Transcript: Episode 0044

This transcript:
  1. Was machine generated.
  2. Has not been checked for errors.
  3. May not be entirely accurate.
WEBVTT

00:00:00 – 00:00:23:	Music

00:00:23 – 00:00:44:	Welcome to the Stone Choir podcast. I am Corey J. Moeller, and I'm still woe. On today's

00:00:44 – 00:00:50:	Stone Choir, we're going to be discussing the subject of forgiveness. Last week, we

00:00:50 – 00:00:54:	spent a couple hours talking about the state of young men in the world today and the state

00:00:54 – 00:00:59:	of the world as it relates to their future lives. We had a ton of feedback on that episode,

00:00:59 – 00:01:05:	and I wanted to do this episode, Corey, and I wanted to specifically address forgiveness

00:01:05 – 00:01:12:	because people reached some logical conclusions, some right conclusions from listening. They

00:01:12 – 00:01:17:	weren't necessarily the ones that we had in mind, so we wanted to talk briefly about why

00:01:17 – 00:01:23:	that happened, how that works, and more fundamentally how forgiveness plays out in the Christian

00:01:23 – 00:01:32:	life with each other. One of the things that we talked about last week was the blow-up of

00:01:32 – 00:01:38:	years ago in the Christian space around debt-free virgins without tattoos, and as we discussed some

00:01:38 – 00:01:45:	of the implications of that, at no point did Corey or I ever explicitly say that unless a girl is

00:01:45 – 00:01:51:	debt-free without tattoos and without a body count, she is unfit, because we don't believe that.

00:01:51 – 00:01:59:	That's, as we did say, that's a test that's virtually impossible for anyone today, simply

00:01:59 – 00:02:06:	because so much of the world, including, frankly, within the church is oriented around papering

00:02:06 – 00:02:13:	over or actually condoning things that can be harmful. As we were specifically addressing young

00:02:13 – 00:02:20:	men, we wanted to make the point that given a set of 10 girls, if you have a choice of one who

00:02:21 – 00:02:27:	potentially has made fewer mistakes, all the things being equal is probably a better choice.

00:02:27 – 00:02:32:	On the other hand, things are never always equal. There are a lot of different reasons why someone

00:02:32 – 00:02:37:	might go into debt, how much debt they go into, what kind of tattoos they get, where they get them.

00:02:38 – 00:02:42:	I have an ex who had a tattoo on the side of one of her feet that said,

00:02:42 – 00:02:49:	walk by faith, because it was a tribute to her father who had died, and at one point she was

00:02:49 – 00:02:54:	working in a company where there was a Japanese visitor who noticed the tattoo. She was wearing

00:02:54 – 00:02:58:	sandals that day, and he commented on it, and it wasn't really a very favorable comment. He was a

00:02:58 – 00:03:03:	little offended by the fact that she would have a visible tattoo in the workplace. One of the

00:03:03 – 00:03:08:	lovely things about the Japanese is that they're very forthright about things. If you have an East

00:03:08 – 00:03:14:	Asian coworker and you gain five pounds and you're showing him the face, they'll come to you and say,

00:03:14 – 00:03:22:	you're looking a little fat. I think that's great. There's absolutely no malice to it. There's nothing

00:03:22 – 00:03:27:	except for a brotherly fraternal concern that something might be wrong. I just want to let you

00:03:27 – 00:03:34:	know that I want to see you be the best you can be. It wasn't a mean thing for a Japanese person

00:03:34 – 00:03:40:	to say something. It was kind of what most Americans would take as offensive about your own

00:03:40 – 00:03:46:	body. She very adorably responded and said, well, this is a tribute to my ancestors. This is a tribute

00:03:46 – 00:03:51:	to my deceased father. He was impressed by that, and it shut him out. He was like, okay.

00:03:52 – 00:03:57:	So even when we say that things like tattoos are not necessarily a great idea,

00:03:57 – 00:04:01:	there are also different types of tattoos or different reasons for people to get them.

00:04:02 – 00:04:07:	It's not about, okay, you did a sin at some point in the past or something like,

00:04:07 – 00:04:13:	if you're $10,000 and that is that a sin, I don't think so. Is it stupid? Yeah. Did you make a

00:04:13 – 00:04:19:	mistake and do something stupid and now you have to dig out of it? Yes. So today we're talking about

00:04:19 – 00:04:24:	forgiveness because there's the aspect of how much of that is for us to forgive in another person,

00:04:25 – 00:04:30:	and then just how do we treat each other in general? As we said, I said there were a number

00:04:30 – 00:04:34:	of people who felt the other consciences were burdened by some of the things that we said,

00:04:34 – 00:04:40:	which was not our intent. So we wanted to begin by talking briefly about what's commonly called

00:04:40 – 00:04:46:	the three uses of the law. As I looked this up yesterday to make sure I was getting things right,

00:04:46 – 00:04:52:	I realized that as usual, the Reformed and Lutherans don't number these things the same way.

00:04:52 – 00:04:57:	So we're going to be using the Lutheran numbering, which is curb, mirror, and rule for the three uses

00:04:57 – 00:05:04:	of the law. The curb is the civic law, the law that you have on the books that says,

00:05:04 – 00:05:10:	if you do this, you go to prison. If you do this, you owe a fine. The curb is there to prevent evil.

00:05:11 – 00:05:18:	On the theology podcast, we're not talking about curbing evil with the civic law, although in

00:05:18 – 00:05:23:	future episodes, we're talking about governments that will be a part of it, but it's always ultimately

00:05:23 – 00:05:28:	still top down. It doesn't have anything to do with how we relate to each other. Then the second

00:05:28 – 00:05:35:	use in the Lutheran ordering is the mirror, which is to show our sin. You read what God has said,

00:05:35 – 00:05:41:	you listen to what God has revealed, and you realize, wow, I sinned against God and I didn't

00:05:41 – 00:05:48:	even know it. That's something that we find in Scripture where God is omniscient. He knows

00:05:48 – 00:05:53:	everything. He knows the inner workings of our hearts in ways that we never will. He knows more

00:05:53 – 00:06:01:	about how bad we are than we do. When we come to the realization through contrasting our lives with

00:06:01 – 00:06:08:	the law as revealed in Scripture, it causes us to repent. That is a godly ordered response to

00:06:08 – 00:06:13:	realizing I did something wrong. As I said in the group chat, after we dropped that episode,

00:06:14 – 00:06:21:	Corey and I threw ourselves under the bus in that episode more than most. We're not going to make

00:06:21 – 00:06:27:	these shows a tell-all about our personal sins, in part because a lot of them involve others,

00:06:27 – 00:06:32:	and we have no business involving others in any sort of personal confession,

00:06:32 – 00:06:38:	because that's performative and disgusting. I would never impugn someone else's privacy in such a way.

00:06:39 – 00:06:45:	But I will happily share things that are bad about me when it doesn't affect anyone else,

00:06:45 – 00:06:52:	not to make myself anything, but just as an example. I can tell you, I did something bad,

00:06:52 – 00:07:00:	and here is how it interacts with God's word. Scripture reveals when we have sinned against

00:07:00 – 00:07:06:	God, and part of the reason for the fear of the Lord episode was to talk about a rightly ordered

00:07:06 – 00:07:13:	response to that. If I have sinned against God, as David said in Psalm 51, against you, you only

00:07:13 – 00:07:17:	have I sinned and done what is evil in your sight, so that you may be justified in your words and

00:07:17 – 00:07:26:	blameless in your judgment. The way that we see ourselves in contrast to God's perfect will

00:07:26 – 00:07:34:	is brutal. It's standing in front of a mirror naked, and you realize you're worse than you thought.

00:07:35 – 00:07:40:	We wanted to talk today about the fact that if someone has that response as a Christian,

00:07:40 – 00:07:45:	that's only possible with the gift of faith. I think one of the greatest blessings of the

00:07:45 – 00:07:51:	Christian life is that when we're confronted with our own sin, if you're not a Christian,

00:07:51 – 00:07:58:	if someone particularly happens in people who have alcohol or substance abuse where it's described

00:07:58 – 00:08:04:	as them hitting rock bottom, they realize that the next step for them is death. They've made so

00:08:04 – 00:08:10:	many mistakes, they've hurt so many people, they've hurt themselves so much, they realize that they're

00:08:10 – 00:08:18:	at the bottom of a well. The blessing of the Christian understanding of life is that we understand

00:08:18 – 00:08:23:	that we're not down there alone, that God is down there with us, and that he can lift us out of that

00:08:23 – 00:08:30:	because he forgives us for everything that we've done to take us to that point. It's a blessing

00:08:30 – 00:08:34:	in the Christian life because if you don't know Christ and you realize how terrible you are,

00:08:34 – 00:08:41:	for some people the next step is self-murder, is suicide. If someone despairs of their sin

00:08:41 – 00:08:48:	and they don't see any way out, that's just utter hopelessness. When a Christian realizes the same

00:08:48 – 00:08:56:	thing, I'm absolutely terrible, as Paul wrote when he described his inability to strive successfully

00:08:56 – 00:09:02:	in all cases against his own flesh. Christians know better than most that we're awful,

00:09:03 – 00:09:09:	and the difference is that we know that the solution is Christ's forgiveness, first to us

00:09:09 – 00:09:16:	from him, and in the forgiveness of God that we extend to others. The third use of the law is

00:09:17 – 00:09:24:	the rule, the rule and norm of the Christian life, where we focus most of our time on Stone Choir,

00:09:24 – 00:09:29:	Corey Reffer still last week, and it's something we say frequently. We're talking about the

00:09:29 – 00:09:34:	and then of Christian life, you're a Christian and then what? You know what God wants and then

00:09:34 – 00:09:42:	what do you do with that. When we describe what Scripture says about what God wants all of us to

00:09:42 – 00:09:48:	be doing in our lives, some people in their own personal circumstances will look at their

00:09:48 – 00:09:53:	current circumstances or distant past or recent past and realize I did something that I shouldn't

00:09:53 – 00:09:59:	have done. We want to talk today about forgiveness precisely because if that was you when you heard

00:09:59 – 00:10:04:	something last week, you're like, man, I feel crushed by this. I should not have done those things

00:10:04 – 00:10:11:	and I feel terrible. We want to spend today's episode talking about forgiveness that God has

00:10:11 – 00:10:18:	already delivered to you on the cross and it is received by your faith, and that repentance that

00:10:18 – 00:10:24:	you have when you realize your sin is a demonstration of the indwelling of the Holy Spirit because you

00:10:24 – 00:10:30:	repent without despair. Repenting with despair isn't really repentance because you know that

00:10:30 – 00:10:36:	you can't turn away from your wickedness because you know it's inherent and it's only with the

00:10:36 – 00:10:44:	Holy Spirit inside us giving us faith and revealing to us that God sanctifies us. God makes our lives

00:10:45 – 00:10:52:	holy. He lets us have the ability to choose to do the very good that we cannot choose on our own.

00:10:52 – 00:10:59:	Someone without God cannot choose to be good in a way that's going to have any effect. It's only

00:10:59 – 00:11:06:	through the gift of faith that that's possible. So as we go through this today, I want to reassure

00:11:06 – 00:11:11:	folks who felt bad after last week's episode. We don't want you to feel bad. We don't want you

00:11:11 – 00:11:18:	to feel beaten down or punched. If you do briefly, that's a good thing. That's a blessing from God

00:11:18 – 00:11:25:	because there was something in God's word that that pricked your heart. Like, ouch, that was an

00:11:25 – 00:11:31:	injury that I didn't know that I had. That was a sin that I didn't realize. On the other hand,

00:11:31 – 00:11:40:	we don't want to trigger the sort of scrupulosity that is particularly common in more immature

00:11:40 – 00:11:46:	faith. I don't say that with any insult. It's just that when you're new and you're trying to figure

00:11:46 – 00:11:51:	things out, you want to try to get everything right. Whether it's a new marriage or it's a new

00:11:51 – 00:11:56:	faith, it's a new job, you show up, you want to get everything right. And when you fail, it really,

00:11:56 – 00:12:02:	really hurts. We don't want people to feel like, okay, here's this list of things that we should

00:12:02 – 00:12:08:	all be doing. If you fail on 8 out of 10, that shouldn't beat you down. That should give you an

00:12:08 – 00:12:14:	indication that, okay, God has given me some idea what I should be doing. Here's the stuff that I

00:12:14 – 00:12:20:	can improve. As we discussed in today's episode, how we extend forgiveness to each other, one thing

00:12:20 – 00:12:27:	I hope will come across very clearly is that our lives are better in the moment, in these hours,

00:12:27 – 00:12:33:	in these days, when we extend God's grace to each other. You have to be easy on people who

00:12:33 – 00:12:37:	feel broken. You don't clobber someone who already feels like they've made a mistake. So,

00:12:37 – 00:12:41:	I want to talk about this today because we don't want you to feel clobbered. If you're listening,

00:12:41 – 00:12:46:	you're like, oh man, I wish I hadn't done that. That should be a reason for you to

00:12:47 – 00:12:53:	know that God has forgiven you for whatever it is that you did. And so, by the end of this episode,

00:12:53 – 00:12:59:	I hope that we can make that case clearly because God's word, His law, is ultimately a source of

00:12:59 – 00:13:03:	comfort. On one hand, it shows that we are all sinners and that we fall short of the glory of

00:13:03 – 00:13:10:	God. On the other hand, God's eternal will is that Jesus died on the cross to solve all of these

00:13:10 – 00:13:16:	problems, to pay for everything that you know and that you didn't know. And so, on the judgment day,

00:13:16 – 00:13:21:	you'll stand before the throne of God and your robes will be washed white in Christ's blood.

00:13:21 – 00:13:26:	And so, God will have blotted out all of your sins. And we won't remember them. The evil that

00:13:26 – 00:13:34:	we've done will be forgotten. And forgiveness now in this life is also about a weaker,

00:13:34 – 00:13:38:	imperfect form of forgetting that will be eternal in the new life.

