Let’s Try This Another Way: Forgiveness Only Occurs Among Repentant Believers
“We want to love the unforgiven as our enemies, not lead them to believe that we love them because they are forgiven. That’s not the gospel and is obviously antithetical to how God loves His enemies daily. Blank check forgiveness does not put the gospel on display.”
Wow, this whole thing with being obligated to forgive people regardless of their unrepentance is a serious sacred cow. I have written many articles on this subject, and continue to approach it at different angles; this post is one more.
First, we do no person a favor, including ourselves, by circumventing the need for repentance. Here is what we have, in essence, because people listen to others and not God: “I forgive you, but remember that God hasn’t forgiven you because you haven’t repented, but we are supposed to forgive the way we have been forgiven, because we repented, but in your case it is different because you sinned against me and not God.” How does that square with Matthew 25:31-46? In that judgment, passive neglect is the issue, how much more active abuse?
Default forgiveness is what subjects people to hopelessness, bondage, and misery, not the biblical prescription. We are to remain angry for offenses while leaving retribution to God. Being righteously angry will not “destroy us,” but will rather continue to hold the offender accountable in hope that reconciliation will occur in the future. Though the obviousness of it annoys me, I will point to the redeemed souls under the alter crying out to God to avenge their blood. Pray tell, is there a way to send them one of these putrid memes lest they destroy themselves via unforgiveness? Maybe an angel has a Facebook account and will send them one.
In fact, opportunities to love our enemies may lead them to repentance (Rom 2:4). When we love our enemies without granting unwarranted forgiveness, we are being like God. Furthermore, blank check forgiveness does not foster indictment of conscience that brings about repentance and subsequent change. On this wise, blank check forgiveness goes against God’s natural order of things. Forgiveness goes hand in glove with a clear conscience. Those who are forgiven should have a clear conscience, but if they haven’t repented, we don’t want them to have a clear conscience. People repent because their consciences indict them. If you hold someone accountable for unrepentant sin, yet do good to them, this is more likely to incite the conscience than blank check forgiveness. When we forgive someone, we declare them no longer guilty; again, this is the same way we are forgiven. We want to love the unforgiven as our enemies, not lead them to believe that we love them because they are forgiven. That’s not the gospel and is obviously antithetical to how God loves His enemies daily. Blank check forgiveness does not put the gospel on display.
All in all, forgiveness only has context among believers. That’s why when people refuse to repent, we are to treat them as unbelievers, break fellowship with them, and continue to hold them accountable. The burden is not on those who have been sinned against, but rather on those who have sinned against others. People only change because they are held accountable by God, others, their own consciences, and consequences. Forgiveness does not lead to repentance, undeserved love does. An offer of forgiveness can only be granted when repentance occurs. When we have opportunity to love our enemies, no opportunity exists to present the gospel if we have already forgiven them. They are God’s enemies and our enemies—that’s why “friendship with the world is enmity against God.” We therefore love our enemies and grant forgiveness when those who have sinned against us repent. If they don’t repent, we are to treat them as unbelievers. If they do repent, we have “gained a brother.”
On the other hand, those who will not forgive those who have repented show themselves to be unbelievers as well. When the Bible talks about forgiveness, repentance is always assumed if not stated outright. If you note the Lord’s Prayer, it is addressed to the “Father.” And this brings me to the main point: true biblical forgiveness is only in context of God’s family. No forgiveness takes place outside of it. When a person repents and is forgiven by God, that is their initiation into the family of God, and after that, the forgiveness/repentance paradigm is assumed, expected, and demanded by God. The offended who don’t forgive, and the offenders who will not repent are assumed to be illegitimate family members. Under the auspices of common decency in the world, we accept apologies, but God has little patience for family schisms. True believers reconcile because we are all members of God’s family.
And reconciliation with God and others MUST ALWAYS have two parts: repentance and forgiveness.
paul
Protestant/Baptist Theological Stupidity: A Mother Can Give Birth and Leave the Baby Unborn
Meme Post #3
Thank goodness your mother didn’t give birth to you and leave you unborn! Such is the logic of this meme because those who hold to progressive justification do not understand the new birth. The new birth ends sin—there is no sin to be left in or to deal with in regard to justification. Christ does not finish justification through sanctification. The new birth justifies completely apart from the law whereas sanctification needs the law (Jn 17:17, Matt 4:4). The weakness of the flesh yields no condemning sin that Christ could theoretically “leave us in.” There is NO “your sin” as that sin died with the old you. Your so-called “present sin” is not the same sin that once condemned you. The new birth ends condemning sin and you cannot be unborn.
Is All of Reality a Prewritten Story For God’s Glory and Self Love?
