The New Testament gives us a fair bit of insight into what
forgiven people look and act like. Jesus once told a paralyzed man, “Take
heart, my son; your
sins are forgiven.” The expression he used means something like “Cheer
up!” That might be a little difficult for most paralyzed people.
But it gives us an idea what Jesus saw as the higher priority, and
what is most important in life. If we had to choose between our health and being
forgiven our sins, we would be immeasurably better off sick and forgiven than to
be healthy and remain guilty in the eyes of God.
Forgiveness matters.
The Natural Response
It matters so much that it affects people who receive it. It makes them do
unusual things. A woman once poured
costly ointment on the feet of the Lord Jesus, kissing them and wiping them
with her hair. That’s not something you see every day, then or now, but Jesus
didn’t say there was something wrong with her. He didn’t patronize her or just
put up with her; rather, he used
her as a role model for his audience. He said she was responding appropriately
to having been forgiven: with much
love.
Love is the normal, healthy, Christian reaction to forgiveness. And love is not just a feeling that we get heavenly
credit for claiming to possess; love can be tested as to its authenticity.
Jesus said, “If you love me, you will keep
my commandments.” In other words, if you do not obey me, you are demonstrating you don’t love me.
Love as Evidence of Salvation
This wasn’t a new idea. Love
and obedience are also linked in the Law. The apostle John puts the
relationship between love and obedience to Christ this way: “Whoever
says ‘I know him’ but does not keep his commandments is a liar,
and the truth is not in him, but whoever keeps
his word, in him truly the love of God is perfected.”
That’s pretty unequivocal: keeping Christ’s commandments is
love, disobeying them is not love. And it is love that is the clearest evidence
that we have been forgiven our sins. A person who claims to be a Christian and wants to continue in his
sins is seriously defective in one way or another. We might argue that he
is acting completely inconsistently with the forgiveness he has been given and
needs to change his ways. Perhaps that is the case.
Knowing and Obeying
More seriously, though, he may be demonstrating something much
worse than an immature understanding of the salvation he has received. He may
be showing the world that he has not been forgiven at all; that his claim that “Jesus
is Lord” is really just a lie, and that he has never really come to know Jesus
at all.
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