Prof. John Stackhouse’s Weblog

As we pick up on this discussion of repentance and forgiveness, it is important to understand that repentance and forgiveness can be performed unilaterally.

For the victim, forgiveness offers freedom. Again, we must disagree with those who teach that forgiveness must not be granted without repentance. To insist that the victim withhold forgiveness until the offender repents actually serves to victimize the offended person twice: first by the offense itself and second by holding the victim in thrall to the offender by keeping her attached both to him and to the offense until he chooses to repent—which he may never do. Indeed, in some cases, people have been victimized by offenders who have died: Are they never to enjoy the peace that comes from forgiving the other?

No, the victim can cut herself or himself loose from the burden and corrosion of anger, vengeance, fear, and other horrible feelings arising from the offense by sincerely forgiving the offender. She is now free to walk away from this horrible part of the past and heal.

Similarly, an offender can truly repent whether or not the victim will forgive. In fact, a scandalous teaching of the Christian faith is that one can repent of one’s sins before a third party and receive forgiveness. The victim herself doesn’t even need to be there. How can that be right?

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As Christians enter the season of Advent—the time of the church year when we undertake an examination of our lives and repent of our sins to prepare for the celebration of the first coming (“advent”) of Jesus—we do well to consider the themes of repentance and forgiveness. There is a lot of confusion around these terms, and a lot of pain around them as well, perhaps especially as Christmastime brings to mind hurtful events and relationships in one’s life. Let’s see if we can bring a little Christmas light to bear on the subject.

Repentance and forgiveness are at the heart of the Christian faith and two of the key words in the Christian vocabulary.

Indeed, they are

• at the heart of the Gospel—we are called to repent and God promises to forgive our sins;
• at the heart of Christian prayer: “and forgive us our sins, as we forgive those who sin against us” (Luke 11:4) ; and
• at the heart of Christian conduct toward our neighbours.

Yet sometimes Jesus says such odd things about forgiveness: “Be on your guard! If another disciple sins, you must rebuke the offender, and if there is repentance, you must forgive. And if the same person sins against you seven times a day, and turns back to you seven times and says, `I repent,’ you must forgive” (Luke 17:3-4).

Notice that in this short passage we encounter multiple sins and multiple forgivenesses. Forgiveness may be necessary toward the same person over and over again.

Notice also that repentance seems to be required. But it isn’t.

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“Yes, Virginia,” wrote Francis P. Church, editor of the New York Sun, in 1897, “there is a Santa Claus.”

But when Virginia got a little older and took high school physics, her doubts returned. Big time.

Let’s see how she thought about the matter.

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Politicians, we all know, are among the least respected people in our society. We assume the worst about them and nod our heads sagely as one or another of them is exposed as venal, or hypocritical, or merely ambitious.

Yet we need them, and we need Christians among them.

Politics is about multiple policies, procedures, publics–and therefore about patience. No wonder so many people who want to get things done, and get them done soon, and get them done in a straightforward way tend to despise and avoid political careers.

Christians, of all people, should therefore get involved.

Our theology equips us to expect, and not be shocked by, sin, stupidity, absurdity, and waste. We should take for granted that some people’s motives are bad, everyone’s motives are mixed, and political systems are corrupt, with all that money and power at stake.

Our theology should also, however, lead us to expect some success, some goodness, and some blessing. We who know how things eventually turn out, and who know that God intends to bless the world in the meanwhile, should be hopeful of at least some measure of shalom from government.

So, given our grasp of the light and the dark, the positive and the negative, the “mixed field of the world” and what it takes to get anything worthwhile accomplished in it, we should be unusually patient. And yet we usually aren’t.

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A couple of years ago, a few students brought to my attention the fact that D. A. Carson, Research Professor of New Testament at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School in suburban Chicago, had quoted me in his book, Becoming Conversant with the Emerging Church: Understanding a Movement and Its Implications (Zondervan, 2005).

They each came to me, and several people have since approached me during speaking engagements around North America, because Carson uses something I wrote to illustrate something he doesn’t like about the emerging church. This use has puzzled each of my inquirers for the same two reasons: (1) they didn’t know I had anything to do with the emerging church and (2) they didn’t think that Carson construed properly what I wrote.

So I retrieved a copy from our library, looked up my name, and behold, on page 66, there I am.

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