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What part of the Bible's teaching is the easiest to verify through daily experience? Every human being is a sinner. What options do sinners have? We can deny what everyone knows to be true. We can blame others for our own faults and failures. Or we can confess our sins to God in deep humility and receive his gift of eternal forgiveness. But there's a rub: The surest evidence that we have received this gift is that we are able and willing to give it to others. Through the cross, God has paid off the world's entire cumulative debt of sin since he has graciously put us "back to zero" with him, we must do the same for others.

 

Chosen by God
Forgiven and Free
April 24-25, 2010
Glenn McDonald
Ephesians 1:7, 8

There’s an old saying that goes, “What’s worse than a church with no vision? The answer is – a church that has many visions.” If people who come together in God’s name believe there are a hundred different best ways to relate to God, then it will be very difficult to know if a particular next step is actually taking us in the right direction.

What is the greatest vision in the world? Dallas Willard believes it is not a picture of what might happen someday – the way we generally say that a compelling vision should be a snapshot of our preferred future. Instead, Willard declares that the greatest vision in the world is the unshakeable conviction that God is good, that he is making all things right, and that there is nothing more wonderful than being his child. That’s not a picture of a hoped-for tomorrow; that is a vision of what is already true for those who trust Christ.

Welcome to the book of Ephesians – the apostle Paul’s short but extraordinary letter that begins by casting a vision of what God has done for us even before he created the universe. Paul insists that if we take seriously how much God values us, our outlook on life will never be the same. Let’s take our Bibles and open them once again to Ephesians chapter one, where we are working our way through one of the most significant patches of teaching in all of Scripture. What we know as verses 3-14 is actually just one stunningly long run-on sentence in the original Greek, in which Paul falls all over himself trying to communicate the fullness of the goodness and the greatness of God.

Today we arrive at verses 7 and 8 – words that are worthy of being committed to memory. We hope you that will go the extra mile every week to memorize our Ephesians texts in advance. After all, we remember what we really care about. For you that might mean the phone numbers of your friends; the draft picks that Bill Polian just made for the Colts; multiple computer passwords so you can pay your bills online; or the words that someone once spoke to you in love – words that you will always want to remember. Well, God wants these words of love – his love for us – to be forever fixed in our minds. Let’s speak them together, either by reading them from our own Bibles or up on the screen, or saying them from memory. Let’s stand & declare the word of God:

In him we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of sins, in accordance with the riches of God’s grace that he lavished on us with all wisdom and understanding.

 In his New Testament letters Paul uses five primary words to describe the Christian life: grace, truth, faith, hope, and love. Grace always comes first, and, true to form, it appears first in the book of Ephesians. This is no accident. If we don’t begin with grace, we will never know God and we will never walk well with each other. Unless grace is at the center of all that we do and think, church will end up feeling pretty much like the company picnic where everyone is jostling for promotion; the school board meeting where battles over budgeting priorities become a matter of life and death; or the family reunion where loved ones try to get their needs met through intimidation or playing the role of the victim.

But God relates to us – beginning, middle, and end – by means of grace. Paul talks here about “the riches of God’s grace which he lavished upon us.” Grace is the Bible’s one-word description of something that takes many words to explain. Grace refers to God’s incomprehensible and unconditional acceptance of sinful and rebellious human beings. In the words of one Bible commentator, “Grace is the Judge of the universe asking criminals to sit down to a meal in his home.”

Grace makes no sense. Why would God love us with an everlasting love when he flat out knows who we really are? Grace is therefore the ultimate religious watershed. Every other sect and creed and religion in the world, in one form or another, teaches: “I obey God – therefore I am accepted.” Only the religion of Jesus teaches: “I am accepted and loved by God – therefore I obey.”

In verse seven Paul declares that “in him we have redemption through his blood.” Now redemption is part of the language of the ancient marketplace, and it rarely figures into our conversation today. Redemption means “purchasing or buying back some item or person that would otherwise be lost, taken prisoner, or destroyed.” In other words, God has rescued us or released us from bondage by paying a price. The price is the blood of Jesus, shed for us on the cross. Redemption means that God went to work, long before we were ever born or knew our great need of him, by paying the ultimate price to bring us to himself.

