Every man needs Christ. To many awareness of this need comes as a sense of inadequacy to meet life’s demands. But to most it comes in a realization of our moral failure.
Sin is a Trojan horse. We welcome it into our lives as a bringer of good things only to discover that it contains hostile forces that come creeping out in the darkness. Then either a man loses his conscience and thereby becomes a monster or else he is ceaselessly tormented by guilt.
Victor Hugo compared attacks of conscience to the tide that may ebb for a while but then comes surging back to the shore again. Yet this tormenting voice of conscience that keeps saying “You are unclean!” is a blessing, for it is essential to any vital religious experience. Paul talks about it in Romans 7 and remarks concerning its torment, “Wretched man that I am.” But he goes on to joyfully proclaim that Christ delivers us from “the body of this death.”
Of course, if your conscience does not trouble you
concerning your sin, there is not much in this article for you. But before you
decide concerning your own cleanliness, consider the scope of sin. I am not
just talking about murder, or fornication, or drunkenness, or dishonesty. I am
also thinking of sullenness, vindictiveness, bad temper, and
self-righteousness. And beyond these are the sins of neglect. I am thinking of
the Master’s talent wrapped up and hidden in a piece of cloth (Luke
The High Cost of Forgiveness
There is no way a man may rid himself of guilt. He cannot in his power ever quit committing sin. Sin is a hard thing to conquer and a hard thing to forgive. It is easy to condone sin, to make light of it, and to say we have forgiven and been forgiven. But we cannot fool ourselves long. Like the tide, the sin and guilt return. When a man talks about it being easy to forgive sin, he is not forgiving. He is condoning. To be tolerant of sin and to take it lightly is to do no more than the teller of dirty stories can do. But that is not forgiving. That is moral looseness.
Imagine two mothers whose sons plunge into vice. One mother tries to cover it up. She makes excuses, says it wasn’t really so bad or that it wasn’t really her son’s fault at all. She is condoning, not forgiving. But the other mother does not make light of her son’s sins, or excuse them. She sees how terrible they are. She takes sin seriously. She too forgives but not lightly. She forgives but it turns her hair gray. She suffers from the sin. She bears the burden of it. That is the only way sin can really be forgiven, and it is not easy.
Yet even though it is not easy, Christ forgives. Even though
it was as difficult as shedding his blood on a cross, Christ forgave and still
forgives. And apart from that shed blood, the Bible says, there is no remission.
Forgiveness is promised to those who repent and are baptized (see Acts
But in Christ you are forgiven. Christ took sin seriously and hated it as no man ever hated it. But he forgives it. Even though sin is so hard to forgive that it can only be forgiven in the blood of a cross, he forgives it. He took that cross. Whatever else the cross means to you, it has to mean this. Christ forgives sin even though it is not easy. It costs. It cost him a terrible price.
When the gospel offers forgiveness of sin, it does not invite people to a careless tolerance where sin is condoned. It invites us to a cross where sins are paid for in suffering. It always costs to expiate sin.
A Man Forgiven
Now let us look in the second chapter of Mark’s Gospel at a case of Jesus actually forgiving sin. A palsied sinner is brought to him. Look at the poor, shaky, nerve-ridden creature, utterly jangled and all to bits, at odds with physical and spiritual life. He is brought into the atmosphere of the Holy One in a last desperate effort to find a cure. Christ does not reprove the man and demand that he pull himself together. Instead he pours out the steady radiance of his health-giving charity. “Son, your sins are forgiven.”
Just imagine it! Christ is telling him it’s all right, to fear not, that his sins are done away. The love of God, so much stronger than his fears, restores him to health. He is forgiven. So let him now rise and resume the full life for which God intended him. Let him pick up the mat they brought him in on. That’s all over. Let him now look forward, not backward. Let him rise and walk.
But notice that in every healing of Christ, whether physical
or spiritual, the patient’s own will must be called out to insure the
permanence of the cure. “Immediately he stood up before them, took what he had
been lying on and went home praising God” (Luke
That alone is health. Even the influenza patient is not cured while he still mopes about saying, “You see, I have had a touch of the flu.” He is completely well when he puts it all behind him and gets on with the business of life. In the same way, when the healing touch of Christ is laid on our souls, his real successes are not those who go around constantly feeling their spiritual pulse, in terrible fear of another temperature, but those whose faith and gratitude make them forget themselves and their poor little sins and stand up and glorify God. They go forward in the new energy of power and love, dropping themselves and their unfortunate pasts.
Some of the greatest saints were among Christ’s critical moral cures. Consider Mary Magdalene of the seven devils or that chief of sinners, Saul of Tarsus. But Paul looked forward, not backward, with a wonderful combination of vigorous initiative and absolute, grateful trust. “This one thing I do, forgetting those things which are behind, and reaching forth unto those things which are before, I press toward the mark for the prize of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus” (Philippians 3:13-14). People “who enjoy poor health” whether spiritual or physical will never respond to Christ’s healing power with the fullness and faith he asks.
Cured and Cleansed
All sin is disease and it takes many forms. Some people are liable to intermittent lustful fevers and others are poisoned by pride or self-love. But whatever the form, the result remains the same. Sin always thwarts our adjustment to life. And we can’t produce the right anti-toxin. Christ must enter and cleanse us from infection. He must heal our jangled and distracted minds, our turbulent desires and conflicts, by the infusion of his peace. He must treat the scratches on our souls, for without him we are helpless. But even he can’t do it unless we want it so much that we cease our struggles and obediently abandon ourselves to his power. We have to give up our own favorite treatments and home remedies and obey the Great Physician. We have to let him remove our private devils because we can’t.
But what a glorious release we receive when we do! We are really clean and we know it. And at last when death strikes and we pass on to confront judgment, and people are running to and fro in panic and crying for the rocks to fall on them and the hills to cover them, surely our own pulses can beat normally and our hearts feel no fear, for Christ, who has cleansed us and led us this far can doubtless lead us further. And we are, after all, still where we have been for years, enveloped in the love of God.
Why then worry, since Christ has cleansed us and is always near? This is the peace that passes understanding. This is the gift of God’s grace, accepted. With it we can step forward toward the future and face life with steady eyes.