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About Jesus - Steve (Stephen) Sweetman Defining
Biblical Forgiveness Many foundational
theological words have lost their Biblical meaning in today's Christian
world because we define them in accordance with our twenty-first century,
western-world definitions. The
word "forgive" is one example.
As forgiveness applies to any relationship, our western culture
tends to define forgiveness as the relinquishing of bitterness, resentment
and hostility we hold against those who have offended us, but is that
Biblically accurate? We can't define a word
found in the Bible by looking it up in today's dictionary.
The Bible was written in eras, cultures and languages that have
next to no similarities to today. If
we want to understand the Biblical meaning of the word "forgive"
we must learn how the Bible defines it, and that through the study of
original languages and relevant ancient cultures in which the word
"forgive" was written. In relation to sin, the
Old Testament Hebrew word "salah" is translated into English as
"forgive," "pardon" or a few other related words. Jeremiah
31:34 says God "will forgive [salah] their [Israelites] wickedness and will
remember their sins no more." Some
other Hebrew words are translated into English as forgive, one being
"nasa" that suggests a lifting up or a throwing away, as seen in
Exodus 34:9 where Moses asked God to forgive (throw away) the sins of the
Israelites. More importantly is how
the New Testament defines the word "forgive" in relation to
Jesus forgiving our sins. The
predominant Greek word translated as "forgive" in the New
Testament is "aphiemi." This
was primarily an accounting word in the first-century Greco Roman world,
denoting the deletion or cancelation of a debt.
It's like a loan manager clicking the delete button on his computer
that cancels your debt. One
second you have debt. The next
second it's gone. Read Matthew
9:6. "'But
I [Jesus] want you to know that the Son of Man has authority on earth to
forgive [aphiemi] sins.' So
he said to the paralyzed man, 'Get up, take your mat
and go home.'" Jesus said that He and
He alone has ultimate universal authority to forgive, delete or cancel
sins from the heavenly record. With
one click of the heavenly metaphoric delete button, all of my past,
present and future sins were forgiven, deleted or cancelled from God's
heavenly spreadsheet. It's what Paul wrote about in Colossians 2:13.
In one split second my sins disappeared.
What God did not do or could not do was to relinquish any
bitterness, resentment or hostility He held against me because He has no
such sinful human tendencies to relinquish.
Ridding one's self of such emotions is not Biblical forgiveness. Postscript
Some think that God
doesn't see our sins He has forgiven based on Jeremiah 31:34 quoted above.
The context of that verse concerns God not remembering the sins of
Jews when He restores the nation of Israel
at the end of this age. God
still sees a Christian's sin He has forgiven as He saw the sins of the
Christians in the seven churches of Revelation 2 and 3. It is
why Jesus presently sits beside God as our lawyer and atoning sacrifice,
representing us before God when we sin (1 John 2:1 - 2).
It's as if God sees a sin, looks at Jesus and says, "Yes, it
has been forgiven." How
thankful I am. How the word
"forgive" applies to us and God was the topic of this article.
How forgiveness as I have defined it applies to human relationships
is a topic for another day.
Scripture
References Exodus 34:9 "'Lord,' he said,
'if I have found favor in your eyes, then let the Lord go with us.
Although this is a stiff-necked people, forgive
our wickedness and our sin, and take us as your inheritance.'" Colossians 2:13 "When you were dead
in your sins and in the uncircumcision of your flesh, God made you alive
with Christ. He forgave us all our sins," 1 John 2:1 - 2 "My dear children,
I write this to you so that you will not sin. But if anybody does sin, we
have an advocate with the Father—Jesus Christ, the Righteous One. He
is the atoning sacrifice for our sins, and not only for ours but also for
the sins of the whole world."
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