Download The Role of God the Son: Forgiveness Ephesians 1:7

The Role of God the Son: Forgiveness
Ephesians 1:7-10
Take your Bibles and turn to the exact same text we looked at last week, Ephesians 1. Let’s
start by reading the text and getting an idea what we’re looking at.
Read text
The part we want to focus on this morning is forgiveness, v. 7. “In him we have redemption,
the forgiveness of sins.” In a way, that is like saying the same thing in two ways. We use words like
redemption and forgiveness interchangeably, usually because we don’t know the best word to use
and we only have a vague idea of what they mean anyway. But there is a difference between
redemption and forgiveness, although they do bring about the same end goal; they bring us back to
God. To many of you, that may be all you care about. Oh, big word here, big word there. All I want to
know is that I’m saved and that I’m going to heaven. Well, that’s fine. But your laziness in not wanting to
know is sort of like a guy who marries a wife and one day she wants to talk about the relationship.
He says, “Look, all I want to know is that we’re married and if I’m going to get the benefits of being
married.” He doesn’t love his wife. He shows it in that he doesn’t want to learn about his wife. He
only wants what his wife has to offer. He’s content to know less and he’s intent not to learn more.
And I think that’s really the heart attitude behind anyone who says, “I just want to know that I’m
saved and I’m going to heaven.”
It’s also valuable to know what these terms mean because they show us so much about the
gospel that we didn’t know. For instance, last week we looked at redemption. Our basic
understanding of redemption is that God makes the bad things go away and replaces them with
good things. But we saw last week that it was much more than that. Redemption is God taking all
the bad things and turning them into good things, so that the enjoyment of the good things is
greater because of the bad things.
Right after the climax of The Lord of the Rings, Samwise Gamgee discovers that his friend
Gandalf was not dead (as he thought) but alive. He cries, “I thought you were dead! But then I
thought I was dead myself! Is everything sad going to come untrue?” And the answer in redemption
is yes. And it will somehow be greater for having once been sad. Jesus spoke of the end of time
when he would sit on his glorious throne as “the renewal of all things.” Not the destroying of all
things and the recreating of brand new things, but the renewal of all things. Something tells me that it
was good for you to hear that all the bad things in life will be turned into good things in redemption.
In the same way that we learn that redemption is more than we thought, we find out that
forgiveness with God means more than what we mean when we think about forgiveness. C.S. Lewis
said it well: “Every one says forgiveness is a lovely idea, until they have something to forgive.” It’s
much easier to talk about being forgiven than having to forgive, and that is our context here. We
aren’t necessarily looking at forgiving others as we are looking at being forgiven by God.
In v. 7, Paul moves his attention from God the Father to God the Son. In the Father we
have been blessed with every spiritual blessing. In the Son, we have redemption through his blood,
the forgiveness of our trespasses. All religions offer some kind of forgiveness. What makes
Christianity unique? What makes it unique is this phrase, “according to the riches of his grace.” This
is an act of grace, meaning that God did it and you didn’t. He earned our forgiveness. Now compare
that to Hinduism or Buddhism which believes in Karma—what comes around goes around. Or
compare it to Islam which offers some form of forgiveness after acts of penance. How are we
forgiven? We are forgiven according to the riches of his grace. How much grace? More than enough,
v. 8. He lavished on us. So forgiveness doesn’t come in bite size pieces. It doesn’t come after acts of
penance. It doesn’t come through a series of comings and goings as you experience reward for good
and punishment for bad. It comes more like God took the Gatorade cooler and dumped it over
your head.
Well, we do want to see a few things about forgiveness that will, I hope, help you to
appreciate it even more, especially as we take part in the Lord’s Supper at the conclusion of this
message.
I. Forgiveness that costs nothing is worth nothing.
In the book If You Could Ask God One Question, two British men did a survey of random
people, asking them, “If you could ask God one question, and you knew that you would get an
honest answer, what would it be?” And then they took those answers and put them into a book in
which they took the twelve most asked questions and answered them. And one of the most asked
questions was, “If Jesus really was your son, how come he got killed?” which is like asking, “Why
did Jesus have to die?” When Jesus hung on the cross, there was a crowd of people under him who
mocked and jeered and told him to come down. And even one of the criminals beside him told him
that if he were the Son of God, he would get off the cross and save him too. But Jesus didn’t come
down. And that means he either didn’t have the power to do so, or he chose not to.
