One of the best games we played as kids was SORRY. It’s a game of 2-4 players who travel around a board with their pieces as they roll the dice. The first player with all 4 pieces at Home wins. The game title comes from the many ways players can stop another’s progress, while issuing an apologetic “SORRY!” Watch this clip as Eunice explains SORRY strategy…
One of the hardest phrases to tell another person is “I’m Sorry.” Yet, true forgiveness is one of the most important ingredients of a healthy family and any healthy relationship. We’re all sinners and will hurt or be hurt by others. If we are ever going to get past these hardships we have we will have to use the words “I’m Sorry” and “You’re Forgiven.”
People who come to counseling generally fit into one or both of two categories. There are some who need to understand how God’s forgiveness is extended to sinners; and there are others who need to learn to be forgiving. In other words, some people are struggling with their own guilt; others have a sinful tendency to blame others and withhold forgiveness for wrongs done. Many people struggle with both guilt and blame.
Before we understand how to forgive others, we need to understand how we are forgiven. God does not forgive by simply looking the other way when we sin. Sin has separated us from God and must be punished. 2 Corinthians 5:18-21 explains what it took to reconcile us to God (forgive our sin).
And all things are of God, who hath reconciled us to himself by Jesus Christ, and hath given to us the ministry of reconciliation; To wit, that God was in Christ, reconciling the world unto himself, not imputing their trespasses unto them; and hath committed unto us the word of reconciliation. Now then we are ambassadors for Christ, as though God did beseech you by us: we pray you in Christ’s stead, be ye reconciled to God. For he hath made him to be sin for us, who knew no sin; that we might be made the righteousness of God in him. (2 Cor. 5:18-21)
God did not reconcile the sinner to Himself by asking him to change his ways and making things right with God. No sinner could ever do enough to satisfy the demands of God’s perfect righteousness. Forgiveness is not accomplished because we decide to go to God, but because He decides to come to us. That’s the distinction of Christian forgiveness. Every man-made religion teaches that there is something the sinner must do in order to receive forgiveness. Bible Christianity alone teaches that God has supplied, on the sinner’s behalf, all that is necessary to receive forgiveness. Three words help us understand this.
1. Substitution
Jesus became our substitute as a sinner while on the cross. God treated Christ like a sinner and punished Him for all the sins of all the world. Now God can treat us as righteous and give us credit for Christ’s perfect obedience. While Jesus Christ hung on the cross bearing others’ sins, God the Father poured out on His own sinless Son every ounce of divine fury against our sin (Isaiah 53:4-6). Forgiveness costs us nothing, because it cost Christ everything.
2. Imputation
Imputation speaks of a legal reckoning. To impute guilt to someone is to assign guilt to that person’s account. Likewise, to impute righteousness is to reckon the person righteous. It exists totally apart from the person to whom it is imputed. In other words, a person to whom guilt is imputed is not actually made guilty in the real sense. But he is accounted as guilty in a legal sense. The guilt of sinners was imputed to Christ. He was not guilty. He was merely reckoned as guilty before God and the penalty of all that guilt was executed on Him. Sin was imputed, not imparted to Him. God treated Christ as if He were a sinner. The guilt He bore was not His own guilt, but He bore it as if it were His own.
3. Justification
Just as Christ was ‘made to be sin’ because our guilt was imputed to Him, we become righteous by the imputation of His righteousness to us. Just as God put our sin to Christ’s credit, He put Christ’s righteousness to our credit. Christ, dying on the cross, did not actually become a sinner in order to bear our guilt. So we do not actually have to become perfect in order to be credited with His perfect righteousness. That is ‘being justified’ (just as if I’d never sinned).
God forgives sinners – not because we deserve it or as a reward for doing something – but because of what Christ has done for us. That is the ground on which all other forgiveness is based. It is the pattern for how we are to forgive others. We forgive others, not because they deserve it, but because Jesus died for sins (ours and theirs). If we keep in perspective how much God forgave, and how much it cost Him to forgive, we will soon realize that no hurt or sin against us can ever justify an unforgiving attitude. Christians who hold grudges or refuse to forgive others have lost sight of what their own forgiveness involved.
Near the end of the Civil War, it was just a matter of time until the South would surrender. Abraham Lincoln was asked how he would treat the southerners once the war was over. His answer was, “I will treat them as if they had never been away.”
God treats us with total forgiveness when we return in surrender to Him. My prayer is that you will turn from your sin and toward your Heavenly Father for total forgiveness.