Articles
Despising Forgiveness
As we have seen repeatedly in our OT study of the decline and fall of Israel, God’s people had become an abominable hybrid of Canaanitish immorality and ritualistic Mosaic legalists. The leaders were murderers, thieves and adulterers; the masses were idolaters; and false prophets crafted the nation’s worldview. It was a society so sick that God finally declared it unredeemable, and He raised up the Assyrians and Babylonians to ravage, plunder and disperse them.
But as the prophets heralded doom, there was also a ray of hope – not for the immediate future but in a distant time. Redemption and restoration were coming, but what would it look like? Would it be a revitalized, earthly throne of David with conquered enemies, expansive borders, abundant luxuries, exotic imports, summer villas and a bedazzling, refurbished temple?
Though a veil covered the full meaning of prophetic utterances (at least Messianic ones – Eph 3:3-6; 1 Pet 1:10-12), the prophets did hint at what was to come. The future did not include a kingdom modeled on earthly empires (Israel tried that already and it ended in dismal failure). Rather, it would be a new ideal of righteous rule, divine peace and a true restoration of relationship with God through forgiveness. Given their history, Abraham’s fleshly progeny should have jumped at the chance to have their sins washed away, both national and personal. But here we find something peculiar about the whole issue of forgiveness: the sinner must recognize and accept that he/she is, in fact, a sinner and gravely in need of reconciliation with God. Only then will the message of forgiveness be good news; actually, the best news anyone could possibly receive.
Jeremiah, amid his messages of horror and catastrophe, looked beyond coming exile to a time of healing and forgiveness: “Behold, the days are coming, says the Lord, when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and … Judah … I will put My law in their minds, and write it on their hearts; and I will be their God, and they shall be My people. No more shall every man teach his neighbor … and … his brother, saying, ‘Know the Lord,’ for they all shall know Me … For I will forgive their iniquity, and their sin I will remember no more” (Jer 31:31-34).
In a clearly Messianic passage Isaiah portrays a suffering Savior who pays the price for the sins of others: “He was wounded for our transgressions, he was bruised for our iniquities; the chastisement for our peace was upon Him, and by His stripes we are healed … and the Lord has laid on Him the iniquity of us all … He was cut off from the land of the living; for the transgressions of My people He was stricken … Yet it pleased the Lord to bruise Him; He has put Him to grief. When you make His soul an offering for sin … for He shall bear their iniquities” (Is 53:5-6, 8, 10-11).
Later Isaiah anticipates the very words and works of a coming Savior: “The Spirit of the Lord God is upon Me, because the Lord has anointed Me to preach good tidings to the poor; He has sent Me to heal the brokenhearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives, and the opening of the prison to those who are bound … to comfort all who mourn” (Is 61:1-2). Jesus reads these very words to His townsfolk of Nazareth, and their response was attempted murder (Lk 4:18-29).
But as the life of Jesus unfolded and He, along with the prophet John, called their generation to repentance, the ultimate meaning of the OT prophecies should have become clear. God was doing something far more complex and significant than establishing another carnal kingdom. This He had been doing for millennia: Egypt, Israel, Ammon, Moab, Edom, Assyria, Babylon, Persia, Greece, Rome. The carnal Jewish mind set its sights no higher than another restored, earthly, Davidic kingdom that would wage warfare, defeat the enemy and restore to the beleaguered Israelites their pastoral “vine and fig tree.”
When the angel appeared to Joseph and explained the nature of Mary’s pregnancy, he said, “She will bring forth a Son, and you shall call His name Jesus, for He will save His people from their sins” (Mt 1:21). Matthew comments: “All this was done that it might be fulfilled which was spoken by the Lord through the prophet, saying, ‘Behold, a virgin shall be with child, and bear a Son, and they shall call His name Immanuel,’ which is translated, ‘God with us’” (Mt 1:22-23/Is 7:14). What good news! God Himself was coming into the world to offer salvation from sins. Not only was Mary’s pregnancy not the result of sin; it was divinely ordained so that the result of sin – spiritual death – could be taken away.
Peter continues this connection between the prophets and forgiveness after Pentecost: “But those things which God foretold by the mouth of all His prophets, that the Christ would suffer, He has thus fulfilled. Repent therefore and be converted, that your sins may be blotted out, so that times of refreshing may come from the presence of the Lord … Yes, and all the prophets from Samuel and those who follow … have also foretold these days. You are sons of the … covenant which God made with our fathers, saying to Abraham, ‘And in your seed all the families of the earth shall be blessed.’ To you first, God, having raised up His Servant Jesus, sent Him to bless you, in turning every one of you from your iniquities” (Ac 3:18-19, 24-26). As the prophets had spoken, God was intent on reclaiming the sinners of Israel, but it would be on God’s terms, and those terms involved a new covenant which provided better promises and extended to Gentiles.
The Hebrew writer later appeals to Jeremiah, contrasting Mosaic sacrifices with that of Christ: “And every priest stands ministering daily and offering repeatedly the same sacrifices, which can never take away sins. But this Man, after He had offered one sacrifice for sins forever, sat down at the right hand of God … And the Holy Spirit also witnesses to us; for after He had said before, ‘This is the covenant that I will make with them after those days, says the Lord: I will put My laws into their hearts, and in their minds I will write them,’ then He adds, ‘Their sins and their lawless deeds I will remember no more’” (Heb 10:11-12, 15-18).
Simply put, for those who cannot appreciate grace and mercy and who despise the God who offers them, “there no longer remains a sacrifice for sins, but a certain fearful expectation of judgment, and fiery indignation which will devour the adversaries” (Heb 10:26-27).
