Biblical Virtues: Forgiveness Unites

In Paul’s letter to the Colossians, one passage - roughly the middle third of chapter three - offer some interesting features. The verb ‘forgive’ appears three times in quick succession, in a passage about virtue.

The other virtues in the passage are named but once.

While forgiveness is therefore preeminent among the virtues, ‘love’ appears as a meta-virtue, “over” and “above” all the others. Love, in turn, produces harmony.

This text is filled with abstractions and has very few concrete nouns. Yet the reader learns that love “binds” things together in “perfect unity” (or “harmony”).

It is noteworthy that Paul does not write here about people being in unity. Readers commonly anticipate talk of unity among people in the New Testament, but often the text speaks of uniting things, indeed, “all things” (cf. Ephesians 1:10).

The scope of the New Testament is grander than the entire human race. The vision of the Gospel extends to “all things,” and Jesus is the Redeemer of all creation (cf. Colossians 1:20):

Put on then, as God’s chosen ones, holy and beloved, compassionate hearts, kindness, humility, meekness, and patience, bearing with one another and, if one has a complaint against another, forgiving each other; as the Lord has forgiven you, so also must forgive. And above all these put on love, which binds everything together in perfect harmony. And let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts, to which indeed you were called in one body. And be thankful. Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly, teaching and admonishing one another in all wisdom, singing psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, with thankfulness in your hearts to God. And whatever you do, in word or deed, do everything in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through him.

This unity of all things, including humans, is not a ‘uniformity’ or a ‘conformity,’ but rather a harmonious joining together, to form a complex whole, for a purpose. Jesus unites everything as He reconciles everything.

In a sort of return to Eden, the final Paradise will be a united creation. What kind of harmony existed, not only among humans, but among all things, prior to the Fall?

That harmony - that ‘unity’ - will be restored, and the structure of the text reveals that forgiveness is one of the key mechanisms whereby this restoration will take place.

To contemplate forgives is to contemplate sin, because without sin, there would be no need for forgiveness.

Jesus unites as He redirects: the Greek metanoia and the Hebrew shuv. He unites as He causes ‘all things’ to fall into their roles in His plan. The breadth of this common purpose includes inanimate physical objects.

As there are millions of different objects, different people, and different ideas, so there are millions of sins as each of them can take the wrong direction, and millions of virtues as Jesus redirects each of them into His will.

There’s Only One Hero in This Story

People tell lots of stories about “Bible Heroes” - a quick search through a bookseller will reveal titles like My Big Book of Bible Heroes for Kids, Greatest Heroes and Legends of The Bible, and Wonder Women of the Bible: Heroes of Yesterday Who Inspire Us Today.

Are we doing a disservice to children with these books?

There is only one hero in the Bible. These book titles give the impression that there is a whole category of people who are ‘heroes’ in the Bible.

The people often characterized as heroes are, to the contrary, ordinary human beings - which is to say, sinful and flawed human beings.

The list names - Noah, Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Joseph, Samuel, Saul, David, Solomon, Peter, James, John, Paul - are noteworthy and significant, but not heroes in the common sense of the word.

In fact, the text goes out of its way to show us that both the sins and the inabilities of these people. Not only are wrongdoings of each carefully catalogued, but their ineptitudes and insufficiencies are also listed.

In sum, the narrative is working precisely to prevent us from calling these people ‘heroes.’

By contrast, the one true hero of the metanarrative which spans all of Scripture is God. Numerically, adjectives like ‘righteous’ are applied far more often to God than to any one human being, or even all human beings together.

God heroically uses flawed and sinful human beings to accomplish His will.

God is the one true Hero.

The Bible is not a book with heroes and villains. It is a book with one Hero, one villain, and many ordinary human beings. For this reason, Jesus says that “no one is good - except God alone.”

If we attempt to rewrite Moses and David and Abraham and Joshua into heros, we create a scenario in which God uses only this superior class of people to perform His mighty deeds.

But if we realize that that these people were poor, miserable sinners - exactly like us - and if we realize that God used them anyway, then we can also understand that God can and will use us, despite our many imperfections, to carry out His will.

Credo and Credamus

The followers of Jesus express in words what they believe. These statements are called ‘creeds’ or ‘confessions.’

The word ‘confession’ has two different but related meanings. A ‘confession’ is an admission of sin and guilt, but another ‘confession’ is also a statement of beliefs.