Our chief benefit is described in the next phrase as “the forgiveness of sins.” Forgiveness in this verse translates the Greek word aphesis, which means “release.” It means that God has let us go. He has unlocked the jail cell and turned us loose. We used to be incarcerated in a living hell called sin. But now we are no longer in sin; we are “in Christ.”

You might remember last week that we learned that Paul uses the phrase “in Jesus,” or “in the Lord,” or “in him” – and those are the very words we see at the beginning of verse seven – nine times in this opening section of Ephesians. To be “in Christ” means to live in a different geography or a different country even while we live in central Indiana. If you have abandoned yourself to the leadership of Jesus, then every time you are in Starbucks you are also “in Christ” – and that should make a difference as to how you place your order, how you relate to the clerk, and how you demonstrate God’s reality to others standing in line who do not yet understand how they can move from being in sin, or in spiritual denial, or in deep need, to being in the kingdom of God’s own Son.

The tragedy of these verses is that it’s so easy to become used to them. God’s redemption can begin to feel like an entitlement. God is supposed to forgive us because, well…he’s God, and it’s in his job description. In the words of the poet W.H. Auden, “I love to sin. God loves to forgive. The world is admirably arranged.”

According to the Bible, however, that’s not the whole story. Three things are true of every human being. Every one of us is sinful. Every one of is loved. And every one of us is called to receive and accept God’s power to be transformed – to appropriate God’s solution to our sinfulness by surrendering our lives to this Jesus who has done so much for us.

And that should ripple through every one of our relationships. In the words of Ken Sande, “Christians are the most forgiven people in the world. Therefore we should be the most forgiving people in the world.” Think of the cross. If we truly grasp what God has done for us in the vertical dimension – forgiving our sins and setting us free – then living out his call back in verse five to be “holy and blameless in his sight” means that we must forgive others along the horizontal dimension with lavish, God-like grace.

The problem is that we are so completely inept at doing this. Rich Buhler, a pastor on the West coast, puts it this way: “If you were a lousy cook before you became a Christian, you will be a lousy cook after you became a Christian.” A great many aspects of life require the accumulation of specific skills and experience. While it’s true that coming to Christ gives us an extraordinary new motivation to forgive others, and the power of the Holy Spirit to change our hearts, most of us have so little experience in the practices of confession and reconciliation that we quickly stumble into the world’s strategies of dealing with conflict instead of applying those taught by Jesus.  

A few months ago I decided to surprise Mary Sue by cleaning out the drain in our shower. I removed the small metal cover over the drain, grabbed the longest screwdriver in our tool box, and began to work my way down through several years of accumulated gunk. I was making excellent progress until the wet screwdriver in my wet hand suddenly succumbed to gravity. It completely vanished. I had no idea my drain went down that far. Now I had a different kind of surprise waiting for Mary Sue. By the way, if any of you need help with home repairs – plumbing, electricity, whatever – I’m available free of charge.

When it comes to do-it-yourself projects, I am one of those guys who cannot do it himself. When it comes to dealing with pain and conflict in a Christlike way, not one of us can do it by ourselves.

Next August we will tackle these words from Ephesians 4: “Be completely humble and gentle; be patient, bearing with one another in love. Make every effort to keep the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace.” As this series began we affirmed that the overall plan for Ephesians may be described as Sit, Walk, and Stand. The first three chapters of Paul’s letter compel us to sit in God’s presence – to learn who he is and what he has done – before we attempt to walk in Jesus’ name, and certainly before we try to stand against evil and injustice in the world. But that doesn’t mean that we’re off the hook in applying chapter one until Labor Day weekend. We can’t withhold granting forgiveness to others until we understand everything there is to know about God’s forgiveness of us.

