The Rules of Forgiveness

I'm trying to understand the rules of forgiveness.
If the Bible doesn't contradict itself, and it doesn't, then how does this work?
God tells me to
Forgive as the Lord forgave you.--Colossians 3:13

OK. So, how does He forgive?
When you were dead in your sins and in the uncircumcision of your sinful nature, God made you alive with Christ. He forgave us all our sins--Colossians 2:13
So, He forgave me before I repented.

But then He says,
If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness.-1John 1:9
In other words, I must repent to be forgiven. 

So which is it?

Well, it's both.

When Christ went to Calvary, He proclaimed forgiveness and freedom for all men, although most of them did not know Him, had not even acknowledged His godhead, much less repented.
He did it all, all He could do.
But men still have free will, the free will He gave them.
Jesus did all of his part.  Men were forgiven, but their relationship with Him was not yet repaired.
It takes repentance to do that. 
When we acknowledge and repent of sin, we restore our communion with God.

And that is how we must forgive.
We do what we can while the offender is still clueless, still dead in sin.  We forgive him as Christ forgave us.  Without recompense, without expectation.
Then, sooner or later, he may acknowledge and apologize, repenting for his sin.
That is when, as in Christ, are we restored.

Another Blood

The Bible tells us that King David of Israel had a heart for God.  And he did. But he was not weak, nor was he sweet, nor meek.  King David was made and commissioned by God for war.  And he was good at it.

He began his career by killing the giant Goliath and while he reigned, Israel fought enemies on all sides.  King David knew the color of blood, and the smell of it, and the taste of it.  And when he grew old, he tired of it.

By the end of his life, David wanted not to destroy any longer, but to build.  First, though, he decided to assess his kingdom.  He desired to see the scope of what he had done so far.  He had fought so many years; he wanted to find out what he had accomplished, so he commissioned a census.  And he counted his people.

He had built an empire, a far reaching one of more than a million and a half fighting men. 
But God was not pleased with David.

During his life, David had conquered many lands and killed many men at God's command.  And God blessed him for his obedience.  But this counting God neither commanded nor sanctioned.  
Of all the things David had done, this peaceful, seemingly innocuous action angered God.
And David would spill another kind of blood.

Men would die this time, not because David was obedient, but because he had sinned.
So the Lord sent a pestilence in Israel, and seventy thousand men of Israel fell.--1Chronicles 21:14

This new blood left a mark all the other had not.  And David would pay for his disobedience.
Then, only then, after all the love and reverence, after all the songs, after all the years of drawing his sword in God's name, only then did God tell David he had done wrong.
You had shed much blood and have made great wars; you shall not build a Temple in my name for you have shed much blood on the ground before me.--1Chronicles 22:8

This last disobedience, not the years of faithful, if bloody, following, disqualified David from building the Lord's temple.
And so it still does.
The blood of disobedience, of pride, of lust, can never honor God.
But there is a blood of another kind, blood shed by specifically commissioned men according to God's intentional command. That blood leaves another stain, the stain of holy obedience, the stain of sacrifice, the same stain that gathered at the foot of the cross on Calvary.

Pay Attention!

Did you ever hold  wild bird in your hand?
So light, so small, so fleeting...bound to fly away at the slightest flinch.
Its quick, small weight is a rare gift and too soon gone.
I have to pay attention every minute lest it vanishes.

That bird is like God, whose nearness is also a fragile thing.

God--fierce, constant, powerful God--always hovers close by.  He occupies the very air. His love, ethereal and palpable, bears rare,  precious weight.

But it can fly away in an instant of inattention.
Although God, for His part, always loves, always protects, my own wavering drives Him off, just out of reach.

That is why I nurture my closeness to God like a sweet rare bird in the palm of my hand, knowing that, though He never changes, when I succumb to random motion, He will flutter off to a nearby branch and wait there until I am still again.

Though the mountains be shaken and the hills be removed, yet my unfailing love for you will not be shaken nor my covenant of peace be removed,--Isaiah 54:10

Works for Me...

Forty years.
Why did God make Moses and his Jews wander around in the desert for forty years?  Why not twenty? Why not fifty?

What happens in forty years. anyway?
People die, that's what.  Two generations die.
In forty years, God knew that virtually none of the people who He rescued from Egypt would still be alive.  None of the ones who worshiped the golden calf.  None of the ones who complained about not having onions.  None of them, not even the babies.

 Your sons shall be shepherds for forty years in the wilderness, and they will suffer for your unfaithfulness, until your corpses lie in the wilderness.--Numbers 14:33

After forty years, none of those Jews still living would have remembered anything about their life in Egypt.  They all would have grown up in the desert.  They would know nothing of lush harvests or emerald rivers.  They would know only sand and sun and manna and God.  And they would be grateful for the promised land.

God thinks in terms of generations. Men do not.
Even Hezekiah, who came to know God and to teach his whole kingdom about Him, didn't get that God does not just care about individuals.  He cares about legacies.

 Then Isaiah said to Hezekiah, “Hear the word of the Lord Almighty: The time will surely come when everything in your palace, and all that your fathers have stored up until this day, will be carried off to Babylon. Nothing will be left, says the Lord. And some of your descendants, your own flesh and blood who will be born to you, will be taken away, and they will become eunuchs in the palace of the king of Babylon.”

