.” Spiritual pride is far more dangerous than the loony ideologies, or the carnal sensuality of the unbelieving world. This doesn’t mean the world’s ideologies are not loony, nor its sensuality not carnal. It means all of us are plenty bad in ourselves. Our only hope isn’t to escape from others but to repent of ourselves.
When Jesus lives in our homes we are not especially interested in how much better we might be than other sinners. That He loves us, dwells with us, directs us, despite our own manifold moral flaws, is a picture of how we might love others. Not in embracing sin or excusing it. Not in diminishing the law of God. But by celebrating the grace of God. Our prayer is that when those outside the kingdom enter into our homes they are not overwhelmed by how good we are, but are stunned by how repentant we are. And by how fully we believe the glorious truth that we are forgiven. We are, after all, nothing more than beggars telling other beggars about the Bread of Life.
The Reformation in England was not a smooth operation. The mess has yet to be cleaned up. Among the results of the Reformation in England is that the reigning monarch over the nation is technically the reigning ruler over the church. When Henry VIII began his reign he was so committed to Roman Catholicism that he published a book in its defense. The Pope, in gratitude, granted the king a title, Defensor Fidei, “Defender of the Faith.” When the issue of the issue of his wife led the King to look for a new wife the Pope would not grant the title, “Single and looking to mingle” and thus a Reformation was born. Henry maintained his title of Defender of the Faith, named himself head of the Church of England, both of which roles have been passed down to every King or Queen of England.
Until now. King Charles III has let it be known that he will not assume the title of “Defender of the Faith” but has instead determined he will be “Defender of Faith.” He has already begun to fail at his legacy. The Bible does not teach that a nation’s civil ruler is the ruler of the church in that nation. In fact, you’ll recall that the first king of Israel lost his throne precisely because he took on himself the role reserved for the priests in offering sacrifices. In like manner, the Bible does not teach that a woman, even if she is queen, even if she is, as all accounts suggest, a faithful, believing, child of the King queen, should be head of the church. At least, however, she knew the difference between the faith and faith. At least she proclaimed the reign of Christ rather than submitting to the reigning folly of our day, postmodernism.
Faith is a transitive verb. For those of you who have forgotten the Queen’s English, that means it requires an object. One cannot merely have faith. One must have faith in something or in someone. As such, faith is likewise not an unqualified good. The people of Germany had faith in their Fuehrer. Some people have faith that the monarchy will soon be banished from the United Kingdom. Will King Charles busy himself with defending these faiths? Will he defend the faith of countless Muslims who believe Israel will and should be blown off the map?
The truth is that the king’s shift reveals the one faith he is determined to defend, that faith which dominates the western world. Its creed says, “Each of us creates his own truth. Nothing is objectively true.” For all the weaknesses of the English Reformation, at least it affirmed that there was truth, and it was to be defended. England’s new king, sadly, has already surrendered. May he repent and turn to the true and living God, in submission to the one true King.
As a grade school child my conception of cool included too tight silk shirts and blue jeans with more flair than Liberace. I even had my own polyester jumpsuit. I looked like a cross between Howdy Doody and Elvis, in his latter years. I would be a fool indeed to long to go back to such sartorial silliness.
True nostalgia, true longing for days gone by is fed by a different kind of folly. It seems that hindsight can only be had through rose-colored glasses. And they never go out of style. We want things not as they used to be, but as we remember that they used to be. Which is why the author of Hebrews went to such trouble, argued with such passion, warned with such fervor in his epistle. Nostalgia can do worse things than make you dress funny.
Living in a comparatively free country, one where pluralism rules the day, it is difficult to understand what it would have taken for a first-century Jew to embrace the claims of Jesus Christ. More than likely, such would destroy a whole host of family relationships. Friendships would be sundered as well. Those, like Nicodemus and Joseph of Arimathea, indeed, like the apostle Paul, who once were honored and respected men of the community, would now become social pariahs, unable to get a place at the table. And a swift and painful death by martyrdom, with each passing day, became more and more likely.
Like their forefathers before them, we can have sympathy when some begin to talk about how they once had leeks and garlic back in Egypt, that though they were slaves, their pots were filled. Present suffering deepens the rosy hue as we look back at past suffering. And so many believing Hebrews struggled mightily with fits of nostalgia. Many were sorely tempted to throw off the dead-weight of this Jesus, that happy days might be here again. Cast off that cross, they reasoned, and they could stand upright in the halls of men again. Many, in short, were tempted to neglect so great a salvation.
