A Mirror of God’s Forgiveness (2)

Stated Previously

Last time, I proved that it is the doctrine of the sacred scriptures and the Reformed confessions that we must freely forgive our neighbor of his trespasses against us, even before there is any evidence of true repentance. Our forgiveness of the neighbor is free and unconditional regardless of whether he is a believer or an unbeliever, whether he is of the body of the church or of the world. The calling is to love our neighbor; and loving the neighbor, we forgive him of his debt against us. That is rooted fundamentally in God himself and his free forgiveness of us. I wrote last time that our forgiveness of the neighbor is a mirror or reflection of God’s free forgiveness of us. However, God freely forgives the sins of his elect people only, and he always imputes the sins of the wicked to their accounts. When we forgive the neighbor, our forgiveness is powerless. Strictly speaking, it cannot save and cannot take a person out of the guilt of his sin. Neither can our forgiveness of the neighbor save him from the destruction of hell. God may be pleased to use his people for the salvation of his erring sheep, but it is God alone by his sovereign grace who forgives sins and redeems from the guilt of sin. Nonetheless, our forgiveness of the neighbor is free and without conditions, and in that we see a reflection of God.

The Reformed confessions teach God’s free forgiveness of his people. I note all the instances in the confessions that speak of the free and unconditional forgiveness of sins. This is not to mention all the times the confessions speak of God’s gracious forgiveness and gracious justification of us. Grace, by definition, is God’s eternal disposition of favor toward his undeserving people. Grace freely accomplishes all our salvation without any activities of man.

True faith is not only a certain knowledge…but also an assured confidence, which the Holy Ghost works by the gospel in my heart; that not only to others, but to me also, remission of sin, everlasting righteousness, and salvation are, freely given by God, merely of grace, only for the sake of Christ’s merits. (Lord’s Day 7, in Confessions and Church Order, 90–91)

[God] grants us freely the remission of sin and life eternal, for the sake of that one sacrifice of Christ accomplished on the cross. (Lord’s Day 25, in Confessions and Church Order, 108)

Q. 70. What is it to be washed with the blood and Spirit of Christ?

A. It is to receive of God the remission of sins freely, for the sake of Christ’s blood… (Lord’s Day 26, in Confessions and Church Order, 109)

The same apostle saith that we are justified freely by His grace, through the redemption which is in Jesus Christ. (Belgic Confession article 23, in Confessions and Church Order, 51)

That every one examine his own heart, whether he doth believe this faithful promise of God that all his sins are forgiven him only for the sake of the passion and death of Jesus Christ, and that the perfect righteousness of Christ is imputed and freely given him as his own… (Form for the Administration of the Lord’s Supper, in Confessions and Church Order, 268)

Truly, the confessions speak of God’s free forgiveness and the free justification of his people by grace alone.

Such is the significance of “as” in the fifth petition of the Lord’s prayer: “Forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors” (Lord’s Day 51, in Confessions and Church Order, 139). When we take this petition on our lips, we are asking God to send away our debt in the same manner that we send away the debt of our neighbor. In the fifth petition we are really asking God to deal with us in the same way that we deal with our neighbor. If we teach and live the doctrine of conditional forgiveness of the neighbor, that is also what we must say about God’s dealing with us. Many professors in the Protestant Reformed Churches have noted the relationship of “as” in the fifth petition and grounded their conditional theology of God’s forgiveness in their conditional forgiveness of the neighbor. In order to forgive the neighbor, there must be evidence of repentance, and unless and until there is repentance, then I may not and must not forgive the neighbor. So they teach about God: Unless and until man repents, God does not forgive him. Thus the free forgiveness of the neighbor is not an unimportant doctrine in the life of the believer and for the church. This doctrine is not something obscure and irrelevant. It touches on the gospel of grace itself. If the Reformed Protestant Churches corrupt this doctrine, the gospel must necessarily be corrupted. Then we must demand that the pulpits teach prerequisite repentance for the forgiveness of our sins with God. The churches must demand to hear no more of free justification, but repentance must be preached as a necessary act of man by grace in order to have God send away man’s debt and forgive his sins in his experience. God be praised that that is not the truth of the fifth petition. God forgives our debts by grace alone in Christ alone through faith alone to the glory of God alone; and in like manner, as we are freely forgiven, we are to forgive the debt of the neighbor who sins against us as a gracious fruit of God’s forgiveness of us. That is the glorious gospel powerfully displayed in our daily lives as believers.