00:13:40 – 00:13:45:	There are a couple points there that I want to pull out and flesh out a little bit before we move on

00:13:46 – 00:13:51:	to the rest of the episode, the main part of the episode. But even before doing that,

00:13:52 – 00:13:58:	I'm going to read three verses from Psalm 139 because I hope this came to mind when it was

00:13:58 – 00:14:03:	mentioned that wherever you are, even if it happens to be rock bottom, God is still there.

00:14:04 – 00:14:08:	I won't read the whole thing. I'm actually going to recommend that you pause the episode,

00:14:08 – 00:14:14:	go read Psalm 139, and then come back and listen to the rest. And this is not just a trick to get

00:14:14 – 00:14:20:	some of you who have not done so yet to check the show notes, but it will be there. But I'll

00:14:20 – 00:14:26:	read three verses starting with verse eight. If I ascend to heaven, you are there. If I make my bed

00:14:26 – 00:14:31:	in Sheol, you are there. If I take the wings of the morning and dwell in the uttermost parts of

00:14:31 – 00:14:35:	the sea, even there your hand shall lead me and your right hand shall hold me.

00:14:37 – 00:14:40:	But the two points that I want to draw out are

00:14:42 – 00:14:51:	antinomianism as a general sort of umbrella issue. And then the difference in terms of

00:14:51 – 00:14:56:	repentance between despairing and not despairing. I'll start with the second and then go back to

00:14:56 – 00:15:03:	antinomianism. But when it comes to repentance, the difference between Judas and Peter is despair.

00:15:04 – 00:15:11:	Judas regretted deeply what he had done and despaired. And so Judas was damned.

00:15:12 – 00:15:18:	Peter regretted deeply what he had done, because he had also denied Christ. He had

00:15:18 – 00:15:25:	betrayed Christ in denying him. But he did that without despair. And so we will one day

00:15:25 – 00:15:31:	get to meet Peter in paradise, because he did not despair. He repented without that despair.

00:15:31 – 00:15:36:	And that, of course, is a gift of God. But on the note of antinomianism,

00:15:38 – 00:15:44:	some Christians and Lutherans in particular historically by certain groups have been accused

00:15:44 – 00:15:52:	of being antinomian because we preach the gospel in its fullness, in its absolute

00:15:53 – 00:15:58:	fullest truest sense. We don't mix works with the gospel, for instance.

00:16:00 – 00:16:06:	And as should be evident, as should be very clear from the listing of the three uses of the law,

00:16:06 – 00:16:13:	we are very clearly not antinomians, because the third use is directly against antinomianism.

00:16:14 – 00:16:21:	The third use is a very clear statement that the law still applies to Christians.

00:16:22 – 00:16:28:	The law applied to Adam and Eve. The law applies forever because the law is God's will.

00:16:28 – 00:16:36:	It flows from God's nature. It is eternal. And it's not an oppressive thing.

00:16:37 – 00:16:42:	Yes, because of our fallen nature and our fallen flesh, we cannot fully comply with the law. We

00:16:42 – 00:16:48:	attempt to do so, and part of sanctification is that we get better at it as we are a Christian for

00:16:48 – 00:16:56:	longer and as we exercise ourself in God's word, in God's law. But we won't be perfect in this life

00:16:56 – 00:17:01:	because we are fallen in this life. We are partly regenerated in this life. We are fully regenerated

00:17:01 – 00:17:07:	in the next. And that is when the law, of course, will then not be a burden. The law remains

00:17:07 – 00:17:12:	because the law is God's eternal will. But you may be familiar with the phrase,

00:17:12 – 00:17:20:	Lex Semper Akusat. The law always accuses. It's important to note that is the law always accuses,

00:17:20 – 00:17:27:	not that the law only accuses. Because the law does not only accuse. Yes, it always accuses

00:17:27 – 00:17:33:	because of our fallen flesh. But it also guides us in our life. That is another way you can

00:17:34 – 00:17:40:	another term you can use for the third use is guide. And the law guides regenerate Christians.

00:17:41 – 00:17:45:	And so it accuses because of the fallen flesh, because we fall short of God's standard.

00:17:46 – 00:17:55:	But it is not only accusation. It is also a guide. It is holy good. The law is not an evil that was

00:17:55 – 00:18:01:	done away with on the cross. Christ did not come to abolish the law as scripture makes abundantly

00:18:01 – 00:18:09:	clear. He came to fulfill the law. He came to make it possible for us to please God with our even if

00:18:09 – 00:18:16:	incredibly imperfect attempts to obey his law to comply with what he tells us to do.

00:18:17 – 00:18:24:	Our good works, our which that's all good works are good works are acting in accord with God's law.

00:18:25 – 00:18:30:	Our good works are pleasing to God, if we are in Christ, because we are in Christ.

00:18:31 – 00:18:36:	Because the imperfection, the sin that taints those good works is not counted against us in

00:18:36 – 00:18:42:	Christ. It is only the good for which we receive credit. And we receive credit because of Christ's

00:18:42 – 00:18:51:	work for us, which is quite a great deal for us, a very good thing. I want to read the full first

00:18:51 – 00:18:58:	part of Psalm 51 that I quoted briefly before because it goes to a lot of this. Have mercy on

00:18:58 – 00:19:03:	me, O God, according to your steadfast love, according to your abundant mercy, blot out my

00:19:03 – 00:19:09:	transgressions, wash me thoroughly from my iniquity, and cleanse me from my sin, for I know

00:19:09 – 00:19:15:	my transgressions and my sin is ever before me. Against you, you only have I sinned and done

00:19:15 – 00:19:20:	what is evil in your sight. So that you may be justified in your words and blameless in your

00:19:20 – 00:19:26:	judgment. Behold, I was brought forth in iniquity, and incended my mother conceived me. Behold,

00:19:26 – 00:19:30:	you delight in truth in the inward being, and you teach me wisdom in the secret heart.

00:19:31 – 00:19:40:	So when David speaks God's word, saying, blot out my transgressions, wash me thoroughly from

00:19:40 – 00:19:47:	my iniquity, and cleanse me from my sin, he's describing what Christ's propitiating sacrifice

00:19:47 – 00:19:55:	on the cross accomplished. When Jesus proclaimed it as finished as he died, before he died,

00:19:55 – 00:20:01:	in the moment of his death, that is what he was announcing, that we were cleansed from all of

00:20:01 – 00:20:07:	our sin in that moment. And one of the tremendous blessings that we have as Christians after the

00:20:07 – 00:20:14:	cross is that we no longer have to live as the Jews did for 2,000 years leading up to it, and

00:20:14 – 00:20:20:	as all believers did from Adam through Mary, looking forward to the promise of the Messiah.

00:20:21 – 00:20:26:	We have the benefit of hindsight. We have the benefit of hundreds of witnesses of these things

00:20:26 – 00:20:32:	who attest from firsthand knowledge and experience the miracles that they saw, what

00:20:32 – 00:20:40:	they witnessed with their own eyes. And so our faith in a way today is even easier than it was

00:20:41 – 00:20:47:	for Noah or for Jacob or for Abraham. You could go down the list of all the patriarchs.

00:20:48 – 00:20:53:	Their faith was in a promise not yet fulfilled, and it's God we're talking about, so we can

00:20:53 – 00:21:00:	absolutely trust in his promises, because as we often say on Stone Choir, the same God who can

00:21:00 – 00:21:06:	speak the universe into existence, if he makes a promise, it's already happened. It's a done deal.

00:21:06 – 00:21:13:	You don't have to doubt it. So on one hand, it's not more impressive that Abraham believed,

00:21:13 – 00:21:18:	and it was counted to him as righteousness. On the other hand, I think it's fair to say that we

00:21:18 – 00:21:24:	have it easier. We have the fullness of Scripture recorded for us today, testifying to all these

00:21:24 – 00:21:32:	things. And so what that has to do with forgiveness is that when the Messiah, when the Christ died

00:21:32 – 00:21:39:	on the cross, when God died for our sins in that moment, all of our sins for all time were washed

00:21:39 – 00:21:47:	away, because not only is God omniscient, he's omnipotent, he can do everything, and he did it

00:21:47 – 00:21:52:	in that moment for us. Everything we ever committed, everything we will commit from this day forward

00:21:52 – 00:22:02:	until our last, was paid for past tense on the cross. And the future-looking promise that

00:22:02 – 00:22:11:	they had in the Old Testament was a joy and an expectation. What we have today is the fulfillment

00:22:11 – 00:22:18:	of that promise in the review mirror. And that's a tremendous blessing that I think that those in

00:22:18 – 00:22:24:	the past would envy us, because they had to promise something that was not yet fulfilled. And

00:22:24 – 00:22:28:	they didn't know exactly what their hundreds of prophecies in the Old Testament,

00:22:28 – 00:22:31:	they didn't know exactly what it was going to look like. They knew bits and pieces and they

00:22:31 – 00:22:38:	believed it, but prophecies are only fully understood in the review mirror. When God fulfills

00:22:38 – 00:22:42:	them, you look and say, yep, lines up perfectly. I wouldn't have imagined it like that, but here it

00:22:42 – 00:22:49:	is. And that is the life and death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. And so the forgiveness that we

00:22:50 – 00:22:54:	share with each other today, and the forgiveness that we take comfort in today,

00:22:54 – 00:23:02:	is in view of the shedding of Christ's blood on the cross. And the fact that all transgressions,

00:23:02 – 00:23:07:	all sins, all trespasses are wiped away in that moment by his perfect blood

00:23:09 – 00:23:14:	is the root of the Christian faith. In a future episode, we're going to be doing something specifically

00:23:14 – 00:23:20:	on the sacraments as a means of grace. That's an important part of Lutheran theology. So we're

00:23:20 – 00:23:25:	going to spend an episode describing how Lutherans view the sacraments relative to some of the other

00:23:25 – 00:23:31:	denominations to demonstrate. Here's why we believe that our approach to Scripture is consistent with

00:23:31 – 00:23:36:	the Lutheran view of the sacraments. The sacraments are absolutely a means of grace,

00:23:36 – 00:23:41:	and it's how God delivers his promises and his forgiveness in time.

00:23:43 – 00:23:49:	The word is too. When the word is spoken, it delivers on those promises. As we've said before,

00:23:49 – 00:23:56:	the superabundance of God's grace is such that there's more forgiveness than we have sin.

00:23:56 – 00:24:01:	He's forgiven everything, and he's given us all these different means. He knows that we're going

00:24:01 – 00:24:07:	to doubt. Doubt is sin, and it's going to happen anyway, because we will never be perfect until we

00:24:07 – 00:24:12:	die. And so the superabundance of God's grace is saying, I have the word for you. I have the

00:24:12 – 00:24:18:	sacraments for you. I have pointing back to the cross for you. I've surrounded you as a Christian

00:24:18 – 00:24:26:	in your life in this wicked world with a hedge of promises and signs of the things that I have done

00:24:26 – 00:24:32:	for you. And so those are given as a comfort that the forgiveness that was earned on the cross

00:24:32 – 00:24:38:	is real. It's actually accomplished in time. It's not a forelooking promise as it was for Mary.

00:24:38 – 00:24:45:	It's a revealed and realized promise that we look back and say, yep, God promised and God

00:24:45 – 00:24:50:	delivered. And the joy of the Christian life vertically as it relates to God is the knowledge

00:24:50 – 00:24:58:	that God delivered on his promises. And therefore, Christian freedom now means living free from the

00:24:58 – 00:25:03:	terror of our sin. And that's something that, it's part of the reason we did this episode,

00:25:03 – 00:25:08:	is there are some people who felt kind of beaten down by what they heard. Now they were beaten down

00:25:08 – 00:25:14:	by the fact that when we talked about the third use, when we talked about the rule or the,

00:25:14 – 00:25:19:	you know, the guide of God's perfect will in our lives today and going forward,

00:25:19 – 00:25:24:	when you look back over your life, you're like, ooh, I failed. I sinned. I did things I shouldn't

00:25:24 – 00:25:30:	have done. As I said at the beginning, if that repentance is in your heart, you should know

00:25:30 – 00:25:35:	that you have received forgiveness for that. You don't need to wallow in it. It's important to

00:25:35 – 00:25:41:	realize it. It's a fruit of the Holy Spirit that we look at our own lives and we realize, yeah,

00:25:41 – 00:25:47:	that was sinful. That was bad. I shouldn't have done that. And then immediately turn to God and

00:25:47 – 00:25:52:	say thank you for the sacrifice of your son on the cross that my wickedness that I didn't even know

00:25:52 – 00:25:58:	about was already forgiven. And then we go on with a joyous Christian life, knowing that that's the

00:25:58 – 00:26:04:	kind of God we have. We don't have a God who's sitting around hiding in the bushes, taking notes

00:26:04 – 00:26:09:	and being angry with us. You know, that's what Twitter censors do. That's not what God does.

00:26:09 – 00:26:14:	God, with his perfect knowledge of the innermost recesses of our hearts, knows those things and

00:26:14 – 00:26:21:	yet he still loved us so much that he sent his only begotten son to die for us. We always quote

00:26:21 – 00:26:28:	John 3.16, but the next verse or two is equally important in that sentiment. For God so loved the

00:26:28 – 00:26:33:	world that he gave his only son that whosoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal

00:26:33 – 00:26:38:	life. For God did not send his son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world

00:26:38 – 00:26:43:	might be saved through him, whoever believes in him is not condemned. Whoever does not believe

00:26:43 – 00:26:48:	is condemned already because he has not believed in the name of the only Son of God.

00:26:49 – 00:26:54:	That's a perfect lead-in because I was actually just going to read those verses. I actually have

00:26:54 – 00:27:02:	them up on my screen right now because it is so vitally important to include 17 and 18 when we read

00:27:03 – 00:27:10:	those verses. We read that section because we take the wrong lesson if we don't read

00:27:11 – 00:27:19:	Scripture in context, particularly here. We need that context of verse 18 because this pulls out

00:27:20 – 00:27:26:	some of the theological aspects of justification that I want to go over here

00:27:27 – 00:27:35:	because there are two aspects of justification. You could say two justifications if you are

00:27:35 – 00:27:40:	so inclined, but keep in mind that you're speaking after a fashion. There is the objective and the

00:27:40 – 00:27:48:	subjective, and these can also be called the universal and the personal. The universal

00:27:48 – 00:27:55:	objective justification is what Christ accomplished on the cross, and we have that in verse 16 because

00:27:55 – 00:28:02:	what does it say, for God so loved, the world that's ton kosmon, cosmos being the Greek word from

00:28:02 – 00:28:12:	which we get cosmos that is everything. Christ reconciled everything with his death. His death

00:28:12 – 00:28:18:	was of infinite value. It was sufficient for the reconciliation of all things, and so does ton

00:28:18 – 00:28:25:	kosmon. It is not just some group of people, not some small group of people, not only human beings.

