Nathan Key

Husband, Father, Thinker.

 

 
 
OK, I haven’t been keeping up with my promise to blog about this every day, but I am reading through this every day and talking about it with my good friend Brad on a weekly basis. Last night, we talked through day nine in Piper’s book which talks about how Christ’s Death allows for our forgiveness.
 
Usually one defines forgiveness as something that’s all about grace from the perspective of the one recieving it rather than the one giving it- if my mortgage were forgiven it would mean that I wasn’t required to pay any longer (self-centered). In the case of Christ’s Death, we’re talking about ultimate forgiveness of sins. Forgiveness means that we don’t have to worry about the eternal consequences of sin (self-centered).

But we rarely think about what forgiveness COSTS the person giving it.

When we teach our children to forgive others, we tend to leave out the part about how much it costs the person doing the forgiving. We focus on letting the other person off the hook instead of on the person forgiving and on the incrimental costs associated with when a real debt is forgiven.

If my mortgage were forgiven it means that I don’t have to pay it back, sure, but it also means that the bank has to give up the right to collect money from me. Money that they shelled out in the first place. They lose out. It costs something.

It costs something when God forgives sin, too. He’s got to figure out a way to punish sin because that’s the cost that sin requires. Pouring out that cost on His son was the only way for Him to truly enact grace to us.

On a more personal note, I’m beginning to realize that if I tell someone that I forgive them, it’s gotta cost me something. I can’t just blow it off when someone truly lets me down. In order to forgive, I have to truly give up the right to feel angry at them or stew about it. Otherwise, it’s not actually true forgiveness, is it?
 
 
Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us—for it is written, “Cursed is everyone who is hanged on a tree.” Galatians 3:13

God put [Christ] forward as a propitiation by his blood, to be received by faith. This was to show God’s righteousness, because in his divine forbearance he had passed over former sins. Romans 3:25

In this is love, not that we have loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins. 1 John 4:10
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I’ve often noted that there seems to be a lot of “God’s Wrath” in the Old Testament and then this seemingly different God who wants to be friends with us in the New Testament. It’s a contradiction that doesn’t go unnoticed and is often debated among my friends- even if it’s not something that’s debated in the upper echelons of theology buffs.

What I’ve decided recently is that the writers of the Old Testament knew that they were under the law. They knew that there was a set of rules or a moral code that must be followed in order to be considered righteous before God. They also knew how incredibly impossible it was to adhere to the standard set before them. Even the best of them was required to provide blood offerings yearly to atone for their shortcomings. They knew that once the rules were broken, someone had to pay.

But the writers of the New Testament lived in a different reality. They were writing their epistles with a different view of the law and the payment for breaking it.

They had the Cross.

They had a visual picture of the Wrath of God poured out on the Son of Man and so they knew that the price had been paid. So although they understood the importance of the law, they also knew that it was a law that would bring freedom rather than guilt for the price of breaking that law had already been paid.
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I'm spending 50 days thinking about The Cross in Preparation for Christmas. If you want to join me you can head hear each day for discussions. If you really want to dig in, you can read John Piper's book The Passion of Christ at the following link:

http://www.desiringgod.org/media/pdf/books_pojc/bpojc_all.pdf

I’m looking forward to the conversations!