Repentance and Forgiveness
Written by Stanley D. Gale |
Sunday, October 23, 2022
For our part, though, we should be eager to forgive even before signs of repentance are forthcoming. Our private inclination should be to let go and to give grace. When and if we are given the opportunity in person, we should be ready to extend the forgiveness we have already fostered in our hearts. Freely we have received, freely we are to forgive.
While an accurate understanding of forgiveness can be discerned by studying the vocabulary found in Scripture, in another sense it takes sixty-six chapters to plumb the depths of forgiveness. Even then, we cannot fully comprehend it because we will grow in our understanding and appreciation as we study God’s Word and seek His wisdom for its application. One of the questions that relates to forgiving another has to do with the place of repentance as a requisite for granting that forgiveness.
“If He Repents, Forgive Him.”
Is hearing an expression of repentance by the offending party necessary for the granting of forgiveness by the one wronged? Can a debt of sin be canceled apart from recognition of some degree of remorse on the part of the offender? Should it be?
A pastor friend was wronged by another pastor, totally blindsided and slandered. My friend intended to pursue conciliatory efforts with the offending pastor but said this: “I forgive him and I pray that he will one day repent.” Is my friend putting the cart before the horse by forgiving without first hearing an expression of repentance and, in so doing, cheapening grace?
We want to form our opinions from the Word of God. A key passage to consider is found in Luke’s gospel: “Pay attention to yourselves! If your brother sins, rebuke him, and if he repents, forgive him, and if he sins against you seven times in the day, and turns to you seven times, saying, ‘I repent,’ you must forgive him” (Luke 17:3–4). Is our Lord laying out a requirement that we discern repentance before granting forgiveness?
It is safe to say that repentance is always to be desired when it comes to ownership of sin. All sin is first and foremost against God. Repentance accords sin its weight before a holy God. It also admits not only the wrong but acknowledges a degree of personal responsibility for the wrong and laments over it.
“I Repent.”
But is Jesus saying that we need to hear the actual words, “I repent,” or does He mean that we must always endeavor to somehow discern or elicit contrition before granting pardon? Or could it be that our Lord is not speaking of repentance so much as He is of return? The brother who was adversarial and moving away is now conciliatory to some degree and moving toward even if he has not fully acknowledged his sin.
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Crushed, Stricken, Victorious
Jesus showed Himself trustworthy by gaining the victory over sin when we were the transgressors. Through His resurrection, justifying work, and exaltation, Christ is worthy of our trust and confidence. When the apostle Peter read Isaiah 53 and saw what Jesus had done for His people, his response was to see Jesus’ suffering as a model of His faithfulness, so that no matter what we are experiencing or facing, we can trust ourselves to Him.
Trusting others presents massive challenges in our fallen world. Everyone has been corrupted by sin, and therefore fails to be fully faithful or trustworthy. As Proverbs 20:6 says, “Many a man proclaims his own loyalty, but who can find a trustworthy man?”
While humans prove to be both distrustful and untrustworthy, God presents Himself as the One we can supremely trust for everything in this life and beyond the grave. We see an intentional emphasis in Scripture on the trustworthiness of God, but Scripture does not command us to have a blind faith. The Lord instructs us to trust Him, and then He demonstrates He is worthy of our trust. God never speaks, then fails to act. He always proves Himself faithful.
Despite this truth, we often struggle to trust God, which manifests itself when we give in to sin in times of various trials and temptations. So how do we grow our trust of our Lord and His power over our sin?
We find a helpful answer to this question in Isaiah 53. Here, God reveals His Suffering Servant, the Lord Jesus as eminently trustworthy. Whether we suffer because of trials or temptations, Jesus can be trusted to see us through and bring God’s covenant promises to fruition.
There are four ways Isaiah shows Jesus’ trustworthiness in this passage.
First, Jesus humbled Himself when we were proud.
At the start of this chapter, Isaiah laments Israel’s unbelief. Just before, in Isaiah 52, we learn that the Gentiles would marvel at the exalted Servant. Yet when the scene flips to Isaiah 53, regardless of the magnificent salvific promises of the previous passage, we observe the ongoing disbelief of people who have had a front-row seat to God’s work. What makes God’s promises so difficult to trust? Isaiah answers by showing us the Servant’s humility alongside the pride of sinners who reject God’s word.
Isaiah gives a description of the Servant’s humility, using agricultural pictures to convey Jesus’ outward appearance as useless and unfruitful. The Servant came in the humblest of ways, and His circumstances and appearance made Him look dispensable. Peoplewould have contempt for God’s Messiah and suffering Servant.
Thus, we see both the humiliation of the Servant and the pride of man. God in human flesh descends to us, and we despise Him because He does not meet our ideals. God, however, sees us in our pride, knows how we will respond, and still comes to save us from sin.
