"10For this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, saith the Lord; I will put my laws into their mind, and write them in their hearts: and I will be to them a God, and they shall be to me a people:
11And they shall not teach every man his neighbour, and every man his brother, saying, Know the Lord: for all shall know me, from the least to the greatest. 12For I will be merciful to their unrighteousness, and their sins and their iniquities will I remember no more." (Hebrews 8: 10-12)
Forgiveness of sins is not a light matter. God had to send His own Son to pay for our sins, but He paid not just for our sins, but paid for all sins for all time, and to this day He serves as the Mercy Seat for the whole world (1 John 2: 1-2)
What does AA say about forgiveness? Nothing short of empty, bereft blasphemy:
It is plain that a life which includes deep resentment leads only to futility and unhappiness. To the precise extent that we permit these, do we squander the hours that might have been worth while. But with the alcoholic, whose hope is the maintenance and growth of a spiritual experience, this business of resentment is infinitely grave. We found that it is fatal. For when harboring such feelings we shut ourselves off from the sunlight of the Spirit. The insanity of alcohol returns and we drink again. And with us, to drink is to die.
If we were to live, we had to be free of anger. The grouch and the brainstorm were not for us. They may be the dubious luxury of normal men, but for alcoholics these things are poison.
We turned back to the list, for it held the key to the future. We were prepared to look at it from an entirely different angle. We began to see that the world and its people really dominated us. In that state, the wrong-doing of others, fancied or real, had power to actually kill. How could we escape? We saw that these resentments must be mastered, but how? We could not wish them away any more than alcohol.
This was our course: We realized that the people who wronged us were perhaps spiritually sick.
Though we did not like their symptoms and the way these disturbed us, they, like ourselves, were sick too. We asked God to help us show them the same tolerance, pity, and patience that we would cheerfully grant a sick friend. When a person offended we said to ourselves, "This is a sick man. How can I be helpful to him? God save me from being angry. Thy will be done."
We avoid retaliation or argument. We wouldn't treat sick people that way. If we do, we destroy our chance of being helpful. We cannot be helpful to all people, but at least God will show us how to take a kindly and tolerant view of each and every one. (AA, pg 66-67)
If someone abused me as a kid, that person harmed me. To allow someone to hide behind "sick" makes no sense at all. In fact, it's down right reprehensible.
If someone steals from me, that's a loss which I have incurred. How will I be repaid for what was taken from me?
Forgiveness, at its most basic, economic level, must be about more than just "letting something go". Someone has to pay for what someone else took from us. Someone else has to recompense us for our losses.
We need God's grace every day in our lives. As long as anyone has a notion that they have only a provision connection with God, which at any time can be revoked because we have sinned, then we can never rest secure that we are at peace with God.
The Bible tells us that we have this peace:
"1Therefore being justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ: 2By whom also we have access by faith into this grace wherein we stand, and rejoice in hope of the glory of God." (Romans 5: 1-2)
The Scripture is more final -- "Having been justified" -- it's a total, complete, irrevocable deal with God.
We are also invited to keep receiving His grace in our lives:
"17For if by one man's offence death reigned by one; much more they which receive [lit. are receiving] abundance of grace and of the gift of righteousness shall reign in life by one, Jesus Christ."
In fact, God wants us to be defined and driven by God's grace:
"10But by the grace of God I am what I am: and his grace which was bestowed upon me was not in vain; but I laboured more abundantly than they all: yet not I, but the grace of God which was with me" (1 Corinthians 15: 10)
Without grace, you cannot forgive, because we forgive to the extent that we receive God's grace in our lives:
"And be ye kind one to another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, even as God for Christ's sake hath forgiven you." (Ephesians 4: 32)
Christ forgave us completely of all our sins:
"To the praise of the glory of his grace, wherein he hath made us accepted in the beloved. 7In whom we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of sins, according to the riches of his grace" (Ephesians 1: 6-7)
"Accepted" is literally "made gracious". We are defined by grace in Grace personified, which is Christ, who lives in us (Colossians 1: 27), and by His faith we live (Galatians 2: 20-21)
As we allow Christ to live in us, His grace flows. As long as we believe that we are called to live this life, then we frustrate His grace in our lives, and thus we have no power to live, weighed down by the sense that we have to keep taking our inventory, keep cleaning up the past, keep making up for the future, and never able to move on with one's life.
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