Dear Friends of "Dial Daily Bread,"
There's an interesting but important question in connection with the subject of "overcoming sin." Did God forgive sin before the sacrifice of His cross? Or could He forgive sin only as the result of the cross? Which came first: His forgiveness, or His cross?
On the surface it appears to be a trivial chicken-egg question. God forgives, period; be happy. Why even bother with why or how or when He does it. But the principle here is so important that the stability of God's universe is involved in the answer.
The general idea is that God is omnipotent, that is, He can do anything He wants to. You and I sin; we ask Him to forgive us, and He does. Someone has rightly written, "alienation from God is the natural habitat of humanity," therefore we sin again and again. And God always forgives, like a kind grandfather, because He is omnipotent and it's easy for Him to do so.
Finally, after our endless cycle of sinning and repenting, we die; and for the sin itself that is so deeply rooted in us to be overcome (Augustine's theology), there must be an experience after death called Purgatory. There at last the job gets done. Millions of Christians believe this.
But the Bible says differently. "The sting of death is sin," for sin carries death within itself (1 Cor. 15:56; Rom. 6:23). God cannot pardon it without His cross; to do so would fill the universe with death. Adam and Eve would have "instantly" perished in the Garden had not "the Lamb [been] slain from the foundation of the world" (Rev. 13:8).
Which must "come first"? That slain Lamb! Yes, God can do anything He wants to, but He doesn't want to fill His universe with death. Therefore He cannot forgive sin apart from a tremendous "giving-for." Without a deep heart-melting appreciation of that "giving-for," sin remains in the human heart, not "overcome." Forgiveness apart from first the sacrifice of the cross would be a cheapening of sin itself, and thus a cheapening of the sacrifice required to overcome it.
--Robert J. Wieland
From the "Dial Daily Bread" Archive: May 18, 2001.
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