God's Forgiveness Ephesians 1vii

What does the Lord's Table mean to you? There are many things which are spoken of volubly by the Supper. There is the love of God, there is membership in the family, there is assurance of God's favour, there is rest in Christ, and there is strength for the way.

But one of the most significant truths that the table addresses is the forgiveness of sins. In him, says Paul we have redemption through His blood, the forgiveness of sins.' I want to suggest to you this morning that one of the means by which we will benefit at the table this morning is if we have a proper appreciation of the forgiveness that has been obtained by the cross.

You see there is a great danger that we will take the forgiveness of God for granted. And if we have a superficial view of God's forgiveness it will almost certainly lead to superficial views of the sacrament and superficial Christian lives from Monday to Saturday.

Some people approach holy things with the superficiality of the person who wants to do a famous art gallery in a short space of time. He is told there is a Goya here and Da Vinci a Rembrandt and he goes and he looks at each for a few moments makes a few uninformed comments to those around and then leaves later on to tell people that he has seen some of the world's great art treasures. Well at once level he has but the experience has not touched him.

My prayer this morning is from the words of a little chorus that goes like this, 'Oh make me understand it help me to take it in. What it meant for thee the holy one to take away my sin.'

1. The Problems of Forgiveness

Lightweight notions of our forgiveness are often caused by the fact that people think that forgiveness is something that we are owed by God. God is love is perhaps the only scrap of information that many people outside the churches and some within them carry in their heads. It is true of course but unless that truth is suspected by other truths about God's character it leads us to age with the French sceptic who on his death bed said, 'he God will forgive me, that's his business.'

People cannot get their head around the cross and see it as an enigma. Why can't God simply forgive us unconditionally? We are expected to forgive one another unconditionally. None's death is expected when we forgive other people. Why can't God practice what he preaches and be equally generous? Why so much insistence on the need for the cross and such superstitious talk about sacrifice. And so for many people there is simply an assumption that God if there is one will forgive them anyway and the cross is no more than a symbol of the faith. We too must understand why the cross is a necessity. We must grapple with the problem of God's forgiveness if our coming to the table is to be meaningful.

The problem of forgiveness arises from two areas. First of all there is the seriousness of our sin and secondly there is the holiness of God. A shallow understanding of both results in a shallow appreciation of forgiveness.

A number of years ago someone wrote a letter to the Life and Work lamenting the way people blithely speaks of sin without rally taking on board its reality. "When I was in the army," he wrote "the padre would lead us in prayers from the prayer book, which we would recite together. We all confessed to being miserable sinners in whom there was no health. And on being dismissed everyone returned to the lying swearing and petty thieving that had gone on before."

The Bible describes our sin in a number of ways. It is hamartia a term borrowed from archery to describe sin an as missing of the target. None of us have achieved anything like the standard of heaven, which after all is perfect holiness. Sin is also spoken of as adikia or unrighteousness or iniquity, which described an inner corruption or perversion of our character. It is the fatal force, which like gravity always pulls us down. Sin is also spoken of as anomia which is lawlessness.

When we sin it is important for us to know that we are not in the first place offending a law although that is true. We are offending a person. David lamented with great insight when he sinned against Bathsheba,' against thee have I sinned in they sight done this ill.' Now David had of course offended grievously against Abthesheba and against Uriah and he had broken several of the commandments in doing so but he had first and foremost sinned against God.

Sin is an act of rebellion in which we put our own desires and impulses before God. Sin is the shout of defiance which says, "I will be ruler of my own life. I will not acknowledge the reign of God over me.' Every sin is a breach of what Jesus called thirst and greatest commandment, too love the Lord our God with all our heart and soul and mind ands strength.'

In different ways we have sought to abolish sin. We have excused ourselves by saying that we were not responsible. We have blamed our environment or our genes. We have reclassified sin as illness we have sanitised sin by repackaging and renaming it. But no matter that we do this sin remains and deep down this causes us anxiety and unease. We feel guilt.

