Forgiven Sins, Page 2

The Old Testament usage primarily reflects the Group Ego of the people of Israel without reflecting any type of individual application; it is tied in with sacrificial offerings, priestly pronouncements, scapegoats, and the like. This was necessitated by the overall spiritual goal of preparing and purifying through the Blood of Abraham and David the receptacle for the Christ. The entirety of the thrust of forgiveness in the Old Testament was toward fulfilling the goal of the “chosen people,” as the following passages illustrate.

Ex 32,31-33: (31) So Moses returned to the Lord and said, “Alas, this people have sinned a great sin; they have made for themselves gods of gold. (32) But now, if thou wilt forgive their sin—and if not, blot me, I pray thee, out of thy book which thou has written.” (33) But the Lord said to Moses, “Whoever has sinned against me, him will I blot out of my book.”

The individual aspect at the end suggests that God will blot out any one individual who, by sinning, stands in the way of the mission of the chosen people; anything beyond that would seem to be an incipient reflection of the approaching time when the burning contemporary question of evolving individual responsibility in Israel was prophetically expressed in Jer 31,27-34 and Ezek 18.

1 K 8,37-40: (37) If there is famine in the land,. . . pestilence or [crop] blight; [enemy siege]; . . . plague . . . sickness . . . . (39) then hear thou in heaven thy dwelling place, and forgive . . . and render to each whose heart thou knowest, according to all his ways .. . ; (40) that they may fear thee all the days that they live in the land which thou gavest to our fathers. (In accord, 2 Ch 6,30.)

Again, the reference to “each heart” appears to be out of concern that the one may bring evil on the whole people.

Job: While the term “forgive” is not used in this book, the categorical assertion by Job’s “friends” is that suffering is brought not only upon him but upon his entire familial domain because of some hidden sin of his.

Ps 79,9: Help us, O God of our salvation, for the glory of thy name; deliver us, and forgive our sins, for thy name’s sake!

The community is still the obvious concern. And why is the forgiveness “for thy name’s sake” rather than for the welfare of those forgiven? Surely the implication must be that the fulfillment of the covenant relationship is of benefit to God. Prophetically, the provision of the true Israel and the vehicle for the approaching Christ would appear to answer this question— the people were “a chosen race” and servants of God’s purpose.

Dan 9,19: O Lord, hear; O Lord, forgive; . . . for thy own sake, O my God, because thy city and thy people are called by thy name.”

Again, the forgiveness was collective for the people “for thy own sake.”

One searches the Old Testament in vain for a different thrust, one in which forgiveness is clearly either brought to, or required of, the individual unharnessed from the mission of the people. Not until the Babylonian captivity does forgiveness begin to be associated with the individual’s own destiny (Jer 31 and Ezek 18) and, even then, its tone is primarily prospective. “Forgiveness” in the New Testament comes to individual fruition and centers around one or more of the following themes:

1. The healing nature of forgiveness; e.g., Mt 9,1-8; Mk 2,1-12; Lk 5,17-26; 7,36-50; Jn 5,2-14.

2. The nature and extent of one’s forgiveness is related to the manner in which one forgives others; e.g., Mt 6,12-15 and 18,21-35; Mk 11,25-26; Lk 6,37; 11,4; Eph 4,32; Col 3,13; Philem.

3. The authority of Christ (e.g., Mt 9,1-8; Mk 2,1-12; Lk 5,17-26) and his servants (e.g., Jn 20,23) on Earth to forgive sins.

4. The nature of sins that will (can) not be forgiven: Mt 12,31-32; Mk 3,28-30; Lk 12,10; Heb 6,4; 10,26; 1 Jn 5,16-17.

But given this evolutionary change, and its reflection in the Bible, we return to the initial twofold question, “What is the immorality of escaping the consequences of one’s sin, and how can the immorality be expunged?”