Creeds often begin with either ‘I believe’ or ‘we believe’ - both formulations are needed, to balance the individual reliance on God as well as the corporate relationship to God.

The earliest creed is found in the New Testament, when Jesus challenges Peter to put beliefs into words by asking Peter, “Who do you say I am?” (Mark 8:29 and Matthew 16:15)

Peter was already following Jesus and working for Him. But still Jesus wanted to challenge Peter to articulate his belief in words. By so doing, Peter clarified his faith, both for himself, and for others.

Several other confessions of faith are also found in the New Testament (cf. I Corinthians 15).

In the years after the last New Testament documents were written, the followers of Jesus continued to express themselves in creeds. In the first few centuries, the Apostles Creed, the Nicene Creed, and the Athanasian Creed appeared.

Each successive creed added to, but did not replace, the previous ones.

In the 1500s, statements of faith like the Augsburg Confession appeared. In the 1900s, the Barmen Declaration was another expression of faith in Jesus. Which new creeds might appear in the 21st century?

Followers of Jesus repeat their creeds aloud, together, and often. Why? In a world filled with many bizarre ideas, one’s thinking is easily led astray. Only by reviewing, perhaps once a week, a brief statement of faith can one maintain a steadier relationship to reality.

The One Single Story

The publishing industry produces numerous books of “Bible Stories” for children. A glance at the inventory of any bookseller will reveal titles like Bedtime Bible Stories and Illustrated Family Bible Stories.

As pleasant and well-intentioned as such volumes may be, there is a particular danger in their approach to Scripture.

By presenting the text as a collection of discrete and independent narratives, which can be read in isolation from each other, and in any order, the grand narrative of the Heilsgeschichte can get lost.

There is no such thing as One Hundred and One Favorite Bible Stories, such titles notwithstanding. There is one story, told over the course of 66 different books. One goal of discipleship is to see that story as a whole, not as bits and pieces.

One continuous story, from Genesis to Revelation, permeates the Scripture.

We can lose sight of the “big picture” of God’s work in history, if we become too enmeshed in the “little picture” of the “stories” in the Bible.

Taking care not to get lost in the details of the story, we must hang on to the point of the story.

All the subplots in Scripture must be viewed in their context within the one overarching plot of the Scripture.

There is one story: God created (Genesis 1 and 2), creation fell (Genesis 3 through 11), and God saved His creation (Genesis 12 through Revelation 22).

A Book of Grace: the Old Testament

Among many Christians, the old cliche still circulates that the Old Testament is primarily the text of a stern God whose wrath is directed at sinful humans who sullied His perfect creation.

This same platitude asserts that the New Testament is a contrasting text of a gracious, loving, and forgiving God.

Such a characterization of the Hebrew text against the Greek text is not only wrong, it is dangerous.

The Old Testament is a document of grace: of freely-given, unearned love. God showers unmerited gifts upon undeserving sinners.

We read, e.g., that Abraham was worshipping idols or false gods when God chose him and called him to be the head of the messianic lineage (Joshua 24:2).

When the Heilsgeschichte continues with the Exodus, the narrative shows us that the Hebrew slaves in Egypt, whom God rescues, were busy worshipping Egyptian deities (Ezekiel 20:8).

God was blessing sinners who were not living lives devoted to Him. The old Testament shows a grace so lavish that it’s scandalous.

If the message of the Old Testament is “You are saved by grace, not by works” (and it is), then what is the message of the New Testament?

The Gospel, if we understand the word ‘Gospel’ to be the saving message about God’s love, is already present in the Old Testament. Jesus is fully anticipated as Redeemer and Messiah.

The New Testament, then, is a text which is designed to teach us about how to live here and now, in the Messianic Era.

Jesus is saying, in effect, “Look, don’t worry about how to get into Heaven after you die. You can’t solve that problem, and I’ve already solved it for you. I would rather have you spend your time and attention on this world and on this life. Concentrate on living as one of My followers.”

The Old Testament announces God’s grace. The New Testament teaches us how to live in that grace.

Martial Imagery: Isaiah’s Call

The sixth chapter of Isaiah is paradigmatic to the extent that it has been incorporated into the sanctus part of the liturgy for Lutherans, Roman Catholics, Anglicans, Orthodox, and other churches.

Isaiah begins his account by noting the time - “in the year that King Uzziah died” - which alerts us to a notion of political instability: who would the new king be? And which policies would he enact?