00:28:26 – 00:28:32:	It is all things, and that's of course the same word we get in verse 17 that is still

00:28:32 – 00:28:42:	cosmos there, the world. But 18 is important because 18 teaches us the personal justification

00:28:42 – 00:28:49:	whoever believes in him is not condemned. When it comes to human beings, there is a

00:28:49 – 00:28:57:	personal, a subjective justification, and that is when you believe that is faith, and so in essence

00:28:59 – 00:29:05:	a way to summarize this is the crucifixion of Christ was the means by which God worked

00:29:05 – 00:29:12:	objective justification, that being of all things. Faith is the means by which God

00:29:12 – 00:29:19:	subjectively justifies the sinner, and the word and the sacraments are the means by which God grants

00:29:20 – 00:29:29:	that faith to the aforesaid sinner. And we'll do the episode on sacramentology at some point,

00:29:29 – 00:29:35:	but this is the core of it here, a response to an accusation that is leveled against Lutherans

00:29:35 – 00:29:42:	and others who have a sacramental theology. There are those who will say, well you're defeating

00:29:43 – 00:29:48:	solifida, you're saying that it's not faith alone, and that's not what we're doing. We are

00:29:48 – 00:29:55:	giving the answer to how God gives you faith when we say that the word and the sacraments are means

00:29:55 – 00:30:04:	of grace, because you have to get the faith somehow. And that's the point. God gives you the faith

00:30:04 – 00:30:08:	through the word and the sacraments. It is a free gift. It is not something you do for yourself.

00:30:08 – 00:30:16:	It's not you have to believe hard enough and you'll be saved. No, God gives you faith. That faith

00:30:16 – 00:30:22:	justifies you. You are saved because of that faith, because of the free gift of God. It is a gift from

00:30:22 – 00:30:29:	beginning to end. That is vitally important to understand, because that is the gospel. The gospel

00:30:29 – 00:30:36:	is free justification for the sake of Christ. Not because you work hard at it and believe hard

00:30:36 – 00:30:42:	enough. Not because you work hard at it and collect enough good works. This is not a competition

00:30:42 – 00:30:48:	where you collect little merit badges. And if you get to the pearly gates and you have enough of them,

00:30:48 – 00:30:53:	then you get to be admitted to paradise. That's not how it works.

00:30:55 – 00:31:03:	God gives you faith. That justifies you because of Christ's sacrifice, because vicariously he paid

00:31:03 – 00:31:11:	the price for you. And so it is all free beginning to end. Now we do not deny that Christians will

00:31:11 – 00:31:18:	have good works. This goes back to that third use of the law. You will have good works as a

00:31:18 – 00:31:25:	Christian, because you are in Christ, because you have faith, and those works are good only because

00:31:25 – 00:31:32:	you are a Christian. If you are not a Christian, you do not have good works. This is an important

00:31:32 – 00:31:39:	theological point that is often glossed over or completely ignored. No matter how good before the

00:31:39 – 00:31:46:	eyes of the world, some particular act, some particular work happens to be. If it is done by

00:31:46 – 00:31:52:	someone who is not in Christ, the work is not meritorious and it is not good, it is not credited

00:31:52 – 00:31:59:	to that person before God in God's court, because the person has to be justified to have good works.

00:32:00 – 00:32:05:	And that's good news for the Christian, for those who believe that is excellent news,

00:32:05 – 00:32:11:	because if you are in Christ again as I stated before, the fact that your works are imperfect,

00:32:11 – 00:32:18:	the fact that you are still a fallen sinner, is not counted against you. Your works are considered

00:32:18 – 00:32:23:	meritorious and there are rewards in heaven for good works. Scripture is very clear about that,

00:32:24 – 00:32:32:	but they are counted only as good because of Christ, and they are counted as only good because of

00:32:32 – 00:32:40:	Christ. And I want to focus for just a minute here on the way that Scripture speaks about

00:32:41 – 00:32:49:	your sins when they are forgiven. God doesn't just say, these are not counted against you.

00:32:49 – 00:32:55:	He does say that, but that's not the only thing he says. God says that he forgets your sins.

00:32:55 – 00:33:04:	I think that we really, this is another thing, we gloss over it, we don't realize

00:33:05 – 00:33:12:	the fullness of what it means for God to forget. God is omniscient, God knows all things.

00:33:13 – 00:33:22:	If God says that he forgets something, it's gone. It's gone in a way that is total,

00:33:22 – 00:33:32:	in a way that is absolute. It never existed. So your sins in paradise when you are fully renewed

00:33:33 – 00:33:38:	are gone in the absolute fullest sense of that term. There is no way to overstate it.

00:33:40 – 00:33:49:	That is the good news for Christians. So once you are fully renewed in paradise,

00:33:49 – 00:33:56:	all of those things that happened in this life, all of the imperfections, all of the

00:33:56 – 00:34:01:	times that you sinned, all of the times that you could have done better, that your good works

00:34:01 – 00:34:08:	were imperfect because of your fallen nature, that's all gone. It is only the good that remains.

00:34:09 – 00:34:13:	Of course, the inverse of that is that it is not good news for those who are not in Christ,

00:34:14 – 00:34:19:	because none of the good for them counts. It is only the evil they did that remains,

00:34:19 – 00:34:24:	because they chose to keep it. And that is a vitally important point.

00:34:26 – 00:34:34:	Your sins will be counted against you only if you decide to keep them. If you are unwilling

00:34:34 – 00:34:40:	to simply lay all of that at the foot of the cross and accept the free gift of salvation

00:34:40 – 00:34:44:	from God on behalf of Christ, then you have declared to God,

00:34:44 – 00:34:51:	no, I'm going to keep my sins in their mind. And God says, fine, you get to pay the price for them

00:34:51 – 00:34:57:	for eternity, because the debt owed for sin, any sin, no matter how small, no matter how great,

00:34:57 – 00:35:02:	the debt owed for any sin is infinite. That is why it is the sacrifice of Christ on the cross

00:35:02 – 00:35:08:	that was necessary to atone for those sins, because his sacrifice was of infinite value.

00:35:08 – 00:35:13:	So, if you want to keep those sins, you get to keep them for eternity,

00:35:14 – 00:35:20:	because you will never be able to pay an infinite price, because you are finite. It took the Son

00:35:20 – 00:35:28:	of God, who is infinite God, to pay that infinite price. And that is why it is good news for Christians.

00:35:28 – 00:35:37:	The debt is paid, and the sins will be totally forgotten, completely erased to the point where

00:35:37 – 00:35:44:	they never existed. It is only the good that will remain. And this is why forgiveness of

00:35:44 – 00:35:50:	each other is such a vital part of the Christian life. It is a crucial part in the etymological

00:35:50 – 00:35:57:	sense of the word, crucial, crucifix, same thing. The forgiveness that we are commanded by God,

00:35:57 – 00:36:03:	that is God's law, that we extend to each other as gospel, to use the Lutheran parlance.

00:36:04 – 00:36:13:	It is God's command, and it is for everyone's benefit. I talked at the beginning about how

00:36:13 – 00:36:18:	some folks were burdened with either their own sins or feeling that they had sinned against

00:36:18 – 00:36:24:	someone else. And so, we want to talk, I think most of this episode, about the interpersonal part

00:36:24 – 00:36:32:	of this, because the theological discussion of us approaching God and us receiving God's gifts

00:36:32 – 00:36:40:	is vital. It is absolutely fundamental to this. It is also in some ways easier intellectually,

00:36:40 – 00:36:48:	or at least spiritually, than the interpersonal stuff. I want to begin as we often do in this

00:36:48 – 00:36:55:	show with Job. At the end of Job, in chapter 42, when God is speaking to all the men who are

00:36:55 – 00:37:00:	involved in that story, he has something to say about forgiveness and about us forgiving each other.

00:37:02 – 00:37:07:	After the Lord had spoken these words to Job, the Lord said to Eliphaz, the Temmonite,

00:37:07 – 00:37:12:	my anger burns against you and against your two friends, for you have not spoken of me what is

00:37:12 – 00:37:18:	right as my servant Job has. Now therefore, take seven bowls and seven rams and go to my servant Job

00:37:18 – 00:37:24:	and offer up a burnt offering for yourselves, and my servant Job shall pray for you, for I will

00:37:24 – 00:37:29:	accept his prayer not to deal with you according to your folly, for you have not spoken of me

00:37:29 – 00:37:35:	what is right as my servant Job has. So Eliphaz, the Temmonite, and Bildad, the Shuite, and Zophar,

00:37:35 – 00:37:40:	the Namethite went and did what the Lord had told them, and the Lord accepted Job's prayer.

00:37:42 – 00:37:48:	So this is an example of intercessory prayer. Something that the Roman Catholics often use

00:37:48 – 00:37:56:	in describing the saints interceding for us in heaven. I think that a much more vital

00:37:56 – 00:38:02:	read on intercessory prayer is what we do for each other. If someone sins against you, you are to

00:38:02 – 00:38:08:	intercede on their behalf to God to say, God forgive them for this, for their sin against me,

00:38:10 – 00:38:14:	I don't want it to be held against them. Because the bad advice that Job received from his friends

00:38:15 – 00:38:19:	was basically telling him to sin against God. They were saying things that weren't correct,

00:38:19 – 00:38:25:	and if Job had listened to them, he would have fallen into sin. And so God was angry with that

00:38:25 – 00:38:32:	because they were effectively being the devil's tempters in that situation. And what was God's

00:38:32 – 00:38:39:	solution? You guys, you need to go sacrifice. I will hear Job's intercessory prayer on your

00:38:39 – 00:38:45:	behalf. When Job says, forgive these men, I will forgive them for his sake, which of course is

00:38:45 – 00:38:50:	also for Christ's sake, because all forgiveness, as we've just laid out, is at the cross. That

00:38:50 – 00:38:55:	finished work, that perfect work on the cross of the sacrifice of Jesus Christ,

00:38:55 – 00:39:02:	paid for all these sins past, present, future. The intercessory prayer of Job for his friends

00:39:02 – 00:39:10:	is forgiveness. God forgave and Job forgave. The thing that we have to deal with in this life,

00:39:10 – 00:39:18:	the very practical matter, is one of the hardest parts of being a Christian. When you are commanded

00:39:18 – 00:39:26:	to forgive those who are trying to kill you, that's tough. That's, ego is involved. The notion

00:39:26 – 00:39:32:	that I have been slighted, that someone wants to hurt me, and I want to defend myself, and I want

00:39:32 – 00:39:39:	to protect my family, and I want to protect my property, and I want to obey God. And the joy

00:39:39 – 00:39:45:	of the Christian life is realizing that those things are not at odds. So when we're discussing

00:39:45 – 00:39:51:	forgiveness, we're not talking about pacifism. We're not talking about there being no temporal

00:39:51 – 00:39:58:	consequences for the evil actions of other men. We're talking about what God is saying here.

00:39:58 – 00:40:04:	These men sinned against me, and they sinned against you, Job. You intercede on their behalf.

00:40:04 – 00:40:09:	Ask me to forgive them, and I will. That's a promise that he makes to all of us. That's in the Lord's

00:40:09 – 00:40:16:	prayer. Forgive us our trespasses. Forgive us our debts, as we forgive those who owe us debts,

00:40:16 – 00:40:23:	or who trespass against us. That's a tough part of that prayer, because if you actually

00:40:23 – 00:40:30:	think about it and pay attention to it, it's not calling down a curse, obviously, because it's a

00:40:30 – 00:40:37:	good thing, but it is the godly test for the kind of repentance that we're to have. If we say,

00:40:37 – 00:40:43:	Lord, Lord, forgive me, and God looks at our lives and says, well, you're not forgiving anyone around

00:40:43 – 00:40:49:	you, the answer will be, you're not forgiven. You don't actually seek my repentance, because

00:40:49 – 00:40:55:	you don't forgive anyone. You owe this infinite debt to me, and yet you won't forgive the small

00:40:55 – 00:41:02:	debt of this other man who owes you something. And that's the reason that forgiveness is so

00:41:02 – 00:41:08:	crucial in the Christian life, is that it's a hard ask. If you're not thinking about it in

00:41:08 – 00:41:14:	terms of obedience to God, once you actually think about it in terms of, well, God Almighty commands

00:41:14 – 00:41:22:	this, you should just do it. The proper response of the faithful Christian is not to argue,

00:41:22 – 00:41:26:	not to say, not to grumble, not to say, I don't like it. I don't think that's right.

00:41:26 – 00:41:31:	I don't think that's fair. Yeah, exactly. The point is that it's not fair.

00:41:31 – 00:41:35:	Do you want fair? When I was a little kid, I was probably about five or six.

00:41:35 – 00:41:40:	My mom had been complaining on a particular day about something, some injustice in her life,

00:41:40 – 00:41:44:	I have no idea what it was. But it made enough of an impression on me that that evening, when we

00:41:44 – 00:41:50:	were doing our family prayers, I said, Dear Lord, please give my mom everything that she deserves.

00:41:51 – 00:41:55:	And my family still laughs about it to this day, because that's such a horrifying prayer.

00:41:56 – 00:42:02:	Of all the nightmarish things to pray for your mother, please give her everything she deserves,

00:42:02 – 00:42:07:	is the most horrific curse imaginable. I was a little kid. I knew that she was crying out for

00:42:07 – 00:42:12:	justice and I wanted my mom to have justice. I didn't realize what I was actually calling down.

