The Freedom of Good Friday

I find that when I think I am asking God to forgive me I am often in reality (unless I watch myself very carefully) asking Him to do something quite different. I am asking him not to forgive me but to excuse me. But there is all the difference in the world between forgiving and excusing. Forgiveness says, “Yes, you have done this thing, but I accept your apology; I will never hold it against you and everything between us two will be exactly as it was before.” If one was not really to blame then there is nothing to forgive. In that sense forgiveness and excusing are almost opposites. Of course, in dozens of cases, either between God and man, or between one man and another, there may be a mixture of the two. Part of what at first seemed to be the sins turns out to be really nobody’s fault and is excused; the bit that is left over is forgiven. If you had a perfect excuse, you would not need forgiveness; if the whole of your actions needs forgiveness, then there was no excuse for it. But the trouble is that what we call “asking God’s forgiveness” very often really consists in asking God to accept our excuses. What leads us into this mistake is the fact that there usually is some amount of excuse, some “extenuating circumstances.” We are so very anxious to point these things out to God (and to ourselves) that we are apt to forget the very important thing; that is, the bit left over, the bit which excuses don’t cover, the bit which is inexcusable but not, thank God, unforgivable. And if we forget this, we shall go away imagining that we have repented and been forgiven when all that has really happened is that we have satisfied ourselves without own excuses. They may be very bad excuses; we are all too easily satisfied about ourselves.

~ C.S. Lewis “Essay on Forgiveness”

Just as God forgives us so do we have to forgive others. Both how God forgives us and how God demonstrates how we are to forgive others comes in two parts. One is giving freedom and the other is pursuing a relationship. When God forgives us he washes us clean and sets us free (Galatians 5:1 – It is for freedom that Christ has set us free. Stand firm, then, and do not let yourselves be burdened again by a yoke of slavery.) Those of you that know me know how passionate I am about the concept of freedom. It’s my driving passion in nearly all things. It starts with forgiveness and it ends with forgiveness. The second part, the relationship, wow talk about hard stuff. God forgives us even in our own sin as Paul points out in Romans and then at our request he walks with us. He pursues a relationship with us. I’m working on getting to know God, not just knowing of God but actually knowing Him. He draws us into that relationship and we are called to do the same. How hard it is to forgive a wrong and then still pursue the relationship. How hard it is to forgive the wrong when the other person doesn’t see any wrong in it, free them from the jail in your mind, and then pursue a relationship. What a struggle and what a reward that struggle towards freedom is. It has been said that freedom is never free. Ephesians 4:32 reads, “Be kind and compassionate to one another,forgiving each other, just as in Christ God forgave you.” Colossians 3:13 reads, “Bear with each other and forgive whatevergrievances you may have against one another. Forgive as the Lord forgave you.” These are definitely not easy in practice as C.S. Lewis pointed out that