“The word of the Lord you have spoken is good,” Hezekiah replied. For he thought, “There will be peace and security in my lifetime.”--Isaiah 39:5-8 

In other words, Hezehiah thought, "It may suck to be you, but it works for me..."

God doesn't agree.

What damage does generational faithlessness produce?

Examine your own heritage. 

What did your grandparents do or know that has been lost?

Did a grandparent build or sing or sew or cook something that has disappeared forever?

Did they know how to survive without car or grocery store or telephone?

Does they have a heritage of faith that has dwindled from misuse?

Two generations and it is lost.  Gone, and irretrievable.

Forfeiting what was good from prior generations steals from our children.

We keep the faith of our fathers today not just because it benefits ourselves, but so that we can build an unbroken chain of those who know and love God for the future.

And you shall teach them your children, speaking of them when you sit in your house,
and when you walk by the way, when you lie down, and when you rise up.--Deuteronomy 11:19

The Look of Real Horror

Aliens vs Godzilla
The Tomato that Ate Cleveland
Halloween 25
It's that time of year again, when horror becomes the pastime du jour.

But most of what passes for horror is only silliness.
Want to see real horror?
Try repentance.

Don't bother looking into the ridiculously manufactured faces of Jason or Frankenstein.
Try looking into the face of our holy God, knowing that you have offended Him and that He does not have to do more than think about your death to make it happen, and that His face turned away will be eternity in howling darkness.
Think about sin, your sin.

You will know when you get it, when the reality of it dawns on you.
You will know.

Why have these people turned away?..They cling to deceit;..no one repents of his wickedness, saying, "What have I done?--Jeremiah 8:5-6

"What have I done?"
The sadness, the devastating reality, the...repentance.
That is horror. Real horror.
Not the movies, not any fright fest, no trick or treating.

We have to go there, you know. And often.
Repentance is not a Sunday thing, not a just-before-church thing, not even a daily thing.
The best repentance comes right away, moment by moment, the same way we sin.

"What have I done?"
And when we know, and repent, Christ will show us again what He has done.

Jew for a Day

I am trying to imagine myself a Jew today.
Or a Buddhist, or a Mohammedan, or a Muslim.
I know that God exists.  
He made me. His power drives the world.
Somewhere, from up high and far away, He influences my life.

I try to serve Him. I try to obey Him. I reach out to love Him, to draw near to Him, but He is too terrible, too far.
He speaks to men sometimes, but they don't benefit much from the conversation.  They are too flawed themselves.
Such men have stood so near God as to hear His voice in thunder and whisper, to feel the heat of His fire, to witness His blinding brightness, but even then, they fail.
They smash His personally engraved tablets in a fit of anger.
They fear their king so deeply that they tell him their wife is their sister.
They sleep with their captain's wife, then kill him to cover it up.
No, these men, though they have spoken with God, do not help much at all.

And, because I am a Jew, there is no Jesus.
God shows no gentleness, little mercy, no offered fellowship, no shared humanity.
I long for God, but know that He will not share His heaven with the likes of me.
I can never know my God.

Then I remember Simeon:
Lord, now let your servant depart in peace, according to your word, for my eyes have seen your salvation, which you have prepared for the face of all people; a light to  lighten the Gentiles, and to be the glory of your people Israel.--Luke 2:29-32

He saw Jesus on the day of His presentation in the Temple.
One look.  That's all it took to change an impossible contradiction into hope and a future.
One look.
Not a God far away, but God in my own skin.
Simeon, a faithful Jew, but as sad and impatient as the rest, had waited for the promise.
And it came.
It came to him in the same way that it comes to everyone--in one moment.

I look up and He is there.
My Savior lives.

We, the Needy

OK, so you aren't rich.
Most of us aren't.
Or are we?  I mean, rich compared to who?
We might not be rich compared to Bill Gates, but how about compared to someone living in the Middle Ages, who feared plague or walked in cow dung every day? Or in Renaissance Europe, when courtiers carried perfumed hankies because people and places stank so badly? Or modern Ethiopia, where starvation kills thousands of people every day?
We are, in fact, richer than we ordinarily think.

Admit it.
We live in a place and time of comfort and privilege.  No one dies of starvation here.  We do not wake to the sound of gunfire. Our lives are luxuriant beyond that of ancient kings.

But are very poor in one way.  We can no longer see God.
We are the ones Jesus spoke of when He said,
Blessed are they who have not seen, yet believe.--John 20:29

We have not seen.
Moses, Abraham, and Noah have long ago died. The burning bush is extinguished.  The voice on Sinai is silent. Jesus does not walk among us.  We cannot, by word of mouth, learn of something He did just yesterday in the next town.

We need one thing those poorer people did not.
If we are to know God, we must have faith.
No earthly privilege will bring it.
No wealth can buy it.
We will not stumble upon it hanging on a cross in the town square.

Still, God made us for this time.
Faith is part of our intended destiny and, indeed, it is our privilege.
Because we cannot see, we must believe.

My Lord and my God!--John 20:28
The Lord is near to all who call upon Him, to all who call upon Him in truth.--Psalm 145:18