Meme Post #2
Determinism is a lazy and cowardly approach to life. It is a god of the lazy person’s own making. Determinism finds its articulation in the Protestant Reformation and its historical-redemptive hermeneutic. It supplies an easy one-size-fits-all explanation for life events and brashly characterizes God without fear. It eats and drinks from life with no emotional investment and deems life as having no value other than God’s glory. Every detail and life event is predetermined by God for His own purposes, glory, and self-love. It is a worldview that hates life under the nomenclature of pious worship.
How Church Ruins Your Life
Meme Post #1
“Church” was never meant to be an institution, but rather a family meeting in private homes because that’s what families do. During the soon approaching Thanksgiving Day, extended families will meet together locally. In others words, for example, the Dohse family is a large family with descendants living all over the world, but more than likely, only the descendants living in the Dayton, OH area will gather together in one place. Few families maintain a purpose-built facility for meeting together. In fact, that would be deemed rather strange.
The 1st century assembly of Christ had a family mindset that is hard for us to comprehend. “They had all things in common” is not a socialist statement, it is a statement regarding their family mindset at that time. The “Church” concept did not really get a foothold in Christianity until the 4th century. The word “church” is a replacement word added to Bible translations and goes hand in glove with the institutionalization of Christianity.
One reason this is important is because families operate differently than institutions. In families, order and unity is achieved through what families are supposed to be about – love and respect. Thanksgiving dinner will go well this year because of family cooperation. Yes, there will be organization, but it will be based on many considerations other than authority. Mom and grandma will tell the men to stay out of the kitchen, and they will obey. When mom says its time to eat, everyone will come to the table. Everyone recognizes that the food part is mom’s gift. If some of the men tarry in front of the football game, aunt Beth will enter the room with a pair of scissors and threaten to cut the power cord on the big screen TV, and so it goes.
Much could be discussed here (this is a many-faceted dynamic), but the family concept circumvents cultism. Cults are predicated on authority—always. No authority, no cult; they must have authority. The integration of authority and religion always results in cultism. It starts with an authoritative presupposition resulting in a mind-control mandate. The institutional church was clearly founded on authority supposedly mandated by Christ through what we call apostolic succession. Immediately after the demise of the most prominent apostles, the so-called church fathers began clamoring for a centralized religious authority based in Rome. The home fellowships led by elders vigorously resisted this attempted transition. After a messy power struggle that lasted for more than 200 years, for the most part, home fellowships succumbed to the Roman church’s claim of apostolic succession and divine authority.
This was the beginning of the Roman Catholic Church from which Protestantism came, but the latter claimed no less authority whatsoever. The Reformation created many splinter groups that attempted to revive home fellowships, but were met with equal persecution from both Rome and Geneva. Catholics and Protestants never ceased fighting accept for the purpose of working together unofficially to persecute the various home fellowship movements that emerged. The Catholics nor Protestants had any tolerance for those who would not come under the auspices of their authority. And, if you think the vast majority of wars fought throughout history are the result of differences regarding religious authority—you rightly assess.
The claim of authority has always been, and always will be, twofold: God ordained governments to enforce religious orthodoxy, and the church’s oversight of salvation. One gets saved in the church, and through “faithfulness to the church,” the church, in turn, doles out more and more salvation until the day of judgment.
Let’s look at this in regard to meme #1. Where does God get “full custody” of his children? Look at the picture—it’s the church building. The implication follows: if you are a casual church attender, you only do business with God on the weekends or a mere one hour during Sunday service. The other implication is that you only do business with God at the temple. On the one hand, we are His “children,” but on the other hand, apparently, we only fellowship with Dad at an institution.
The idea is flawed, unnatural in regard to truly being born again into God’s family, but also has unfortunate cause and effect ramifications. If you go to a purpose-building twice on Sunday, once on Wednesday, and for whatever else is going on during the week (e.g., choir practice, visitation, revivals, men’s Bible study, women’s Bible study, youth activities, church softball league, etc., etc., etc.), when does one have any time with their own families? They don’t.
But the following is the kicker, especially in Reformed churches: on the one hand, families have little private time together, but on the other hand, they are spending what little free time they have hearing about how everyone in their family is a “sinner” or totally depraved. Then, when certain family members begin to display an aversion to the results of this construct, the church recommends separation or shunning. This is resulting in the division of families within the institutional church that is even unprecedented in the secular realm.
The institutional church is bad for your family and will destroy your marriage at worst, and will result in mere coexistence at best. Don’t sacrifice your family at the alter of showing faithfulness to God by being present at the purpose-building “every time the doors are opened.”
There should be NO disconnect between your family life and your life with God, that’s why the family of God should fellowship together right where we live, in the home.
paul
Paul's Passing Thoughts 
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