00:42:13 – 00:42:19:	But as mature Christians, we do understand that. If you say, give that person everything they

00:42:19 – 00:42:28:	deserve, that's an infinite, talish death sentence. And God's command to us is that you're not to do

00:42:28 – 00:42:34:	that, because that measure by which you measure others, I will measure you. That is God's promise.

00:42:34 – 00:42:41:	He promises to forgive our sins. But if we want to weigh out and meet out God's justice

00:42:41 – 00:42:48:	against other men for their slights to us, God holds that against us. He says you're not actually

00:42:48 – 00:42:53:	you're not forgiven because you are not forgiving. And that's, that's law. That's,

00:42:53 – 00:43:02:	that's the rule that God lays out for us. In Mark 11, Jesus taught, whenever you stand praying,

00:43:02 – 00:43:07:	forgive. If you have anything against anyone, so that your father also who is in heaven may

00:43:07 – 00:43:13:	forgive you your trespasses. And the Greek word that's used for trespasses means the same thing

00:43:13 – 00:43:18:	in English. It means if, if you're walking down the sidewalk and you step into someone's yard,

00:43:18 – 00:43:24:	you're trespassing. It's not necessarily a big deal, but it's a trespass. And so when the word

00:43:24 – 00:43:29:	trespasses is used correctly as a translation in scripture, that's what it means. It doesn't mean

00:43:29 – 00:43:35:	big stuff. It doesn't mean, oh, this man tried to kill me, this man tried to burn down my house.

00:43:35 – 00:43:40:	It means he, you know, he said something mean about me, or, you know, he looked at my dog the

00:43:40 – 00:43:45:	wrong way, or he stepped on my yard, whatever it is. We have to forgive the small stuff too.

00:43:45 – 00:43:53:	We can't let that stuff pile up in our hearts as bitterness, because it precludes us from receiving

00:43:53 – 00:43:59:	God's forgiveness to us. And so it's, it's a blessing to know this is a Christian. And it's,

00:43:59 – 00:44:07:	it's not a burden, but it's a, it's a command. God is saying, here's what I expect of you.

00:44:07 – 00:44:10:	And in a third use of the law as the, as the guide for the Christian life,

00:44:11 – 00:44:18:	it should become easy for us. As Corey was talking about sanctification earlier, it takes time as a

00:44:18 – 00:44:23:	Christian to get used to just obeying God and not being a whiner, because that's not, it's not our

00:44:23 – 00:44:30:	inherent type. It's not our personality as a human being. We want to say, no, not me, that other guy,

00:44:30 – 00:44:35:	don't, you know, don't hold me to those standards. We're all like that. There's no such thing as

00:44:35 – 00:44:41:	being so great that you never, ever have experienced that. As you develop in the Christian life, as

00:44:41 – 00:44:49:	you focus more on God's things, it does get easier, not because you necessarily become this super

00:44:49 – 00:44:54:	person, but because you've come, become completely subsumed to the will of God, like God commands

00:44:54 – 00:45:01:	it. Okay, that's it. And when that is our response, God commands it, Lord, let your will be done.

00:45:02 – 00:45:08:	When that is the, the autonomic response of the Christian, suddenly everything gets a whole

00:45:08 – 00:45:14:	lot easier, which is part of God's blessing. Corey and I were, we faced some very serious threats

00:45:14 – 00:45:18:	against ourselves a few weeks ago, and it kind of ruined my day when it happened. You know,

00:45:18 – 00:45:24:	I was thinking about how to handle something that was a very credible, potentially completely

00:45:24 – 00:45:31:	destructive threat to my life. And it wasn't until I got in bed and was, was praying that I

00:45:31 – 00:45:35:	realized this, you know, this stuff that we're saying to you now, I had to say to myself,

00:45:35 – 00:45:40:	like, what does God to say about this? Very simple, forgive him. Somebody does evil against you,

00:45:40 – 00:45:46:	you forgive them. And forgiveness means exactly what it meant in Job's case, and in all the other

00:45:46 – 00:45:53:	cases in scripture, when someone sins against you, as happened to Jesus when he was on the cross,

00:45:53 – 00:45:58:	and they were dividing his clothes, he said, Father, forgive them for they know not what they do.

00:45:58 – 00:46:03:	Stephen said the same thing when he was being stoned. That was his last words before he died.

00:46:04 – 00:46:11:	That sort of intercessory prayer from us as believers to God, on behalf of the people

00:46:11 – 00:46:16:	in the midst of their very most malevolent and evil acts, is God's command to us

00:46:16 – 00:46:24:	to say, Lord, I don't want this person to suffer the eternal price for this evil against me.

00:46:25 – 00:46:30:	And in all those cases, in the case of Jesus and Stephen, in the case of the threats against us,

00:46:30 – 00:46:36:	it is precisely because these people hate Christ that they are doing these things. And so,

00:46:37 – 00:46:44:	when we say, Lord, forgive them for our sake, that takes us off the board, that is saying,

00:46:44 – 00:46:51:	I don't want justice in my name to be visited against this man in eternity, because I don't

00:46:51 – 00:46:58:	want you visiting anyone else's justice against me for all the evil I've done. That's the equation.

00:46:58 – 00:47:04:	Please, Lord, take my name off the board on both sides of the ledger. And when we do that,

00:47:04 – 00:47:10:	and so far as they continue to hate and act as enemies of God, God will deal according to them

00:47:10 – 00:47:15:	as he sees fit. We don't need to worry about that. And I only mentioned that specific

00:47:15 – 00:47:18:	personal example, because I had a crap day when it happened. I woke up the next morning,

00:47:18 – 00:47:23:	felt fine, and I'm worried about it since. That's a blessing from God. When some evil is

00:47:23 – 00:47:29:	befalls you, and you obey God, and you trust in God, and the next thing you know, everything's

00:47:29 – 00:47:36:	fine again, that's the peace of God which surpasses all human understanding. And

00:47:36 – 00:47:41:	my comfort is not that, oh, I don't think anything bad is going to happen to me in the future,

00:47:41 – 00:47:46:	because I prayed to God and asked for his forgiveness for this person. It may happen.

00:47:46 – 00:47:52:	The worst, most evil things may happen. All the evil that is wished against me by our enemies

00:47:52 – 00:47:59:	may come to fruition if God permits it. So it's not a get out of jail free card for us to avoid

00:47:59 – 00:48:05:	temporal consequences for the evil of others. But I don't need to worry about it, because God

00:48:06 – 00:48:10:	has marked the hour of my death, and nothing will be permitted to happen to me that he doesn't

00:48:10 – 00:48:16:	permit. And so if something happens, I'm not going to do what Job's wife said and curse God and die.

00:48:17 – 00:48:23:	I'll take the good with evil, and I will praise God for it. And it's important for us as Christians

00:48:23 – 00:48:27:	to think through these things now when it's easy, you know, when the lights are on and you have a

00:48:27 – 00:48:32:	full belly, and you're not, you know, nothing particularly bad is happening to you, even if

00:48:32 – 00:48:39:	you're stressed out, or you're bummed out, you have lost your job, or some stress or some bad

00:48:39 – 00:48:44:	thing is happening. The knowledge that could get way, way worse to the point of you losing everything,

00:48:44 – 00:48:50:	including your life, the reconciliation that we have to each other now in these moments when

00:48:50 – 00:48:57:	you're like, I'm going to obey God and leave the rest to him, that habit that we form now in those

00:48:57 – 00:49:05:	quiet moments, you know, in bed before you go to sleep, is us being served by God in the future

00:49:05 – 00:49:11:	when calamity befalls, when terrible things are happening. We can look God, we can look back and

00:49:11 – 00:49:17:	trust that when God commanded us to do those things, and we know that he keeps his promises for those

00:49:17 – 00:49:23:	things, God will keep his promises to us then in the moment of horror, and in the future, even if,

00:49:23 – 00:49:27:	you know, if the future is that you're going to be dead in five minutes. Okay, what does God

00:49:27 – 00:49:33:	promise then? Eternal life with him. So there's no bad thing that can happen to a Christian

00:49:33 – 00:49:39:	that we can't receive with rejoicing, and forgiving each other for the things that we do

00:49:40 – 00:49:45:	comes up front. And as Corey said, it's not, we're not earning our survey and salvation,

00:49:45 – 00:49:51:	it has nothing to do with that. It's saying, I understand the debt that I owe to God,

00:49:51 – 00:49:55:	and I understand the debt that this person knows to me, and there's no comparison.

00:49:55 – 00:50:01:	How could I possibly demand justice for this small thing when I have a lifetime of evil piled up

00:50:01 – 00:50:08:	against God? I would never ask for that man to receive what he deserves, because Lord help me

00:50:08 – 00:50:14:	if I receive what I deserve. And with that knowledge, we then have peace from God. And that's the

00:50:14 – 00:50:20:	blessing of obedience, of obedience coming from faith is that everything is suddenly fine. You

00:50:20 – 00:50:25:	can be completely peaceful in the middle of a hurricane, because no matter what happens, you

00:50:25 – 00:50:32:	can trust in God's promises. And in the daily life, forgiveness is key part of it. If you're

00:50:32 – 00:50:36:	having a great week, a great month, a great year, but there's someone who's done something evil

00:50:36 – 00:50:41:	against you, if you're harboring that against them, it's going to eat up the whole year.

00:50:41 – 00:50:47:	It's going to color a dark cloud across whatever else happens until you reconcile. And maybe

00:50:47 – 00:50:53:	reconciliation in terms of coming to you forgiving them and them being reconciled to you as brothers

00:50:53 – 00:50:57:	in Christ is impossible. That's not even what we're saying here. We're saying that you intercede

00:50:58 – 00:51:05:	to God on their behalf and say, Lord, not in my name. What they do against you is between them

00:51:05 – 00:51:10:	and you. I'm not a party to it. I forgive them. I ask you to forgive them for Christ's sake, for my

00:51:10 – 00:51:16:	sake. And that's the end of it. That's hands off. It's Jesus take the wheel. And we can trust that

00:51:16 – 00:51:22:	God will do that and he'll do it perfectly. And with that sort of confident faith, suddenly

00:51:22 – 00:51:27:	everything else becomes easy on the good days, the bad days, the worst days, everything becomes easy

00:51:27 – 00:51:32:	when you have confidence that the promises that God keeps in these small things, he's also going to

00:51:32 – 00:51:39:	keep in the great things. And being reminded in our own lives by those moments when we ask someone

00:51:39 – 00:51:47:	to be forgiven for our sake. And then we wake up at peace. Is God demonstrating his love for us?

00:51:47 – 00:51:51:	That you will not be burdened by the evil of other men. The only way for them to burden you is if

00:51:51 – 00:51:57:	you permit it. And that can only happen if you don't trust in God's promises. And yes, someone will

00:51:57 – 00:52:02:	hear this and feel condemned by it. Because again, if you're sinning against God by not trusting in

00:52:02 – 00:52:07:	him, that's a call to repentance. And so when we say these things, it's not intended to like beat up

00:52:07 – 00:52:14:	on people's consciences. But when the word of God acts on us is going to act according to God's

00:52:14 – 00:52:20:	will. We don't have any control over what the Holy Spirit does with God's word and people's hearts.

00:52:21 – 00:52:26:	God will not return to him void. God will accomplish the task for which he sent his word forth.

00:52:28 – 00:52:32:	Forgiveness is something that we give to others because it's been extended to us infinitely.

00:52:33 – 00:52:39:	That's a very easy equation. And once we get used to it, you have a decent Christian peaceful life.

00:52:39 – 00:52:46:	No matter how bad things get with your neighbors, with your enemies, you can never be so beset

00:52:46 – 00:52:52:	that you won't be at peace inwardly. That's a tremendous gift from God. And so this episode

00:52:52 – 00:52:56:	is about the gifts that God gives us through us giving each other the gift of forgiveness.

00:52:57 – 00:53:00:	If we have that, we have everything that God wants for us in this life.

00:53:02 – 00:53:07:	Personally, I've made a little bit of this easier for myself by taking a page out of God's book

00:53:08 – 00:53:13:	and simply forgetting many of the slights against myself. I suspect there may be some

00:53:13 – 00:53:20:	mechanical differences there in God's case. But when we speak of fairness versus mercy,

00:53:21 – 00:53:28:	I would hope that Matthew 18 comes to mind. And I'll read the section that I have in mind

00:53:29 – 00:53:33:	that many of you undoubtedly know which one. But before I get to that,

00:53:35 – 00:53:42:	I want to draw out two terms and further define them so that we're abundantly clear about what

00:53:42 – 00:53:48:	we mean and what we're saying and what we are not saying. The first term is suffering.

00:53:51 – 00:53:56:	And when it comes to suffering, there are two kinds we should distinguish. There's suffering

00:53:56 – 00:54:03:	that is simply part of this life, whether it is caused by others, by the natural world or any other

00:54:03 – 00:54:10:	source. And then there is suffering for Christ. When Christians speak of bearing suffering,

00:54:10 – 00:54:16:	when the scriptures speak of that, it is bearing suffering on account of Christ, on account of

00:54:16 – 00:54:20:	your faith. If someone comes up to you in the streets and punches you in the face and says,

00:54:20 – 00:54:26:	I hate your shoes, you're allowed to defend yourself. If you don't defend yourself,

00:54:26 – 00:54:32:	that's not suffering for Christ, that's being a pacifist. Christians are not called to be pacifist,

00:54:32 – 00:54:39:	Christians are prohibited from being pacifists. If on the other hand, you are dragged before

00:54:39 – 00:54:45:	the secular authorities and you are told to renounce some part of scripture, then you are

00:54:45 – 00:54:51:	required to affirm what scripture teaches and bear whatever suffering may come, because that is for

00:54:51 – 00:55:01:	Christ. And the second term that I want to highlight is the term enemy. And the reason we need to

00:55:02 – 00:55:09:	further define this term is because English and really, insofar as I'm aware, all Germanic languages

00:55:10 – 00:55:16:	have the same, not problem, but distinction between them and languages like Greek or Latin.

00:55:18 – 00:55:24:	And that is that the term enemy is vague. It is ambiguous in a way that it's not

00:55:24 – 00:55:30:	necessarily so in these other languages, because it has a wider range, a wider scope of meaning.