That’s especially true because of the opportunity we have to participate in today’s service of reconciliation and healing. Our church has experienced a significant amount of turbulence over the past year. But conflict is an amazing opportunity for spiritual growth. Every time we experience conflict, we learn what we really think about the Lord. We demonstrate whether we are trusting in a really big God, or whether we merely have a really big ego and really big problems. Make no mistake: If we do not trust in God in the midst of chaos, we will inevitably put our trust in ourselves or in someone else – and that always leads to sadness.

But we can be guided, motivated, and empowered by the greatest of all promises: We ourselves are forgiven by God. Today’s service is going to focus on God and his grace, not the details of our struggles with each other. For it is by God’s grace and the help of the Holy Spirit that we can learn how to do what feels utterly unnatural to us: we can acknowledge our sins openly, we can lay down our rights humbly, we can refuse to hurt those who hurt us, and we can forgive those who have never even admitted they have caused a wound.

All of this begs a question: If the church may be defined as the group of people that genuinely believes the truths of Ephesians 1:7-8, why do Christians ever have to have special services of healing and reconciliation? Why is our track record so pathetic?

Last year on a very dark night I was walking two of our family’s dogs down the country road that runs beside our house. Far up ahead I could faintly make out figures moving across the road. I knew exactly what they were. They were coyotes. There is a predatory group of coyotes that regularly crosses from one field to another along that part of the road.

Would my Australian Shepherds be a match for a pack of wild animals? I wondered if we ought to turn back. Instead I kept going and decided to intimidate the coyotes by yelling at them. “You had better not be there when we get up there, or you’re going to be sorry!” Then I yelled as loudly as I could, “We’re coming after you!” It was all quite intoxicating, and I didn’t feel much anxiety…that is, until we got closer and I realized that I had actually been yelling at two human beings – Dave and Laura Gangstad, who were definitely wondering why the person who was threatening them in the dark turned out to be their pastor.

Out of the abundance of the heart, the mouth speaks. When we are motivated by fear and self-protection, and are trying to provide our own security, but really don’t know the truth about reality, we are in the dark in more ways than one. Eugene Peterson points out that every Christian knows that love is supposed to be the bottom line of all our relationships with others. But nobody has to pass a Love Competency Test in order to become a church member, nor do we have periodic reviews to see if we are growing in sensitivity and patience with others. Anger, arrogance, and manipulation are by far the most common and most damaging sins in local churches. In other words, followers of Jesus routinely wound each other. What can we do when that happens?

We can follow one of four paths. Three are disastrous and forbidden by Scripture. One is wise and is commanded by Christ himself. Let’s briefly have a look at each.

First, we can practice denial. Denial is the decision to act as if nothing ever happened, or to conclude that it’s probably just my imagination or my hyper-sensitivity or my fault altogether. Denial paves over the pain. This is peace-faking, not peace-making, and it is very common among Christians. Love and lies do not mix well, however. I John 1:7 calls us to “walk in the light as he is in the light.” Denying that wrongs were ever done or wounds were ever received is not a strategy to bring about healing.

Second, we can hope for amnesia. We can do our best to forget and then call it forgiveness. It’s time to move on. Bringing up the subject will just open old wounds and make people upset, and it’s probably too late now to do anything anyways. And isn’t it true that in the book of Jeremiah God tells us, “Their sins and lawless acts I will remember no more”?

As it turns out, God’s memory is quite a bit better than any of ours. Forgiveness should not be confused with forgetting. In most cases we will never forget the wounds we have received. What God chooses to do, as part of his grace in granting us forgiveness, is to refuse to remember in the sense of using our sins against us. And we must do the same. As an act of faith we must stand against our desire to use hurtful memories against those who have wounded us.

This is not an easy thing to do. I have learned over the past few months that this is the steepest learning curve of my entire spiritual life. But Christ will help us. As we obey his command to bless instead of curse, and to pray for others instead of dwelling on negative emotions and perceptions, the Spirit does indeed change our hearts. Memories remain. But the spirit of vindictiveness is gradually rooted out and driven away.

