Hello All,
(Just a general disclaimer that I must insert here at the beginning. I am but a lay person, like most of you. And these weekly “thoughts” are but my own. Not the definitive word on this or any topic. Just my own conclusions derived from my own study and faith in God. The greatest hope I have for these weekly “thoughts” is to have them be a springboard for further study on your part. Not to be a weekly treatise to be blindly accepted. So, please read them with this intent, this motive in mind).
This week’s lesson from “The Adult Sabbath School Guide” is titled “Unity and Broken Relationships”. Have you noticed that certain recurring themes rotate through our lesson quarterly? The same topics cycle and recycle through from time to time. Often from a different focus each time. But similar themes repeat. This week’s lesson struck a familiar cord with me from a lesson 5 years ago. I did a quick research and found the same lesson from the 3rd quarter of 2013. That quarterly was titled “Revival and Reformation” with Mark Finley as the principal contributor. The weekly lesson titled “Reformation: Healing Broken Relationships” from 2013 is used for this week’s lesson in 2018, too. I must admit, the week’s lesson from 2013 was a good one and bore repeating. If you still have that quarterly, you may want to look back at it to see any notes you might have made… to see your thoughts at the time.
I particularly liked a paragraph on this week’s lesson for Wednesday, December 5, 2018 (the exact same lesson for Wednesday, September 18, 2013… I liked it then, too). Here is the paragraph:
“It is true, we cannot receive the blessings of forgiveness until we confess our sins. This does not mean that our confession creates forgiveness in God’s heart. Forgiveness was in His heart all the time. Confession, instead, enables us to receive it (1 John 1:9). Confession is vitally important, not because it changes God’s attitude toward us but because it changes our attitude toward Him. When we yield to the Holy Spirit’s convicting power to repent and confess our sin, we are changed”.
What a great understanding! So often we say or think that God-the-Father needed God-the-Son to be crucified in order to look on us with favor and grant us forgiveness. This is not so! This quote shows us the dynamics of our Father’s love and forgiveness. And the dynamics of our individual choices, too.
EGW states another choice that is in our control. In Christ’s Object Lessons page 251:
“We are not forgiven because we forgive, but as we forgive. The ground of all forgiveness is found in the unmerited love of God, but by our attitude toward others we show whether we have made that love our own. Wherefore Christ says, "With what judgment ye judge, ye shall be judged; and with what measure ye mete, it shall be measured to you again." Matthew 7:2”.
If we are unforgiving to others, God’s forgiveness cannot reach us. We have not made His love our own by our choosing Him and by reciprocating that Divine choice. The dove of forgiveness finds no place in our hearts to rest its feet. God’s forgiveness is not real to us. So here are the two lynch-pins of forgiveness. Both found in our attitude and choice. And both lynch-pins have their foundation in the unchangeable nature of God’s forgiveness. The first lynch-pin is found in our confession. The second is found in our willingness to forgive others. Again, both are grounded in God’s eternal forgiveness. Because the lost are not lost because they are unforgiven, but because they want none of God’s forgiveness. In the end, the lost will perish... fully loved and forgiven… but they will still perish. For the death at the end is not death at the hands of their loving, forgiving father. It’s because they adamantly maintain that “We will not have this man to reign over us” (Luke 19:14). And they are sadly left as they desire… alone with themselves to reap the natural consequences of their own selfish, illogical, rebellious and sinful thinking. And when the full revelation of the passionate fiery love and forgiveness of the Father floods from within the New Jerusalem out across the whole earth, that fiery love and forgiveness will invigorate the righteous even as it consumes sin and all who identify themselves with it.
The prodigal son was forgiven by his father even before he walked away from his father’s home. But the father’s forgiveness meant nothing to the son until… he saw the depths of his depravity and came home… and confessed. An example of confession as the path to realizing in yourself the forgiveness that already exists in the Father’s heart. Christ’s parable of the man who was forgiven 10,000 talents but refused to forgive the man who owed him 100 denarii, is an example of how the Father’s forgiveness can only be realized in your own heart as you extend the same forgiveness to others. A hard heart is impervious to the forgiveness God so freely offers.
Forgiveness, like love, is not a mere proclamation. It is life. It is not something in a vacuum or some legal arrangement. It is a passionate interchange between our Heavenly Lover and the one He loves (you). His forgiveness and love is the objective gospel, offered to you, offered to all. Your confession and reciprocal response is the subjective gospel offered back to God, and in-turn, offered to all in our sphere. A wonderful glorious dance of love from Father to child, from child to Father and from child to child. The heavenly music is playing. Do you hear it? Then let us join the dance!
With brotherly love,
Jim