Finding Forgiveness

How can we find forgiveness? That's what I want to talk about. And the Bible passage that I'd like you look at is the one we've just heard. So that's 1 John 1.5 – 2.6. Do get a look at it. Verse 9 really sums it up:

If we confess our sins, he [that is, God] is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins…

But we need to do some groundwork before we can really get to grips with that.

According to a recent survey, average student debt has soared to a record high. It is now £6,000. That compares with an average student debt of just £1,000 in 1992.

Apparently 95% of students today owe money, compared with just one third ten years ago. Total UK student debt is estimated at £5,000m. The proportion of students borrowing on credit cards has soared from 6% 10 years ago to 35%.

And last year parents paid £500m to UK colleges and universities to fund their children's education. Clearly those of us with children approaching student years have something to look forward to. Indeed there may be parents of students here who feel that most of that £500m has been personally paid by them.

But it's not just students who get into debt. New research shows, I gather, that couples buying their homes are particularly vulnerable to racking up debts they can't afford. If things go wrong, home buyers can quickly find themselves saddled with debt of over 40 times their income.

What is more, apparently the report debunks any suggestion that the young are reckless when offered credit. Instead, it is those aged between 25 and 39 who are most likely to find themselves in financial hardship. I must admit it's a bit disconcerting that those aged 25+ are not considered to be in the young category – but that's beside the point.

Why am I going on about debt? Because it's one of the ways that Jesus illustrated what God's forgiveness is all about. So let's follow that illustration through by asking four questions about forgiveness.


First, WHAT IS FORGIVENESS?

To be forgiven is to be released from indebtedness.

Jesus once told this little story in a very tense situation. It's in Luke 7:

Two men owed money to a certain money-lender. One owed him five hundred denarii, and the other fifty. Neither of them had the money to pay him back, so he cancelled the debts of both. Now which of them will love him more?"

And the reply came: "I suppose the one who had the bigger debt cancelled." And Jesus said, "… he who has been forgiven little loves little." To be forgiven is to be released from indebtedness. And indeed, to be forgiven draws out a grateful response of love – but more about that later.

Some debts – even large debts - can be paid off. It may be very hard, require massive self-discipline, immense effort, and a great deal of time. Take the case of the 19th Century novelist Sir Walter Scott, who lived up the road in the Scottish borders. You might even have visited his beloved home at Abbotsford.

He was already a famous and prolific author when he underwent the great crisis of his life in 1826. Scott was a partner in a publishing company that failed that year, and he found himself in debt to the tune of £120,000 – many millions today. Scott refused what he regarded as the easy way out - bankruptcy. To his mind, debts should be paid. It seemed an impossible task, but from then on he worked slavishly, and everything he earned went to pay off his debt.

This heroic effort undermined his health, and seven years later he died at Abbotsford after a series of strokes. After his death the last of his debts were cleared by the sale of copyright on his works.

Scott was not forgiven his debts. He did not want to be. He considered it his duty to pay them. He thought he could. He was right – just.

But some debts are just too large for the resources available. The debt of many African nations is a case in point. African national debt amounts to every African man, woman and child owing the developed world over $300. Tanzania spends 40% of its government revenue on paying interest on debt. In sub-Saharan Africa the mountain of debt now stands at over $200bn and apparently it continues to grow. No wonder much of this debt is widely regarded, even by Western governments, as unpayable.

The debt we owe to God is unpayable. Admirable as Walter Scott's determination was, his debt was nothing to that which we owe God. And if we imagine, as so many do, that we can pay it off by our own attempts at being religious or good or both, then not only are we kidding ourselves, but we will be turning our backs on our only hope of having the burden lifted. We need to be forgiven. We need our debts to be cancelled. And our only hope is Jesus.

What is forgiveness? It is having your debts cancelled.


Secondly, WHY DO WE NEED FORGIVENESS?

We need forgiveness because we are deeply in debt as a result of our sin. And every one of us is a sinner. 1 John 1.8:

If we claim to be without sin, we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us.

And on to verse 10:

If we claim we have not sinned, we make [God] out to be a liar and his word has no place in our lives. [Why? Because God tells us we are sinners.]

What is sin? It is our rejection of God and his will for our lives. He has been like a loving Father to us. And we have wanted nothing to do with him. He has shown us the way to go. And we have gone in the opposite direction. Many others get hurt by our particular sins. But they are like symptoms of a disease. And when you get to the root of all sins, you find our sin against God.

And what would it take to repay the debt mountain that we have created by our sin? The Bible says 'the wages of sin is death.' And by that is meant not just physical death but eternal death and hell. Unless our debt is cancelled one day we will have to begin to pay. Our debt will catch up with us. Debts have a habit of doing that.

Us humans are very prone to try and escape from our responsibility for our debts. One way to do that is to try and hide them. Another is to run away from them. Then when the debts are exposed, yet another is to try and shift the responsibility for them.

