The cost of forgiveness

Since today is Good Friday, we had a worship service at church this evening to remember the suffering and death of Christ. I spoke of the sufferings of Christ, both the physical and mental anguish he experienced, and the spiritual agony he endured in bearing in his soul the wrath of God against sin.

Although I didn't speak of it tonight, I have been thinking how the sufferings of Christ provide us with the true measure of the cost of God's forgiveness of our sins.

I would imagine there are few people in the world, or at least in our society, who don't know that the God of the Bible is a God who forgives. And, I would guess that a good many people are fairly confident that God will forgive their sins. As I heard it was said by someone, "God will forgive me; that's his business."

But I wonder how many people truly understand the price that God paid to get into this business of forgiveness? One might think that God, being God, could simply forgive a person's sin simply by willing to forget it. I do something similar to this practically on a daily basis. When one of my children commit some childish and harmless "sin" against me, like knocking over my water glass, he or she will apologize (sometimes!). And it is no problem for me to forgive them, because I wasn't really offended. In my worst moments, I believe that God looks at my sins in that way. They're pretty minor sins, I tell myself, and surely a God as big as he is cannot be too troubled by them. So, he can easily look past it.

But the cross reveals a different story. God doesn't forgive sin by overlooking it. Rather, sin, in any form or degree, is an offense against God's holy character. And if he is to be God, he must respond in righteous judgment against it. That is why Christ suffered as he did at the cross. The sinless Son of God bore in his body and soul the just judgment of God against sin. Only on the basis of Christ's suffering and death as a substitute for sinners, could God forgive sinners. And when you consider the depth of Christ's suffering, you begin to understand costliness of God's forgiveness.

No matter how much we take it for granted at times, God's forgiveness is valuable beyond measure. It cost him the death of his Son. Show me someone who understands the price Christ paid on the cross to take away his sins, and I'll show you someone who knows the true value of God's forgiveness.