Lectionary Cycle Year A: Fifth Sunday After Pentecost:
Romans 5:6-15 (Read it on Bible Gateway)
Reconciliation
See also Devotions: Romans 5:1-8 & Romans 5:12-19
We're doing a bit of overlapping here as we dig deep into Romans through this Lectionary Cycle. Since the beginning and end of this passage has already been the focus of other Devotions, we're going to focus on the little 'nip' in between, namely verses 9-11, that have not been touched on at all.
In these few verses, Paul makes an earth-shattering statement, one that might just force many of us to re-think significant chunks of our faith if we but open ourselves to its view and life changing power. "When we were God's enemies, we were reconciled to him through the death of his Son." In other words, forgiveness and grace was offered to us even before we sought it. We were extended forgiveness and reconciliation even before we were enlightened enough to ask for it. While we, in terms of humanity, were still mocking Christ on a cross, his work of salvation was even then, paving the way for us to find paradise. Paul is pointing out that not only had God not done anything to deserve our falling away in sin, even as Christ had done nothing to deserve his arrest and crucifixion, yet God extended the plan of forgiveness and salvation even though we, again as collective humanity, hadn't asked to be forgiven.
To put this on a more human scale, it's like having someone who mistreats us, judges us, yells and screams at us and takes every chance they can find to make our lives miserable and yet we extend a hand in friendship and offer them forgiveness, pure, absolute, total and unconditional forgiveness. Can you imagine doing this for the person who has most plagued your life? Heck, can you imagine doing it for anyone who has hurt you in any way? Fortunately, God could not only imagine it, but did it.
Of course, forgiveness offered, is not necessarily forgiveness accepted. But in such cases the failing is not on the one who offered forgiveness, but on the one who has not accepted it. The consequences therefore fall not because of the forgiver, but the one who rejects that forgiveness. In other words, when the final break comes, it will be because the one forgiven rejected the gift and turned away, not because the one who offered it turned them away.
When looked at in this light, it's hard to see God casting judgment or God proclaiming condemnation. Why? Well, because God forgave. God made the offer of forgiveness, paid a high price to enact that forgiveness, and has set no time limit on how long that forgiveness is offered. If you forgive someone, but then condemn them, then you haven't really forgiven them have you? If you forgive someone but they reject you, then you might withdraw your forgiveness...then condemn them. But that's because out of hurt and rejection, you withdrew the gift you offered. God hasn't done that. Everything in the Bible backs up that supposition, God's offer of forgiveness is still there.
To forgive is to offer love, to embrace in support, to hold and to cherish. To forgive is to not hold the faults, actions and words of someone against them, nor to judge, condemn or vilify them. To forgive is to wipe the slate clean...and not start a new one. To forgive is to love, first, last and only. God gets that.
Here's hoping the rest of us figure it out. After all, if we're truly called to live as Christ lived, if we're truly called to embody Christ to others, than that means we should truly embody that unconditional, even unsought perhaps, forgiveness. If so, then we will forgive even in the midst of being wronged, we will speak words of love and forgiveness even as we are ignored, or even ridiculed. We will seek to embrace even in the midst of wrongdoing.
If God, who has the right to judge, has chosen to offer forgiveness, unsought, undeserved and unconditional, then we who, as sinners ourselves, have no right to judge, should strive to do the same.
(Another of those little disclaimers: while it is one thing to offer forgiveness, it is another to continue to expose oneself to abuse or unhealthy relationships or conditions. None of the above should in any way infer that someone should allow themselves to be abused in any way, shape or form, or to feel they must continue to subject themselves to people with unhealthy boundaries, expectations or obsessions. In such cases best practices would affirm it is healthy and even healing to forgive, but best when the forgiveness is offered at a healthy distance.)
For the complete listing of our Devotions, see our Devotions Archive
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Comments: 6
I'm afraid I have to disagree with you. If you will, let me comment on each of your statements...
God is omnipotent...
I can get behind that one.
God created both good and evil, sin and forgiveness...
The best theological discovery I found dealing with this was in the movie Oh God: Book II, where God (played deftly by George Burns) appears to a little girl and sets her off on a quest to get people to "Think God." At one point she asks why bad things happen? God responds along the lines of... "Can you imagine a top without a bottom? An up without a down?" He goes on beautifully to explain that not even he could create a universe filled with light, love and joy without the opposite things forming in order to give them more definition and clarity.
I think God created "Good" by defining a plan, a desire, for human beings to treat each other well, to care for one another, and to be in relationship with God. Good is nothing more than that, a path.
However, more profoundly, God created us with free will, the ability to choose. Is a relationship real if the other person has no choice in the matter? If someone loves and adores and obeys every word from you because you made them do so, its not real. So, because God wanted REAL relationships, God gave us the ability to choose. But not to choose just in that, but in all things. We can choose to love, or to hate, to create beauty or ugliness, to buildup or tear down, to bring life, or death.
Because we have free will, sin was not created by God directly, but instead 'cooked' when God mixed "Good" (God's plan) with "Free Will" (our ability to choose), stirred and suddenly some of us chose to not follow God's plan, and thus sin was born.
As for God knowing everything we will do, you shouldn't confuse that with God then making that decision for us. I know the Sun will rise tomorrow, that doesn't imply I made that happen. I may know my best friend, spouse, or child so well that I can predict his or her action in response to almost anything. That doesn't mean I bear responsibility for their choice does it?
God knows everything we will do because God knows us better than we know ourselves. But God still allows us free will. All God willed in that direction is that we have the power and responsibility to make those choices.
Let me know what you think about my comments. I appreciate you commenting and wrestling with some of these concepts in a public forum. They aren't easy. But I hope most of all that you don't take my thoughts as judgement on your thinking, merely me responding to them and wrestling myself.
God does not merely allow us free will. God created free will. All aspects and characteristics of it.
God created all choices/options, and outcomes, and possabilities of outcomes, just like our very genetics. It's a build in thing.
We have no more say so, over this free will ability, within us, than we have over what color eyes we are born with. It's inate.
Just like our minds, and intelligence. Inate. God designed us to learn from mistakes, as well as many other methods.
Observation, trial and error, instruction, repetition, just to name a few. It's inate. If at first you don't succeed, try, try again, as the saying goes.
I think we are only held accountable by other humans, who are every bit as flawed as are we, if there is, inded a flaw, at all. Deoends on ones point of view, as to imperfection, and as to whether or not imperfection actually exists at all, but that's another topic, altogether.
I'm meaning to say, that God does not hold us accountable, in such ways as mankind does, but this inate free will and the choices we make, do come with either consequences suffered, or great things very beneficial to one or many, depending on what the subject matter be. Hopefully, ones ability to learn from ones mistakes is great. That differes in degree from person to person.
Thankfully, there is a very good track record of wisdoms passed down from generation to generation that reduces the tiral and error that many might have otherwise have to go through.
Sadly, many basic understandings of wisdoms have not been taught, and demonstrated to so many, it seems ignorance and superstition, abound.
But, there is always a good word, of useful info. here and there that makes it through.
I am ever grateful and thankful that we are so awesomely made, with such inate abilities. It cuts all the work, in half, at least, even when we are learning the hard way.