Nick Leeson is a fine example of that. He was, as you may remember, a trader for Barings, Britain's oldest merchant bank. In 1995 his dealings on the Singapore International Monetary Exchange brought down Barings. By the time he was caught, he'd piled up debts of £800m, almost the entire assets of the bank.

He'd tried to conceal them fraudulently. But in the end the scale of them was so great that his cover was blown. He ran. But he was found. Leeson blamed senior management in London. They blamed Leeson. He went to jail.

When he was released and came home to Britain, his lawyer said that Leeson felt he "was the only one who really paid a serious price" for the bank's collapse. Barings shareholders - many of whom lost their life savings - disagree with this.

He tried to hide his debts. He tried to run. He tried to shift responsibility. In the end his debts caught up with him. Debts do.

And the day will come – it will be the Day of Judgement – when our debts will catch up with us, if we haven't been forgiven them. There is no way that we can even make a dent in the task of paying them back ourselves while there's still time, any more than Nick Leeson's personal savings could have paid off the £800 million that Barings owed because of him. Our only hope is to have our debts cancelled. In other words, we need forgiveness.


Thirdly, HOW IS FORGIVENESS POSSIBLE?

If you're any kind of fan of Charles Dickens you'll know the very sound advice of Mr Micawber in David Copperfield:

"Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure nineteen nineteen six, result happiness. Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure twenty pounds ought and six, result misery."

The trouble is, none of us has come anywhere near living by that advice in relation to God. We have a mountain of debt. We need our debts to be cancelled. But how?

After all, when debt is cancelled, it's not as if it vanishes into thin air. When a debt is written off, the cost is still paid. It's just that the burden of the debt falls on someone else. So our debt can only be paid by someone who is not indebted himself – indeed someone who is massively in credit.

And the only person that applies to is Jesus. How can we be forgiven? Through what Jesus did when he died on the cross. Look at 1 John 2.1-2:

My dear children, I write this to you so that you will not sin. But if anybody does sin [and he's already made clear that we all have and do], we have one who speaks to the Father in our defence – 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.

When John speaks of Jesus as 'the atoning sacrifice for our sins', what does he mean? The sacrifice he's talking about is the way that Jesus deliberately, out of love for us, laid down his life when he was executed on the cross and cut off from God his Father.

And in what sense was that an 'atoning' sacrifice? In the sense that Jesus was paying what had to be paid in order for our sin to be dealt with. And it is a measure of how great our sin is that that is what it took to deal with it. When Jesus died, he took on the whole of our debt and paid it himself. That's how forgiveness is possible.


Fourthly, HOW DO WE RECEIVE FORGIVENESS?

There are five things that we need to do – five aspects of the same process. They're all there in those verses in 1 John.

First, we must recognise how deep in debt we are. If we don't, we won't see that anything needs to be done, nor will we see that our debt is totally unpayable by us. 1.8:

If we claim to be without sin, we deceive ourselves…

Secondly, we must realise that Jesus paid our debts on the cross. If we don't, we won't know that anything can be done, and we won't know who to go to. 2.2:

[Jesus Christ] is the atoning sacrifice for our sins…

Thirdly, we must request God to cancel our debt because it has been transferred to Jesus. If we're not prepared to ask, we're effectively saying that we don't want God to cancel our debt thank you very much. We'll deal with the situation ourselves. 1.9:

If we confess our sins…

Fourthly, we must receive forgiveness and believe God's statement that our debt is cancelled. If we don't believe that promise that God gives us, even though our debt is cancelled, we'll carry on living as if we are still indebted. But the promise is crystal clear - 1.9:

If we confess our sins, [God] is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins…

Fifthly and finally, we must respond by committing ourselves to a debt-free lifestyle from now on. That's what John here describes as 'walking in the light' or 'walking as Jesus did'. And he says in 2.3:

We know that we have come to know [Jesus] if we obey his commands.

If we don't, we'll show that we're ungrateful and we havn't really begun to understand what Jesus has done for us. But what does it mean to live a debt-free lifestyle? What will we do from now on? If you're going to take the plunge, then you need to know. So let me mention five aspects of this new way of living.

One: we will listen to God's advice about how to live. How do we hear him speak? He speaks to us through the pages of the Bible. Get some advice from Christian friends about how to get into it, and then start reading the Bible. Then make the Bible a book which is your constant companion for the rest of your life.

Two: we will pass on our experience to others. We will tell others the good news that their debts with God can also be cancelled because of Jesus. Don't try and tell the whole world to start with. I suggest you think of two people who you could tell what God has done for you: one of them a Christian; the other not.

Three: we will continually be asking God for his help. We can only live this new life with God's assistance. He's promised he'll give it to us. But he wants us to be in constant communication with him about our needs. How do we ask? Just by talking to him. We can't see him. But we know he's listening and that he'll give us what we need when we ask because that's what he tells us in the Bible. So ask. That's what we call prayer.

