3 min. read
The Triune God gives us an audacious picture of forgiveness. The God referred to as the Trinity is continually giving over of God’s self to an Other. God chooses to be completed by freely relating to everything he, of his own will, has created. God’s self-giving love delights in being mutually affirmed by his creation. This is evidenced in God’s on-going mission of reconciliation: “in Christ God was reconciling the world to himself, not counting their trespasses against them, and entrusting the message of reconciliation to us” (2 Cor. 5.19).
Reviewing Forgiveness
It is apparent that God’s mission is extended through his people. And foundational to reconciliation is the act of forgiveness.
Yet the act of God’s forgiveness, most singularly defined in Christ, is a journey of discovery and endurance. Both the forgiver and the forgiven experience some type of discovery. The forgiver must endure the hardship of seeking to persuade the forgiven back into relationship. Forgiveness is only meaningful when we take seriously that relationship has been broken.
Jesus’ insistence on the importance of forgiveness displayed an understanding of the Torah as something profoundly different than a burdensome legal code: Torah was a gift of covenantal story to be rehearsed–enacted–in the present.
A Trinitarian view of forgiveness cannot accept a legalistic rendering of the Atonement. Propitiation not only is not biblical–YHWH did not accept sacrifices as offered to pagan gods–, but it does not mesh with the God who was enfleshed in the person of Jesus Christ. Because Jesus spoke forgiveness before there was repentance! Forgiveness was the catalyst of a hoped-for reconciliation.
We need only look at the metaphorical story in Genesis 3 to see a consistent picture of the Triune God as the God who forgives in anticipation of reconciliation. When Adam and Eve have eaten the fruit and covered themselves, they do not need to send a gift to God in order to entice him to come to the garden, nor to assuage his wrath so that he would talk with them. Rather, God comes to the garden as if nothing was wrong. Not finding his earth-creatures God asks, “Where are you?” He is not angry. He is not seeking repentance. He is seeking relationship. God has forgiven Adam and Eve before even speaking with them. The consequences to sin–the “No” to God–remain and must be faced, but God has forgiven and now seeks reconciliation.
So, the model of forgiveness seen in the life of the Triune God is one of forgiveness offered unconditionally. Reconciliation requires that forgiveness be received and accepted. And this reception yields a whole change of being, a journey of growth.
But God’s forgiveness for everyone has already been provided, thus it can be pronounced. It is up to each of us to decide to return that blessing in a life of praise, or to reject it.
It must be the hope of those who follow Jesus–as it is surely God the Father, Son, and Spirit’s hope–that judgment will be healing for all, accepting the truth of forgiveness.
Even so, we must take seriously the eternal God who acts in time, and so too respond to his forgiveness–and each other’s–in time.
So who will you forgive today, before they even ask for your forgiveness? And what if that person never repents, or never seeks forgiveness, or never even acknowledges their need of forgiveness? Will you still forgive the way the Trinity does?