He sits in the dungeon, knowing that before the day is over he will be executed in the most brutal manner that Roman law allows. He’ll be scourged within a hair’s breadth of death, and then nailed to a stake to die slowly and painfully, paying for his crimes of insurrection and murder against the powerful Roman occupier.
Less than a half mile away, a powerful Roman governor, Pontius Pilate, fearing for his own career and life, struggles between the demands of both expediency and justice. An obviously innocent man has been railroaded into his presence. The religious leaders for whatever reason want him dead, a gruesome task that Roman law won’t let them carry out themselves, and hence their invitation to Pilate to do the deed for them.
Over Pilate’s head is a threat. “This man claims to be a king, but we have no king but Caesar,” say Jesus’ accusers. If you don’t do something about him, you’re no friend of Caesar. We’ll make sure Caesar knows that you took no action against one who claims to be a king and is trying to usurp Roman authority. Caesar already has suspicions about you. Do you want to risk this?
Pilate vacillates, but he believes he sees a way out. At the Feast of Passover it is customary to release one criminal, a complete and unequivocal pardon. Why shouldn’t that prisoner be Jesus? Earlier in the week, the people of the city welcomed Jesus into Jerusalem with shouts of hosannas and praise. Surely they would demand the release of Jesus called Christ, and not the release of a murderer and thief.
“Whom do you want me to release to you?” asks Pilate. “Barabbas, or Jesus who is called Christ?” (Matthew 27:17)
“Barabbas!” they shout back.
“What then shall I do with Jesus who is called Christ?”
Less than a half mile away is Barabbas. He is close enough to the activity taking place down the street to hear the rabble yelling his name, but far enough away that he cannot hear Pilate pleading for the life of Jesus. He can only hear one side of the conversation, and when he hears his name on the lips of an angry mob, he has hope that his supporters are coming to rescue him. “Barabbas! Barabbas!” His fellow revolutionaries are coming to his aid!
But the very next words he hears freeze him with fear and dread, because what he hears is, “Barabbas! … Crucify him! Crucify him! … Barabbas! … Crucify him!”
The guards rush into his cell and drag him off the floor. And after the shoving and dragging and struggling is done, the murderer and thief finds himself in the street among the mob, now a free man! But a completely innocent man takes his place on the instrument of death.
Did Barabbas feel any twinge of remorse when he saw Jesus carrying his cross? Did he watch as Jesus and two of Barabbas’ compatriots slowly expired as they baked in the sun? We don’t know. But I do know this. I am Barabbas. I was in bonds because of my crimes. I deserved nothing less than the penalty that had awaited Barabbas.
I am Barabbas because one day I found myself free of the guilt, completely pardoned because Someone for no reason that I deserved stepped forward and took my place. My guilt gone, my life restored, I now have the chance to live, and this time truly live. Life: the gift to Barabbas and to me. For I am Barabbas.
A great many unfortunate people have been affected by foreclosure on their homes in recent years as a result of the worldwide economic down- turn. Millions of people have been forced out of their houses in this situation – from tiny homes to great mansions – and moving beyond foreclosure is not easy. The process of recovery can be grueling and take years.
The first recorded home foreclosure may have occurred far earlier than you suspect. That first foreclosure was not due to failure to pay a high interest loan, however – or any kind of loan, in fact. The third chapter of Genesis describes the foreclosure in detail and shows that the first homeowners/tenants were evicted not for failure to pay, but as the price they paid for disregarding God’s clear tenancy instructions (Genesis 3:22-24).
Heartbreaking as modern home foreclosure may be, it is nowhere near as tragic as that first foreclosure in which the human family not only lost its “perfect home,” but also its relationship with the One who was the perfect builder and loan officer combined. Many homeowner and renter contracts are extremely complex, but according to the Garden of Eden story the first couple had a very straightforward contract which they understood fully: “We may eat fruit from the trees in the garden, but God did say, ‘You must not eat fruit from the tree that is in the middle of the garden, and you must not touch it, or you will die’” (Genesis 3:2-3). The last few words quoted there show that foreclosure on their home was only the first – and not the worst – part of the penalty the first homeowners faced.
