Growing up I heard something about Jesus’ death that never truly made sense to me, it’s going to take 1500 words to explain it, but the next 10 minutes may set you on a course that changes everything…
Hearing people and preachers saying that Jesus died for the forgiveness of sin never really made sense to me. It didn’t seem to fit in with some things Jesus taught, my own modern concept of what forgiveness meant to me, and partly because the word forgiveness really isn’t the best word they could use now a days for translation in several areas of scripture. I’ve read different teachings on the subject but non of them ever seemed to harmonize with things Jesus teaches. It’s what Jesus taught about His (and our, if you are a disciple of Jesus) Father that stood out to me the most. In Luke 6:27-36, Jesus paints a beautiful picture of who our Father, the Most High is…
The Father loves His enemies, He does good to those who hate Him, He blesses those who curse Him. When hit, He offers the other cheek, He gives and when people take away what is His, He doesn’t demand it back. He treats others the way He wishes to be treated. He loves His enemies who do not love Him back, does good, lends expecting nothing in return. He is kind to ungrateful and evil men and we are to be merciful just as He is.
Jesus taught that the Father was this way before Jesus died on the cross. We can see it in the Old Testiment. God, our Father has always been patient, merciful, and forgiving. It is His very nature because He IS love!
And this was my struggle…
Since God is the way Jesus described, since God is Love, why did He need to sacrifice His only begotten son, Jesus, in order to forgive sin? Even people have the ability to forgive and overlook sin, Jesus even expected it of people, so it didn’t make sense to me that God couldn’t forgive without sacrifice. My modern day understanding of forgiveness basically meant that when someone does something against me I forgive them by over looking it. According to what Jesus teaches above, in Luke, the Father was already able to forgive sin before the cross. How does one love their enemies without forgivness? We can also see this in many Psalms and other areas of the Old Testiment. Yet, In a speech given by Peter and the apostles in Acts 5:30-32 it’s said…
“The God of our fathers raised up Jesus, whom you had put to death by hanging Him on a cross. He is the one whom God exalted to His right hand as a Leader and a Savior, to grant repentance to Israel, and forgiveness of sins. And we are witnesses of these things; and so is the Holy Spirit, whom God has given to those who obey Him.”
So how does all this harmonize? Well with my modern understanding of forgivness it doesn’t. The Lord led me to dig a little deeper to find the harmony.
The original word here in Acts 5:31 translated as forgiveness is the Greek word “aphesis” (Strongs number G859). To get a deeper sense of this word I looked at the other uses of the word to get a bigger picture of how people of the day would have heard and understood aphesis, as opposed to my modern thought of what forgiveness means and assuming it’s the same. When I dug deeper into the uses of aphesis something really stood out. In Luke 4 Jesus stands up in the synagogue and reads a Old Testiment scripture from Isaiah saying that this scripture is being fulfilled in their hearing. What He read was…
“The Spirit of the LORD is upon Me, Because He anointed me to preach the Gospel to the poor. He sent me to proclaim deliverance (aphesis) to the captives, and recovery of sight to the blind, to set at liberty (aphesis) those who are oppressed, to proclaim the favorable year of the LORD.”
My modern concept of forgivness being to overlook can’t even be a part of what aphesis means or else it wouldn’t make sense in this Luke 4 passage…
Now when I think about the people of the day and how they heard the word aphesis, I start to think of words like deliverance, liberty, some translations say set free. I start to tie that back in with speach given by Peter and the apostles in Acts and I start to hear that Jesus didn’t die so that God could over look my sin (my own modern day concept of forgiveness). He died so that we could be delivered from sin! To be set free from sin! To be at liberty from sin! Now things are starting to harmonize with Gods character! The things Jesus taught about sin are all starting to make sense. Paul’s teaching to the Romans from chapter 6 through chapter 8 is all coming into alighnment with why Jesus died on the cross. It’s about the release of sin! In reality if it was just about overlooking sin, Jesus wouldn’t have told people to go and sin no more, but He did because His ministry was and is about releasing you from your captivity of sin. If the Father’s goal was to over look or hide sin, He already had a system and religion in place for that. He said many times in the Old Testiment that He hid their sin. But look at Hebrews 10:3-4, when speaking of the prior religious and sacrificial system…
“But in those sacrifices there is a reminder of sins year by year. For it is impossible for the blood of bulls and goats to take away sins.”
The first system was replaced because it couldn’t literally “take away” sins, which means that the system based on the sacrifice of Jesus can and does take away sin! Not just hide it, not just overlook it, but rather it has the power to literally take it away!….this is the true Good News! Sin can be removed, taken away, you can be delivered! You no longer have to be a slave to sin, Jesus came to set you free from the oppression of sin. There is power in picking up the cross and following Him! Take His yoke and learn from Him and you WILL find rest, there is power in it that no other religion, including the one it replaced has. The power to take away sin.
I have experienced it!
I know this to be true. I have experienced it! I was delivered and set free all at once, in a moment, from the lust for sex that was a full fledged sex addiction including pornography. It was there for as long as I can remember, then it was completely gone. My heart was completely changed, cleaned, released from the sin of looking at women with lust. My view of women, how I thought of them and viewed them, completely changed all in a single moment! The burden was taken away so that I no longer starved and worked to feed my sin. Completely changed and set free, it was no longer a struggle to try to think different or try not to give in to certain things that were destroying me, my marriage, my time with my children, and other people. I was a captive, a slave to sin as Jesus said in John…
“those who sin are slaves to sin”
I was set free so that I could walk according to the way that Jesus taught. Learning from Him has brought me rest just as Jesus promised! Some areas of who I was He could just teach me a different way, such as my anger issues. Some things teaching wasn’t enough, He taught me not to lust but in my effort not to lust, I found that I absolutely could not stop. Even if I was able to keep from acting out for a period of time my heart still lusted daily, I was owned by it. Eventhough I knew Jesus taught that to look at a woman with lust for her is to commit adultry with her in my heart, I still couldn’t stop. My Lord Jesus let me struggle with it for a period of time and then all at once delivered my entire heart from it. This is what Jesus died for, this is why He was willing to through torture for us. Not for sin to be forgiven the way I thought about forgivness, being overlooked, but rather for it to be able to be removed! Now THAT is the true Gospel message!
What about when Jesus healed people and told them their sins were forgiven? Well now, that forgivness is a whole different Greek word but also translated as forgivness. I found it’s meaning to be far different than I ever expected!
Jesus heals The Entire Man!