An Ever-Abiding Love-Debt

There are some matters that need to be further expanded upon from the foundation laid in the previous article. I defined the forgiveness of the neighbor as the act of not reckoning the sin to the neighbor’s account. I do not hold to his account the sins he commits against me. I do not desire revenge against him and hold a grudge against him for the sins he committed against me personally. I do not wish destruction upon him. Yet there is a weakness in that definition. The weakness is that it is strictly negative in character. Our calling is to love the neighbor for God’s sake. In loving him I forgive him freely of his sin against me. I merely assert this point now, having proved in the previous article that love and forgiveness of the neighbor are intimately related. I propose now the following addition to the definition: And that we love him for God’s sake as the ever-abiding debt of love that we owe to the neighbor. This addition is rooted in the apostle Paul’s practical instruction found in Romans 13:8: “Owe to no man any thing, but to love one another: for he that loveth another hath fulfilled the law.” The English rendering in the King James Version is adequate to understand the meaning. But consider the following translation to help with the reading. “But” ought to be translated as except. “You owe no man anything, except to love one another: for the one who loves the other has fulfilled the law.”

Romans 13 is in the practical part of the epistle. In the doctrinal section of the book, the first eleven chapters, the Holy Spirit teaches that God justifies ungodly sinners and that we are righteous before God by faith alone without our works or activities. Now, being saved completely in Jesus Christ, what is our calling as believers in the world? In the context of Romans 13, the apostle explains what we owe to every man. “Render therefore to all their dues: tribute to whom tribute is due; custom to whom custom; fear to whom fear; honour to whom honour” (v. 7). There are many debts that we owe to others in the various relationships of life. There are the relationships of the government and its citizens, the parent and child, and the teacher and students. There is the debt of honor that must be paid. There is also the debt of gratitude of one to another for his well-doing. If a man has me to his home and feeds me a meal, I owe him my thanks for his well-doing toward me. There may be the actual debt of money to another. If we accrue a ten-thousand-dollar debt with our neighbor, we are obligated to repay that money to him. These are no insignificant things. We must pay our debts to our neighbor for God’s sake. When we pay these debts, they are finished.

Then the apostle says in verse 8, “Owe to no man any thing, but to love one another.” What is expressed by the apostle is that even if you pay this debt of love that you owe the neighbor, it is never paid in full. A similar principle is expressed by Christ in Matthew 18:22 when he says that we must forgive “seventy times seven”: Forgiveness is endless and ever abiding, no matter how often and in what way the neighbor sins against us. So too in Romans, our debt of love is an ever-abiding debt that we owe to the neighbor.

The apostle says that this is one debt that can never be paid. Indeed, it exceeds all other debts. Even when this debt is paid, the debt always remains. You never are rid of the debt. Owe no man anything, except to love one another. This ever-abiding debt is to love your neighbor—even when that love is not returned to you, but instead he persecutes you, sins against you, despitefully uses you, and curses you. You must love him even when he hates you. You must forgive him even when he does not repent.

The reason it is an ever-abiding debt the apostle indicates by the word “for.” “For he that loveth another hath fulfilled the law.” To love the neighbor is an obligation and abiding debt because love is the fulfillment of the law. In Romans 13:9 we read, “Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself.” This is also Christ’s summary of the second table of the law in Matthew 22. And finally, in Romans 13:10 we read, “Love worketh no ill to his neighbour: therefore love is the fulfilling of the law.” The apostle is speaking about the thankful life of the believer and his calling toward the neighbor: Love the neighbor for God’s sake.

God requires in his law that we love. We must love because God is love. He created a creature who should manifest this love. The wicked too are called to love. That is God’s law for all men because that is who God is. God will judge man for all his hatred of God and the neighbor. God will send men and women to hell on the ground of their sin, unbelief, and hatred.

Loving one another is the obligation of the child of God. You must love me, and I must love you. When you do, you have just paid your debt. But the debt always remains. You never can be rid of the debt. You always owe this debt of love. You must love the neighbor even when he hates you. You must love him even when he sins against you. And when you love him, you merit or gain nothing at all. You simply pay your debt.

