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MORE THAN A GOOD TEACHER #3

FREE FORGIVENESS FROM A THIRD PARTY

It doesn't happen very often, but once in a while, when a person steps forward and says, "I forgive you," an angry mob turns on him and says, in essence: "No, you don't either!"

Back in April, we all remember the 13 crosses on a hillside overlooking Columbine High School in Colorado. Twelve bright-eyed high school kids, plus one teacher, all gunned down on a Tuesday morning. But perhaps you recall that for a short time, there were actually fifteen crosses there. One sympathetic soul, who had driven a long way to Littleton to quietly perform this task, also erected memorials to Eric David Harris and Dylan Bennet Klebold. It was an olive branch of sorts, a recognizing of the fact that their deaths, too, were a great tragedy for the human race. But those two additional crosses didn't stay up long. Hurting, angry, anguished friends of the victims wouldn't stand for it. To have crosses up there for the two killers seemed like blasphemy; it seemed like cheap forgiveness. It couldn't be permitted.

I recall how after the Jonesboro, Arkansas shootings back in 1998, a sign soon appeared there at the elementary school. "We forgive you," it said. Classmates and friends were willing to offer forgiveness to Andrew Golden and Mitchell Johnson for killing four students and a teacher. In a sense, it was the town speaking. And many of us looking on wanted to applaud that generous spirit, that willingness to forgive.

But it was very shortly after this that a scathing article appeared in the Reader's Digest by the Los Angeles radio commentator, Dennis Prager, who hosts a three-hour talk show each day. And he said, in essence, "Wait a minute! What do we mean, ‘We forgive you'?" How could people who weren't even related to those four slain girls offer forgiveness? By what authority? Certainly the husband of the dead teacher, Shannon Wright, could say, "I forgive you." But on what grounds could the average citizen of Jonesboro put up a sign with that offer: "Mitchell, Andrew, I forgive you"?

That's an interesting dilemma, and it takes us right back into the very pointed question of the week — or the question of these two weeks. Was this Person named Jesus Christ just a great teacher, a wise guru with many homespun homilies and keen insights? Or was He more than that? And when we get to the question of forgiveness, we find out something quite interesting about this Teacher from a little village called Nazareth.

There's a very revealing Bible story which takes place in Luke chapter five. This is probably the ultimate description of crashing a party, because here was a paralyzed man whose friends couldn't break through the crowds of people around Jesus and get their ailing buddy anywhere close to the Great Physician. So what did these men do? They toted him up to the roof, pulled loose some tiles, and let their companion down almost right on Jesus' head! All at once Christ has a half-dead invalid dangling from a parachute, so to speak, right in front of Him.

But here in verse 2 Jesus says the most unexpected thing. "Friend, your sins are forgiven." In the Living Bible paraphrase it's a bit more pointed than that even.
"When Jesus saw their faith [that of the rooftop friends], He said to the sick boy, ‘Cheer up, son! For I have forgiven your sins!'"

And stop the Palestinian presses right there, because we're right back to our Jonestown and Littleton protests. "YOU forgive this guy's sins? Just who in the world are you?" Now, we don't know what kinds of sins this sick man had committed. But there's no record of any kind anywhere that he had done these things to Jesus. Had he stolen from Christ? Lied to Him? Coveted His wife? Jesus wasn't even married. So we don't see any evidence that this drop-in visitor from the sky had ever really sinned directly against Jesus. And yet, without batting an eye, this dusty-footed Teacher from out of town says with great confidence: "Hey, don't worry about your past sins. I'VE forgiven them all!"

Now friend, here's the obvious point . . . and we've just proved it big-time in the states of Arkansas and Colorado. If a person offers forgiveness for something that wasn't even done to him — at the very least, we resent it. If he keeps it up, we either run him out of town or assume he's some kind of a nut. "Who do you think you are, fella?" is about the kindest thing we would say to him. "Tear down your stupid memorial crosses. You're not God; you can't forgive people on your own say-so."

