Tag: heaven

Why Doesn’t God Forgive Sin Without a Sacrifice?

~ Theologetics ~ Leave a comment

If God can do anything He wants, why doesn’t he just forgive sin? He’s all-powerful. He’s the epitome of love. So, why did He need a sacrifice for sin? Why doesn’t He just say to everyone, “Poof your sins are forgiven!”

The Return of the Prodigal by Rembrandt

In the beginning, we are told that God gave mankind one rule: don’t eat the forbidden fruit. We only had that one rule. We still disobeyed. God drove man from His earthy temple, Eden, but not before telling them a promise. We’ll get back to that promise later.

Why would God need to send them away, though? Couldn’t He just have said, “I forgive you. Don’t do it again. Stay and enjoy paradise”? Furthermore, later in Scripture, we are told that God requires us to forgive someone who sins against us, and if we don’t, then He won’t forgive our sins. But wait. Why do we have to be the first to forgive? Is that even fair?

Well, I believe that to understand this, we must first understand who God is and who we are in relation to God.

God, who is the most perfect being, created man. Man is not a perfect being. As I stated earlier, the earliest man couldn’t even keep one rule. God is all-powerful (omnipotent), all-knowing (omniscient), and the ultimate goodness (omnibenevolent). Man is none of these things. We can only know so much, do so much, and have a limit on how good we can be. God, because of His omnibenevolence, cannot sin. Since we do not have that attribute, we do sin.

To illustrate my point, let’s say I kicked a small rock down the road. It’s not a being that can not feel or think because it’s incapable of life. I’ve done no wrong. Now, let’s say I’ve kicked a bug that wasn’t bothering me. I’ve likely caused it harm or even killed it, and this action probably speaks negatively about my character. But it basically stops there. Now let’s say I continue down the road and I see a dog and decide it’s a good idea to kick it. Well, if it doesn’t bite me, I could actually be charged with animal cruelty in many places and if it’s someone’s pet, the dog has more intrinsic value bestowed on it, and I could get in trouble with its family also. There would be even more trouble for me if I chose to kick one of the dog’s human owners.

Basically, as I moved up the “hierarchy” of existing things, I committed more of a trespass against each thing. Even if I was never caught, most people would probably agree that some cosmic or divine justice would (or at least should) await me for my moral failing. The higher the being, the more I would be indebted to some sort of restitution even if it’s just an apology.

This brings me to my point. Our trespasses (sins) against a Being who exists in infinite goodness increases because of who He is. The increase is so much that an infinite punishment is the only justified payback.

When man sins against man, the debt is much less than when man sins against God.

Jesus told a story about a master who called his servant to him to settle an outstanding debt he owed the master. The servant begged and pleaded that the master would be merciful, and the master was. Later, the servant sees another servant who owed him much less than the first servant owed his master. The second servant begged for mercy, to which the first refused to listen and had his family thrown into prison until he received his money. The king heard about the incident. “You wicked servant! I forgave you all that debt because you pleaded with me. And should you not have had mercy on your fellow servant, as I had mercy on you?” He then had the servant thrown into prison until he could repay the debt. (Read Matthew 18:23-34).

Immediately before Jesus told this story, his apostle Peter asks how often he should forgive his brother if his brother sins against him. “As many as seven times?” Peter inquires to which Jesus answers, “not seven times, but seventy-seven times.” Some translations say seventy times seven. By following up Peter’s question with the above story, Jesus illustrated that sins against the Master are exponentially greater than sins against each other.

When you read the parable, take note of the amount that the servant owed his master: 10,000 talents. A “talent” was twenty years wages. Twenty years!! One talent=20 years wages. This man owed 10,000 talents to his master. That’s 200,000 years of wages he owed. There was no earthly way that this man could have repaid that debt. The amount his fellow servant owed him was worth only a few hundred days of work.

You may ask, “Since Jesus told the story, and He said that the master was just going to forgive the servant, why can’t God just forgive us?” The point of the parable was to show how our sins against each other pale in comparison to our sins against God. But it does remind us that God is merciful.

I’ve mentioned that God is all-powerful, all-knowing, infinitely good, and merciful. I must add that His goodness goes hand in hand with another attribute, His justice. As a good and just judge, he must punish wrongdoing. Otherwise, he is neither good nor just. Take a moment and think about some of the bad things you’ve done in life knowing what the punishment could have been, and you still proceeded to do the evil deed. How brazen we can be! Now imagine the only “punishment” awaiting our evil deeds was God saying, “Ahh, it’s all good! Just don’t do it again!” You better believe we’re gonna do it again! So, since it’s not “all good,” He punishes because He is all good. And since He is all-good, He still makes a way for us. How? He paid our debt, nailing it to the cross of Christ. (Colossians 2:14)

In conclusion, since God is the highest being (The Most High), any sin against Him is of the highest offense. Any sin man commits against his fellow man is not. Therefore, God does not have to forgive us just because He is good. Instead, because He is good (and just), He must punish sin. However, the good news is that Jesus, the promise God told Adam and Eve, took our penalty for sin on His own back by dying on the cross. The ultimate goodness took on the ultimate punishment. Those who repent and believe this are forgiven and free. And if you are forgiven, you must forgive others.

Derrick Stokes

Theologetics.org

Why Am I Guilty For Adam and Eve’s Sin?

~ Theologetics ~ 2 Comments

Isn’t it true that man stands guilty before a holy and blameless God for his sin nature? And that sin nature comes from our first parents Adam and Eve? Isn’t it unfair that a God of love would punish me for something that I didn’t do but was merely a condition I was born into? Isn’t the following passage from Ezekiel a complete contradiction to the Christian concept of salvation?