Jesus proves Himself trustworthy in His willing humiliation for prideful sinners. Isaiah includes himself in those who thought little of the Servant, saying, “We did not esteem Him.” We must include ourselves in that we. Apart from God’s grace, we rejected Him. Christ, though, condescended to save us, showing He is trustworthy.
Second, Jesus was faithful when we were not.
Isaiah paints a rather ugly picture of us.
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Context Matters: O, Death, Where is Your Sting?
The gospel holds our pain in tension with God’s promises. It permits honesty in the face of grief yet assurance that God will resolve our sorrow one day. We still wait for death’s final defeat. Until then, its sting runs deep. Yet the empty tomb of our risen king declares that the sting won’t last forever.
Perhaps you’re familiar with these hopeful and defiant questions: “O death, where is your victory? O death, where is your sting?” You may have sung them on Easter Sunday to revel in Jesus’ triumph and deliver death a lyrical one-two punch. Or maybe you have stood silent as others around you sang victoriously—you believe that Jesus overcame death’s power, but you have felt defeated by death’s pain.
Whatever your experience is with these questions, they reverberate with hope. Jesus conquered the grave. The tomb is empty. We’ve been set free.
But could our taunting of death be premature?
Context matters. When we learn to read the Bible as it is—not merely as an archive of lyrics for happy songs—we may find our most cherished verses to provide even deeper hope than we imagined.
Resurrection Matters
These rhetorical questions come from 1 Corinthians 15, one of the most important chapters in your Bible. Some believers were saying Christ did not rise. So Paul realigns their history and theology.
If there is no resurrection then we have some serious issues: preaching is pointless (1 Cor 15:14), faith is worthless (1 Cor 15:14), we’re still in our sin (1 Cor 15:17), and the dead have perished forever (1 Cor 15:18). If Jesus did not rise then we have no hope beyond the grave and Christians are “of all people most to be pitied” (1 Cor 15:19). So we should just party hard until we die (1 Cor 15:32).
Christian faith rests entirely on Jesus’ resurrection. If it did not happen, we are magnificent fools. But Paul establishes the historical fact of the resurrection, verified by hundreds of eyewitness accounts (1 Cor 15:1-11). The empty tomb changes everything.
Jesus’ resurrection reverses the curse of sin. Death is mere sleep for those who are in Christ—just as he rose, so will we (1 Cor 15:20-22). We will exchange our broken frames for glorious bodies (1 Cor 15:35-49). Jesus’ resurrection means life has purpose—what we do matters. Instead of indulging every craving, we ought to live holy lives (1 Cor 15:34) driven by the grace of Jesus’ victory (1 Cor 15:57). Preaching the gospel is not pointless, but is “of first importance” (1 Cor 15:3). So we should “always [be] abounding in the work of the Lord, knowing that in the Lord your labor is not in vain” (1 Cor 15:58).
Tense Matters
This brings us to our refrain of questions, which occur in Paul’s crescendo at the chapter’s end.
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What We Miss When We Skip the Book of Ezra
Ezra connects to the overarching story of the Bible. We were made to worship God, but our rebellion means that we need a pure high priest to make our worship possible. Ezra reminds us of this central activity of the community of God and our dependence on him to draw us near.
The book of Ezra is an odd duck. It bears the name of a man who doesn’t appear in its first half. Though titled like a minor prophet, this is a book of history, one far shorter than most historical books in Scripture. And it is one of the few portions of God’s word set after the Babylonian exile.
I couldn’t find any data to justify this suspicion, but I would guess that Ezra is not commonly read or studied by modern Christians. I get it—among other barriers, there are long lists of names in chapters 2, 8, and 10.
Yet, this little book has much to offer!
God Works in the Hearts of Kings
God rules over kingdoms and kings—this is true everywhere and at all times. But it is made explicit with surprising frequency in the book of Ezra.
We see this in the very first verse of the book: “…the Lord stirred up the spirit of Cyrus king of Persia, so that he made a proclamation throughout all his kingdom and also put it in writing …” (Ezra 1:1)
We also read that the Lord “had turned the heart of the king of Assyria” toward the Israelites (Ezra 6:22). The author of the book blesses God “who put such a thing as this into the heart of the king, to beautify the house of the Lord that is in Jerusalem, and who extended to me his steadfast love before the king and his counselors, and before all the king’s mighty officers” (Ezra 7:27–28). Finally, as part of his confession, Ezra thanks God that he “has extended to us his steadfast love before the kings of Persia, to grant us some reviving to set up the house of our God, to repair its ruins, and to give us protection in Judea and Jerusalem” (Ezra 9:9).
In Ezra a group of Israelites journeyed from Babylon to Jerusalem to rebuild the temple of God. Since they left captivity, traveled through dangeous territories, and settled in an occupied land, these people needed the approval, help, and protection of the local and central rulers.
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