The Ache of Forgiveness

This past week I did something that hurt my wife's feelings. It was nothing major, but it was still significant because I focused on my own personal schedule rather than focus on being a good communicator and to see behind her eyes. When I realized that she was upset and disappointed with me, I was crushed. All the things that I had previously been enjoying were suddenly subverted to the fact that I did something that made my wife upset. I couldn't rest easy until I returned to her, repented, and asked for her forgiveness. The indiscretion was not wiped clean until she verbally gave her forgiveness. I was grieved and troubled until she gave her forgiveness. Even though I know that she is one who keeps short accounts and would forgive me, I could not feel ease and rightness with her until that point where she said, "I forgive you." I knew that her love for me was not conditional and that she would forgive me, yet at the same time I could not take it for granted because I knew that our relationship would not be in the right place until this transaction of the mind, mouth, and heart took place.

Reflecting on this incident, I am left troubled because I do not feel that same grief when I sin against the Lord. When I sin incidentally or purposefully, there is not that same aching feeling that compels me to drop whatever I am doing and seek the Lord for forgiveness and grace. I recently read Jerry Bridges’ book "The Discipline of Grace," and it focuses a great deal on the different disciplines that come into play when you’re pursuing a life of righteousness. From his chapter “The Discipline of Commitment,” I believe that he sheds some light onto the problem. There is no intention to even try to please God in our actions, so when we don’t please God with our actions, there is no level of despair. Bridges quotes William Law:

Now the reason of the common [sin] is this, it is because men have not so much as the intention to please God in all their actions…and if you will here stop, and ask yourself, why you are not as holy as the primitive Christians were, your own heart will tell you, that it is neither through ignorance, nor inability, but purely because you never thoroughly intended it.

The law of entropy is at work in our bodies. A system, left to itself, has a natural tendency to decay. It is only by adding energy to the system that allows it to survive. This law is true whether we are talking about the world we live in, the child’s progressively messy room, or our own spiritual lifestyle. We are naturally predisposed to an “ever increasing wickedness” that must be combated against if we are to be sanctified.

The conversion experience is like the reanimation of a dead body- “you were once dead in your transgressions and sins…God…made us alive with Christ.” (Eph 2:1-5) However, the conversion only represents reanimation of the soul and will; the physical body itself, as well as the emotions and thought life are still dead and need to be reanimated as well through sanctification. However, without the intent of allowing the Great Physician to ‘operate,’ our limbs will never be alive. Without blood flowing through them, there is no pain from the cuts and bruises we inflict on ourselves when we sin, which triggers the shame and despair. Job said, “I make a covenant with my eyes…” I think the challenge for me in the year to come is to make a covenant with my eyes, my ears, and my mouth to have a thorough intention of obedience and repentance. I want to sense my rightness in relation to the Lord, so that sin’s sting will be quick and my desire for grace and forgiveness quicker still.