A third strategy for dealing with conflict is to succumb to bitterness. We may conclude that since we cannot understand exactly why certain bad things have happened to us, we can never get better. We become paralyzed because we think another party is obligated to take the first step toward reconciliation. We’re left feeling hopeless and depressed. Worst of all is what we read in Hebrews 12:15: “See to it that no one misses the grace of God and that no bitter root grows up to cause trouble and defile many.” Bitterness is a weapon of mass defilement.

Ken Sande, whom I quoted earlier – and who is the source of many of the insights in this message – has written an exceptionally helpful book called The Peacemaker. Sande describes what he has come to call the 60/40 rule – an unfortunate way of seeing things that has sadly become all too common amongst Christians. According to the 60/40 rule, I acknowledge that I am at least 40% responsible for the conflict that I am having with you. But that leaves you responsible for the other 60%. Therefore you owe the balance of payments. You need to come to me before I am obligated to come to you. In the meantime, while I will wait for you to take action, I will go on feeling proud or miserable…or both.

Bitterness may lead us to conclude that we have rights and they have been violated, and it wouldn’t be just to let someone else off so easily. Sande asks, “Where would any of us be if it weren’t for God’s forgiveness? Where would we spend eternity if God administered justice that was not tempered by mercy?” As one author has put it, unforgiveness is like drinking poison and hoping that someone else will die. We so easily take Ephesians 1:7 for granted – God has forgiven our sins, thank God – even as we hang on to bitterness as a strategy for compelling others to make things right.

Denial, amnesia, and bitterness: three dead ends. Scripture assures us there is another way. It is forgiveness. The only human being who ever had the right to be bitter said from the cross, “Father, forgive them, for they don’t know what they are doing.”

God’s call to forgiveness includes the Bible’s command that we confess our sins to each other. Sadly, not many of us have great depth and breadth of experience in doing this. During the Middle Ages confession became a private sacrament – something that a faithful Catholic would do in the presence of a single priest. Protestants took an even more radical step towards the privatization of confession. We took away the priest, teaching that when you sin you primarily need to work things out alone with God.

But Scripture is clear that confession, especially when it deals with conflict, is a horizontal experience, as we read in James 5:16: “Confess your sins to each other and pray for each other so that you may be healed.” We are called to go personally – with humility and in reliance upon God – to those who have offended us and to those whom we know we have offended.

And what happens when we do that? By God’s grace human beings can experience aphesis – release from bondage. More times than not, who is the person who is released from prison? By going to another in transparency and humility – even if they do not respond as we hope – we give God the power to free us from our own self-made prisons of hopelessness and sorrow. That’s because God is always there for those who choose to walk in his ways, in his strength and power, and under his care, guidance, and healing hand.

So what’s your next step? You might choose to become a peacemaker. Or read a good book like Ken Sande’s in your small group, or become part of next month’s study group on forgiveness here at ZPC. Come to the service of reconciliation today. As God prompts you, go personally to others – in your family, in your workplace, or here at church – and experience God’s gift of forgiveness. Don’t wait for someone else to make the first move. Seek forgiveness from others, and lavishly share it just as God has lavishly shared his grace with you.

Several decades ago, theologian Reinhold Niebuhr blessed the world with what has become known as the Serenity Prayer. Most of us are familiar with the first four verses:

God, grant me the serenity
to accept the things I cannot change
the courage to change the things I can,
and the wisdom to know the difference.

But Niebuhr’s prayer continues with ten more lines that are heard far less often:

Living one day at a time,
enjoying one moment at a time,
accepting hardship as a pathway to peace;
taking, as Jesus did,
this sinful world as it is,
not as I would have it,
trusting that You will make all things right
if I surrender to Your will;
so that I may be reasonably happy in this life
and supremely happy with You forever in the next. Amen.

What is the greatest vision in the world? It is the present reality that God is good, that he is making all things right, and that nothing is more wonderful than being his child. By his grace, we can not only live that vision but help bring it as a gift to our broken world.