00:55:30 – 00:55:36:	If I tell you that someone is my enemy, you don't know if that's a personal enemy

00:55:36 – 00:55:42:	or a public enemy. So for instance, if you are, if your nation is at war with another nation,

00:55:43 – 00:55:46:	the citizens of that other nation, the soldiers of that other nation,

00:55:46 – 00:55:53:	are not your personal enemies. They are public enemies. That's not what's in view here in scripture

00:55:53 – 00:55:59:	when we're forgiving our enemies and praying for them. Yes, you should still pray for those people

00:55:59 – 00:56:04:	to come to faith if they are pagans, if they are atheists. That's a separate matter from what we

00:56:04 – 00:56:11:	are discussing here. But the distinction in Latin would be inimicus and hostice. Inimicus is a

00:56:11 – 00:56:18:	personal enemy, which is what's in view here. Hostice is a public enemy, what's not in view here.

00:56:20 – 00:56:26:	And so you have to keep that in mind. When you read these passages of scripture that deal with

00:56:26 – 00:56:32:	enemies, you are called to forgive your personal enemies, to pray for your personal enemies,

00:56:32 – 00:56:39:	not to hold these things against them. That is not saying that a nation cannot have enemies,

00:56:39 – 00:56:43:	that a nation cannot act against those enemies, that a prince cannot wield the sword, because of

00:56:43 – 00:56:48:	course the prince does not wield the sword in vain. That is a separate matter. So those who accuse

00:56:48 – 00:56:55:	Christians of being pacifists are using this ambiguity in this term in a certain subset of

00:56:55 – 00:57:04:	languages to try and push false doctrine. Do not let false teachers befuddle you in this particular

00:57:04 – 00:57:10:	way. Scripture does not teach, again, just to make sure this is abundantly clear, Scripture does not

00:57:10 – 00:57:16:	teach that Christians must be pacifists. In fact, it teaches the opposite that a good Christian,

00:57:16 – 00:57:24:	particularly a good Christian man, cannot be a pacifist. But to return to the issue, as I said,

00:57:24 – 00:57:31:	I would, of fairness versus mercy. You should of course think of the parable, of the unforgiving,

00:57:32 – 00:57:36:	or whatever adjective it happens to be, if you have headers in your Bible. It's not in the

00:57:36 – 00:57:39:	original text, so it doesn't matter. But the unforgiving servant.

00:57:42 – 00:57:46:	Then Peter came up and said to him, Lord, how often will my brother sin against me,

00:57:46 – 00:57:52:	and I forgive him, as many as seven times? Jesus said to him, I do not say to you seven times,

00:57:52 – 00:57:59:	but seventy-seven times. Therefore the kingdom of heaven may be compared to a king who wished to

00:57:59 – 00:58:04:	settle accounts with his servants. When he began to settle, one was brought to him who owed him

00:58:04 – 00:58:10:	ten thousand talents, and since he could not pay, his master ordered him to be sold, with his wife

00:58:10 – 00:58:15:	and children, and all that he had, and payment to be made. So the servant fell on his knees, imploring

00:58:15 – 00:58:21:	him, have patience with me, and I will pay you everything. And out of pity for him, the master

00:58:21 – 00:58:27:	of that servant released him and forgave him the debt. But when that same servant went out,

00:58:27 – 00:58:32:	he found one of his fellow servants who owed him a hundred denarii, and seizing him, he began to

00:58:32 – 00:58:38:	choke him, saying, pay what you owe, so his fellow servant fell down and pleaded with him,

00:58:38 – 00:58:43:	have patience with me, and I will pay you. He refused and went and put him in prison,

00:58:43 – 00:58:48:	until he should pay the debt. When his fellow servants saw what had taken place, they were

00:58:48 – 00:58:52:	greatly distressed, and they went and reported to their master all that had taken place.

00:58:53 – 00:58:59:	Then his master summoned him and said to him, You wicked servant, I forgave you all that debt,

00:58:59 – 00:59:03:	because you pleaded with me, and should not you have had mercy on your fellow servant,

00:59:03 – 00:59:09:	as I had mercy on you. And in anger his master delivered him to the jailers, until he should pay

00:59:09 – 00:59:15:	all his debt. So also my heavenly father will do to every one of you, if you do not forgive

00:59:15 – 00:59:23:	your brother from your heart. And so we see initially, when the master is dealing with

00:59:23 – 00:59:29:	the unforgiving servant, the ungrateful servant, we see mercy. Because he forgives them this

00:59:29 – 00:59:34:	massive debt, and for those who don't know how large of a sum ten thousand talents is,

00:59:34 – 00:59:39:	it may as well be infinite. It is not something that you are ever repaying if you are simply a

00:59:39 – 00:59:45:	laborer. That's the sum of gold that a king would have in his stores. The average person

00:59:45 – 00:59:50:	will never possess that, will never be able to repay that. He was forgiven in infinite debt,

00:59:50 – 00:59:56:	and so of course that is typologically us as sinners, forgiven the infinite debt of sin

59:56 – 01:00:04
against God, on behalf of Christ. And then we see later when the master deals with him again,

01:00:05 – 01:00:10:	he's treated with fairness. Fairness is you have to repay the debt. You cannot repay the debt,

01:00:10 – 01:00:14:	you will never repay the debt. But it is fair to demand of you that the debt be repaid.

01:00:16 – 01:00:19:	And so in light of the fact that we are forgiven the infinite debt of sin,

01:00:20 – 01:00:25:	we are to forgive our fellow servants, our fellow Christians, our fellow man,

01:00:26 – 01:00:35:	his sins against us. Because those sins are minor. Here it's a number of denarius. Denarius is the

01:00:35 – 01:00:43:	day's wage for a hired hand for the average laborer. So it's not a trivial sum. It's a hundred days

01:00:43 – 01:00:51:	worth of labor, but it is nothing compared to 10,000 talents. It is a finite sum compared to an

01:00:51 – 01:00:59:	infinite sum. And so we are called to forgive these minor debts of our fellow servants in light of

01:00:59 – 01:01:07:	what Christ has forgiven us, what God has forgiven us on Christ's behalf. We are not called to be

01:01:07 – 01:01:15:	the wicked servant who fails to forgive his fellow servants, because that is rejecting Christ. That

01:01:15 – 01:01:22:	is rejecting faith. That is saying, no, I'm worthy of this, and it is my works that have done this for

01:01:22 – 01:01:29:	me. That is to be an apostate. That's what we see here. The wicked servant is a apostate, and that

01:01:29 – 01:01:34:	is why, of course, he is delivered over to the jailers until he should repay the debt, which,

01:01:34 – 01:01:42:	again, he cannot do, because this is sin. It is an infinite debt. And I just want to reiterate the

01:01:42 – 01:01:50:	import of the way God describes the forgiveness that he extends to us and the extent of the

01:01:50 – 01:01:58:	forgiveness that he expects us to try to deliver to each other. Obviously, God's completion of these

01:01:58 – 01:02:04:	things is utterly perfect, and ours is always utterly imperfect. Nevertheless, when God demonstrates

01:02:04 – 01:02:10:	the amount of indegree of forgiveness he extends to us, that's an example. Here is what perfect

01:02:10 – 01:02:17:	forgiveness looks like. You should contrast your forgiveness with this. And when we say things like

01:02:17 – 01:02:23:	this, again, it's not intended as condemnation for however you're forgiving people. It's a reminder

01:02:23 – 01:02:32:	that make sure you're actually forgiving them for one thing. If I've said in the past, if someone

01:02:32 – 01:02:39:	says, I'm sorry, say I forgive you. Don't worry about it, or it's no big deal. Say I forgive you.

01:02:39 – 01:02:45:	Announce forgiveness to them, because, frankly, you're doing something harmful if you won't announce

01:02:45 – 01:02:51:	their forgiveness. If someone is contrite, if they're repentant, and they know that they need

01:02:51 – 01:02:57:	forgiveness and they come to you, you have an obligation to deliver it in clear terms. And

01:02:57 – 01:03:03:	it's one of these things that we try to downplay socially by saying, I don't worry about it's no

01:03:03 – 01:03:10:	big deal. And that may be true, but that's the downplaying and that moment is far less important

01:03:10 – 01:03:16:	than them hearing from your lips, I forgive you. And frankly, that's equally important to you,

01:03:16 – 01:03:21:	because if you say to them, I don't worry about it's no big deal. Maybe later on, you think about

01:03:21 – 01:03:26:	it, you think, well, you know, maybe it's kind of a bigger deal than I thought it was. You know,

01:03:26 – 01:03:31:	looking back at what they did it, you know, I would forgive them, but I kind of have a problem

01:03:31 – 01:03:37:	with the way they did it. If you announce their forgiveness, that's also binding on you.

01:03:37 – 01:03:43:	And it makes it very simple. If you're thinking about it later, and they said, please forgive me,

01:03:43 – 01:03:48:	and you say, I forgive you. When you look back, that's bookended. That's the beginning and end

01:03:48 – 01:03:55:	of the thing. You have foreclosed on yourself dwelling on the past transgressions by announcing

01:03:55 – 01:04:01:	that forgiveness. Because instinctively, we know, well, okay, it's settled. It's over. And it's over

01:04:01 – 01:04:07:	in a way that's not over when you say that's no big deal. Don't worry about it. And Isaiah 43

01:04:07 – 01:04:13:	God says, I am he who blots out your transgressions for my sake, and I will not remember your sins.

01:04:14 – 01:04:19:	As Corey said earlier, this is God to His infinite and omniscient, who knows all things,

01:04:19 – 01:04:24:	saying I will not remember. We don't know how that works, and we don't need to worry about it.

01:04:24 – 01:04:30:	All we need to do is trust in that promise. He says something very similar in Psalm 103.

01:04:31 – 01:04:36:	The Lord works righteousness and justice for all who are oppressed. He made known in his ways to

01:04:36 – 01:04:41:	Moses, he acts for the people of Israel. The Lord is merciful and gracious, slow to anger,

01:04:41 – 01:04:47:	and abounding in steadfast love. He will not always chide nor will he keep his anger forever.

01:04:47 – 01:04:52:	He does not deal with us according to our sins, nor repay us according to our inequities. For as

01:04:52 – 01:04:58:	high as the heavens are above the earth, so great is his steadfast love toward those who fear him.

01:04:58 – 01:05:03:	As far as the east is from the west, so far does he remove our transgressions from us.

01:05:03 – 01:05:08:	As the Father shows compassion for his children, so the Lord shows compassion to those who fear

01:05:08 – 01:05:17:	him. For he knows our frame, he remembers that we are dust. When God says that his steadfast love

01:05:18 – 01:05:22:	for us separates our sin as far as the east is from the west,

01:05:22 – 01:05:31:	that's him describing in vaguely comprehensible human terms. There's an infinite distance between

01:05:31 – 01:05:36:	you and the penalty for the thing that you've done. Spiritually, that should be what we offer to

01:05:36 – 01:05:44:	each other. Now, we're talking about forgiveness in particular. We're talking about it in general,

01:05:44 – 01:05:49:	but we're doing it in view of last week's conversation also where we were discussing

01:05:49 – 01:05:54:	interpersonal relationships. When you're in a relationship, particularly a marriage,

01:05:56 – 01:05:59:	you're obviously going to remember the dumb crap that you did to each other in the past.

01:06:01 – 01:06:08:	That's not sinful. Humans are not capable of completely forgetting. We are, however,

01:06:08 – 01:06:17:	completely capable of reframing past events that at the time were horrible and caused tears and

01:06:17 – 01:06:22:	anger and distance where there should be no distance between two people who love each other.

01:06:23 – 01:06:29:	When forgiveness is announced and received, when forgiveness exists in that relationship,

01:06:30 – 01:06:34:	the fact of the separation, the fact of the pain between you,

01:06:36 – 01:06:41:	honestly, in most cases, it usually becomes laughable. That's going to depend on the personality.

01:06:41 – 01:06:45:	It's certainly going to be the case more. For example, in American relationships,

01:06:45 – 01:06:51:	then a Russian relationship where Eastern Europeans aren't as jovial as we are about things,

01:06:52 – 01:06:58:	but certainly within the West, old married couples laugh about the stupid stuff. They don't

01:06:58 – 01:07:04:	dwell on it, but if something comes to mind, all that's left in view of the forgiveness that you

01:07:04 – 01:07:09:	extend to each other for Christ's sake is how humorously stupid it was that you were ever mad

01:07:09 – 01:07:13:	in the first place, or that you ever did something so stupid that required forgiveness.

01:07:14 – 01:07:20:	And so the silliness in the evil, we're not minimizing the evil of it,

01:07:20 – 01:07:26:	but I think the fact that in retrospect, after forgiveness, we just see the absurdity of our

01:07:26 – 01:07:33:	own human folly shows the power of God's forgiveness. There's something that was truly

01:07:33 – 01:07:37:	evil that would have destroyed a relationship between a man and a woman, between a man and God,

01:07:38 – 01:07:45:	with forgiveness. All the bad has taken away, and all that's left is the stupidity and the

01:07:45 – 01:07:49:	absurdity that we would have done something against God or against someone we love in the

01:07:49 – 01:07:58:	first place. And it's for us in these times, before the judgment thrown, before we get to that point,

01:07:58 – 01:08:02:	it's okay to laugh. It's okay to forget too, like you're blessed if you completely forget

01:08:02 – 01:08:08:	about that stuff. But if you remember, remember and laugh and say, that was just silly. I'm so

01:08:08 – 01:08:14:	sorry, I was dumb. Can you believe we did this? I will never do that thing again. That's repentance,

01:08:14 – 01:08:21:	and it's the joyful Christian life to say, yeah, I sinned. And another crucial part, point that

01:08:21 – 01:08:28:	we wanted to make in today's episode is paying attention to when a sin occurs and when forgiveness

01:08:28 – 01:08:35:	is delivered, as it relates to us interacting with each other. What I mean by this is, if you're a

01:08:35 – 01:08:41:	young man, and you're looking for a wife, and you find someone, and she's not completely perfect,

01:08:41 – 01:08:45:	just as you're not completely perfect, A, congratulations, you found a human being,

01:08:45 – 01:08:54:	she's going to be great, B, if she has sins in her past, and then you come to her and you say,

01:08:54 – 01:08:59:	I want you to be my wife. There's no forgiveness there for you even to extend her, but she didn't

01:08:59 – 01:09:06:	do anything against you. If she sinned in her past, you should not ever make her feel like she needs

01:09:06 – 01:09:13:	to apologize to you. Now, if she's a good girl, if she's repentant, she will look back and say,

01:09:13 – 01:09:18:	yeah, it's not me anymore. I wish that I hadn't done that. I can't undo it. I'm a completely

01:09:18 – 01:09:25:	different person now. You take her as she is, and you love her as she is, and whatever regret

01:09:25 – 01:09:32:	she has for her past sins that she's repented of and left behind, you should be like God.