Romans 13:8 provides nothing for sophists who seek to add works of the law to justification. That salvation is complete in Jesus Christ has already been established in the first eleven chapters of Romans. Rather, love as the fulfilling of the law must be taken in the sense of Lord’s Day 44:

Q. 114. But can those who are converted perfectly keep these commandments?

A. No; but even the holiest of men, while in this life, have only a small beginning of this obedience; yet so, that with a sincere resolution they begin to live not only according to some, but all the commandments of God. (Confessions and Church Order, 133)

Christ obeyed the law in my place, and his obedience is counted as mine. All the love for God and the neighbor that God requires of me is found in Jesus Christ, my righteousness. Having been renewed and given the principle of the new life of Christ in my heart, I begin to live according to all the commandments of God, namely, that I love God and love my neighbor as myself. In that sense love is the fulfillment of the law.

But what is love? Love is not a natural affection, feeling, or emotion. Men have all kinds of ideas of what love is. We must let scripture tell us what love is. The Greek word agape translated as “love” in Romans 13:8 means love as esteem. Love, then, is the esteem of the beloved as precious and dear. Love is the determination to do good to the beloved. Love is the seeking and the establishment of a bond of warm fellowship.

First, there is the love of God conceived in a trinitarian sense. God is love, and he loves himself in all the fullness of his trinitarian life. The Father esteems his beloved Son as precious and dear. The Father seeks the eternal good of his beloved. The Father seeks and establishes a bond of infinite and eternal fellowship between himself and his Son in the Spirit. And the Son cleaves to the Father in the infinite esteem of love. The Spirit himself is the bond of love between the Father and the Son in the Trinity.

Second, there is the love of the triune God for his Son, Jesus Christ, the mediator. The Father loves his Son and has given all things into the hands of his Son. This was God the Father’s word at the baptism of Jesus Christ: “This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased” (Matt. 3:17). This is my Son whom I love and for whom I am determined to do eternal good.

Third, there is God’s love for the entire world with Jesus Christ as the head and his elect as his body. “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son” (John 3:16). God loves the world in the sense of the cosmos, or the entire creation, with its center in Christ and in the elect in Christ.

Fourth, there is the love of God for the church. He loves his precious treasure and peculiar people and chose them in love before the foundation of the world to be the glorious body of Christ. God eternally esteemed his people. He eternally desired his people and established with them a bond of fellowship in Jesus Christ, their head. Desiring his people, he seeks them out in the preaching of the gospel and brings them unto himself. He loves his people who are unlovable in themselves and in whom there is nothing that he should desire them.

Fifth, there is the love of the church among the saints. When the apostle writes in Romans 13:8 that we must love one another, he has in mind the church, of course. In the church there is reciprocal love among the brethren. The saints love each other with God’s own love and behold each other as precious and dear. This love among the saints is delightful, sweet, and pleasant. They esteem each other as precious and dear. They do good to one another and seek one another’s eternal welfare. They fellowship together and enjoy communion. They are bonded together in the love of the Spirit and united to Christ and to God.

Lastly, there is the love of the child of God for the ungodly neighbor. The apostle, while certainly speaking of love in the church, also has in mind the life of the Christian in the world. This love takes a different form than the love in the church among the saints. Because love seeks the eternal good of its object, it does not tolerate sin and unrighteousness in those whom it loves. Love seeks to establish a bond of communion and fellowship, but it will not do so outside of righteousness. To the world this righteous love appears not to be love at all. The world charges the true love of the believer for the neighbor as hateful, wicked, and spiteful. The natural love of the world is natural affection perhaps due to the physical bond, natural brotherhood, and common goals and interests that belong to members of the world. This natural love is not the love of the scriptures. This natural love is completely unrighteous and tolerates sin. This natural love, which actually is hatred, allows a sinner to continue prancing his merry way to destruction. But true love seeks the salvation of its object. Love in God is righteous love. And the love of the child of God is righteous as well. Love does not allow a neighbor to walk in sin and hold to the lie because to remain in that sin means utter desolation. The believer rebukes sin, speaks the truth, and will not seek unrighteous fellowship with those outside of Jesus Christ. Love seeks the eternal good of the neighbor and not merely his temporal good.

