Forgive and...then what?

The God of the Bible is a forgiving God, and there is no doubt about that. Throughout the Bible we see God graciously forgiving those who do not deserve it. In fact, the entire Bible is a book about forgiveness. It is a book about God's mission to be reconciled unto man and what He did to make it possible for us to come to Him. The very basis of the Bible is that man has a need to be forgiven and that God is a God who wants to forget. The prophet Jeremiah, prophesying by inspiration concerning the New Covenant that would come under the Christ had this to say concerning God and forgiveness in the age of Christ:

But this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, declares the LORD: I will put my law within them, and I will write it on their hearts. And I will be their God, and they shall be my people. And no longer shall each one teach his neighbor and each his brother, saying, 'Know the LORD,' for they shall all know me, from the least of them to the greatest, declares the LORD. For I will forgive their iniquity, and I will remember their sin no more." (Jeremiah 31:33-34)

Did you catch the last line? God will forgive their iniquity and will remember their sin no more. That's the great thing about God. When He forgives my sin, it's gone. It will never be brought up again. God will not use it against me. He will not remind me of all of the mistakes I made nor will He remind me of how much of a "dirty sinner" I am, and imply that I should be thankful that He would have enough love to forgive me despite my flaws. That is not a God I want to serve, nor is it a God I WOULD serve. We must realize that God does not forgive unconditionally. God does expect us serve Him, to do our best, to seek after Him, and admit when we mess up, but when we do ask for forgiveness, it's done.

The problem is that in this area I am often unlike God, and many Christians doing their best to emulate God's character aren't any better than I am when it comes to forgiving and forgetting. I'm sure we've all heard about someone doing or having done something marginally wrong. We learn that someone is a heavy smoker, that someone we know spends many nights drinking or doing drugs. We surf a brother's Facebook and see that he curses and lists filthy movies and music as his favorites. We look through a sister's profile and come across pictures of her in skimpy outfits, bikinis even. It comes to the surface that someone is having sex outside of wedlock or even is dealing with the consequences that could come from that, that is, a child conceived out of wedlock. I could go on, but hopefully you get the picture. We learn that fellow Christians aren't perfect and that there are things they might struggle with or maybe have made a mistake. Am I compromising on these issues? Am I saying these are just minor things that we should overlook and never saying anything about? Not at all. But what do we do if we approach someone and they repent of the issue?

Sometimes we expect perfection in that area. I know a great sister in Christ who is currently dealing with an addiction to cigarettes. She knows they are hurting her wallet (being a good steward and all), her influence and her body and she wants to make a change for the better. She is strong and has shown it by going six days without a smoke at the time I wrote this. What happens if she were to slip up though? She's human, is she not? She's fighting a powerful addiction that most people can't ever seem to break, yet wouldn't a gut reaction to the news that she messed up be to think of how weak she is and that she must lack dedication? For many it would be, but that isn't the case. I know she's the type of Christian who would realize her mistake, pick herself up and start back the hard trek she's making. None of us are perfect, yet for some reason we expect every other Christian to be so, at least in the areas we personally think should be easy to deal with. The problem is, what's easy for me, might not be easy for others.

Sometimes we allow a stigmata to stick with someone regardless of what they do afterward. Let's look at an out of wedlock pregnancy. Unless you've never left your house and never talked to anyone outside of yourself and a pet, you probably know someone that has had a child out of wedlock. Chances are that person might even be a Christian. "How could that be?!?" you might ask, "Don't they know sex outside of marriage is wrong?!" I'm sure they do, but people make mistakes. We live in a culture where the secular side flaunts sex as normal in whatever situation it might occur and the religious side is often only willing to discuss the sinful side of sex and rarely the beauty that is godly sex between a man and a wife. This, combined with a cultural average of higher marriage age, often only adds to the burden young men and women feel as they deal with love and the natural desire for sex that God gave them. A couple might have a child out of wedlock though, and even if they, and sometimes just the mother alone, repent of their actions and do their best to raise that child in a godly setting, many in the brotherhood only see them as sinners and the child as a product of sin. Do we not realize how ungodly this attitude is?