01:09:32 – 01:09:38:	You should forget about those things and never think that that colors who she is, because we're

01:09:38 – 01:09:43:	not talking about sins within a relationship. We're talking about you had no idea this other

01:09:43 – 01:09:51:	person existed, and then you decide if she's for you or not. If she is, you have nothing

01:09:52 – 01:09:56:	that you can hold against her, even apart from the fact that you should forgive anything that you

01:09:56 – 01:10:00:	did. What we're saying is that there's a case to be made that you shouldn't even be thinking about

01:10:00 – 01:10:04:	all I need to forgive her for what she did, because she didn't do it to you. She did it

01:10:04 – 01:10:11:	to God, or he did it to God. You're not just picking on girls here. We're all sinners.

01:10:13 – 01:10:16:	When someone comes to you and you create a relationship with another human being

01:10:16 – 01:10:24:	who is a fallen sinful creature, there's a clean slate in that relationship,

01:10:24 – 01:10:28:	and you try to make sure that you keep that slate clean every day. By forgiving whatever

01:10:28 – 01:10:33:	sins occur within the relationship, you're going to have a lifetime to do stupid stuff to each other

01:10:33 – 01:10:40:	you have to forgive in both directions. For the young girls who are listening,

01:10:41 – 01:10:48:	you should not be burdened by things that you've already repented for. The comfort of the gospel,

01:10:48 – 01:10:52:	when we commit sins against God, when we do these things, we realize they're terrible.

01:10:53 – 01:10:59:	We need to trust in God's promises about how far he separates us from our sins. When he talks about

01:10:59 – 01:11:05:	blotting and covering and removing and forgetting, we need to trust that God has done that for us.

01:11:07 – 01:11:10:	As we talked about last week, when you're talking about someone you can create a life with,

01:11:10 – 01:11:17:	it's not about a perfect person. It's about someone who is going to be able to fulfill

01:11:18 – 01:11:24:	the duties of a good spouse who's not going to have the kind of baggage that will become insurmountable.

01:11:24 – 01:11:30:	There are cases where that's simply the case, but the fact that anyone has ever done something

01:11:30 – 01:11:36:	wrong in their past, you shouldn't assume that it's baggage. It's a case by case thing. Someone

01:11:36 – 01:11:42:	did something and they regret it and they're absolved and it's behind them. That's the end of it.

01:11:42 – 01:11:48:	Frankly, it's going to depend on circumstances, but I would say in general, if you're already the

01:11:49 – 01:11:55:	point that you love someone and you want to have a life with them, all the things being equal,

01:11:55 – 01:12:00:	I think the default should be to say, there's nothing here for me to even see. I'm going to say

01:12:00 – 01:12:05:	you should forgive them because the point I was just trying to make is that you shouldn't feel

01:12:05 – 01:12:08:	like you have to forgive them for anything because it's none of your business. You can decide,

01:12:09 – 01:12:13:	do I want this person to be a part of my life? When you get to that point and you say yes,

01:12:14 – 01:12:20:	that's it. To become one flesh and it's effectively a new person. The new couple

01:12:20 – 01:12:25:	is a new thing and you're starting from scratch. Try not to pile up too many more mistakes with

01:12:25 – 01:12:31:	each other. Don't make the past mistakes and try to avoid making future mistakes. When you do,

01:12:31 – 01:12:36:	forgive quickly and easily and get to the point that you can laugh about it. You'll have a very

01:12:36 – 01:12:42:	long and happy and successful marriage. If you're willing to extend the grace to each other,

01:12:42 – 01:12:49:	the God extends to you. Part of that is keeping an eye on what God commands and trying. If you're

01:12:49 – 01:12:53:	thinking day by day about I want to serve God faithfully, I want to be a good wife, I want to

01:12:53 – 01:12:59:	be a good husband. If you have that in view, when you sin, it's not going to be huge stuff.

01:13:00 – 01:13:03:	You're not going to sin catastrophically. You're going to sin in smaller,

01:13:03 – 01:13:08:	stupid ways. You're not going to fall into the big ticket traps that occur when you're not paying

01:13:08 – 01:13:15:	any attention. That's the reason that the rule of the third use of the law is so vital. The reason

01:13:15 – 01:13:21:	it's worth talking about is not to burden consciences. It's to say, hey, here's a way not to have a

01:13:21 – 01:13:27:	burdened conscience in the first place. Obey God, fear Him, love Him, treasure His precepts,

01:13:27 – 01:13:32:	and you won't have a situation in your relationship where you have this terrible stuff to forgive.

01:13:33 – 01:13:37:	The ideal relationship is one where you don't accumulate those mistakes, those sins,

01:13:37 – 01:13:42:	and you don't have a bunch of baggage in the relationship to carry around

01:13:42 – 01:13:49:	until you forgive. You forgive quickly and freely, and you trust that God's promise that He will

01:13:49 – 01:13:54:	blot those sins out for that person holds within your relationship as it does between them and God.

01:13:56 – 01:14:03:	Typology is a great gift from God to the Christian and to the church. Little foreshadowing

01:14:03 – 01:14:12:	for the Sacramentology episode, but marriage is used throughout Scripture as a type for the

01:14:12 – 01:14:19:	antitype that is Christ's sacrifice for the church. Marriage is used as the type for the

01:14:19 – 01:14:24:	antitype that is Christ's relationship to and with the church, with believers.

01:14:26 – 01:14:32:	This is a helpful way to look at how you should approach marriage, and this goes for both young

01:14:32 – 01:14:37:	men and young women or middle-aged if you happen to be getting married older.

01:14:40 – 01:14:47:	Who you were before you became a Christian is in large part irrelevant

01:14:49 – 01:14:56:	from God's perspective. All of those sins do not carry over after the altar.

01:14:57 – 01:15:02:	That is the dividing line for the Christian. The dividing line is Christ's sacrifice.

01:15:04 – 01:15:07:	When you become a Christian, when you are given that free gift of faith,

01:15:09 – 01:15:15:	those sins are gone there in the past. Yes, there's this tension of now but not yet for

01:15:15 – 01:15:21:	the Christian because we still live in a sinful fallen world, in sinful fallen flesh,

01:15:21 – 01:15:28:	but we have the beginnings of these eternal things. We have the beginnings of paradise.

01:15:28 – 01:15:33:	We have the beginning of sanctification that grows as we progress in the Christian life,

01:15:33 – 01:15:40:	and yes, there is progress in the Christian life. But that altar on which Christ died,

01:15:41 – 01:15:47:	that's the true dividing line because the sins are in the past with reference to that point in time,

01:15:47 – 01:15:54:	and the new you is the future. You should think of marriage in the same way.

01:15:56 – 01:16:01:	Those things that happened in your past or her past or your past and his past,

01:16:03 – 01:16:09:	you are leaving those in the past. The marriage altar is the dividing line.

01:16:10 – 01:16:17:	The two shall become one flesh. That is a new person. That is a new creation by God.

01:16:18 – 01:16:24:	So leave what happened in the past, in the past. Yes, there may be consequences with which you have

01:16:24 – 01:16:32:	to deal in this life because that is the reality of the fallen flesh. Handle those things as necessary,

01:16:32 – 01:16:39:	but do not bring up those things from the past. Absolutely never use them as a weapon against

01:16:39 – 01:16:45:	the other person. These are not things that you get to hold over the other person that give you

01:16:45 – 01:16:51:	power to wield to manipulate or to force some sort of action out of your spouse.

01:16:52 – 01:16:57:	That is exactly what you should not be doing. That makes you the wicked servant, in fact.

01:16:59 – 01:17:02:	All of that stuff is left. That altar is the dividing line.

01:17:04 – 01:17:11:	So bear that typological relationship in mind with regard to marriage. That is one of the things

01:17:11 – 01:17:16:	that we can take out of Scripture when Scripture uses marriage as a type.

01:17:18 – 01:17:24:	But keep in mind that tension in the Christian life of now but not yet,

01:17:26 – 01:17:32:	because that is true. It flows through all of this. The sins still exist because we remember them,

01:17:33 – 01:17:36:	as David says in the Psalms.

01:17:38 – 01:17:43:	Your sins are ever before you. You remember the things you have done against God, the things

01:17:43 – 01:17:48:	you should not have done, and of course you regret them. You feel shame for them. That's proper.

01:17:50 – 01:17:57:	But also remember that you have been forgiven for those. So use that memory insofar as you

01:17:57 – 01:18:01:	still have it. Maybe God has blessed you with forgetting some of them. Undoubtedly he has

01:18:01 – 01:18:04:	blessed you with forgetting some of them. No human being has perfect memory.

01:18:06 – 01:18:13:	But use what you remember of those sins to drive you into God's word,

01:18:13 – 01:18:18:	into that forgiveness, into the Christian life. That is part of what it means to be a Christian.

01:18:19 – 01:18:27:	You seek that sanctification. You seek to do better. And a quote comes to mind from

01:18:27 – 01:18:30:	Saint John Chrysostom that is an excellent one for this point.

01:18:31 – 01:18:38:	Do not be ashamed when you repent. It is a medicine for sin. It's phrased various ways.

01:18:39 – 01:18:41:	Do not be ashamed when you repent, but when you sin.

01:18:44 – 01:18:49:	That's the point. When you sin, immediately turn to God.

01:18:51 – 01:18:56:	Don't feel that because you've sinned, now you've separated yourself from God and there's a chasm,

01:18:56 – 01:18:59:	and you have to do X, Y and Z before you can approach God.

01:19:01 – 01:19:05:	That is the voice of Satan telling you that you need to separate yourself from God.

01:19:07 – 01:19:13:	That is the absolute worst thing you can do at that moment. What you should do is immediately

01:19:13 – 01:19:19:	turn to God and repent. Turn away from that sin. That is what God commands you to do. That is what

01:19:19 – 01:19:26:	God wants you to do. Because if you hold on to that sin, which is exactly what you're doing,

01:19:26 – 01:19:31:	if instead of repenting you say that I need to do these things before I turn to God,

01:19:31 – 01:19:35:	you're holding on to that sin. Don't keep your sin.

01:19:37 – 01:19:42:	Christ paid for that sin on the cross. He paid for not only every sin you have ever committed,

01:19:43 – 01:19:46:	any sin you are committing now if you are committing a sin while listening to this.

01:19:47 – 01:19:54:	He also paid for every sin you will commit. From the perspective of God, there's no real

01:19:54 – 01:19:59:	difference between the sins you committed when you were five years old and the sins you committed

01:19:59 – 01:20:06:	when you were, are, or will be 50 years old. It's the same from God's perspective. They were all

01:20:06 – 01:20:16:	forgiven. All of your sins were forgiven on the cross. So turn to God immediately when you sin.

01:20:17 – 01:20:21:	Don't hold on to those sins. Don't keep them for yourself. That's what Satan wants you to do,

01:20:22 – 01:20:28:	because that's what he's doing. That's what every single person who will spend eternity

01:20:28 – 01:20:33:	in his kingdom is doing, holding on to those sins instead of handing them off to Christ.

01:20:35 – 01:20:40:	That's the miraculous or the wonderful exchange of which Luther speaks in his writing.

01:20:40 – 01:20:46:	We get to hand Christ all of our sins, and he hands us his righteousness.

01:20:47 – 01:20:51:	That's the gospel. You are righteous on account of Christ's work on the cross,

01:20:51 – 01:20:56:	not because of anything you do, and he has taken all of your sins, forgiven them,

01:20:56 – 01:21:05:	and God will forget them. And so in this life, part of the Christian life is forgiving others

01:21:05 – 01:21:12:	in the way insofar as we are capable that God has forgiven us. So forgive others their trespasses

01:21:12 – 01:21:18:	against you, and forget them if possible. If you don't think about them, you will eventually

01:21:18 – 01:21:22:	forget them. That's how it works. That's how human memory works. That is a blessing from

01:21:22 – 01:21:28:	God that we can forget these things. And that is particularly true in marriage.

01:21:30 – 01:21:34:	You are creating a new life with someone. You are a new creation. You are one flesh.

01:21:36 – 01:21:40:	That is what God has joined together, and so let not man separate. That includes you,

01:21:40 – 01:21:45:	incidentally, you are still man. Do not hold on to those things from the past.

01:21:47 – 01:21:51:	That will do you and your spouse no good. It can only work evil.

01:21:53 – 01:21:58:	So leave that all before you approach the altar and start your new life.

01:21:59 – 01:22:06:	Yes, what we spoke of in the previous episode is, of course, important. It matters to this life.

01:22:07 – 01:22:17:	But as Christians, as forgiven human beings, yes still sinful, yes still fallen, yes still living

01:22:17 – 01:22:25:	in this world, we are called to forgive others because we have been forgiven. And that is not

01:22:25 – 01:22:31:	just because we've been forgiven. It is also because God wants to pour out his blessings on us.

01:22:31 – 01:22:39:	And as was mentioned at the beginning of the episode, when you obey God, there are blessings

01:22:39 – 01:22:44:	attendant that obedience. Some of them flow naturally from the obedience. So for instance,

01:22:44 – 01:22:50:	if you do not practice birth control in your marriage, or likely than not,

01:22:50 – 01:22:54:	children will be a natural consequence of that. Children are a blessing from God,

01:22:55 – 01:22:59:	particularly the children of one's youth, as the Psalms very clearly say.