The apostle says that “love worketh no ill” (Rom. 13:10). Our love toward the man of the world cannot be a relationship of fellowship, but that love consists of never doing evil against him. When the neighbor is hungry, we feed him. When he is thirsty, we give him drink. When he smites us, we turn the other cheek for him to smite us again. When he takes us to the law to take our coat, we are prepared to give it to him. When he is naked, we clothe him. When he compels us to go a mile, we go two miles.

We must love the neighbor because there is a far greater love, a love manifested at the cross of Jesus Christ, where our massive debt was paid! While we were yet his enemies, God commended his love toward us. God loved us so deeply that he gave himself in his Son to the death of the cross. Because of God’s love for his elect, he dealt with their sins at the cross of Christ. While we were justly the objects of his wrath and hatred, in Christ we are the objects of God’s love and favor. Since God performed such an act of love for our salvation, we ought to love one another for his sake.

We owe no man anything, except to love one another. That is an ever-abiding debt. We owe this debt to our neighbor because of the debt of gratitude to our God for his saving work. When God forgave me freely by his grace, I incurred a debt of gratitude and thankfulness that I simply can never return to him. How often the believer is ashamed by how utterly unthankful he is for the salvation freely given to him! I have a debt of love to my neighbor because I have a debt of thankfulness to the God of my salvation. He makes me thankful, and he gives me that life of thankfulness too. I must be thankful even for my life of thankfulness. Our forgiveness of the neighbor and paying him our love-debt is a gracious fruit that is worked in our hearts by God’s forgiveness of us.

The Avenging of Sin

I forgive the neighbor’s debt against me and love him for God’s sake as the unending debt of thankfulness that I owe to God. When I forgive my neighbor, I free the neighbor of the debt he owes me for his sin. Legally and rightly, if a man smites me on the cheek, he has a debt. He ought to be smitten on the cheek himself. That was the law of Moses, as we read in Leviticus 24:19–20:

19. If a man cause a blemish in his neighbour; as he hath done, so shall it be done to him;

20. Breach for breach, eye for eye, tooth for tooth: as he hath caused a blemish in a man, so shall it be done to him again.

In Matthew 5 Jesus Christ quoted this text to the Pharisees, who were twisting the scriptures. The Pharisees’ doctrine was an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth. Their doctrine was this: “I will not forgive you until you repent, and all the while I am going to take justice into my own hands and hold your sins against you until you repent.” These unscrupulous pettifoggers were loving their friends and those who did good to them and taking vengeance on their enemies. They made themselves sound pious all the while. “We are upholding the law! We are taking sin seriously!” They personally were taking vengeance and exacting justice on their enemies. But justice belongs to God and to the rulers whom God has appointed to judge righteously. The Pharisees and Sadducees took the law of Moses and wrongly applied it to themselves personally, as if they were God and might exact the debt of the neighbor. They were holding onto the sins that had been committed against them and seeking retribution for them. They hated their neighbors, even their enemies. They wanted to destroy their neighbors and send their neighbors to hell for their sins against them. Christ dismantled the Pharisees thus:

38. Ye have heard that it hath been said, An eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth:

39. But I say unto you, That ye resist not evil: but whosoever shall smite thee on thy right cheek, turn to him the other also.

40. And if any man will sue thee at the law, and take away thy coat, let him have thy cloke also.

41. And whosoever shall compel thee to go a mile, go with him twain.

42. Give to him that asketh thee, and from him that would borrow of thee turn not thou away.

43. Ye have heard that it hath been said, Thou shalt love thy neighbour, and hate thine enemy.

44. But I say unto you, Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them which despitefully use you, and persecute you. (Matt. 5:38–44)

Jesus Christ was speaking of the personal attitude or the firm resolution of our hearts to forgive the neighbor who sins against us. We may not avenge ourselves, but rather we forgive the sin. Christ said, “Do not resist evil.” That refers to the evil done to us by the neighbor. Do not resist it. Do not try to exact your pound of flesh if he smites you on the cheek. The neighbor’s actions are cruel and wicked. He sins against the sixth commandment. He murders you. His heart is filled with rage and desire of revenge against you. Do you strike back? Not at all. You give to him the other cheek to strike you again. Your neighbor takes you to the worldly courts to exact his revenge and take your coat. He attempts to take from you the good gifts that the Lord has given to you. Is the believer’s response to take him to court to gain his earthly possessions that the Lord has given to him? I have a strong case after all, and I can take him for all he is worth. What is the believer’s response? I stand ready to give him my coat, not that I will not defend myself in the court. But if he demands my coat, I stand ready and prepared to give it to him. It is not a matter of personal grievance and revenge that motivates the believer but love for God and for the neighbor. The child of God believes that the Lord hears the cries of the distressed and oppressed. The believer takes refuge in the righteous God who says, “Vengeance is mine.” To the believer, love your enemies, bless them who curse you, do good to them who hate you, and forgive those who sin against you.