Interestingly, Isaiah did not choose to begin his narrative with “in the year that King Ahaz took the throne.”

Judah faced political instability - much like a modern nation-state in an election year! - but Isaiah’s text pointedly then refers to God as ‘King.’ Isaiah is telling us that although it might be worth noting who the next king is, and what that king’s policies will be, it’s far more important to remember that God is King is a more profound and permanent sense.

The vision of Isaiah pictures God on a throne and having a garment with an excessively long train - both symbols of royal power.

The attending seraphim introduce a military image: seraphim are warrior-angels, perhaps pictured as flying flamethrowers. (‘Flamethrowers’ were terrifying weapons used primarily in the Pacific in WW2.)

The seraphim were ‘calling’ to one another, not singing - perhaps reminiscent of the marching cadences of soldiers. They identify God not simply as the ‘Lord,’ but rather as the ‘Lord of armies.’

In the face of this vision, Isaiah can only see himself as condemned and doomed. Isaiah is scared and terrified in the presence of an omnipotent and holy God.

An approaching angel, carrying a glowing coal, can only have increased Isaiah’s terror. He must have assumed that he would die within a few seconds.

How it must have amazed him to find that, not only did he not die, but rather that God had sent the angel to save him!

Note that Isaiah is utterly passive in this salvation event: God sends an angel, who touches the coal to Isaiah’s lips. Isaiah is merely present, motionless.

Isaiah moves from passivity to activity only after the salvation event: grateful for redemption, Isaiah says, “Here I am! Send me!”

2,500 years later, how does God sanctify us? Most 21st followers of Jesus, we may assume, have not been approached by a seraphim carrying glowing coals. But we have been made just as holy as Isaiah.

God’s purifying work is done through baptism, through the bread and wine and body and blood, through His written Word, and perhaps in other ways. God is at work saving and sanctifying us.

Like Isaiah, we should be somewhat scared when we contemplate the holiness of God.

And like Isaiah, we should be moved to action by our gratitude when we experience God’s saving love.

For this reason, we “fear, love, and trust” God.

‘Christian Community’ vs. ‘Church’

In a perfect world, Christian community and the church would be the same thing. But we live in a fallen world.

The two terms are not coextensive. In our churches, we have casual contact with people who may not actually be part of our lives on a regular basis. They’re not part of our Christian community, but for 60 or 90 minutes a week, they inhabit the same worship space as we do.

People whom we see more frequently may form our Christian community, even though they’re not part of our church. Coworkers, neighbors, teammates, club members, and others, if they are followers of Jesus, may share a quote from Scripture or support us in prayer.

Working side-by-side with a fellow believer for 40 or more hours a week, over years, might make that person more a part of your Christian community than a fellow church member whom you barely know.

Naturally, it would be nice if our church were our Christian community. We undertake efforts on a regular basis to strengthen our discipling relations within our congregation.

We must, however, beware the pitfalls of attempting to attain that ideal state in which ‘Christian community’ and ‘church’ are exactly synonymous.

When we fail to acknowledge and accept the fallenness of this world, we are tempted to engage in a utopian question for the perfect church, which would also be the perfect Christian community. Such a well-intentioned but misguided effort will not end well.

Some of the darkest chapters of history are the results of quixotic endeavors to construct consummate Christian community. Such ventures forget to reckon with the brokenness of the world.

Efforts to construct a perfect church in a world which is inherently imperfect are efforts which justify extreme means by citing the nobility of their goal. If perfection is attainable, then any measures are warranted in the pursuit thereof.

The actual results of such attempts are cults and dictatorships, often harsh ones, demanding unconditional loyalty and obedience.

God, on the other hand, is asking us to patiently endure life in an imperfect world - in which neither church nor Christian community will be ideal.

We can, and should, ask if there are things we can do to improve our fellowships. But looking for steps toward improvement is something quite different than a vision of perfect association. Such visions are dangerous.

God asks us to forbear, and persevere in our in communities, knowing that we, and the others in them, are all sinners. Churches and fellowships are imperfect.

Our communities are groups of sinners positioned around a sinless God, imperfect humans placed into contact with a perfect Messiah, finite people encountering an infinite Jesus.

Churches will never be perfect, and neither will Christian community. But God still uses them, and we should look for the good in them, and from time to time, we may be able to adjust them and make them a bit better than they are.

We must be patient and realistic, both about our fellowships, and about ourselves.