If having to choose, what would you prefer, love or forgiveness? At its deepest level, are these words inseparable?
Oswald Chambers, in his book, My Upmost for His Highest states:
“Beware of the pleasant view of the fatherhood of God: God is so kind and loving that of course He will forgive us. That thought, based solely on emotion, cannot be found anywhere in the New Testament. The only basis on which God can forgive us is the tremendous tragedy of the Cross of Christ. To base our forgiveness on any other ground is unconscious blasphemy.”
Is he saying that even though God loves us, He can withhold His forgiveness unless we acknowledge Christ’s death on the cross? Yet, it was out of his love for us that he gave His Son to die for us.
John 3:16
16 For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.
This verse says God so loved us…the love for us was so great, that He couldn’t stand the thought that we couldn’t be with Him forever because of our sins. He had to do something once and for all to solve this. Yet, by doing this, He created a chasm between love and forgiveness. No matter how much He loves us, forgiveness only comes through the cross.
For those who choose not to believe in the cross, they are saying and even hoping that they can sidestep the death of Christ and are relying on the fact that by the mere nature of God loving them that forgiveness will automatically come. This is extremely hard for me to grasp. Can I love someone and not forgive them?
What does God know about love that we don’t as it relates to forgiveness? Or is it that He knows about human nature and that over time, love and forgiveness will collide. That we, as human beings, can’t ever stop sinning so there would never be the time we could be with Him. For He can’t allow sin to enter his presence. Therefore, sin had to be eliminated. Jesus took on the sin of the entire world past, present, and future.
But this doesn’t answer why. If sin was taken away from mankind through the death of Jesus which sprung out of the enormous unconditional love God has for us, why does God put a contingency that we must believe to receive this great gift? Why can’t we claim that if Jesus died for all our sin, didn’t that just give us a clear pathway to be with God?
Did God place a contingency or did Satan? Jesus right before He died, loudly proclaimed, “It is finished.” Game over between sin and man. No more guilt just pure forgiveness. The pathway is clear, the gate is open, you are free walk the path and be with God.
Then, where is the contingency coming from? It is created by Satan using his greatest weapon, DOUBT. He used this in the beginning with Eve in the garden and he will use it until the very end of time.
I now see God brought forgiveness and love together as one. Satan creates the chasm between the two. Jesus says there is a path, just start walking and you will find God just ahead. We say, “No, that’s okay. I will take a different path.” Why do we do that?
We prefer to create our own paths. They are called by different names such as performance, or ignorance, or freedom for belief in anything, or the list of the multitude of other false gods. Truth be told, each one of us creates a path of our own. The interesting thing is, when we reach the end of our path, we will always come up empty, for the path never leads to anywhere.
So, what do we do? We just try another path. Yet, why do we avoid the path God created? Why take any path at all? Sin has a way when left unchecked, destroy us and consume us until we scream out to be freed. So, we begin to look for paths to be freed from the weight of the sin we carry. We then come to the understand the need for forgiveness on our own.
God knew this about us so He was forced to come up with the ultimate plan. He determined that the only answer would be to remove the sin and place it on the shoulders of the only one who had the strength to carry it – and that was Jesus, who was by very nature, God. God had to kill a piece of himself to free us.
I conclude that in the depths of this mystery, love and forgiveness are divinely twisted together.
Just a Thought…