Ironically, one could argue that their problem wasn’t that they were looking backward. The old saying, “you can’t go back again,” wouldn’t help. One might say their failure was that they weren’t looking far enough back. A love of the past may be a good thing, as long as what we love is a good thing. They were called not to look back to their recent Judaism. Neither were they to look longingly at the apex of their nation, to the days of David and Solomon. They should not look back to Egypt, nor even to the days of the great patriarchs. Rather, they should have longed to get back to the garden.
The right thing to long for is a world without sin. Our hearts should ache to be once again at peace with God, to walk with Him in the cool of the evening, to see the lion lay down with the lamb. This is godly nostalgia, as long as it moves us to godly obedience. While we ought to long for such things, we ought not to do so forlornly, knowing that you can’t go back again. Rather we do so joyfully, knowing that we, with every forward step, step back toward the garden. That is, the path to the garden is through the consummation of the kingdom of Jesus Christ.
These things, however, were written for us as well. While our status as outcasts and victims in our own culture cannot compare with the Hebrews in the first century, we are headed in that direction. Like Augustine before us, we are called to witness the destruction of the culture around us. And, like the Hebrews, we are tempted toward nostalgia. We long for those halcyon days of the 1950’s, when the Hayes Office kept our movies clean, and the daily news wasn’t filled with liberal prelates gayly shouting the “love” that once didn’t dare speak its name. Like the Hebrews, we are looking in the wrong place.
As Christians, our longing is not that we might have a cleaner pop culture. The church does not place its hope in military/industrial/cultural American hegemony across the globe. Rather, we long for the day when every knee will bow and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord. The church longs for the day when we will be dressed not in the gaudiness and flash of a decadent culture, but in the radiant robe provided by our Husband and Lord.
I’ve heard it said. I confess I’ve said it myself. Some surprising providence comes to pass and we call it “a God thing.” We are, which is good, affirming that God is alive and well not just in heaven but on planet earth, that He is in control. The trouble is the implication that unsurprising providence is not a “God thing.” Everything from the stars marching through their spheres to the clog in my mower’s carburetor is a “God thing.”
Just as we are willing to “allow” God to reign over certain parts of our lives, that is our own personal “spiritual realm,” so we “allow” Him to reign over certain parts of the universe. Wars, and rumors of wars are appropriate objects of His attention. Rain also, because there’s not much we can do about it, is something we are content to leave in His hands. Mower repair, or parts procurement, however, that, we seem to think, is a human thing. Which may help us grasp a bit better why we are so easily annoyed over the little things.
When Abraham Kuyper first thundered, “There is no square inch in all reality over which Jesus Christ does not declare, ‘MINE’” we all jump up and cheer such grand and eloquent insights. We stand ready to storm Washington, Hollywood, perhaps even Amsterdam, having heard such rousing speech. That’s a good thing. But it also means that the three or four square inches that are the gunk in my mower or the pokey person that made me miss the light are present because the King of the Universe has so declared.
Understanding that God reigns over the details not only should give us greater wonder, it ought also to give us greater peace. When you get cancer, when you go through the Internet treatment, when you deal with a sick child, it is actually comparatively easy to remember that God is in control, and to rest in that truth. When you just miss the green light, when your luggage gets lost by the airline, or when your mower quits in the middle of a mow, it’s a little harder. Which challenge then has the greater power to help us? Which provides a daily, ordinary opportunity to cultivate the fruit of the Spirit, including peace, patience and joy?
It’s a good thing in the face of trauma to remember that God’s got this. It’s also a good thing in the face of mere annoyance to remember that God’s got this. The trauma may kill us in the end. The annoyance may persist. That God has this under His control is no promise that things will turn out as we’d like. Instead it is a compelling promise that things will turn out as He’d like.
We will once again be sharing our home Bible study through Facebook Live this evening, 7 eastern. Those who would like to meet face to face, you’re also invited for dinner at our home at 6:15. This fall we’ll be considering several astonishing biblical promises that we all struggle to believe. You can learn more about the book we’ll be working through here.
Join us, one way or the other, and we pray your faith will be strengthened.