Whenever that happens of course we are encouraged to believe that it is the guilt itself which is the problem. Don't blame yourself don't feel guilty about it people say. And of course there is such a thing as false guilt where a morbid over scrupulous conscience blames itself unjustifiably. But that is a far cry from saying as many modern people assume that guilt in itself is an illness.

True guilt is a wake up call. True guilt is something for which we may ultimately be grateful if it causes us to acknowledge our sinfulness and make our way to the one place that our sinfulness can be addressed which is the cross of Christ. You remember in the parable of the Prodigal Son there came a moment of self-awareness for the young err son. We are told that 'he came to himself' before he came to his father. IN other words he had to acknowledge his self-centeredness before he could go on and receive the reconciliation of his father. There would have been no ring, no robe, no kiss no feast if he had remained in the far country suppressing his guilty conscience telling himself that everything was well.

We will only see the greatness of forgiveness in the light of the gravity of our sin and also in the light of the holiness of God. In our day there has been a great stress on the nearness of God. There is good cause for that as we have seen in Galatians. God has come near in Jesus. We may approach him as our Father if we are in Christ that is only a result of what Christ has come. The church in addressing God in a chummy met fashion has led the world to imagine that God is simply and magnification of their own personalities and so not very threatening.

But in the same epistle in which we read that God is love we also read that God is light. God is absolute holiness and when his light is described in the Bible it is often described I such a way that its luminosity drives back al who are loaded with sin from God's presence. It is unapproachable light in which God dwells. He is of too pure eyes to behold iniquity. And so God is described in ways tht stress his separateness from sin. He is consuming fire and when sinners approach they endanger themselves. Moses is told. Don't come any nearer. Take off your shoes for the place where you stand is holy ground.

Isaiah Ben Amos had an encounter with the holiness of God if ever one had. In the temple he has a vision of God in which God is at a great height above him. I saw the Lord high and lifted up. Everything in that vision was designed to underline the great distance between himself and a holy God. Before coals from the altar, the place of sacrifice could avail for Isaiah he had to come to that point where he cried out, 'Woe is me for I am undone.' Literally I am unravelled.

Isaiah felt disintegrated. To disintegrate means exactly what the word suggests, dis integrate. To integrate something is to put pieces together in a unuited whole. When we say of someone he has integrity we say he has got it all together. Well in beginning to discover something of the holiness of God Isaiah was beginning to discover that he did not have it all together. He disintegrated before the holiness of God.

2. God's Dilemma

This presents God with a dilemma It is God's nature to love and to forgive. And yet it is also God's nature to be holy and to express his opposition to sin by removing it from his presence and finally destroying it. There is a great conflict between the attributes of God's character - between his mercy and his holiness.

It is expressed powerfully in God's words in Amos 'how can I give you up Ephraim how can I hand you over Israel? How can I treat you like Adman? How can I make you like Zeboiim? My heart is changed within me; all my compassion is aroused. I will not carry out my fierce anger, nor devastate Ephraim again. For I am God and not man the Holy One among you. I will not come in wrath.'

There was only one way for this great conflict to be resolved. God himself would have to offer himself to pay the price of our sin. He would place himself in the cauldron of divine justice. He would substitute himself.

The word redemption implies the paying of a price. And of course the well-known illustration of this is the courtroom scene. The guilty sinner is standing before the judge. The sentence is pronounced guilty. The accused stands waiting for the judge to announce the penalty. He gasps the penalty is enormous. Too great a sum for him to pay. But the judge comes down and writes out a cheque for the full amount from his own hand.

The illustration gives some idea of what is involved but it falls so far short. God did not simply sing a cheque to achieve reconciliation with guilty sinners. God have himself. God was in Christ reconciling the world to him. God came in Christ as the God man to do what he could not do as God which is to taste death. As a true man Jesus Christ could truly substitute for us. he could reprint us in eerie way. But as God His substitution was infinitely valuable. No human substitute could d o what Christ did.

On the cross Christ was utterly forsaken of God. On that cross Christ was made sin for us. He became a substitute and was placed under the sentence of death as though he had been the most sinful man in the world. And all in order that God might show mercy to us whilst showing judgment on sin.

