C. S. Lewis on Forgiveness...from the Weight of Glory

We say a great many things in church (and out of church too) without thinking of what we are saying. For instance, we say in the Creed “I believe in the forgiveness of sins.” I had been saying it for several years before I asked myself why it was in the Creed. At first sight it seems hardly worth putting in. “If one is a Christian,” I thought, “of course one believes in the forgiveness of sins. It goes without saying.” But the people who compiled the Creed apparently thought that this was a part of our belief which we needed to be reminded of every time we went to church. And I have begun to see that, as far as I am concerned, they were right. To believe in the forgiveness of sins is not nearly so easy as I thought. Real belief in it is the sort of thing that very easily slips away if we don’t keep on polishing it up. 


We believe that God forgives us our sins; but also that He will not do so unless we forgive other people their sins against us. There is no doubt about the second part of this statement. It is in the Lord’s Prayer; it was emphatically stated by our Lord. If you don’t forgive you will not be forgiven. No part of His teaching is clearer, and there are no exceptions to it. He doesn’t say that we are to forgive other people’s sins provided they are not too frightful, or provided there are extenuating circumstances, or anything of that sort. We are to forgive them all, however spiteful, however mean, however often they are repeated. If we don’t, we shall be forgiven none of our own. 


Now it seems to me that we often make a mistake both about God’s forgiveness of our sins and about the forgiveness we are told to offer to other people’s sins. Take it first about God’s forgiveness. I find that when I think I am asking God to forgive me I am often in reality (unless I watch myself very carefully) asking Him to do something quite different. I am asking Him not to forgive me but to excuse me. But there is all the difference in the world between forgiving and excusing. 


Forgiveness says “Yes, you have done this thing, but I accept your apology; I will never hold it against you and everything between us two will be exactly as it was before.” But excusing says “I see that you couldn’t help it or didn’t mean it; you weren’t really to blame.” If one was not really to blame then there is nothing to forgive. In that sense forgiveness and excusing are almost opposites. Of course, in dozens of cases, either between God and man, or between one man and another, there may be a mixture of the two. Part of what seemed at first to be the sins turns out to be really nobody’s fault and is excused; the bit that is left over is forgiven. If you had a perfect excuse, you would not need forgiveness; if the whole of your action needs forgiveness, then there was no excuse for it. But the trouble is that what we call “asking God’s forgiveness” very often really consists in asking God to accept our excuses. 


What leads us into this mistake is the fact that there usually is some amount of excuse, some “extenuating circumstances.” We are so very anxious to point these out to God (and to ourselves) that we are apt to forget the really important thing; that is, the bit left over, the bit which the excuses don’t cover, the bit which is inexcusable but not, thank God, unforgivable. And if we forget this, we shall go away imagining that we have repented and been forgiven when all that has really happened is that we have satisfied ourselves with our own excuses. They may be very bad excuses; we are all too easily satisfied about ourselves. 


There are two remedies for this danger. One is to remember that God knows all the real excuses very much better than we do. If there are real “extenuating circumstances” there is no fear that He will overlook them. Often He must know many excuses that we have never thought of, and therefore humble souls will, after death, have the delightful surprise of discovering that on certain occasions they sinned much less than they had thought. All the real excusing He will do. What we have got to take to Him is the inexcusable bit, the sin. We are only wasting time by talking about all the parts which can (we think) be excused. When you go to a doctor you show him the bit of you that is wrong—say, a broken arm. It would be a mere waste of time to keep on explaining that your legs and eyes and throat are all right. You may be mistaken in thinking so, and anyway, if they are really all right, the doctor will know that. 


The second remedy is really and truly to believe in the forgiveness of sins. A great deal of our anxiety to make excuses comes from not really believing in it, from thinking that God will not take us to Himself again unless He is satisfied that some sort of case can be made out in our favour. But that would not be forgiveness at all. Real forgiveness means looking steadily at the sin, the sin that is left over without any excuse, after all allowances have been made, and seeing it in all its horror, dirt, meanness, and malice, and nevertheless being wholly reconciled to the man who has done it. That, and only that, is forgiveness, and that we can always have from God if we ask for it. 


When it comes to a question of our forgiving other people, it is partly the same and partly different. It is the same because, here also, forgiving does not mean excusing. Many people seem to think it does. They think that if you ask them to forgive someone who has cheated or bullied them you are trying to make out that that there was really no cheating or no bullying. But if that were so, there would be nothing to forgive. They keep on replying, “But I tell you the man broke a most solemn promise.” Exactly: that is precisely what you have to forgive. (This doesn’t mean that you must necessarily believe his next promise. It does mean that you must make every effort to kill every taste of resentment in your own heart—every wish to humiliate or hurt him or to pay him out.) The difference between this situation and the one in which you are asking God’s forgiveness is this. In our own case we accept excuses too easily; in other people’s we do not accept them easily enough. 


