Sin, Accountability, Justice, Forgiveness

As long as we speak of God’s forgiving our sins – compare, for example, Psalm 103:3, “who forgives all your iniquity” – we seriously and even radically qualify the notion that God holds us accountable and judges us for our sins. It does not matter how we attempt to qualify the notion of forgiveness. We might argue that it applies only to the people of God, the people God has chosen. We might argue that it only applies contingent to repentance. I do not think either one of these positions is truly supportable biblically or theologically, but they can be presented as ways to help make sense of this complex of sin, accountability, justice, and forgiveness in God’s economy and human existence. Nevertheless, as soon as we admit that in at least some way, in at least some instance, God responds to sin with forgiveness, we find that God’s economy is not a system of strict accountability and “just” consequences.

Hence, when we consider this business of God’s forgiveness in relation to sin, accountability, and justice, I think we are most unsure what to do with forgiveness. The idea that God forgives me is good news. The idea that God forgives the person who wrongs me is not good news. Thus we run full force into the baffling enigma of accountability and justice and forgiveness in God’s scheme. One chief way we try to deal with the enigma of forgiveness is to systematize the whole business. We seek a rational system that makes logical sense of accountability, justice, and forgiveness in God’s response to our sinfulness. Yet I think that is precisely how we err in all of this, by trying to make all of this into a rational system that we can grasp, understand, and manage without remainder, without loose ends. In that attempt we lose certain critical elements that are true about God’s dealings with us but that do not neatly, completely fit into or compose a system, with all the predictability implied by the idea of a system. Let me suggest some of those vital elements.

• God is passionate about people and relationships more than about accountability and justice as impersonal, abstract ideals. This, I contend, derives not from an ultimate, intrinsic value of humankind, but from the intrinsic, triune nature of God.
• Justice, conceived as accountability and “what is due,” is a tool, not an end. Justice is a mechanism to serve people and relationships.
• Justice is a process, not a state of being, at least in a sinful world. Justice, accountability, and forgiveness are not ends in themselves, but means to seek constantly, in a sinful world, the well-being of individuals in relationship.
• Justice and forgiveness are not achieved through logic but through history: once for all in the death and resurrection of Jesus; and then all at every moment in the history that flows from the cross for, through, and in us.
• We cannot and must not presume forgiveness. We receive and accept forgiveness. Hence, there is no sense of deserving or expecting forgiveness.
• Creation is God’s grace. Redemption is God’s grace in a sinful world. Redemption is the virtually inexpressible conjunction and amalgam of justice and forgiveness. Forgiveness is God’s grace exercised in a sinful world.
• There is no forgiveness from God without the cross (judgment) in it. There is no cross from God without forgiveness (grace) in it. Holiness and love cross historically, eternally in Jesus.
• God’s forgiveness both condemns and acquits us; kills and re-vivifies us. God’s forgiveness does not ignore, minimize, or excuse our sin. God’s forgiveness nails our sin up on top of a hill to expose it to the light for what it is. And God’s forgiveness takes it down, buries it, and transforms its darkness into new light.