3. The Result

The result is the forgiveness of sins. Through him we have redemption through his blood- the price has been paid in the only way it could be by the blood of Jesus and we have forgiveness. The word used here is sometimes translated trespasses which means our "missteps," our "stumbling," our tragic, hurtful blunderings in which we think we are doing something that will fulfil us, but it ends up wrong, devastating, deadening, and we end up bitter and disillusioned. But those stumblings have been forgiven.

Here Paul is putting his finger on the chains which bind us in our enslaved condition. It is our guilty awareness of these deliberate acts and choices that operates to make us hide from God, and also from each other. The chains that bound us to our past made us uncomfortable with ourselves and with others. We were uncomfortable in religious settings because we felt God did not accept us and could never accepts us. We were uncomfortable with being with others unless we knew that they had done the same kind of things as we had. We became withdrawn, secretive, resentful, We took pride in being independent aloof self sufficient and the more life went on in this way the more miserable we felt. And it was all because of being bound to our sin.

But forgiveness changed all of that. The word forgiveness of sins means the dismissal of sins. When you trusted Christ your sins werwe dismissed from you. Up until that point you see you werwe joined to your sin. You would one day go to hell along with your sin. That is why it is only partly helpful to say that God loves the sinner but hates the sin. You cannot separate the sinner from the sin in that way. Only forgiveness can separate the sinner from the sin. If the sinner does not repent he will go with his sin to hell.

But forgiveness does separate us from our sin. I think here of the wonderful picture that we have from the Day of Atonement. On that day the high priest would confess the sin of the people over the head of a goat. And then a servant would take the goat out to the edge of the wilderness and would dismiss the goat from the presence of the people. it would go out there near to be seen or heard of again. The people had been separated from their sin had been dismissed.

Now here is something of enormous pastoral significance. I am no longer identified with my sin. There is a vogue today for people to speak of a practice which once bound them such as alcoholism or homosexuality as though that were still what identified them. It may sound very humble to say I am an alcoholic and all a recovered alcoholic is doing who says tht is confessing that they must always maintained a vigilant guard against falling again into excessive drinking. But if you are a Christian you are no longer defined by something like that. You have been separated from that sin by the grace of God. Your confession now is I am a child of God. I am greatly loved.

Think of the woman brought to Jesus who had been taken in the act of adultery. She is a pathetic person caught up by her foes in a shameful piece of entrapment. They had probably been spying on her knowing that she regularly got up to this kind of thing. But Jesus speaks an amazing word to her, 'neither do I condemn you. Go and sin no more.' He sins have been dismissed from her. She has been liberated by forgiveness. No more must she live outr? her life like a poor wee bird I a cage she is free , free from the bars of sin.

Forgiveness completely changes the way we think of ourselves. Without acknowledging guilt there can be no forgiveness. When forgiveness comes there can be no guilt. The cross shows me that I am more loved than I ever thought.

There is a beautiful word for believers in the prophet hose were God says of us 'I will show my love to the one I called 'not my loved one.' I will say to those called 'not my people,' 'You are my people,' and they will say, 'You are my God.'

You will know that the disciple referred to as the disciple Jesus loved in the fourth gospel is none other than John himself. Forgiveness you see had changed his whole self-understanding. If John were to be suddenly dropped into one of these modern group situations where people ask you to share with the group the most significant thing about yourself what would John have said. ' I am loved by Jesus.'

And this change this dismissal of our guilt and sin has been made possible only by the blood of Christ. Blood is not a pleasant thing, it is sticky messy, sickening for some. But the Scriptures tells us there was no other way. 'Without the shedding of blood there is no remission of sin.' Death was the inevitable outworking of my sin. The folly of my self-centred, blasphemous rebellion against God had only one destination- eternal death. But praises God for Jesus' In him and in him alone we have redemption through his blood the forgiveness of sins.'

On the night before his execution the Marquis of Argyll claimed that God was 'just now saying to me, 'Son be of good cheer, thy sins are forgive thee,' and upon repeating those words burst into tears and retired to a window to weep there.' May the wonder of our forgiveness seize our minds convulse our emotions, make us tremble with joy. Amen