February 20: Jesus offers forgiveness

Steve Smartt is pastor of Moultrie Baptist Church in St. Augustine.

The story has been told of how on a Lord’s Day a group of missionaries and believers in New Guinea had gathered to observe the Lord’s Supper. While seated, one of the believers recognized a man who had cannibalized his father. When one of the missionaries questioned him, he replied, “The man who just came in killed and ate the body of my father, and now he has come in to remember the Lord with us. At first I didn’t know whether I could endure it. But it is all right now. He is washed in the same precious blood.” With no further delay, together they had Communion.

What an incredible level of forgiveness it required to be seated at the Lord’s table with one who had committed such a horrific act and realizing that they would no longer face eternal punishment for their crime. So much greater, though, is the depth of the forgiveness of Christ on the cross as He prayed on behalf of those who had put Him there (32-34).

Most incredibly and revealing of Christ’s love is His obedience to the will of the Father in choosing to die on their behalf, and ours, for forgiveness (35-39). Though the rulers sneered and mocked Him saying, “He saved others; let Him save Himself if He is the Christ of God, the Chosen One,” Jesus refused to relent in His obedience in order to provide a way of forgiveness for others through His death. The writer to the Hebrews says that Jesus, “for the

joy set before him endured the cross, scorning its shame” (Hebrews 12:2), and in Philippians, Paul writes that “He humbled himself and became obedient to death—even death on a cross!” (Philippians 2:8). That humility gave the way of forgiveness that leads to the promise of eternal life for all who put their faith and trust in the atoning sacrifice of Jesus Christ (40-43).

When one of the two criminals joined in the mockery, he was rebuked by the other who made his sincere appeal to Jesus in faith. This thief, a condemned sinner, answered the effective call of the Gospel and received assurance of forgiveness. Just as anyone who acknowledges his sin and asks for forgiveness will receive the fullness of God’s mercy, the thief likewise, was promised eternal life by His confession of the Messiah.

In Systematic Theology, Wayne Grudem writes, “As Jesus bore the guilt of our sins alone, God the Father, the mighty Creator, the Lord of the Universe, poured out on Jesus the fury of His wrath: Jesus became the object of the intense hatred of sin and vengeance against sin which God had patiently stored up since the beginning of the world.”

Jesus willingly died for others and made forgiveness available for all who respond to the call of God through the faith that the Holy Spirit has created in our hearts. The wonderful addendum to this is that in bearing the wrath of God against our sin, Jesus provided a complete payment for our forgiveness. Had we been left to pay, complete payment would be eternal suffering. Again Grudem writes that “Jesus was able to bear all the wrath of God against our sin and to bear it to the end … When Jesus knew that He had paid the full penalty for our sin, He said, ‘It is finished’ (John 19: 30). If Christ had not paid the full penalty, there would still be condemnation left for us. But since He has paid the full penalty that is due us, ‘There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus’ (Romans 8:1).

Have you accepted the forgiveness of God through faith in Christ? Have you told others also?