TOD 12.10.07

Imagine if you robbed your neighbor and then asked me to forgive your theft. Imagine if you were unfaithful to your wife and then asked me to forgive your adultery. Imagine if you assaulted a stranger and then asked me to forgive your violence. In each of these cases, you coming to ask me would be absurd, but it would be even more absurd of me to forgive you.

I can’t forgive you because you did not wrong me. And it would be supremely offensive for me to tell your neighbor or your wife or the stranger that everything was fine because I had forgiven you. Now it’s true at some level that violating any member of a community violates us all, but until the primary victim has been restored and they have forgiven the offender, the rest of us are in no position to presume to do so. Understanding this puts us in a position to grasp something very important about Jesus. The only way He could have been anything other than a complete fool for forgiving sins is if He was God.

And, in forgiving them, He was teaching us something else as well. All sins are offenses against the King, and the only reason offenses against other people are sins is because those people are stamped with the mark of the King.