Blessed is the one whose fault is taken away…
Is there any limit to the depths of God’s forgiveness of our sins?
Is there any limit to the depths of God’s forgiveness of our sins?
In the Second Book of Samuel, King David knows he has sinned
greatly out of arrogance, and he will suffer within his own family when the child he conceived
with Bathsheba, and three others, will die.
Knowing he has violated his relationship with God, David realizes that
repentance is necessary, and he will say aloud, I have sinned against the Lord. Psalm 32, attributed to David, is focused on that moment at which he needs God’s
forgiveness, restoration to relationship.
Repeating David’s statement of repentance, the psalmist notes that God took away the guilt of my sin.
Luke’s Gospel also confronts man’s sinful nature with the
story of the woman with the alabaster flask of ointment who comes to the home
of Simon the Pharisee – himself a sinner, although his sin is not explicitly
addressed. She is there to bathe the
feet of Jesus with her tears, wipe them with her hair, and anoint them with
oil. Yet Jesus forgives her sin, because she has shown great love. Like the debtor in the parable Jesus
shares, she is forgiven, but the key is in the response: she recognizes that she has been given a
gift, the gift of forgiveness, and she allows herself to be transformed,
restored to relationship, a state offered (implicitly) to Simon himself, though he does not avail himself of the opportunity.
We too are called to allow ourselves to be transformed, so
that we might, as Paul tells the Galatians, live
for God – living not for self, but knowing that Christ lives in us subsequent to his death and rising. We cannot entirely remove sin from our lives; we can
refocus, however, by acting in love, by living in love, by entering into love
more profoundly every day. To say that we believe in Christ Jesus is to say
that he is our beloved, that we are open to the relationship he
desires to have with us, that we will allow his love to teach us where we have
failed so that it can also teach us where we might go. Is there any limit to the depths of God’s
forgiveness of our sins? Never! May our response to his expression of that
love follow the model of the Gospel: let
us show great love, pouring out all
that we hold within, for God and for all.
This post is based on Fr. Pat's Scripture class.
Image source: Wordle
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