It seems like we are quite often overly unfair to living children of God. We read through the life of Moses and skim over the fact that he murdered a man. I mean, he was the one that received the Ten Commandments. He's got a whole Law named after him. He even led the Israelites to the Promised Land! Why would we focus on a silly little murder? What about King David. This is the man who watched a woman that was not his wife bathe on her roof. Once he got a glimpse of her in the nude, he did what any great child of God would do and summoned her to his bedroom where he impregnated her. Once he realized what had happened, he tried to make it seem as if her husband was the father, and when that plan failed, he simply had the husband killed so he could marry the new widow. Yeah, I suppose that wasn't the BEST thing to do, but this was the king, and even God said he was man after God's own heart, so a little adultery and murder shouldn't be a big deal. What about Paul? I mean, he wrote the majority of the New Testament, so the fact that at one point in his life he dragged men, women and children out of their homes simply because they were Christians shouldn't really be something we spend time focusing on. When these men did wrong though, and were confronted by God's truth, what did they do? They repented. If these men were just "normal brethren" today, they would never live it down.

When it comes to forgiveness, Christians need more compassion and to practice godly forgiveness. It isn't a forgiveness that is unconditional or an act that simply ignores sin out of so called "love," but when one repents of their sins, the ordeal is finished. We have no reason to go around and whisper about what type of person they must really be, or formulate where their parents went wrong or if their parents even tried. We have no justification for spreading around what they had done though "now they've thankfully repented and been forgiven." Obviously they haven't earned forgiveness from us if that is the case. I want to be as God like in my forgiveness towards others as possible. I won't be perfect though, so please forgive me when I fail.

Baptism by Immersion

Throughout the New Testament, readers often come across the subject of baptism. John baptized, Jesus was baptized, the disciples of Jesus baptized and outside of the Gospel accounts the command to be baptized is prominent. Baptism holds a prominent place in the New Testament but is often overlooked by most of the religious world. The purpose and effect of baptism is debated by many, but if we want to know the truth about baptism all we need is the Bible.

The title of this post is a bit redundant. The word baptize actually means to immerse. In most denominations it has taken a different definition than seen in the Bible to include acts such as sprinkling water on one's head or pouring water on one's head, but when we look back to the original language of the word translated "baptize" (baptidzo) it has a definition of immersion in water. I once had a Methodist preacher tell me, in defense of sprinkling infants, that God could use an ocean or a thimble full of water. He was right. God could decide whatever He wanted concerning baptism, or He could even decide that baptism wasn't necessary, but when we read through the scripture that isn't what we find. God, through inspiration, chose a specific word to show us what He wanted and that is immersion. The sixth chapter of Romans even gives us the reason for immersion in water. Paul wrote, "Know ye not, that so many of us as were baptized into Jesus Christ were baptized into his death? Therefore we are buried with him by baptism into death: that like as Christ was raised up from the dead by the glory of the Father, even so we also should walk in newness of life" (Romans 6:3-4). God desired immersion in water because it represents burial, and the coming out of the water as being a new creature.

The Bible is clear in its wording that God desires immersion in water, but we must also ask the question of its purpose. There are many who believe that baptism is an outward sign of one's salvation. That is, once I have been saved, I then am baptized to show my faith in Christ and the salvation that faith has given me. Another side of the argument is that one is not saved until they are baptized, and that baptism is the final act of faith that God requires of us before He adds us to the church. Again, we can simply turn to the Bible to see what God has given us. In Acts 2:38, Peter said, "Repent, and be baptized every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ for the remission of sins, and ye shall receive the gift of the Holy Ghost." Peter, by inspiration of God, taught that before one receives remission of sins, he must repent and be baptized. One isn't baptized because his sins have been forgiven, but because he desires to have them forgiven. When Paul was blind and finally had Ananias come to him, Paul was told to, "arise, and be baptized, and wash away thy sins, calling on the name of the Lord" (Acts 22:16). Paul was not yet a Christian, and from what Ananias told him, Paul still had sins that needed to be forgiven. Paul was told to be baptized. A final verse we can look at, though not the final one in the scriptures, comes from the Christ himself where he stated, "He that believeth and is baptized shall be saved; but he that believeth not shall be damned" (Mark 16:16). Can it be any more clear than that? If one wishes to be saved he must believe AND be baptized. It does not say, "He who believes and is saved shall be baptized", though that is what many practice, but to believe and be baptized.

