The joy of forgiveness
Blessed is he whose transgression is forgiven,
Whose sin is covered (Psalm 32:1).
In Psalm 32 David begins with the blessedness of forgiveness, “Blessed is he whose transgression is forgiven.” It is a wonderful thing to know the forgiveness of God. But we do have a tendency to remember past failures, and these can be recalled very easily. We can feel a withering sense of self-condemnation when we repeatedly make the same mistake. When someone hurts us, we quickly remember the times this has happened in the past. It is like a card index system in our memories, and we often read out the cards in the heat of the moment.
But God’s forgiveness is different. The Authorised Version uses a lovely expression in the parable of the two debtors who did not have the resources to pay what they owed (Luke 7). In verse 42 the Lord Jesus describes the gracious character of the forgiveness of God, “And when they had nothing to pay, he frankly forgave them both.” Do we remember the day when we “had nothing to pay”, and we received the forgiveness of God? How thankful we were! What a load was lifted, and what joy filled our hearts! The debtors in the Lord’s parable, once “frankly forgiven”, never had any sense that their creditor held the debt against them. The creditor was gracious, and the debtors loved him. The one who owed him a great sum of money loved him far more than the other.
It is distressing as Christians to discover we are still capable of failing and failing dreadfully. God is holy, and He judges sin. The Lord Jesus as the great Substitute stood in our place and answered the great question of sin at Calvary. He paid the enormous debt, enabling our forgiveness. Now God righteously, freely and joyfully forgives those who trust the Saviour. Once, a friend of Nicholas ll, the last Tzar of Russia, was engulfed by debt. As he sat at his desk looking at the pile of accounts he could not pay, he drank in order to numb his mind and enable him to take his life with the pistol in his hand. But before he could shoot the gun, he collapsed in a drunken stupor. When he woke up hours later, and his mind cleared, he saw across all the bills on his desk the words written, “Paid by Tzar Nicholas ll”. Paul writes in Romans: “For when we were yet without strength, in due time Christ died for the ungodly.” Once we become God’s children, we continue to experience the wonder of His forgiveness. Knowing the price that Jesus paid for my redemption instils within me a desire to avoid sin. But when we fail, we know that, “if we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins, and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness”
(1 John 1:9).
John Wesley, on a journey to America, met a wealthy fellow passenger with a servant he treated cruelly and beat for the slightest mistake. Wesley asked his fellow traveller if he ever forgave his servant. He said, “Sir, I never forgive.” Wesley replied, “Sir, I hope you never sin!” God’s forgiveness moves us to be forgiving. Our forgiveness should never be superficial, but heartfelt and genuine and a reflection of the Saviour who forgave us: “Be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, even as God in Christ forgave you” (Ephesians 4:32).
