Unless those in society are of a Christian inclination already,
trying to have them understand the concept of God’s forgiveness is pretty much
pointless like wings on a penguin. The importance of other people forgiving and
God forgiving someone serve different functions. God’s forgiveness is base in
repentance and acceptance of what Christ has done on our behalf on the cross.
We empty ourselves in humbleness to approach the cross in a contrite spirit. In
the face of an awesome God there is no other manner proper. When we forgive
wrongs others have done to us we need to not necessarily forget the wrong but
not be willing to act on it. In this we emulate God in his forgiveness. God is
omniscient, he forgets nothing. When the Bible says the God no longer
“remembers” or sin what it is really saying is that He is no longer holding it
against us a debt against our account. We have been purchased with the blood of
Christ. God’s forgiveness if we’ve met the criteria cleans the slate for us to
start from “0” and work back towards holiness with the help of the Holy Spirit.
In my experience, most if not all non-Christians view this as a totally alien
or unacceptable concept. The world may view moral crimes just immoral but for
the secular world that does not even believe in God I find it hard to stomach
that they still hold to a “moral high ground” when they do not even believe in
an ultimate moral law giver. They don’t believe in any more absolute. Most view
man as the highest moral good. That’s like considering a computer made by a man
as the highest form of intelligence.
Although men can forgive other men this should never ever be
confused with the forgiveness of God who actually has the ability to forgive
the sin or wrong in a way that releases the offender from punishment due him on
the eternal scale. It is Salvation that is being dealt with here. Sadly, even
when religious people speak of God forgiving nowadays, even in religious
articles, the idea of the forgiveness is not matched up with Salvation often
(such is the case here). It is important to realize that when we sin against
others in a situation that requires them to forgive us it is not just them we
are wronging. When we are wronging someone whether by omission or commission,
we are sinning. By sinning we are first and foremost committing an offense
against God. One because we have disobeyed but also because we have committed
the infraction against another that is made in the image of the Creator. This
is especially true in the case of murder. If we do not reconcile ourselves
through repentance and forgiveness to God we alienate ourselves from him. If we
stay in this state until death we are condemned.
Conversely, if another person does not forgive us for our trespass
it is more an issue of the other person’s heart than ours. We realized we were
wrong and sought the forgiveness. If the one wronged knows this and remains
unmoved by the plea for forgiveness it presents the issue of a hardened heart.
How is this different from God? God would’ve forgiven a truly repentant person
in this situation because this is His nature. A perfectly just God would
forgive a truly repentant person that has accepted His Son. Whereas a person
that not forgiven a truly repentant person is not perfectly just.
When we enter the realm of seeing sin at the holistic level we
begin to see a synergism of powers bigger than individuals that rise to the
level of nations, nation states and leaders. Instead of cells we see what
amounts to multi-cellular organisms that are an amalgamation of the smaller
constituent components. We begin to see that the sins of the individual begin
to multiply as the consensus of a majority of these types of sinful people pick
“like” minded people at an ideological level. It’s like cancer that spreads on
cell at a time. When there is enough of
the disease the system eventually fails but the failure is the cause of a
million little accumulations of failure (sin). Therefore based on the
aforementioned states, I do not believe the Social Gospel that says social sins
are a collective whole or collective nature, an aspect of our society as a
whole itself which doesn't resemble the Kingdom of God .
I believe that it is just the opposite. It is the individuals that are all
individually responsible to God for their own sin. Jesus didn’t change entire towns or convert
entire towns. He converted individuals. Salvation is not a group thing, sanctification
can be communal and eventually glorification will be. Salvation? No! When we
die, we all pass through that turnstile of judgment one at a time. Entire
communities do not pass through as a herd, based on the merit of the collective
whole. This is where the Social Gospel gets it totally wrong (that along with the
fact that it advocates salvation by works). The sin of society is a million
little accumulations of cancer cells acting as a parasite on the entire system
that eventually kills the host. Change starts one person at a time. It’s called
discipleship. We are not going to save society as a whole if we do not act
individually to turn towards God first. It doesn’t say to love you neighbor
with all your heart, soul and mind and love the Lord God as yourself, it says
to love God first. If our hearts are not in the right place first, our actions
are nothing but works that do not gain us favor in God’s eyes.
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