Does this mean that the water is some sort of magical liquid? Of course not. The water is just water. This is a command of God though. Some claim that this means we are working for our salvation. This is not "works salvation" in the sense that I scheme up my own plans and expect God to give me salvation based on what I've thought up, nor is this the idea that if I do enough good things that God owes me salvation. God does not owe me a thing in this life. God does expect us to obey Him though. I have never understood why baptism is the only action that falls into some sort of category of "man's work" when God is the one that commanded it. Almost all teach that we must believe in God in order to be saved (Romans 10:17). That is something I must do. My choosing to believe is an act, a work, that I produce. Almost all hold also that one cannot be saved if they are not first willing to repent of their sins (Acts 2:38) and confess Christ (Romans 10:9-10). All three of these things are seen in the scripture as precursors to salvation, yet they are also things we must do, things that are works. Are they works of men? No, they are works of God. Why there is such anger at the thought that we must submit ourselves to the command of God to receive forgiveness of sins for the first time I doubt I will fully ever know. The logic that one must believe, confess and repent to be saved, but that baptism is not needed because it is deemed a work is totally lost on me.

Man has never had a deciding place in what God desires of His children or those who wish to become His children. What God says one must do to be saved is what one must do and that is that. Man may argue from now until Christ returns on the act and purpose of baptism, but as long as this world stands, God's word will speak truth on the issue. If only we will obey it.

Letting Sin Abound

The other day I wrote a blog post that ended up going in a different direction than I planned. If you haven't read it yet, you can read it here so you can understand this post a little easier. As with the last post, this one is based off a book I read about dirt and the immune system. The basic premise of the book was that we need to be exposed to dirt and germs and the sickness brought on by viruses and bacteria in order to keep our immune system active and strong. I believed that was true before reading the book, but was only strengthened by it. When it comes to our physical health, dirt and all the things within it that we fear are needed for us to stay healthy. Sometimes this mindset becomes part of spiritual practice though, and in that situation there is no benefit.

In his letter to the Romans, Paul wrote, "What shall we say then? Are we to continue in sin that grace may abound?" (Rom 6:1). What was Paul referring to? Up through chapter five of Romans Paul discussed how sin entered into society and all were sinful and in need of redemption. He reaches the climax of his argument by noting that it was for this reason that Christ came to Earth and through Him we can have redemption and forgiveness of sins by His grace. It seems the response by some was that if God's grace was the clear and beautiful answer to sin, then if we sin more, there will be more of God's grace to cover those sins, and who could argue that more grace is a bad thing? Paul give his inspired answer in verse two writing,"By no means! How can we who died to sin still live in it?" While the human immune system is strengthened by introducing small bits of bacteria and viruses to fight off, to introduce small bits of sin into our life is a monstrosity and has no redeeming value.

Despite Paul's response and his inspired argument for why we cannot continue in sin found in the rest of chapter six, many in the religious world follow the mindset that Paul condemned, if not in verbal teaching, at least in practice. I've heard some in the past that they will do something they know is wrong now and repent of it later. One claimed to be joking, but surely there are others in the world who have this mindset? It often goes along with the teaching of Once Saved Always Saved. To believe in such a thing, you have to make some sort of reasoning for how one can be saved continuously, even if they keep sinning. Some might say that if one is living in sin, they weren't really saved to begin with. This is an unjust judgment though and claiming to know one's heart and mind through some special knowledge. This is impossible. The other justification is usually made by stating that, "Christ has already paid for all of my sins, so no matter what I do or what I might do, it's already been taken care of so I don't have to worry." Paul made it clear though that one could fall away, and even that those who were truly saints could later be "delivered to Satan" (I Timothy 1:19-20). John wrote that we must confess our sins in order to have them forgiven (I John 1:9). John did not write that to the lost, but to those who had already been saved.

Sin is never a good thing, nor is it anything to make light of. While Christ's sacrifice made it possible for sins to be forgiven, we must remember to do our part as well and actively seek forgiveness. The Christian has no room in his life for sin.