"Because what is easier, to have said, 'your sins are forgiven,' or to have said, 'Rise and walk'?" Matthew 9:5
This verse has been stuck in my mind for a couple of days now. Jesus calls forgiving sins easy. As I read back through some Old Testament passages recently, it seems like for God, it is ridiculously easy for Him to forgive sins, and He wants to. He's just waiting for people to admit they've screwed up and turn around from it. Like, on the edge of His seat waiting. He doesn't want to bring destruction, or ruin, or any of those things which He said He would in the Torah if the people didn't follow the covenant. He's actually very specific about what would happen if they didn't keep up their end of the contract. Notice also how long it takes Him to bring about all the destruction, and how many generations it takes before the people are suffering through severe famines, seiges, and invasions. Many. This is God wanting to forgive and the people leaving Him no choice but to carry through with what He said with a heavy heart.
We tend to make God out as a Being who struggles to forgive, and because of certain theologies, requires blood in order to do it. In reality, we project our own difficulty in forgiving others and ourselves onto Him. If we hold grudges and want vengeance, we assume God does too. And in this way we make Him into our image instead of remaking ourselves into His. God says in the Scriptures that He takes no pleasure in the death of the wicked, He wants them to turn around not be destroyed.
In the passage where this verse is found, Jesus had told a paralytic that his sins were forgiven. He hadn't healed him yet, He had just absolved him without sacrifices in the temple, and the scribes who were there threw a fit accusing Him of blasphemy, because only God could forgive sins. And Jesus responds, "What's easier? To have said your sins are forgiven, or to have said, rise and walk?" And then tells the man to rise and walk, and he does.
Forgiveness is the easiest thing in comparison with healing a man with paralysis. As a Priest, it was one of my joys, when a man came to me with a heavy heart and a history of drugs and serious trouble, to declare to him as he recounted everything he had done and wanted to turn everything around, "By the authority of Jesus Christ, you are forgiven and absolved of all of your sins, in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit." It was the easiest thing in the world to do, and yet the impact on this young man was profound and devastatingly beautiful as he sobbed. It was the easiest thing in the world for God to forgive him through me, and yet afterwards was when the miraculous, "Rise and walk," was given to him, as I met with him twice to disciple him and then I didn't see him again. I later heard that he had passed away in a motorcycle accident from his mother. But before he died, he had brought all of his former drug addict and dealing friends to Christ, sharing with them what I had taught him in those two sessions. Forgiving him was as easy as breathing, but God making him rise and walk was truly a miracle.
God is the Father in the story of the prodigal son who forgives without recrimination or retribution; He just wanted His son to come to his senses and come home. But then there is the matter of making those paralyzed with hamartia to rise and walk. This is more difficult, and requires extreme measures, miraculous intervention through inclusion of us into the death, burial, and resurrection of His Son, Jesus Christ our Lord. His life flowing through us is the only way we cease to be paralyzed from our own malfunctioning flesh. And the only way this comes to be is through being baptized into His death, burial, and resurrection and offering our body parts to the Spirit of Christ voluntarily to live, act, and speak through us.
This has been a hard road of understanding for me personally. It is difficult to conceive of God not needing some kind of payment in order to be forgiven, because this is how I was taught and indoctrinated. This is what I was indoctrinated as to what salvation was, the forgiveness of sins, as though this was the sum total of what needed to happen. And yet God was more concerned with the harder work of curing the problem entirely while preserving our free choices. Forgiving our behaviors was easy. That wasn't as much of a concern, and certainly didn't require extreme or heroic measures. But solving the problem of human sin, that was something else entirely. That required a new "Adam" and a death which included the entire human race without actually destroying the entire human race. That required Jesus Christ, God the Son and human flesh conjoined and grown together in Mary's womb, dying on a cross and taking the entire human race with Him, so that the entire human race might be freed from the slavery to their own sinful flesh, and conjoined to Him so that they would carry what is born of God within them, activated, watered, by baptism into His death and resurrection.
Forgiveness is easy for God to give. Making us rise and walk, now that was miraculous.
No comments:
Post a Comment