01:23:01 – 01:23:07:	But the inverse of that, of course, is that if you ignore the blessings of God, do not seek

01:23:07 – 01:23:16:	the blessings of God, often they will not flow. So part of being a Christian is seeking those

01:23:16 – 01:23:26:	blessings from God, and you seek those blessings by obeying God. God is the good Father. You ask

01:23:26 – 01:23:31:	for a fish, he's going to give you a fish, not a serpent. So seek these things from God. Repent,

01:23:31 – 01:23:38:	turn to God. God will bless you. This isn't a prosperity gospel. This isn't a therapeutic

01:23:38 – 01:23:44:	gospel. This is simply the word of Scripture. God says they will bless you. All things work

01:23:44 – 01:23:50:	together for good, for those who are called according to His purposes, for Christians,

01:23:50 – 01:23:57:	for those to whom He has given the free gift of faith. Now we don't know, in our limited

01:23:57 – 01:24:03:	understanding, how everything works together. Undoubtedly God will help us to see that after

01:24:03 – 01:24:08:	the fact in paradise. We'll see how everything works together to bring us to where we're standing

01:24:08 – 01:24:12:	when we finally understand. But even if we don't understand in this life,

01:24:13 – 01:24:20:	we can know for certain that God is absolutely trustworthy, that everything He has ever said

01:24:20 – 01:24:25:	is absolutely true, and He has told us that all things work together for the good, and that He

01:24:25 – 01:24:34:	intends to bless us. And so what the Christian does is very simple. We believe. I think the

01:24:34 – 01:24:41:	discussion of Christian forgiveness provides a very interesting contrast with the discussion of

01:24:41 – 01:24:50:	the conduct of doxing. When someone's dox is published and it shows years of past transgressions,

01:24:50 – 01:24:56:	particularly for someone who is in the church, who is receiving Confession on Absolution Weekly,

01:24:56 – 01:25:04:	who is receiving Communion, who has been publicly announced by the pastor in God's voice to be

01:25:04 – 01:25:12:	forgiven for those sins, when a doxer comes along with a dossier, with years of past transgressions

01:25:12 – 01:25:18:	and says, aha, look what I found. I have called out this evil man, and here is

01:25:18 – 01:25:27:	all of his secret wickedness. One of two things is occurring. Either the man who's being doxed,

01:25:27 – 01:25:35:	who's being accused, is leading a completely two-faced life, where whatever is in the dox

01:25:35 – 01:25:45:	is their true nature, and then their public life was a lie. Or the doxer is doing something that is

01:25:45 – 01:25:55:	the purest essence of Satan himself. When Satan was before the counsel of God accusing Job as

01:25:55 – 01:26:04:	he accuses all men, when the dox or the satanic accuser lays out, here's all this stuff. The

01:26:04 – 01:26:12:	other possibility is that those things that the dox victim has done in the past are sins for which

01:26:12 – 01:26:19:	he's been forgiven, things that he's repented of, that he is sorry for, that he's turned away from,

01:26:19 – 01:26:26:	and been forgiven publicly by God for those things. And when someone comes along and says,

01:26:26 – 01:26:33:	but here is all these accusations, it is the purest form of what Satan seeks to do to all of us.

01:26:34 – 01:26:40:	It's how he tries to burden our consciences with past sins. When we're Christians, when we're living

01:26:40 – 01:26:46:	sanctified lives, where we're receiving confession and absolution, where forgiveness is being

01:26:46 – 01:26:51:	announced, where we know it when we read the Word of God that announces our forgiveness

01:26:51 – 01:26:57:	through the very pages of Scripture in God's own voice. Satan wants to say, no, you're not really

01:26:57 – 01:27:02:	forgiven. Don't believe that packalize in church. Don't believe that crap you're reading in the Bible.

01:27:02 – 01:27:05:	You did something wrong in the past, and I'm going to destroy you for it.

01:27:07 – 01:27:12:	Someone who does not have confident faith can be torn down by that. And it's what he does in all of

01:27:12 – 01:27:18:	our lives. Satan's always trying to dox all of us personally, using malformed consciences,

01:27:19 – 01:27:24:	saying, here's this stuff you did a long time ago, or here's that one thing you did recently

01:27:24 – 01:27:32:	that you knew better, and look how disgusting you are. The Christian response to the disgusting

01:27:32 – 01:27:39:	sins that we commit is to repent, to say, yeah, that's disgusting. I hate that too. I never wanted

01:27:39 – 01:27:44:	anything to do with that. I found a sin. I turn away from it. I ask God for forgiveness.

01:27:45 – 01:27:50:	A Christian within his own Christian life who conducts himself in that way is free from the

01:27:50 – 01:27:54:	guilt for those sins, because those sins have been laid at the foot of the cross. And there's no

01:27:54 – 01:27:59:	purchase for Satan. When he comes along with your secret dox or your public dox, whatever it is,

01:27:59 – 01:28:04:	there's a litany of accusations. If you're already forgiven by God because you're repentant for

01:28:04 – 01:28:09:	anything that's actually sinful in there, it may not be because, of course, Satan is the ultimate

01:28:09 – 01:28:15:	liar. He will lie and twist anything that he uses to try to get you to reject your faith.

01:28:16 – 01:28:23:	It's a tricky thing, and it's one of the weak spots that we have in an immature faith,

01:28:23 – 01:28:30:	is to not be able to distinguish between, my heart is accused by the words of God in Scripture.

01:28:30 – 01:28:34:	My heart is accused when I hear someone preaching or speaking otherwise

01:28:35 – 01:28:40:	about the things of God, because I know that I have done something against God.

01:28:42 – 01:28:46:	God, through the Holy Spirit, desires an outcome of repentance

01:28:46 – 01:28:52:	and to deliver forgiveness to you. Satan desires the opposite. He doesn't want you to repent.

01:28:52 – 01:28:56:	He wants you to despair. He doesn't want you to be Peter. He wants you to be Judas.

01:28:57 – 01:29:03:	And so every time any of us confronts our own past sins, those are the two directions.

01:29:04 – 01:29:12:	Either God condemning the sin and saying, I died for this sin. I forgive you. Or Satan saying,

01:29:12 – 01:29:16:	there's no possible hope for you. You've done something too terrible. There's never going

01:29:16 – 01:29:21:	to be any forgiveness. I will accuse and accuse and accuse until you take your own life and seal

01:29:21 – 01:29:27:	your fate. It's two completely different responses to exactly the same fact pattern.

01:29:27 – 01:29:34:	And so that's part of what makes this important to actually discuss among believers, because

01:29:36 – 01:29:40:	the vast majority of people who are listening to stone choir, who listened to anything that

01:29:40 – 01:29:45:	they hear that's going to have something from God, almost no one ever gives any feedback,

01:29:45 – 01:29:50:	because it's a one-way thing. And that's fine. That's a normal part of listening versus speaking.

01:29:52 – 01:29:57:	When you hear something and it convicts your conscience, the important thing is that your

01:29:57 – 01:30:04:	conscience is not malformed and that you take a response that is itself guided by the very

01:30:04 – 01:30:10:	scripture that condemned whatever act it was. So if you did something in your past and you fail

01:30:10 – 01:30:15:	one or more of the tests that perhaps we lay out for what a perfect life would look like,

01:30:16 – 01:30:22:	that is never intended by us to heap condemnation on you, to heap burning coals on your head.

01:30:22 – 01:30:29:	The intent is to say, here's what God wants for us. When we do this, we are blessed. Not saving

01:30:29 – 01:30:33:	ourselves, as we said earlier on. This is not about, I'm going to do really good and I'm going to

01:30:33 – 01:30:39:	save myself. No, that's completely out of the question from the beginning. That's the very

01:30:39 – 01:30:44:	first thing that Christian needs to learn. He can't save himself. Satan wants you to think,

01:30:44 – 01:30:49:	you can't save yourself and God can't save you either. And that's the distinction. When you

01:30:50 – 01:30:56:	are confronted with your sin, you realize, I can't save myself from this. Listen to God

01:30:56 – 01:31:01:	and know that he has forgiven that sin, that he has paid the price for it, and that you have

01:31:01 – 01:31:07:	already received that forgiveness by believing that the sacrifice was given for you. Do not

01:31:07 – 01:31:13:	listen to Satan who continues to accuse you and whisper and pester in your ear and bring up

01:31:13 – 01:31:18:	things from years ago that you've long since repented of, or that were never sins in the

01:31:18 – 01:31:23:	first place and he's trying to trick you into thinking they were evil. He's a deceiver and

01:31:23 – 01:31:29:	he's an accuser. That's not what the law does. God's law, God's perfect will, never deceives.

01:31:30 – 01:31:36:	And it doesn't accuse in the same way that Satan accuses, because Satan's accusation is hopeless.

01:31:37 – 01:31:44:	When the word of God, when God's law accuses us of our sin, it is narrow in saying,

01:31:44 – 01:31:51:	this is contrary to my will, repent, receive forgiveness. There's always an out.

01:31:52 – 01:31:55:	I don't mean to say that in the sense that you can continue just do stuff and

01:31:57 – 01:32:01:	knowingly sin and say, well, yeah, God's got this covered. I don't need to worry about it.

01:32:02 – 01:32:05:	You will drive out the Holy Spirit if you continuously do that,

01:32:05 – 01:32:09:	but it'll take a while. It's not instantaneous. It's something else Satan wants you to think,

01:32:09 – 01:32:16:	oh, you did it once, that's too big. That's how all these little, these sins are small when we're

01:32:16 – 01:32:21:	looking at them. Like, oh, I want to, I'm going to do that. It seems like a good idea. The moment you

01:32:21 – 01:32:27:	do it, Satan's like, oh, no, that was a huge sin, actually, and you will never ever be able to reconcile

01:32:27 – 01:32:32:	to God for that. Scripture says the opposite. Scripture says that all sin has been paid for

01:32:32 – 01:32:40:	on the cross. It's done. It is finished. When faithful preaching announces it, when Scripture

01:32:40 – 01:32:44:	announces it, when you hear someone just discussing it, and the Holy Spirit works through your heart

01:32:44 – 01:32:51:	to say, I screwed up. I need to repent. You already have. That is repentance. With a Christian,

01:32:51 – 01:32:56:	the repentance receives that forgiveness immediately. The reason that we have the

01:32:56 – 01:33:02:	absolution in church, and the reason that we are to forgive each other face to face,

01:33:02 – 01:33:06:	is we were just talking about a minute ago. If your spouse, if your future spouse,

01:33:06 – 01:33:12:	sins against you, forgive them immediately. Say, I forgive you. This is gone. It does not exist

01:33:12 – 01:33:17:	between us. We do that so that there's no purchase for Satan to come along and say,

01:33:17 – 01:33:23:	but look at this. I got this laundry list of stuff. Are you serious? Are you really going to

01:33:23 – 01:33:28:	love this person? Do you really think God's going to love you? No. There's absolutely no room for

01:33:28 – 01:33:36:	that in the Christian life. Christian discussions can speak frankly about evil without it being

01:33:38 – 01:33:43:	something that beats someone down. You may momentarily feel beaten down, and that's

01:33:43 – 01:33:48:	you realizing, I'm a bigger sinner than I thought. That's a good thing, because that's God working

01:33:48 – 01:33:57:	within you. But the very next beat is, I repent of this, God forgive me, and to believe and to

01:33:57 – 01:34:01:	know with certainty that you have received that forgiveness, because the price has already been

01:34:01 – 01:34:07:	paid. That's the reason that we sometimes talk about fixing our eyes on the crucifix,

01:34:07 – 01:34:12:	on the cross with Jesus' body on it. Because as long as you're pointed at that, and that is your

01:34:12 – 01:34:19:	focus, you will not get distracted by, oh, I don't know if God loves me enough for this one.

01:34:19 – 01:34:24:	Really? Look at the cross. Look who's up there. Look what's happening. When you look at that,

01:34:24 – 01:34:28:	you can't possibly think that God doesn't love you enough to forgive whatever it is you did.

01:34:29 – 01:34:32:	And that's why we're to forgive each other for the same reason, because whatever

01:34:32 – 01:34:36:	someone else did to you isn't nearly as bad as the things that we have done to God.

01:34:36 – 01:34:40:	And this isn't relativism. And we've talked in the past about saying, well, you know,

01:34:41 – 01:34:44:	we particularly called out the thing saying, pedophilia is a speck in your neighbor's eye.

01:34:45 – 01:34:51:	I'm not saying anything like that. I'm saying that the accumulation of a lifetime of sin

01:34:51 – 01:35:00:	is itself incalculable by human standards. God can calculate it, he knows. But the individual thing

01:35:00 – 01:35:07:	that someone does to harm you doesn't stack up. And so when we forgive each other, it's because

01:35:07 – 01:35:13:	we don't want to receive what we know we deserve. And that's a cause for joy and not despair.

01:35:13 – 01:35:16:	Ultimately, all these things, even when it's a momentary pause, you're like, man,

01:35:16 – 01:35:22:	that's unbelievable. That's what Corey was saying. Most of the time, we can't forget most things.

01:35:22 – 01:35:26:	And we look back at them, we should be like, it's astonishing. How stupid and evil. And it's

01:35:26 – 01:35:35:	unbelievable. And part of that just astonishment at our own past evil is a way of reinforcing.

01:35:35 – 01:35:40:	That's not me anymore. That's not who I am in Christ. Even if you're a Christian at the time,

01:35:40 – 01:35:45:	you're like, what was I thinking? It was evil. It was wrong. I shouldn't have done it. And so

01:35:45 – 01:35:52:	your future life is guided by saying that there's no room in my life for perhaps my past life.

01:35:52 – 01:35:57:	That is true repentance. And that is a life that is filled with God's forgiveness,

01:35:57 – 01:36:01:	because you will sin in the future, but you won't commit the same types and degrees of sin,

01:36:02 – 01:36:08:	at least with the same volume and frequency, simply because you will spend more time being

01:36:08 – 01:36:12:	hemmed in by all the good things that God provides where there's just less and less room

01:36:12 – 01:36:17:	for stepping too far out of line and getting further away to the point that Satan can start

01:36:17 – 01:36:21:	whispering and saying, yeah, there's there's no hope for you. You're your way too far gone.