Fortunately for the human family, God realized that this chain of events would occur – that spiritual foreclosure was likely to happen – and as a result He set in motion a plan for recovery. We all know the basis of the plan: “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” (John 3:16). But that is really just the first part of the plan. Jesus himself spoke of the second step for foreclosure recovery in a new home: “In My Father’s house are many dwelling places … If I go away and prepare a place for you, I will come back and receive you to Myself, so that where I am you may be also” (John 14:2-3 HCSB). But we have to develop a new relationship with God in order to move past the old, voided, home contract and take advantage of the new one. Put simply, God wants totally remade tenants, remade homeowners for the new home He offers to those who want an eternally secure home with no foreclosure possible.
Physical home foreclosure can be a matter of great anguish, but whether we experience it physically or not, it can illustrate an important lesson about human life. We should be lastingly thankful for the ultimate foreclosure recovery plan that God has instituted for all who return to Him to claim it.
We all know the wisdom of the old saying that we should “forgive and forget” and although that exact phrase does not appear in the Bible, it does summarize Biblical principles of forgiveness.
There are, of course, many scriptures telling us that we should forgive others when they harm us in some way (see, for example, Matthew 6:14, and Ephesians 4:32), but what about the “forget” part of the equation?
There is also clear biblical evidence that we should forget as well as forgive if we are to imitate God. Notice both aspects of forgiveness in this scripture which appears in both the Old and the New Testaments: “For I will forgive their wickedness and will remember their sins no more” (Jeremiah 31:34 and Hebrews 8:12).
How do we apply this? It is hard enough to forgive others, but how are we to possibly forget – especially in those situations where it seems humanly impossible to forget things done to us, perhaps truly evil things? We should realize that psychologically, and spiritually, not forgetting keeps old wounds open and means we may suffer endlessly from the actions of others, so we should certainly make every effort to forget – and we can ask God’s help with this, just as we might ask His help to forgive. But I have known people who have been hurt by others so badly that despite their best efforts and sincere prayer, forgetting seems impossible. Such people may say “I have forgiven them, but I just can’t forget what they did.”
The answer to these situations where it seems impossible to “forget” – despite our full desire to forgive – is that we must understand what the Bible means by “remember their sins no more.” In Biblical Hebrew, the word zakhar which we translate “remember” has a broader meaning than just “remember” in the sense of “not forgetting.” Zakhar also includes the results of remembering – the actions we do as a result of remembering. It is in this sense that the Bible tells us God “remembered” Noah after the Flood (Genesis 8:1) or God “remembered” Abraham (Genesis 19:29). In cases like these examples the Bible tells us not that God suddenly thought about His servants whom He had forgotten for a while – it tells us that in “remembering” them God did something about them – causing the flood to recede on the one hand, or rescuing Lot as Abraham had asked on the other.
So God doesn’t expect or require us to do the psychologically impossible. He just requires that we don’t remember the sins of others against us in the sense of not acting on the memory – not holding the sin against them or punishing them in any way for it – just as he does not punish us when He does not remember our sins (Jeremiah 31:34).
God does require that we forgive those that sin against us, and He does require that we do not actively “remember” those sins. But in the same way, He doesn’t want us to act on “remembering” our own sins by painfully reliving them or being “haunted” by them in discouragement. God knows that it is psychologically and spiritually healthier for us to forget our own sins and the sins of others, once forgiven; but even when the memories linger despite our best efforts, He simply requires us not to act negatively on those memories.
In the post-modern world in which we live, saying that something is “bad” or “wrong” is becoming increasingly out of favor, and it is certainly not politically correct to utilize the concept of “sin.” Speaking of absolutes such as right and wrong can lead to being labeled as being insensitive, intolerant or worse.
This is interesting, as C. S. Lewis might have said, because if we admit to the existence of any absolutes at all – whether being alive, dead, pregnant, not pregnant, or whatever – there is no real reason to suppose that there cannot be moral absolutes, too. Just because we don’t want there to be any, or we think they are a bad idea, doesn’t mean there are no absolutes and there is no wrong, evil – or sin.
