Transformative Forgiveness: Beyond Legalism to True Healing

Dallas and Owen both talk about how we superficially think of forgiveness or superficially desire just as I don't want to be punished I don't want to go to hell I don't want to be in pain classic example of this is to use legal metaphors one time I was driving to a friend's ordination and I was late so I was going fast and I got stopped by a police car. [00:01:52]

and very often when we think about guilt or the promise of forgiveness we think about it in a kind of a legal framework and that's one dimension to it there is a real important sense in which if I need to be forgiven uh Injustice has been done and I am not innocent I stand guilty however the problem with only using that legal metaphor is then it's like if I go to court I just want to be declared innocent on whatever basis and it's just about getting out of punishment or pain not about the transformation of myself. [00:03:13]

and of course what is needed most deeply is the transformation of myself and if what I really want is forgiveness if I have hurt somebody that I loved then uh to seek forgiveness means I recognize there's uh something wrong not just that I have done but I become the kind of person that could do that become the kind of person that can lie that can speak cruel words and so to desire forgiveness is to agree with that and to say I want to become a different kind of person who doesn't do those sorts of things and I will be willing to do whatever is needed to move towards becoming that kind of person. [00:03:39]

Philip Rife had a fascinating sentence in his book The Triumph of the therapeutic where he said religious man was born to be saved psychological man was born to be pleased and we live in a day where that notion of uh standing guilty before God or for others is harder and harder and harder for us to absorb and there's great cost to that. [00:04:21]

and eventually he does in a very powerful scene now both circumstances are true there are times when falsely I might blame myself for something that's not my fault but then there are times when I seek to evade my own guilt and my own fault and the testimony of the writers of scripture and wise people down Through the Ages is the deepest problem in the human condition is not that I blame myself for what's not my fault because then I really didn't do it the deepest problem is when I have done something wrong because then I become the wrong kind of person that's not just wrong that happens to me that's wrong that I become that something wrong that is internal to me in my need for healing forgiveness not just escape from punishment but reconciliation with God and transformation so that I can become the right person we need to be saved and precisely that way and that's what John Owen talks about. [00:06:09]

he says there's a general sense of sin when I'm just aware that people do things wrong but then there's a particular awareness of sin that is applied to my situation and my feelings and my thoughts and acts that he illustrates this with David after he'd committed adultery with Bathsheba before Nathan came to him David was aware there was such a thing of sin he wrote Psalms about that he knew that he was a sinner but he didn't apply that to his situation when Nathan came and told him that Parable and said David Thou Art the man then all of a sudden that particular awareness with the feelings and the thought the the stepping out of denial the realization I'm guilty. [00:07:08]

and and we're invited into that and actually that's an indispensable part of the process of transformation when it's accurate it was my fault and we don't want to do that tons of research around that uh uh the self-serving bias fundamental attribution error memory bias shows that our minds are subtly at work constantly to keep us from seeing the reality of our own wrongness and wrongness and so I don't want to look at it and so I know I find ways to excuse it and here's what John Owens writes there is nothing more evident than that the lack want of a thorough engagement in the performance of these duties self-examination making a man's confession is the great cause why so few come clear from their entanglements all of their days men heal their wounds slightly that's the phrase men and women heal their wounds slightly and therefore after a new painful festering they are brought into the same condition of restlessness and trouble which they were in before. [00:07:54]

so today time for second thoughts about the real nature of forgiveness and about the need to look at that which is genuinely my fault because I get tired of having my wounds healed slightly I realize I'm talking with someone that I say I love but my primary motive right now is just to guard my time and not to have to give it or to guard my money when I think about taking action that's going to cost me something or to look at a group of people and realizing that really I'm just scanning them for approval I'm not listening to understand or speaking with courageous authenticity. [00:09:11]

God would you reveal the truth about myself to me would you help me in trust and Grace have my eyes opened to become aware of the way that I look and listen and speak and behave that hurts others and wounds your heart and creates duplicity Within Myself help me take the time to be willing to see show it to me today give me the courage and humility to go to other people and say I am sorry I lied I kept something from you I withheld my time or my money from you God healed my wounds deeply second thoughts about the power of being truly not just forgiven. [00:10:03]

Dallas with writes in the spirit of in the spirit of the disciplines and talks about it in a number of different places a bumper sticker that he did not like at all that says Christians aren't perfect just forgiven and it was that little word just that was troubling because it implies that the only difference that being a Christian makes is that you have been declared innocent and you will escape some punishment and Dallas used to say there's a very big gap between being perfect and uh just forgiven where there has been no growth no change no shift and he mentions in a little footnote in that book The Spirit of the disciplines that if you rightly understand the concept forgiveness it actually helps you to understand that it's about much more than just the escaping of punishment and includes the promise of the availability of the kingdom and the transformation of the soul. [00:00:37]

and he recommends a book by a Puritan writer in the 1600s John Owen on the forgiveness of sin so I got that book and uh we'll share a few sentences from it towards the end of our time today and then offer you a moment to spend some time confessing and asking God for actual forgiveness. [00:01:29]

and so to desire forgiveness is to agree with that and to say I want to become a different kind of person who doesn't do those sorts of things and I will be willing to do whatever is needed to move towards becoming that kind of person it's far different than just saying get me out of having to pay a ticket. [00:04:11]