A good 50 years before the Trench Coat Mafia ever picked up their guns, Christian author C. S. Lewis goes directly to this very point of inappropriate forgiving. Notice:

"We can all understand how a man forgives offenses against himself," he writes. "You tread on my toe and I forgive you, you steal my money and I forgive you. But what should we make of a man, himself unrobbed and untrodden on, who announced that HE forgave you for treading on other men's toes and stealing other men's money? Asinine fatuity is the kindest description we should give of his conduct."

I guess that's a Cambridge scholar's more elegant and Shakespearian way, "asinine fatuity," of saying: "This guy's a nut." Here's the rest of the paragraph:

"Yet this is what Jesus did. He told people that their sins were forgiven, and never waited to consult all the other people whom their sins had undoubtedly injured. He unhesitatingly behaved as if He was the party chiefly concerned, the person chiefly offended in all offenses. This makes sense only if He really was the God whose laws are broken and whose love is wounded in every sin." And here's a closing sentence along the lines of who's a nut and who isn't. "In the mouth of any speaker who is NOT God, these words would imply what I can only regard as a silliness and conceit unrivalled by any other character in history."

You might remember the poignant but also ludicrous scene from Schindler's List, where the Nazi officer, Commandant Goeth, went around simply snipering away at random Jews for the tiniest thing they did wrong. Sometimes for doing nothing wrong. And Oskar Schindler played on this infantile tyrant's massive ego. "You can be such a big man," he coaxed, "by forgiving these foolish Jews for their mistakes. Instead of shooting them, say ‘I forgive you.' You are the great Amon Goeth! What Aryan nobility you could show!" And for the next few days, this idiot Nazi walked around the camp, saying haphazardly to one inmate after the other: "I forgive you. Ah, yes, I forgive you." And he was a nut. It was obvious that this man was both evil and unbalanced. Because what right did he ave to go around forgiving people for the little innocent flubs of life? These petty infractions, if they were done at all, hadn't been done to him.

And yet, this is precisely what Jesus Christ did. He said to people He'd never met, "I forgive you. Don't worry about your sins; I forgive you for each of them." In John chapter eight, the religious big-shots drag in a woman who had just been caught in adultery — all by herself, apparently; they didn't bring the man in with her — and asked Jesus if she should be stoned. Here's a woman Jesus had never seen before in His life. He didn't know her. And she certainly hadn't committed adultery in a way that was a ripoff to Jesus personally. He wasn't involved. Or was He? Because right there, He very graciously says to her: "Has anybody here condemned you?" No, they'd all fled the scene. And then He adds this: "Neither do I condemn you." In other words, "I forgive you." To the thief on the cross, a man who never took even one drachma or a single fig from Jesus, "I forgive you. At this very moment, I can guarantee you an eternal home in My paradise."

We're wrestling these two weeks against the growing theology out there — even in the Christian world — that Jesus really was just a good Teacher. Not divine. Not the Son of God. Not born of a virgin. Not resurrected on Easter Sunday. Not living in heaven today as our Redeemer and Intercessor and Lord. Just a good Teacher who came up with the Golden Rule. But as he notices all these generous "I forgive you's" uttered over and over by Jesus, C. S. Lewis closes his paragraph by observing:

"Christ says that He is ‘humble and meek' and we believe Him; not noticing that, if He were merely a man, humility and meekness are the very last characteristics we could attribute to some of His sayings."

In closing, I'd like to say a rare kind word about the Pharisees who stood around when Jesus told that man, "I forgive all your sins." They finally say something right when they mutter to themselves — this is in Luke 5:21 — "Who is this fellow who speaks blasphemy? Who can forgive sins but God alone?"

Friend, that is an absolutely true statement. Only God can generically forgive sins; and only a Littleton loony takes it upon himself to grant absolution for crimes not committed against himself. These Pharisees spoke the truth, for once in their lives. And Jesus, reading their thoughts, has the perfect answer:

"‘Which is easier: to say, "Your sins are forgiven," or to say, "Get up and walk"? But that you may know that the Son of Man has authority on earth to forgive sins' — and that's all sins, by the way — He said to the paralyzed man, ‘I tell you, get up, take your mat and go home.'"

And do you know what? That's exactly what the man did.