“The soul that sinneth, it shall die. The son shall not bear the iniquity of the father, neither shall the father bear the iniquity of the son: the righteousness of the righteous shall be upon him, and the wickedness of the wicked shall be upon him.” Ezekiel 18:20

Son of Man by René Magritte

In the book of Genesis, Adam and Eve broke God’s command by eating of the forbidden fruit. This in turn cursed the ground and the rest of humanity. According to the Christian faith, we have to be saved from this curse and in the end the earth will be restored to its former glory and all that placed their faith in Jesus are forgiven. But is it true that we have to be forgiven for something we didn’t do? We didn’t eat the forbidden fruit.

There are many theological terms concerning our condition of needing salvation because of Adam’s sin. The doctrine of “original sin” states we are sinners from the moment we’re born because we were born to the fallen human family, children of Adam. The concept of “imputation” means that Adam’s falleness is automatically placed upon all who are born from him because he was the representative of all of man. Adam, therefore is our “federal head” and whereever the head goes the body follows. “Seminalism” is that we are now born with Adam’s sinful nature because we were physically born of his seed. Basically, Adam’s nature after he sinned became that of fallen man therefore, everyone born after that is born with the same nature in the same way snakes can give birth to snakes. They can’t help that they have a snake nature.

Therefore, it is our nature that we have to be saved from. Remember though, a snake can only act according to its snakey nature. If we are born with a sinful nature, then we will sin. It’s inevitable. Every single human being will sin because that is our human condition. For this reason, every single human being needs salvation. When people say “I was born this way”, they are absolutely right. We were all born this way and with propensity to various sins. We all sin our different sins. That’s why Jesus said we must be born again. (John 3:3)

Even when we’re “born again” we still maintain our fallen human nature right? We don’t cease to be human. No, the Bible says we actually gain a new nature. Once we have repented and placed our faith in Jesus, we become imputed with His nature; His righteousness. Sin therefore, loses its original appeal because it appealed to our old nature. Have you ever stopped eating a certain type of food or drink for, perhaps, health or lifestyle reasons? Then after a while you tried consuming whatever you gave up and it no longer tasted good or even made you sick? That’s a picture of how sin no longer appeals to the born again believer. Of course, there are those different sins that we still struggle with. There are those that we may even be unaware of until the Holy Spirit illuminates those dark corners. As we continue to live in this body with its aging and ailments and as we continue to live in this fallen world, we will continue to struggle with sin. Sin resurfacing from within us and sin from outside us.

Couldn’t God have just punished Adam and Eve and let those born after them have their original sinless nature? Sure, God could have. However, consider that if Eve listened to a serpent, and Adam listened to his wife, both in their sinless state, how much more so would a sinless child born to them follow their sinful example? Or, one may ask why would they have to have had children at all? Couldn’t God just have killed them or waited till they died and started over fresh? Again, yes He could have, but why do we think anyone else would have done any better? Even if all generations were sinless all the way down to you and I, one of us would have screwed it up. Couldn’t God have just made us so that we wouldn’t sin to begin with? As Clark said in his blog Why didn’t God make us perfect without sin?, “A being that is perfect without sin would also be holy, so this seems to indicate that He would have just created another God…”

It may still seem unfair to you that God holds us accountable for something we didn’t start. I wholeheartedly sympathize. Yet, if we’re honest, this concept doesn’t just apply to matters of spirituality. If someone is born to parents who do nothing but break the law and they teach their child to do the same, that child doesn’t know any better yet as the child gets older he or she is still held accountable. Was it unfair that they were born to bad parents? Sure, but at some point, I truly believe, they are shown that there is another way and they must move from pointing fingers at the condition they were born in to the direction of a higher way of living. Remember, that Adam blamed Eve and Eve blamed the serpent but God held them all accountable for their own actions. Just because you were put into an “unfair” situation, your reaction is still your responsibility.

While we may not be punished for Adam’s sin, mankind suffers because of it. In the same way the child born to a drug addicted mother may have physical or mental challenges or the employees of a business may suddenly be without a job because the CEO mismanaged funds.

All that is to say, we aren’t punished for Adam and Eve’s sin. We are punished for our own sins. But, the story doesn’t stop there. If we want to say that it’s not fair that we’ve had to suffer for their sin, we must also conclude that it’s not fair that Jesus suffered and was punished for our sins. While generations have suffered for the sin of Adam, Jesus suffered for the sins of generations. How unfair is that? It’s not about what’s fair or unfair; it’s about His love for us. Jesus took on the punishment meant for us when He died at the cross. What a gift! Do you accept it?

“But the free gift is not like the trespass. For if many died through one man’s (Adam) trespass, much more have the grace of God and the free gift by the grace of that one man Jesus Christ abounded for many.
And the free gift is not like the result of that one man’s sin. For the judgment following one trespass brought condemnation, but the free gift following many trespasses brought justification.
For if, because of one man’s trespass, death reigned through that one man, much more will those who receive the abundance of grace and the free gift of righteousness reign in life through the one man Jesus Christ.
Therefore, as one trespass led to condemnation for all men, so one act of righteousness leads to justification and life for all men.
For as by the one man’s disobedience the many were made sinners, so by the one man’s obedience the many will be made righteous.” Romans 5:15-19

Read: 2 Corinthians 5:17, John 3, Ezekiel 18

Derrick Stokes for Theologetics.org