FORGIVE US OUR TRESSPASSES

BERTRAND RUSSEL, ONE  OF THE GREAT THINKERS of modern times was once asked what he would tell God if he were to meet Him. “You did not give us enough evidence (of His existence)” replied Russel. It appears that the Nobel laureate, the famous philosopher-logician-mathematician, had not read the Bible or didn’t want to admit he had. The answer to his question is right there in the book of Romans 1!

Romans 1;18-20 The wrath of God is being revealed from heaven against all the godlessness and wickedness of men who suppress the truth by their wickedness, since what may be known about God is plain to them, because God has made it plain to them.  For since the creation of the world God’s invisible qualities—his eternal power and divine nature—have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that men are without excuse.

St. Paul, the author of the Letter to the Romans goes on to explain:

21 For although they knew God, they neither glorified Him as God nor gave thanks to Him, but their thinking became futile and their foolish hearts were darkened. 22 Although they claimed to be wise, they became fools 23 and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images made to look like mortal man and birds and animals and reptiles.

In addition to giving a fitting reply to the eminent logician, Paul predicts the decadent  behavior of present day humanity  with amazing accuracy:

28 … He gave them over to a depraved mind, to do what ought not to be done. 29 They have become filled with every kind of wickedness, evil, greed and depravity. They are full of envy, murder, strife, deceit and malice. They are gossips, 30 slanderers, God-haters, insolent, arrogant and boastful; they invent ways of doing evil…31 They are senseless, faithless, heartless, ruthless. Refusing to know God, they became rampantly evil, homosexual, grabbing and grasping, and vicious back-stabbers. They made life hell on earth with their envy, wanton killing, bickering and cheating; they became mean-spirited, venomous, fork-tongued God-bashers, bullies and kept inventing new ways of committing evil. 

The Old Testament tells us about one such enormously wicked person, the king of  Judah–Manasseh, son of Hezekiah. His father had enacted sweeping religious reforms, including a strict mandate for the sole worship of Yahweh and a prohibition on venerating other deities within the Temple of Jerusalem. The Bible calls him a very righteous person.

 

When his son Manasseh became the king he undid all these reforms. He reverted to the debasing cults of the aboriginal Nature-worship which his father had suppressed, thus making Judah revert to the despicable Baal worship; he reintroduced the black arts so prevalent in all the surrounding nations, imported the elaborate worship of the heavenly bodies from Babylon, invading even the temple-courts with its numerous rites and altars; he went to the horrid extreme of human sacrifice, setting an example to the people by sacrificing his own children. He shed so much innocent blood that he filled Jerusalem from end to end. The prophets warned the people and exhorted them to change their ways, but they did not listen to them. Manasseh persecuted those who wanted to bring back Yahweh worship. (It is said he put an end to prophet Isaiah’s long career by cutting him into two with a saw). He led his subjects astray willfully and systemically; a tremendous wave of ritual and mechanical heathen cults flooded Judah.

 

During his reign, Assyria, principally under Esar-haddon and Assur-banipal, was at the height of its arrogance and power; Manasseh ruled over Judah as a willing vassal of this super power. The wholesale idolatry for which his reign was distinguished provoked God to anger and He decided to punish him for his atrocities, for his detestable sins.  “I am going to bring a terrible disaster to Jerusalem and Judah… I will wipe out Jerusalem as one wipes a dish, wiping it and turning it upside down. They will be looted and plundered by all their foes, because they have done evil in my eyes and have provoked me to anger...” declared God in anger and handed him over to the Assyrians.

The Lord brought against Judah the army commanders of the king of Assyria, who took Manasseh prisoner, put a hook in his nose, bound him with bronze shackles and took him to Babylon and kept him prisoner under inhuman conditions. Manassah repented. In his distress he sought the favor of the Lord his God and humbled himself greatly before the God of his fathers.  And when he prayed to him, the Lord was moved by his entreaty and listened to his plea; so he brought him back to Jerusalem and to his kingdom. Then Manasseh knew that the Lord is God, the Bible says. That a man who was the very embodiment of evil like Manasseh could be forgiven and restored demonstrates the enormity of God’s forgiving heart. Like Psalm 78:38 says “Yet He was merciful; He forgave their iniquities and did not destroy them. Time after time He restrained His anger and did not stir up his full wrath”.

There is no place on earth where His grace cannot reach. The Holy Bible contains a number of examples of this. The sin of King David was horrendous. He committed adultery with another man’s wife and murdered his faithful servant in order to cover up his sin. His repentance was sincere and true  and God forgave him completely. (It was  after the Bathsheba affair that God called David “a man after my own heart”!). When Jonah prayed to Him from the stomach of the fish, he forgave him his disobedience and high-handedness and rehabilitated him. (We must not overlook the fact that He created the essential conditions first for his surrender!). 

Apostle Peter’s denial of Jesus was in no way a ‘lesser’ sin than Judas’ betrayal.  But Jesus accepted him back into the fold after Peter’s deep sorrow for his sin and bestowed on him the honorable position of taking care of His sheep. When the religious leaders brought to Him the woman caught in adultery (John 8:1-11), the woman stood no chance before all those people who had condemned her, but Jesus who knew this and saved her life with the warning “Go now and leave your life of sin.”

In the gospel of Luke, Jesus tells the well-known parable of the prodigal son in order to illustrate the epitome of God's forgiving nature. The prodigal son, or lost son, was an abuser of grace. He had a loving father, a good home, provision, a future, and inheritance, but he traded it all in for the temporary pleasures of the world. When he hits the bottom he comes to his senses and returns home. The father forgives his son when he returns and welcomes him home. In the same way, God waits for humans to realize what they have done wrong and ask for forgiveness and welcomes them back when they do. 

Christ taught that forgiveness is a duty. No limit can be set to the extent of forgiveness (Luke 17:4 ) and it must be granted without reserve; there is no wrong so gross nor so often repeated that it is beyond forgiveness. To Him an unforgiving spirit is among the worst of sins. This is the offense which God will not forgive according to Matthew 18:34, 35.  It was the one flaw of the elder son in the parable of the ‘Prodigal Son’ (Luke 15:28-30). Take note of His answer to Peter that one should forgive not merely seven times in a day, (as the Pharisees had taught the Jews) but seventy times seven (Matthew 18:21, 22). This not only shows that He thought there was no limit to one's forgiveness, but that the principle could not be reduced to a definite formula. It will not be an exaggeration to say that the heart of the ‘Lord’s Prayer’ is Matthew 6:12– namely “Forgive us our debts as we also have forgiven our debtors".

************************