Dealing with Sin in the Church

The charge must come against this doctrine of free forgiveness that it will make the members of the church careless and profane. If a man knows that his brother in the church does not hold his sin against him, then he will live how he wants, without worrying about being confronted in his sin. If brothers in the church freely forgive each other, then they will never deal with sin. But the charge is illegitimate.

First, the believer who loves and forgives his neighbor is truly the only one who will deal with sin. The personal offense to himself he has forgiven. He approaches the sinner with the only proper motivation—that is, out of love and not to exact a confession from the sinner. The believer comes to the sinner because the believer owes a debt of love to the neighbor for God’s sake, and the believer seeks the neighbor’s eternal good. The believer will bring the neighbor’s sin to him and rebuke him in that sin because the believer is motivated by the love of God. It is not about the believer and his hurt feelings; it is about God’s glory and a sinner who says that he is not a sinner. It is only this view that allows the believer to deal properly with sin in the church. My person must be removed! The payment owed to me must fall away or else I will never deal properly with the sin. If I never forgive the neighbor’s sins, I cannot seek his repentance. When I am dealing with the sin of the neighbor, I remit the payment that is owed to me. I send away the debt legally and juridically as it concerns me. In that I am carrying out my ever-abiding debt of love that I owe to him. Forgiving the neighbor freely does not mean “forgive and forget.” No, it means “forgive and pursue!” If the sin is private, the believer will pursue the neighbor in the way of love according to Matthew 18. If the sin is of a public nature, the believer will lay the matter before the consistory for judgment.

Related to the first charge, a second charge arises: “Well, if you freely forgive the sins of the neighbor, how can the church ever do discipline?” The charge comes that the church is completely unable to deal with sin. The charge comes just like it came against the doctrine of free justification early in the history of the Reformed Protestant Churches.

You remember how the Pharisees twisted the law of Moses in order to exact payment from the neighbor by a sort of vigilante justice. When Jesus dismissed the Pharisees’ doctrine of an eye for an eye, he was not dismissing the right of those who are called upon in God’s name to deal with sin. In the world the magistrate is the power ordained of God, “for he is the minister of God to thee for good…he beareth not the sword in vain: for he is the minister of God, a revenger to execute wrath upon him that doeth evil” (Rom. 13:4). In the church Christian discipline is the means to execute God’s justice against sin.

We must answer the charge. How can men occupying the special offices execute church discipline with this attitude of free forgiveness of the neighbor? Regarding the sin against himself, the officebearer has forgiven the debt. He owes the neighbor a debt of love even when the neighbor hates him. In my short ministry there have been many sins against myself and the officebearers of First Reformed Protestant Church. The officebearer must forgive the sin as that sin was against him personally. He must if he is to discipline impartially and in love for the sinner. The officebearer and his person must be removed from the judgment. The officebearer’s ideas, feelings, ego, pride, name, and reputation must not enter in to the judgment. This is the only proper attitude of the officebearer. Then indeed, discipline can be carried out in love and not in hatred or anger.

The officebearer is a visible representative of the invisible God. Officebearers are not doing their own work but God’s work. The officebearer, as God’s representative, can deal with sin as it is an offense to God and not an offense to himself, for he personally does not hold that sin against the sinner. The judgment and sentence executed wholly in accordance to the word of God is the judgment of God himself. When a sinner is put out of the church, the judgment of God through the church is that he is not forgiven and has not the forgiveness of sins. What is bound in earth is bound in heaven. The church does not see any evidence that God has graciously forgiven that sinner’s sin. The church does not see in that sinner the marks of a child of God. And the sinner must be expelled out of the kingdom.

Yet always the believer must love the neighbor. As believers we owe the neighbor an unpayable and ever-abiding debt of love because of God’s own work of love that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us. Forgive your neighbor. Love your neighbor. Owe no man anything, except to love one another. For this is the fulfillment of the law.