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Forgive Us as We Forgive - Part 3
God’s grace is first: he forgives us, freely, graciously, without our works. We receive that forgiveness by faith alone, by embracing Jesus Christ with a believing heart. As a fruit of God’s grace we are thankful, and, being thankful, we forgive our neighbor. When we compare our enormous debt of guilt with our neighbor’s trifling transgression against us, we freely forgive him. It is, as the Catechism expresses it, “our firm resolution from the heart to forgive our neighbor.” The one who does not forgive his neighbor, but who lives in bitterness, anger, and resentment; the one who plots his revenge: he does not know the forgiveness of sins. He shows that he has not tasted that the Lord is gracious.
Forgive Us as We Forgive - Part 2
David does not make any excuses, he does not attempt to hide or deny his sin, he does not lash out in anger against the prophet, he does not make a partial confession, or bemoan himself because he was caught: he simply says, “I have sinned against the Lord.” When David confessed his sin, and repented of it—and not before; see Psalm 32:3-5—God forgave him freely and graciously.
Forgive Us as We Forgive - Part 1
God’s forgiveness of us is designed to be a pattern for our forgiveness of our neighbors. “Forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors” (Matt. 6:14) is our plea in the prayer that Jesus taught us. We are debtors to God and we seek the canceling of the debt. Others are debtors to us and they seek the canceling of their debt. When we forgive others, we do what God does, but on a much lesser scale, mimicking what God has done for us: “Even as Christ forgave you, so also do ye” (Col. 3:13).
Our Rejection of Conditions (6): Critiquing a Novel Definition
The Protestant Reformed Churches and her sisters still reject conditions in salvation and in the covenant. We insist that faith is not a condition so that the believer makes himself to differ from the unbeliever, but it is the gift of God. We insist that grace is not wider than election, not on the mission field, and not in the covenant community, but God has grace, effectual, sovereign grace, only for his elect. We insist that God’s promise never fails because everything that God promises surely comes to pass. This is always how we have understood “conditions:” an activity of man on which salvation depends or on which it is contingent.
Our Rejection of Conditions (5): Conditional Grammar in the Bible
If you believe, repent, obey, walk in the light, are fruitful in good works, and persevere in faith and godliness, you show yourself to be one of God’s children exactly because God has worked such saving graces in you—you believe, you repent, you walk in the light, you keep God’s commandments not by virtue of your freewill, but by virtue of God’s grace given to you in regeneration and in sanctification. If God has given you the gift of faith, that faith will not remain hidden, but it will bear fruit. If, on the other hand, you remain unbelieving, impenitent, disobedient, and fruitless, you have no reason to apply the description of believers to yourself.
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