Forgiveness from God is so complete

Funny quip, characteristic of the man, but he’d be among the first to acknowledge that we all have good days and bad days. I got to know Tony a few years ago during Bill Clinton’s presidency when the Monica Lewinsky business sent shock waves across America. Clinton, for whatever reason, approached Tony for advice and counsel, for prayer and pastoring, and before long Tony was appointed the president’s Special Spiritual Advisor.

As a result of this Tony went through one of the most painful and confusing experiences of his life. He runs a charity called The Evangelistic Association for the Promotion of Education (EAPE); something in the region of 95 schools in some of the poorest regions of America were funded by churches, mainly in the US. But funds began to dry up because the Religious Right didn’t approve of Tony’s relationship with an “immoral” President, and with a tear in his eye he said to me: “How can these Christian people punish the poorest, the most vulnerable children in the country because I answered a call from President Clinton to help him rediscover the faith of his childhood?”

I have a friend who went through one of the most difficult and lowest times of his life when he was wrongly accused of a criminal offence. He lost almost everything and at one point it looked like he would end up in jail. However, after a gruelling investigation by the Fraud Squad that went on for over a year it was clear that there was no case to answer.

But serious damage was done and it took years for him to reach the point where he held neither bitterness nor unforgiveness toward those who had inflicted such pain on his family.

How did he come to what you might call a place of forgiveness? Two factors, one practical and one spiritual. At a practical level, he realised that the unforgiveness he was harbouring was hurting only him; it was screwing him up, causing him stress, anxiety and sleepless nights.

But at the spiritual level was where it really counted. “I read one day from Paul’s letter to the church at Rome,” he said. “And the words leapt off the page: ‘... we have been released from the law, for we died with Christ’.”

This is what he told me: “If I had been guilty of what I stood accused of, and if I had died, at that moment the files would have been locked away; they would have been marked; Case Closed.”

Paul was saying that God's forgiveness is so complete that so far as the law is concerned we might as well be dead. When you understand that degree of forgiveness, it’s not hard to pass it on, and when you do, you are at peace with the world, with God and with yourself. And life is good!