01:36:22 – 01:36:26:	That's the rock bottom that someone who's a substance abuser or something else

01:36:26 – 01:36:34:	hits and without God, they're just stuck in that pit until they die. Christianity is saying that

01:36:34 – 01:36:39:	the forgiveness will lift you out of that pit. God will lift you out of that pit. You can't do it

01:36:39 – 01:36:45:	yourself, but the work has been done. And when you believe it, you receive it. And that comfort

01:36:45 – 01:36:50:	that we receive as Christians in the perfect forgiveness from God, when we extend it to others,

01:36:50 – 01:36:55:	we are blessed with a peaceful life as much as we can and have in this life.

01:36:56 – 01:37:03:	A key part of the Christian life is sanctification. And part of sanctification

01:37:04 – 01:37:10:	is that the Holy Spirit will lead you to recognize sins in your life.

01:37:12 – 01:37:16:	And as you deal with those sins in your life, because that is part of sanctification,

01:37:17 – 01:37:23:	there'll be a sin, you'll focus on that sin, you'll get over that sin, or you'll at least

01:37:23 – 01:37:29:	mitigate that sin, you'll be less prone to it as part of this process of sanctification.

01:37:31 – 01:37:37:	But as soon as you've done that, the Holy Spirit will identify another area in your life where

01:37:37 – 01:37:44:	you're sinning. This will continue for the entirety of your Christian life on this earth.

01:37:44 – 01:37:50:	Now for the immature Christian, that at first seems terrible. You mean there will always be

01:37:50 – 01:37:57:	more problems? Yes, there will always be more problems. That is part of life, part of this life.

01:37:59 – 01:38:04:	But that's not bad news. And I notably don't mean immature as a pejorative,

01:38:04 – 01:38:09:	simply an objective assessment. It is great news for the Christian

01:38:10 – 01:38:16:	that the Spirit will lead you to recognize these things. Because that is preparing you for and

01:38:16 – 01:38:22:	leading you into a better life, ultimately preparing you for the next life.

01:38:24 – 01:38:29:	That is the process of sanctification. That is the Christian life. That is great news for the

01:38:29 – 01:38:36:	Christian. You are turning to God, walking toward God, getting rid of these things that

01:38:36 – 01:38:41:	are dragging you down. These things that are making your life objectively worse.

01:38:41 – 01:38:44:	And so it is great whenever you can get rid of any of them.

01:38:45 – 01:38:52:	So sanctification is an ongoing process for the Christian. That is why we have the Holy Spirit.

01:38:52 – 01:38:57:	That is why we have God's Word. We have, of course, the Holy Spirit to help us understand

01:38:57 – 01:39:03:	God's Word. Without the Spirit, we could not understand the Word. But this is part of the

01:39:03 – 01:39:08:	Christian life. It is a progressive sanctifying of the Christian.

01:39:10 – 01:39:15:	Because as we have mentioned in previous episodes, you are either heading toward God or away from

01:39:15 – 01:39:21:	God. There is no such thing as standing still when it comes to the Christian life, when it comes to

01:39:22 – 01:39:26:	being a human being. Because if you're not a Christian, you're walking away from God.

01:39:27 – 01:39:30:	You are walking toward God or you are walking away from God.

01:39:31 – 01:39:37:	Sanctification is walking toward God. That is the Christian life. That is the purpose

01:39:37 – 01:39:44:	of the law. That's the third use of the law. It aids you in knowing what God wants you to do,

01:39:45 – 01:39:51:	because that is, again, God's will. And so you are walking God Word. That is what it means

01:39:51 – 01:39:57:	to be leading a Christian life. You know you're forgiven for your sins already,

01:39:58 – 01:40:03:	but you're being sanctified. You're becoming the person God always wanted you to be, the person

01:40:04 – 01:40:10:	God will make you in the next life. Because that is when the fullness of your sanctification

01:40:11 – 01:40:16:	will occur. This is something that Jesus describes in the parable in Luke 18.

01:40:18 – 01:40:23:	He also told this parable to some who trusted in themselves that they were righteous and treated

01:40:23 – 01:40:29:	others with contempt. Two men went up into the temple to pray, one a Pharisee and the other a

01:40:29 – 01:40:34:	tax collector. The Pharisee standing by himself prayed thus, God I thank you that I am not like

01:40:34 – 01:40:41:	other men, extortioners, unjust, adulterers, or even like this tax collector. I fast twice a week,

01:40:41 – 01:40:46:	I give tithes of all that I get, but the tax collector standing far off would not even lift

01:40:46 – 01:40:52:	up his eyes to heaven, but be his breast saying, God be merciful to me as sinner. I tell you this

01:40:52 – 01:40:57:	man went down to his house justified rather than the other. For everyone who exalts himself

01:40:57 – 01:41:04:	will be humbled, but the one who humbles himself will be exalted. So if you hear something in

01:41:04 – 01:41:13:	scripture that you feel condemns you, you are the tax collector in this parable. You are the man who

01:41:13 – 01:41:20:	has sin, who has done something, and you know it. And God says that you are justified for his sake

01:41:20 – 01:41:28:	by receiving the forgiveness through faith that was delivered at the cross. The man who is haughty,

01:41:28 – 01:41:34:	who sits around keeping track of other people's sins and announcing them and saying,

01:41:34 – 01:41:38:	look at the contrast between me and these other people, I'm so much better. That man is the man

01:41:38 – 01:41:46:	who's in spiritual trouble. The man who is momentarily troubled by his current sins or his past

01:41:46 – 01:41:52:	sins is in better shape than the man who's like, no, I got this figured out. So if you feel like,

01:41:52 – 01:42:00:	man, I'm not as good as I thought I was. Yeah, that's A, it's true. And B, that's good news.

01:42:00 – 01:42:05:	It means that the Holy Spirit is working within you and you are, frankly, you're more Christian

01:42:05 – 01:42:11:	than you were yesterday. You're more Christian than when you didn't realize the depths of your sin.

01:42:11 – 01:42:18:	Because once we realize that we can't fix it, that only God can fix it, it becomes very simple.

01:42:19 – 01:42:27:	And so I just, again, I want to reiterate, Satan wants to dox you every moment of every day of your

01:42:27 – 01:42:34:	life to broadcast whatever evil you've done to the whole world to expose you and to make you feel

01:42:34 – 01:42:41:	like you have no hope in Christ. God wants the opposite. God wants to blot out and to

01:42:41 – 01:42:46:	forget your sins and to separate them as far as the east is from the west. And he accomplishes

01:42:46 – 01:42:53:	that through his word and through the sacraments. And Christians know and believe that. We know

01:42:54 – 01:42:59:	that the evil that we have done is blotted out by God because it's what he promised. It's not

01:42:59 – 01:43:04:	what we deserve. We're not saying a prayer, Lord, give me everything I deserve. We're saying,

01:43:04 – 01:43:09:	Lord, have mercy on me, a poor, miserable sinner. And God will answer that prayer.

01:43:11 – 01:43:18:	Undoubtedly, some who are listening to this episode will have called to mind the unforgivable sin.

01:43:19 – 01:43:25:	We're not deliberately ignoring the unforgivable sin. I'm going to address it right now. However,

01:43:26 – 01:43:31:	if you are still listening to this episode, I can confidently say you have not committed the

01:43:31 – 01:43:37:	unforgivable sin. Another standard by which the unforgivable sin, whether or not it has

01:43:37 – 01:43:44:	been committed, can be judged is if you can worry about it. If you can worry about the unforgivable

01:43:44 – 01:43:52:	sin, you have not committed the unforgivable sin. And this ties into something that Woe said about

01:43:52 – 01:43:58:	a sin being too big, which, of course, is a favorite accusation of Satan. I want to read

01:43:59 – 01:44:06:	just a short quote from CFW Volter. You are not rightly distinguishing law and gospel in the word

01:44:06 – 01:44:12:	of God if you claim the unforgivable sin against the Holy Spirit cannot be forgiven

01:44:12 – 01:44:20:	because of its magnitude. This is a vitally important point. Any time Satan tells you

01:44:20 – 01:44:23:	that you have committed a sin that is too big, he's lying.

01:44:25 – 01:44:32:	He is a wicked, vile liar. There is no such thing as a sin that is too big,

01:44:32 – 01:44:36:	as a sin that has a magnitude that is too great to be forgiven.

01:44:37 – 01:44:47:	The unforgivable sin is unforgivable because of its nature. It is impenitence. It is apostasy.

01:44:47 – 01:44:53:	It is the refusal to believe. It is the rejection of the free gift of salvation, of justification.

01:44:54 – 01:45:01:	It is not unforgivable because of its magnitude. And so when Satan says, well, that sin was too big,

01:45:01 – 01:45:06:	you always know that he's lying. You never have to worry about the sin being too big.

01:45:08 – 01:45:14:	Because all of your sins, every sin, everything was forgiven in Christ on the cross.

01:45:17 – 01:45:26:	Because Christ's sacrifice was of infinite value. That is the thing to keep in mind. Keep that in

01:45:26 – 01:45:33:	sight. Focus on the infinite value of Christ's sacrifice. Don't focus on the magnitude of your

01:45:33 – 01:45:41:	sins. Yes, until you have repented, you will focus on your sins. Those will drive you to

01:45:41 – 01:45:47:	repentance. That is, of course, the mirror, the second use of the law. But once that has

01:45:47 – 01:45:54:	driven you to repentance, focus on Christ. Focus on the word and the sacraments. Focus on the way

01:45:54 – 01:46:00:	that God brings his gifts to you. Because that infinite value of Christ's sacrifice on the cross

01:46:01 – 01:46:06:	covers any of the sins you have committed. So Satan is lying because, of course, he is the

01:46:06 – 01:46:12:	father of lies. He's always lying. So do not listen when he says, ah, that sin is too big.

01:46:12 – 01:46:23:	There's no such thing. Because our God is true and merciful. Our God is the ruler from Matthew 18,

01:46:23 – 01:46:31:	who forgives that infinite debt of his servant. That is the nature of our God. That is the nature

01:46:31 – 01:46:39:	of the gift of salvation that he has given us. Our debt is infinite. But so is Christ's sacrifice.

01:46:39 – 01:46:45:	So is God's mercy. So is God's grace. And so no matter how great your sins are,

01:46:45 – 01:46:49:	they have been forgiven. And you can absolutely rely on that.

01:46:51 – 01:46:58:	When we say, ah, men, we should keep in mind what it is we've said. It means truly,

01:46:58 – 01:47:04:	means let it be so. It means a number of things. But the full sense of it, when we say, ah, men,

01:47:04 – 01:47:08:	does something in Scripture, when we say, ah, men, does something God has promised,

01:47:09 – 01:47:14:	is we're affirming it's already happened. It is already so. Because God is so reliable

01:47:14 – 01:47:20:	that even if it is something in the distant future, it is so certain as to have already happened.

01:47:21 – 01:47:26:	That is the sense of what we're saying. And we should bear that in mind when we use that word.

01:47:29 – 01:47:34:	And so I'd like to read another passage from Hebrews to draw out some of these points we've

01:47:34 – 01:47:43:	gone over in this episode from Hebrews 10. For by a single offering he has perfected for all time

01:47:43 – 01:47:48:	those who are being sanctified. And the Holy Spirit also bears witness to us for after saying,

01:47:49 – 01:47:53:	this is the covenant that I will make with them. After those days declares the Lord,

01:47:54 – 01:47:58:	I will put my laws on their hearts and write them on their minds. Then he adds,

01:47:59 – 01:48:05:	I will remember their sins and their lawless deeds no more. Where there is forgiveness of sins,

01:48:05 – 01:48:12:	there is no longer any offering for sin. In this passage really contains

01:48:13 – 01:48:19:	the summary of everything we have gone over in this episode, all of the points we were making,

01:48:20 – 01:48:21:	that we hope to make.

01:48:23 – 01:48:29:	The single offering is Christ. That single offering was of infinite value,

01:48:29 – 01:48:34:	so there is no longer any offering for sin, because once for all, Christ offered what was

01:48:34 – 01:48:42:	necessary and all sufficient on the cross. God promises he will remember our sins no more.

01:48:43 – 01:48:48:	That is the greatest promise we can possibly hear. Because what God forgets,

01:48:49 – 01:48:55:	no longer exists, never existed. Our sins will be absolutely gone,

01:48:56 – 01:49:02:	to the point where they cannot even be recalled by God, because he promises to forget them,

01:49:02 – 01:49:07:	and his promises are always true. And that writing of the law on your heart,

01:49:08 – 01:49:14:	that's the third use. That's the spirit guiding you into a sanctified life. That is the process

01:49:14 – 01:49:21:	of sanctification that makes you a better Christian, makes you a better person. Because yes,

01:49:21 – 01:49:25:	being a Christian will make you a better person. That is part of the Christian life,

01:49:25 – 01:49:29:	that is the third use of the law, that is God's eternal will.

01:49:29 – 01:49:38:	Yes, the law accuses your fallen flesh, but the law is also turning your fallen flesh

01:49:38 – 01:49:42:	into something greater, preparing you for the glory of the next life.

01:49:43 – 01:49:48:	And that is good news for the Christian. And that is God's covenant with those who believe.

01:49:52 – 01:49:56:	And so all that remains now is to end with one more reading from Scripture.

01:49:57 – 01:50:03:	To close out this episode, where we hope that we have pointed out to you, highlighted for you,

01:50:04 – 01:50:08:	the fullness of what it means that God has forgiven your sins.

01:50:10 – 01:50:17:	Because that is the gospel, that is the good news, that is the greatest news in the history of the

01:50:17 – 01:50:21:	world. Because of course, that's what gospel means. It's good news.

01:50:21 – 01:50:29:	The Lord bless you and keep you. The Lord make his face to shine upon you and be gracious unto you.

01:50:30 – 01:50:37:	The Lord lift up his countenance upon you and give you peace. Amen.

01:51:21 – 01:51:22:	You