And one of the things we need to keep on asking for is forgiveness. We keep on sinning, even after we've come to Christ. And we need to keep clearing our account with him, and starting afresh. It's not that the debt needs to be cleared all over again. All our sin, past present and future was dealt with by Jesus on the cross, once and for all. But we need to keep starting afresh, and recommitting ourselves to debt-free living. And we need to be continually thankful for the forgiveness we have.

Four: we will join with others who've had their debt cancelled, so that we can encourage one another and work together for God. We cannot go it alone. In other words, get stuck in to church.

Five: we will cancel the debts of those who owe us. I don't mean cash, of course. I mean the sins that other people commit against us. We cannot be serious about asking God to cancel our debt if at the same time we're not prepared to forgive the far smaller debts that others owe us.

So what's involved in the debt-free life that God calls us to once he's dealt with the debt of sin that we've accumulated? There are five things to take on board: reading the Bible; praying; belonging to the church; telling others about Jesus; and forgiving sins committed against you.

So then, how do we receive forgiveness? By going through those five R's:

First, we must recognise how deep in debt we are.

Secondly, we must realise that Jesus paid our debts on the cross.

Thirdly, we must request God to cancel our debt because it has been transferred to Jesus.

Fourthly, we must receive forgiveness and believe God's statement that our debt is cancelled.

Fifthly, we must respond by committing ourselves to a debt-free lifestyle from now on.

Now maybe you know yourself to be forgiven – you are quite clear that because of Jesus and his once-for-all atoning sacrifice on the cross, your unpayable debt has been totally wiped out. If you know that, then the question for you is this: how debt-free is the way that you're living? With God's help, we need to keep working at that, because none of us ever arrives this side of heaven.

Maybe, on the other hand, you really feel like saying to me that quite frankly you don't understand a word of what I've been going on about. You're not aware that you owe God anything much. You don't see at all how Jesus and his death can possibly be as significant as I've been saying. In that case I simply urge you to read more about Jesus and get to know him and what he says about you for yourself. He cannot be ignored. We have here the eyewitness accounts of him. Nothing more important has been written in the whole of human history. And what is more they're short. So there's no possible excuse. Please get to know Jesus and think again.

But maybe you've become clear in your own mind that your situation is rather different. Maybe you have begun on those five steps to forgiveness, but you know in your heart of hearts that you havn't yet completed the process. It's become clear to you just how massively you're in debt to God; that there's no way you are ever going to be able to deal with that debt yourself; that if it's not dealt with now you will be faced with it on the Day of Judgement and be required quite rightly to pay what you owe. Maybe you know these things are true. And you're also now convinced that when Jesus died on that cross, he was paying the debts of the world, including your own. All this you know.

But you also know that there's a step you havn't yet taken. You havn't yet come clean with God and in your heart knelt in front of him and begged forgiveness.

Maybe you've just been too proud. Because it is humiliating to do that – rightly humiliating: it puts us in our place.

Maybe you're afraid of what it will mean for you when you owe your life to Christ and you commit yourself to going whereever he leads you. But he is trustworthy. He wants what is best for you. He's proved that. He died for you, as the atoning sacrifice that you need. He is our rightful ruler. We cannot trust ourselves even with our own lives. But we can trust him.

So if this is you, then surely the time has come for you to stop hesitating. It is extraordinary that God should have to urge us to ask him to write off the massive debt we owe him. But that's what he does. So if you're ready to take that step, you can do it now. All you need to do is ask, and you can do that at any time. Except that the best time is always now. Once you've understood the truth about your situation, there can be no good reason to delay.

Here's a simple prayer that you can pray. I shall say it through, and then if you've decided that this is the point you're at and you're ready to pray like this, then I'll pray it through again to give you that opportunity.

This is what I shall pray: Lord God, I see how great the debt is that I owe you because of my sin. I can never pay you what I owe. But I know now that when your Son Jesus died, he paid my debt for me. Please forgive me. Thank you that because of Jesus, all my debt to you past, present and future is wiped away. From now on I want to live for Jesus, debt-free. Please help me. Amen.

So let's now all bow our heads, and any of you who are ready to pray that can say those words after me in the quietness of your own hearts. The rest of you can use the time to talk to God in whatever way is appropriate for you. Let's pray.

Lord God, I see how great the debt is that I owe you because of my sin. I can never pay you what I owe. But I know now that when your Son Jesus died, he paid my debt for me. Please forgive me. Thank you that because of Jesus, all my debt to you past, present and future is wiped away. From now on I want to live for Jesus, debt-free. Please help me. Amen.

If you prayed that and meant it, then you have found forgiveness. Your debt to God is totally cancelled, once and for all. That is God's promise. And what is more, you have started on a new life. It would help you if you tell a Christian friend about the step you've taken. Tell me after the service if you'd like to. But now we're going join together in singing our final hymn.