Forgiveness

Maybe I'm insane, and maybe I'm the only person who does this, but I've managed to cheapen the concept of forgiveness.  In my infinite human wisdom, I've taken what is far and away the most beautiful part of faith, the part that saves, and the part that best demonstrates the love of God, and I've made it weak and inconsequential.  It most certainly is not.

I suppose that I have come to imagine my sin as gone and passed, forgiven as soon as it is done (which is true), and therefore irrelevant, almost as if God never even sees it.  Jesus takes my sin immediately, the sin is punished immediately, and the event is over and I am on right-standing with God immediately.  All of this is true, but it's missing something: forgiveness.  There is grace and mercy, but not forgiveness.  Before the Just God deals with the problem that sin creates (he must destroy it, because he is holy), he forgives us, and there is nothing more beautiful.

The moment where the eternal, just, holy, perfect, and indescribable Adonai Elohim sabaoth (Lord God of hosts) sees our sin in all of its grotesqueness, truly grasping what an offense it is (something we can never quite get a hold of), and forgives us is indescribably beautiful and absolutely crucial to being moved by the gospel.  It is the moment of shame that I often forget to have, where God knows me for who and what I am: a sinner deserving of judgement.  It is the moment where I must prostrate myself before my judge and beg for something I know that I don't deserve, something I never could deserve.  It is the moment before Christ takes my sin, and is punished for it, and I walk off scott-free.  In this moment, fully aware of my sin and my ugliness, God looks upon me and says:

"I forgive you; I love you more."

Read that again, and think about what that means.  "I love you more."  As the bride of Christ, I think this is a good example.  Imagine that you have a wife, and she commits adultery.  She runs away from you and the oath that binds you.  And when she comes home, no matter how many times she goes out or how impenitent she is, aware of the fact that she will do it again, you forgive her.  You know what she did, but you forgive her, because you love her more than the sin she commits, even though it causes you enormous amounts of pain every single time.

As Christians we commit adultery every single day, and I can always remember that I have been forgiven, that my sin was paid for by Christ, and that I may stand before God blameless.  But I always manage to skip over that moment, before my sin is taken and paid for (if such a moment exists) where God looks upon me and my sin, and forgives.  That moment where He loves me more than he hates the sin I commit.  That blows me away.

Beautiful.