The Freedom Found In Forgiveness (Part 1)

By Pastor Matthew

I will be starting a Six part Blog series titled ”The Freedom Found In Forgiveness.” We may interrupt this topic with other topics that may come up.  However, to make it easier to find this Blog series, I will title all the blogs that have to do with this subject the same way (Part 1, 2, 3 etc) in the subject line.  Please feel free to make comments or ask questions.

The Freedom Found In Forgiveness (Part 1)

The Christian life is comprised by the gift of forgiveness.  At the beginning of the Christian life, the submerging of baptism dramatically enacts the free and unconditional gift of forgiveness by which God receives humankind into the fellowship of his own triune life.  In baptism, the past is washed away.  All our guilt and shame is removed – it is drowned and left behind in the water.  In this way, the power of the past is broken, so that a person emerges from the water into new life, into a life wholly open to the future of God’s coming kingdom.

Forgiveness is not, however, merely the start of the Christian life.  Each day and at every moment, we continue to live by the power of forgiveness.  Each day, the Christian community repeats the same prayer: “Forgive us our debts!” Each day, we continue to need and to ask for God’s forgiveness.  Although we are baptized only once, throughout the whole Christian life we continue to share in the Eucharistic meal-the meal of forgiveness.  Just as we share together in the bread and wine, so we are reminded that God’s forgiving grace is our food and drink, our nourishment, our very life.  To eat and drink forgiveness, to be sustained by forgiveness-this is the meaning of the Christian life.

So our prayer each day is: “Forgive us our debts!”  Forgiveness is the opposite of being treated as we deserve to be treated.  It is the opposite of restitution justice.  It is the opposite of “karma,” of reaping what has been sowed.  It is the opposite of every kind of moral legalism.  So too, it is the opposite of making amends for the past.  It is the opposite of conditions, negotiation, and exchange.

Forgiveness is not restitution-it is an unconditional pardon.  It is cancellation of debt.  Forgiveness therefore involves both recognition of the debt that is owed, and an irreversible decision that the debt will be cancelled.  It is therefore not a matter of simply forgetting the past-it is a powerful annulment of the past, an act in which the chains of the past are broken.  Through forgiveness, the past itself is then transformed into something new, just as the future is suddenly opened in a new way.  Liberated from the power of the past, I am now set in motion towards a future rich with hope and possibility.  This, then, is the unique freedom of the Christian life: to stand forgiven before God, and thereby truly free in relation to my own past and to the future of God’s kingdom.

But our daily prayer is not only “forgive us our debts.”  In fact, our prayer is: “Forgive us our debts, as we forgive those who are in debt to us.”  This prayer means: “Set me free from the past, just as I release others from the chains of their past.  Cancel my debts today, just as today I release others from the debts they owe me.  Do not demand restitution for guilt from me, just as I refuse to demand restitution from others.  Set me free from the need to make amends, just as I excuse others from this need.  Forgive me unconditionally, just as I forgive without negotiation or condition.”

THOUGHTS ABOUT THIS ANYONE?