Day: October 26, 2025

“Son, be of good cheer, thy sins be forgiven thee”

It is a remarkable Gospel. What does Jesus want us to know? That he is the forgiveness of sins. “That you may know,” Jesus says to the sceptical scribes whose inner thoughts he knows, it seems. Wow. But what does forgiveness mean and what does it look like?

If you say, “I forgive you, but I can’t forget,” then you haven’t forgiven the sin. You have merely put away the penalty that you might have exacted, your ‘pound of flesh’, as it were. But the original wrong isn’t made right between you. It isn’t forgiven. Forgiveness cannot be mere words.

Or if you despise the one who has offended you so that it is a matter of repugnance or a matter of indifference to have anything further to do with him, then you haven’t forgiven him so much as tried to forget him; in short, to erase him from the horizon of your mind as if he didn’t exist.

If you say, “I will forgive, because if I don’t, God won’t forgive me,” then perhaps you come a little closer to true forgiveness, though standing still a long way off. At least the common basis of our sinful humanity is recognised – a common need, a ground of sympathy, is acknowledged. It points to the radical meaning of what we pray. “Forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive them that trespass against us.” That acknowledges a sense of reciprocity between God and us.

Forgiveness means the removal of sin and the restoration of the good. Forsaking means the actual turning away from sin so as to turn to the active loving of the true and absolute good, God. It means the desire or pursuit of righteousness. The forgiveness of sins enables the forsaking of sins, the following after righteousness only through the restoration of righteousness in us.

(more…)

Print this entry