We know he had the power to get off. In the Garden of Gethsemane, Peter took out a
sword and attacked one of those who came to arrest Jesus. Jesus replied this way, “Do you think
that I cannot appeal to my Father, and he will at once send me more than twelve legions of angels?”
Twelve legions of angels would have been somewhere in the ballpark of 72,000 angels. That would
have been shock and awe to the effect that the invasion of Iraq would have looked like firecrackers.
So we are left to conclude that he chose to be there, which is what the Bible says. But we still
have to settle the question in our minds. Why did he have to die? Why couldn’t he just forgive us?
Every so often someone will come up to me and say, “Hey, I forgot to do such-and-such. I’m
sorry.” And I say, “Don’t worry about it.” That sounds like forgiveness but it isn’t. Or take a
scenario like this. Say we go on a trip and we stop to buy gas. I hand you the money to pay. I give
you more money than we need. We get back in the car, we head off on our trip. We have a great
time. We come home and we’ve spent everything. And then you say, “Uh…remember when you
gave me the money for gas. I forgot to give you the change back. I didn’t realize it at the time, and I
guess I spent it. Sorry.” And I say, “Oh that’s okay. I didn’t even notice it was gone.” That’s not
forgiveness because it didn’t affect me. I didn’t notice it was gone. It caused no change in me. I
didn’t lose any trust from you because you didn’t mean it and you came straight with me. And I
think that’s how we think God should react to our sin. “Hey, no problem. It didn’t effect me any.”
But what about when the evil is serious. What about when your actions have caused
irreparable harm? The only way to forgive someone is to bear it yourself. Like I said, “Everyone says
forgiveness is a lovely idea, until they have something to forgive.” Everyone who forgives great evil
goes through a death into resurrection, and experiences nails, blood, sweat, and tears. Should it
come as any surprise to us that when God chose to forgive us rather than punish us for all the ways
we’ve wronged him and one another that he went to the cross and died there? The cross is a living
example of what every person experience when they forgive a real offense. Our desire isn’t to go
through it for the other person, but to send them there for what they did to us. Forgiveness that
costs nothing is worth nothing.
If you are struggling this morning with the issue of forgiving someone, you should know
that forgiving them means bearing that pain yourself. You will experience the nails, the loneliness,
the tears, but through Christ you will also experience the resurrection. Remember that Jesus led the
way for you. He bore the cross first so that as you bear it, you have hope you will overcome it.
The thing you need to remember is that Jesus is God. And on the cross, God inflicted the
pain caused by us on himself. God wasn’t just sacrificing his Son needlessly. He was doing what
needed to be done.
Take it from another perspective. We usually look at the cross from the perspective that
Jesus died for the awful things you did to set you free. But look at it from the perspective that he
also died for the awful things other people did to you in order to set you free. When someone hurts
you, really hurts you, the bind you. The memory of what they did haunts you. And you will be in
bondage to their sinful actions forever. How could you ever forget what they did to you? How could
you ever forgive? On the cross, Jesus bore the pain you feel caused by that person because you
could not bear it yourself.
In Lois Lowry’s book The Giver, there is a picture of Christ that I’m not sure even she
intended. In the book, all the people live in a futuristic utopian paradise. Everyone is safe, well-fed,
has a job, universal healthcare, retirement. They also have no memory of the past. And the only way
they were able to achieve to achieve this peaceful world is that they had to take all the bad
memories, and most of the good memories, and put them on one person, the Giver, and he lived
alone, in solitude, and bore the memories that the others couldn’t bear. The only way they achieved
peace was that they had to put all the hurtful memories on someone else, and what else is our faith
than that? The only difference is that in the book the old man had to bear the burden all his life, and
in Christ he took an eternity’s weight of burden and endured it in the space of a couple hours. And
when he died, he took them all away.
So the cross is not just a lovely example of how much God loves us. Jesus didn’t die just to
show us he loves us. That would be the height of stupidity. I don’t go home to my wife and say, “I
want to show you how much I love you. I love you so much I’m going to kill myself. That way you’ll
always know.” She’d say, “Don’t kill yourself. That won’t show me you love me. Take me on a date.
Buy me something. But don’t kill yourself.” That’s why Jesus’ death is only good if it is more than a
good example. It’s only good if it was absolutely necessary. And it was. Real forgiveness is costly,
and this is how much your forgiveness cost.
