After forgiveness - Devotion for 9/10/07

After forgiveness – Devotion for 9/10/07

Have you ever had an argument with someone you really care about – say a wife/husband, boyfriend/girlfriend, or even one of your parents? Obviously we all have, and at some point in time, hopefully, there is reconciliation. The two of you come together once again, and apologies are reciprocated back and forth, and then what? To me the time following forgiveness can be an awkward time. You’ve gone straight from being angry to being sorry to being . . . well, it’s just hard to describe. You’re kinda glad that the argument is over, but you’re still kinda stinging about some of the things that we said. You’re kinda glad that the apology was rendered, but you’re still wondering if this argument is going to come up again. So what do you do after forgiveness?

In John 5:1-15, Jesus comes upon a man who has been sick for 38 years, and he is unable to help himself. Jesus asks him if he “wishes” to get well, and the man begins to explain that he wants to get well, but he can’t get himself into the pool of water (there was a belief that at this particular pool of water, when it was stirred by “a spirit,” then the first person in the water would receive healing). So Jesus simply tells him, “Get up, pick up your pallet and walk” (John 5:8). Sure enough, the dude is healed, and so he gets up, and before you know if he’s getting blasted by some of the Jews because he’s carrying his pallet on a Sabbath, which was obviously work, and obviously a violation of the Sabbath. The dude passes it off on Jesus – “that dude made me do it” (Adam Seate paraphrase). Jesus found the guy in a short while in the temple and said to him, “Behold, you have become well; do not sin anymore, so that nothing worse may befall you” (John 5:14).

It’s safe to assume that the dude that was healed was in the temple to worship, which is a pretty cool thing to do after having been healed. But Jesus knew there was something else there, something else that needed to be said. This dude must have had something going on to make Jesus seek him out again and give him the little subtle reminder not to sin again. Now, I don’t think that Jesus was expecting perfection out of our newly-walking fellow. But I’m guessing that Jesus knew something deep, dark about this guy, and Jesus wanted him to know he had been forgiven, but he better not going back to his sinning ways. The guy might have been sort of in that awkward after-forgiveness moment. Harry Emerson Fosdick says in The Manhood of the Master, “Only by a stronger passion can evil passions be expelled.” So as the forgiveness has been granted, meaning that the sin or misdeed has been erased, it must be replaced with something positive, something good – a “stronger passion.”

After forgiveness has been established – after reconciliation has taken place – replace those hard feelings from the argument, those guilty feelings from the apology, and those awkward feelings after forgiveness, with something new – a new stronger passion. Embrace the forgiveness and give thanks to God for the reconciliation.