God's Universal Forgiveness
“Daddy, I’m sorry for being mean.“, she whimpered. “I’ll never be mean again. Will you forgive me?”
“Honey,” I said, “being mean hurts you. It turns you into a mean person. The world is full of mean people who are hurting. I simply don’t want you to get hurt. And yes, I forgive you. I’ll always forgive you, no matter what.”
The preceding dialog has occurred many times in our home. I’d venture to say that it’s representative of routine conversations between all parents and children. The child sees only the present. In her ears are echoing the recently spoken mean words. Her heart feels the conflict between selfishness and love. The parent sees the bigger picture. He sees years back into the past, where meanness has led others into being miserable people. He sees also years into the future, to places where meanness might lead his precious little girl.
This closely illustrates how it is when we do something hateful and come to God about it. We’re concerned mostly about feeling good again, about the here-and-now. God sees the bigger picture. He sees what damage is being done by this malignant attitude of hatefulness. He wants to help us in making good choices, which will spare us much misery.
In our efforts to feel good again after doing something hateful, we Christians have focused keenly on God’s gracious and forgiving nature as a means of relieving our troubled minds. We frequently ask for forgiveness in our prayers1 and claim promises in the Bible which assure forgiveness2. In doing so, though, it’s easy to miss seeing part of a bigger picture of God’s graciousness. Let’s consider a few instances where Jesus was assuring forgiveness.
When the teachers of the Law brought to Jesus a woman who had been caught in adultery, He tactfully dispersed the crowd and said, “I don’t condemn you. Go and don’t sin again.”3 It’s interesting to note that the woman never asked for forgiveness. Jesus assured her that she was forgiven, urged her not to hurt herself anymore and sent her on her way.
When some friends brought a paralytic to Jesus, He assured him that his sins were forgiven, healed him of his paralysis and sent him on his way.4 The paralytic never asked for forgiveness. He simply came. His forgiveness was assured by Jesus and his troubled mind was put at ease.
When Jesus was hanging on the cross, he said, “Father, forgive them. They don’t know what they’re doing.”5 Again, it’s interesting to note that none of Jesus’ tormenters were asking for forgiveness. Yet Jesus is making it clear that He is forgiving them, independent of any request for forgiveness.
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I remember as a child thinking the only way that one could ever make it to heaven would be to say, “Jesus, forgive me of my sins.” just as it was evident you were about to die — say, from a head-on collision or something. Only then could you be all “forgiven up” with no more opportunity to do anything wrong. As awkward as this might sound, I’ve met many adults who have lived their lives feeling just about the same way, with little or no lasting assurance that matters are OK between them and God.
I believe two misunderstandings lead to this kind of thinking:
1) God withholds forgiveness until we formally ask for it.
2) Being forgiven by God qualifies a person for eternal life.
The instances noted above from Jesus’ life on Earth make it clear that God forgives before we ask. God is forgiveness personified. The asking is simply for our benefit. We need the assurance reinforced in our thinking, just like my little girl does when she makes a mistake. Certainly, there is no Biblical precedent indicating that God withholds forgiveness, that He becomes incensed by our poor choices and holds a grudge until we come asking to be forgiven.6 Rather, God has demonstrated that He will pursue us like a parent of a rebellious teenager.7 Would anyone dare to conclude that we as parents — who exhibit a forgiving spirit prior to a child’s wrong deed — are more forgiving than God?
What gets us in this mental rut is thinking that being forgiven is all it takes to make us fit for heaven. Not so. Think about it... Heaven won’t be filled with criminals who have simply been let off the hook — that is, who have simply been forgiven without a change of heart.8 The act of God forgiving a person of a wrong deed doesn’t necessarily fix what is broken in their thinking, does it?
What’s gone wrong in our thinking is that we are all rebels. John said it best: “Sin is lawlessness.”9 Humanity’s problem isn’t one of behavior as much as it is a problem of attitude. We’re all lawless rebels on the inside. Even when we’re acting our best on the outside, we’re still rebels on the inside. That’s why being forgiven — by God or by another person — doesn’t in its self fix the problem. We need a change of attitude. We need a new heart and a right spirit.10 We need God’s Law of Love to be willingly adopted into our own thinking, to be written into our minds.11 Only through a cooperative effort with God does our rebel attitude get displaced by a spirit of graciousness akin to God’s.
Forgiveness is not a means to get back into God's good graces. We're already there — and always have been! Consult your favorite word-origins dictionary to be reminded that the English word forgive means, “to give excessively.” To me, this says that forgiveness is a forward looking attitude, not a backward looking event.
When a person realizes the truth about God — that God is on their side, not out to get them12, and when a humble, willing-to-learn attitude prevails, true forgiveness has been realized. It is then that a person can forgive himself for being a rebel-without-a-cause and move on with life. Only then can God’s universal forgiveness have any effect in a person, helping to set straight13 their mind about the true nature of our gracious God, helping to open their thinking to the shaping of His Spirit.14 “Now this is eternal life: that they may know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom you have sent.”15
Larry Ashcraft
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1 the Lord’s Prayer: “Forgive us our sins, for we also forgive everyone who sins against us.” Luke 11:4 NIV
2 see 1 John 1:8-2:2; Matthew 6:14-15; Mark 11:25; A casual reading of these verses might leave the reader with the impression that God doesn’t forgive us (that He harbors ill will against us) until we forgive others. Placing these verses in the setting of how Christ interacted with others leads to the conclusion that the only instances when forgiveness doesn’t occur is when there are obstacles in our own thoughts, not in God’s.
3 see John 8:1-11
4 see Mark 2:1-12
5 Luke 23:34
6 There are a few places where God is portrayed as being unforgiving, but reading the entire context in these instances suggests a different meaning. For examples, see Joshua 24:19; 2 Kings 24:4; Job 7:21; Isaiah 2:9; Jeremiah 5:7, 18:23
7 see Hosea 11:1-11; John 3:16-19; Romans 5:6-9. As to God’s wrath against sinners, see Romans 1:18-28 (especially vs 24 and 28) and consider how Jesus died the death of a sinner on the cross.
8 see 1 Corinthians 6:9-11; Revelation 21:8
9 1 John 3:4 ASV, RSV, NASB, NAB, NIV, NRSV, NKJV, WEB
10 see Psalm 51:10-12
11 see Jeremiah 31:33
12 see Romans 8:1,31
13 justify or set right
14 see 2 Corinthians 3:18
15 John 17:3 NIV