The Bible is clear that sin does exist and it defines it for us (1 John 3:4). But our modern world has rejected the authority of the Bible, and in many cases it has been successful in making the concept of sin effectively disappear. Sin no longer appears in most polite conversation, in “normal” newspaper articles or in any other area of the media unless it is in the context of discussing the beliefs of “religious extremists” (a term often applied to terrorists, and one with very useful anti-religious potential). So the world has been quite successful in making the concept of sin disappear, but what it has not been able to do is to make the results of sin vanish in the same way. The misery and heartache that can result from lying, stealing, adultery, oppression and many other sins are all too obvious.
Society tries to make sin disappear by trying to deny it and forget it. Those who understand the reality of sin know that the only way to make it disappear is to admit it and to forgive it. Whether we forgive others or we are ourselves forgiven, forgiveness and then a turning to what is “right” is the only way to make sin truly disappear. The world has created quite a “magic trick” in making sin appear to “disappear,” but the truth is, just as in a deceptive “smoke and mirrors” magic act, although you may not see or hear the concept much anymore, sin is still there – as its results show – even if the concept has been hidden in the magician’s hat.
Asking and giving may seem like polar opposites to us, but when it comes to asking something from God, or even giving something to Him, these actions have something in common in that they involve our relationship with our neighbor.
Two verses in the New Testament show this fact. It’s easy to see one of them and then to think the other is just a parallel account, or a slight variation, but the two verses make two distinct statements:
“And when you stand praying, if you hold anything against anyone, forgive them, so that your Father in heaven may forgive you your sins” (Mark 11:25).
“… if you are offering your gift at the altar and there remember that your brother or sister has something against you, leave your gift there in front of the altar. First go and be reconciled to them; then come and offer your gift” (Matthew 5:23-24).
Notice that these situations are not the same at all. Mark 11 speaks of occasions when we are asking something from God – specifically forgiveness in this case – and shows us that we cannot receive this from God (and perhaps anything) if we ourselves are not willing to give forgiveness. In Matthew 5, the occasion is one in which we wish to give something to God, but He makes it clear that He will not accept the gift (perhaps any gift) if we know others have something against us and we are not willing to accomplish reconciliation.
Taken together these verses show how important right relationships with our neighbors are for a right relationship with God. In both these cases, God does not want to accept something – a request or a gift – from someone who is estranged from another, who is holding back something from another – whether we are holding back forgiveness or reconciliation.
In the case of our forgiving others, nothing must stop us doing this, though God understands that in situations where others have something against us we can only do our best to reconcile with them. Sometimes, others are not going to hear our attempts at reconciliation and there is nothing we can do about that, other than to pray for them.
Normally, however, in our relationship with God, whether we are asking or giving, if we hold back from our neighbor, God holds back from us. On the other hand, if we are giving forgiveness and attempting reconciliation where it is possible, God does not hold back from us in accepting that which we are asking or giving.
There are so many special “days” now, it’s impossible to remember many of them. I’m not talking about national holidays such as Thanksgiving and other significant days which apply to many of us, but the burgeoning number of days which seem as though they were mainly the idea of greeting card companies. A glance at an online calendar site shows there are now literally hundreds of “special days” to supposedly celebrate (and send a card) each year. In fact, every day of the year now has some significance, and many days honor multiple things. Some of these days may be perfectly appropriate to show appreciation or concern for others, but a lot of them seem silly at best. October 4 was apparently “National Frappe Day” and I fully expect to see “Second Cousin’s Day” cards soon.
But there is one day this month to which I do subscribe as being totally worthwhile: National Forgiveness Day. There are actually several “Forgiveness Days” which originated in different areas. Global Forgiveness Day and International Forgiveness Day are both celebrated in the summer months. In the US, “National Forgiveness Day” is on the last Saturday in October: this year, Saturday, October 26.
Forgiveness Day is a day that all people of faith can honor, if we choose to do so, and one to which even many people without religious beliefs can relate. For those of us who take seriously the words “Forgive us our sins as we forgive them that sin against us” (Matthew 6:12), the day is an opportunity to reflect on the need for forgiveness and how to make it a part of our everyday lives. This week’s article, “A Day For Forgiveness”, gives some thoughts to start you on your own reflection on what it means to forgive.
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