As regards my own sins it is a safe bet (though not a certainty) that the excuses are not really so good as I think; as regards other men’s since against me it is a safe bet (though not a certainty) that the excuses are better than I think. One must therefore begin by attending to everything which may show that the other man was not so much to blame as we thought. But even if he is absolutely fully to blame we still have to forgive him; and even if ninety-nine per cent of his apparent guilt can be explained away by really good excuses, the problem of forgiveness begins with the one per cent of guilt which is left over. To excuse what can really produce good excuses is not Christian charity; it is only fairness.


To be a Christian means to forgive the inexcusable, because God has forgiven the inexcusable in you. This is hard. It is perhaps not so hard to forgive a single great injury. But to forgive the incessant provocations of daily life—to keep on forgiving the bossy mother-in-law, the bullying husband, the nagging wife, the selfish daughter, the deceitful son—how can we do it? 


Only, I think, by remembering where we stand, by meaning our words when we say in our prayers each night “forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those that trespass against us.” We are offered forgiveness on no other terms. To refuse it is to refuse God’s mercy for ourselves. There is no hint of exceptions and God means what He says.

Notes on Leprosy...Leviticus 13 and 14.

Leprosy or Hansen's Disease is with us today and, as in biblical times, still incurable.  It is not a nice disease. The symptoms can be managed and their effects minimized, but it remains incurable.  This is curious to me given that leprosy is a symbol of sin in the bible.  Without a miracle of God, sin and its deadly result is also incurable.  

Leprosy is a condition where your nerves are deadened so that you can no longer feel pain.  On the surface this sounds like a good thing, right?  Thinking further on it though, it is clear that pain does have its purposes.  Losing your sense of feeling means that if you put your hand on a hot stove you might not be aware of it until your flesh begins to burn and smell.  Much of the body damage that lepers experience is a direct result from their inability to feel physically. 

Can you see the correlation between leprosy and sin?  Sin also deadens your senses.  It hardens your conscience, enabling you to do things you might never have thought you would do and think that they are really no big deal.  Look at pictures of babies...see there innocence and beauty.  There is a reason why they are so attractive to us.  Now look at someone, perhaps in their twenties, who is already well on the road of sin.  You can see the damage and destruction.  Sin takes something beautiful and innocent and disfigures it.  Sin is also contagious.  If everyone around you is doing it, it makes it easier for you to go down that road also.  Sin isolates and separates us...not only from each other but also from God.

Here is the explanation for leprosy given in the Treasury of Scripture Knowledge for leprosy.   

"The plague of leprosy Tzaraâth, the Leprosy, from the Greek λεπρα, from λεπις, a scale; so called, because in this disease the body is covered with thin white scales, so as to give it the appearance of snow. The leprosy is a dreadful, contagious disorder, common in Egypt and Syria, and generally manifests itself at first in the manner described in the text. Its commencement is imperceptible; there appearing only a few reddish spots on the skin, which are not attended with pain or any other symptom, but cannot be removed. It increases imperceptibly, and continues for some years to be more and more manifest. The spots become larger, spread over the whole skin, and are sometimes rather raised, though generally flat. When it increases the upper part of the nose swells, the nostrils distend, the nose becomes soft, swellings appear on the under jaws, the eyebrows are elevated, the ears grow thick, the ends of the fingers, feet, and toes, swell, the nails grow scaly, the joints of the hands and feet separate, the palms of hands and soles of the feet are ulcerated, and in its last stage the patient becomes horrible, and falls to pieces."

Sin acts on our spirits in precisely the same manner.  Sin is a downward slope that begins almost imperceptibly.  It then gains momentum and vigor and its result is always death. 

The cure is simple and very available, but in pride many refuse to accept it.  

For the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.--Romans 6:23

"But the righteousness of faith speaks in this way, “Do not say in your heart, ‘Who will ascend into heaven?’” (that is, to bring Christ down from above)  or, “‘Who will descend into the abyss?’” (that is, to bring Christ up from the dead). But what does it say? “The word is near you, in your mouth and in your heart”  (that is, the word of faith which we preach): that if you confess with your mouth the Lord Jesus and believe in your heart that God has raised Him from the dead, you will be saved.  For with the heart one believes unto righteousness, and with the mouth confession is made unto salvation.  For the Scripture says, “Whoever believes on Him will not be put to shame.” For there is no distinction between Jew and Greek, for the same Lord over all is rich to all who call upon Him. For “whoever calls on the name of the LORD shall be saved.”--Romans 10:6-13

Apart from a touch from God....no one was or is ever cured of leprosy. The same is true for sin. The Son of Man came to seek and save that which is lost.  Jesus was called a friend of sinners and compared Himself to a physician caring for those who knew they needed Him.  He came to heal us of the sickness of sin.  All of us need His cleansing...sadly, not all of us admit our need.  Leprosy is a temporal disease and has consequences only in this life.  Sin is also temporal but its consequences are eternal.  The remedy is Christ.    God's desire is that none of us should perish but that all should come to life in His Son.  The decision you make for Jesus also has both temporal and eternal consequences.  Put your pride aside and thank God that He has done it all.  Revel in the fact that there is nothing you can do but accept His free gift.  Rejoice!