Forgiveness
….. I believe in …… the forgiveness of sins...
The Creed dose not talk about evil, nor does it talk about guilt. It mentions forgiveness, but not repentance. So, do we do what we like, say ‘sorry’ and all is OK?
What is Sin?
In his book God of Surprises Welsh Jesuit, Gerard Hughes, says:
Sin is the refusal to let God be God.
Repentance is letting God be God in our lives.
William Barclay describes sin as essentially failure to be what we were meant to be and should have been.
No one is perfect, so we are all sinners needing to repent.
Early Church
The early Church clearly preached and offered forgiveness of sins upon repentance and baptism. (Luke 24:47, Acts 2.38, 3.19, Mark 2.5 et al). From these early preachings, two views emerged. One saw the Church as an exclusive body of saints. The other promoted the idea of an inclusive Church into which the sinner is invited to come, that he or she may find salvation. Even then, a person who committed a post-baptismal sin could be excluded and excommunicated from the Church. However c220AD Callixtus, Bishop of Rome, issued an edict that he would pardon all post-baptismal sin, except murder and apostasy, if the sinner showed true repentance and did due penance. Although some bitterly opposed what they believed to be a serious a laxity, the wider view of mercy prevailed and became the orthodox belief of the Church.
The Cost of Discipleship
These days, true repentance and due penance, seem to have little if any part in the Church. Dietrich Bonhoeffer (the Lutheran Pastor who opposed Hitler and was executed by the Nazis) recognised this in his book The Cost of Discipleship (1939). His major concern in this book is cheap grace, the grace that has become so watered down that it no longer resembles the costly grace of the Gospels. He says of cheap grace: It is the preaching of forgiveness without requiring repentance, baptism without church discipline, Communion without confession, absolution without personal confession. Cheap grace is grace without discipleship, grace without the cross, grace without Jesus Christ, living and incarnate. Further, he says that real grace will cost a man his life, whereas cheap grace has arisen out of man’s desire to be saved, but to do so without becoming a disciple. He writes, The true believer must resist cheap grace and enter into the life of active discipleship. Faith can no longer mean sitting still and waiting; the Christian must rise and follow Christ.
True repentance results in real forgiveness.
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