II. Forgiveness is not the end goal of our faith.
1 Peter 3:18 says this: “For Christ also suffered once for sins, the righteous for the
unrighteous, that he might bring us to God.” This may sound like an obvious question, but why is it
good news that your sins are forgiven? A person may answer that in a number of correct ways and
yet still miss the real heart of why it is good. You might answer, “Being forgiven is good news
because I don’t want to go to hell.” Or, “Being forgiven is good news because a guilty conscience is
a horrible thing, and I get great relief when I believe my sins are forgiven.” Or, “I want to go to
heaven when I die. I want to see my loved ones who have died.” All of those are correct answers to
why forgiveness is good. So what’s wrong with these answers? 1 Peter 3:18, “For Christ also
suffered once for sins…that he might bring us to God.”
What’s wrong with these answers is that they do not treat God as the final and highest good
of the gospel. God isn’t even mentioned. I can’t tell you how many funerals I have performed where
the family consoled themselves with the fact that the person lost is in heaven now with grandma and
cousin so-and-so. Rarely is there mention of Jesus. Why do you want to be forgiven? You may be
looking with wrong desires.
Consider an illustration that probably would never happen. Let’s say I got up this morning
while it was still dark. I get up and on my way to the bathroom I trip over my wife’s shoes because
she irresponsibly left them in the middle of the floor. I turn and say something sharp to her. “Put
your shoes away. I’m going to get hurt.” She gets up without a word and goes downstairs. When I
arrive in the kitchen, she has her back intentionally to me. I know I shouldn’t have said what I said.
What needs to happen? I need to apologize. But what do I want her forgiveness? Is it because I want
her to make me breakfast? Or I want my guilty feelings to go away? Or I want her to finally admit
she was wrong? No. I want her forgiveness because I want to have my wife back. She is the reason I
want to be forgiven.
Or let’s use you as an example. Say you’re picking up the house at the end of the day. You
tell your child to help pick up. But your child is busy playing his Nintendo DS. He’s disobedient. So
you take it away. He pouts. And you say, “Well, you need to learn that if you want to play your
game, you’re going to have to pick up.” So he does, begrudgingly, and eventually stomps back over
to you to get his game back. Nope. Not until he apologizes. “Sorry,” he groans. You give it back,
begrudgingly. What has happened? A issue has arisen between you and your child. He loved his
game more than your approval. You took the game away. He came back to you. He got his game
back. Has the issue between you and your child been resolved? No. If anything it is worse.
If the gospel is nothing other than you getting forgiveness so that you can get back the
things you lost, you came back to God to get your stuff back but not to find him. If anything, you
are God are on worse terms than when you started. The gospel is not a way to get people to heaven.
It’s not a way to keep people out of hell. It’s a way to get people to God.
III. Forgiveness is once accomplished, repeatedly experienced.
I have told you that grace means that there is nothing you can do to make God love you
more and nothing you have done to make God love you less. And that is true. Christ died once for
sins. It isn’t necessary for him to die over and over again each time after you sin. His one death was
sufficient for a lifetime of your sins. However, when we sin our relationship with God is still
adversely affected. Jesus told us to pray, “Give us this day our daily bread, and forgive us our
trespasses.” This day covers both petitions. Now, we have forgiveness already, but we pray for
forgiveness each day. However, every day when you pray for forgiveness, it isn’t in the same way
that you initially prayed for God to save you. When God saved you, he forgave all of your sins, even
the ones you hadn’t committed yet. That’s a forgiveness of status. You’re status is forgiveness.
However, there is a daily need to repent of sin so that there is not an issue between you and
God when you pray. When you ask for forgiveness, you are reaffirming that Christ has in fact died
for that sin and you are indeed sorry for it. It doesn’t mean that if you die and forget to ask
forgiveness for a sin that you will somehow pay for all eternity for it. There are many sins that I have
not remembered to confess before God either because I forgot or I didn’t realize they were sinful.
Christ dies for all of them whether I’m aware of them or not. But restoring fellowship with God
even after you are forgiven involves experiencing again what Christ has already accomplished for
you.
Coming to the Lord’s Supper is an expression of that. Christ’s sacrifice has already taken
place. There’s nothing we can add to that sacrifice by doing this. But what we are doing is
experiencing the forgiveness that he won for us again. We are confessing to him, receiving his
forgiveness, and leaving with the rewarding experience that Jesus did die for us and we have
fellowship with God.