12. What is Grace? - Part II
Chapter Five
Forgiveness of Sins
This is the message we have heard from him and proclaim to you, that God is light and in him is no darkness at all. […] If we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus his Son cleanses us from all sin. […] If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just, and will forgive our sins and cleanse us from all unrighteousness.1
Since the beginning of the Christian religion, forgiveness of sins through Jesus has been proclaimed as a central doctrine.2 Despite being well-versed in the theology of atonement, I never really knew what forgiveness meant. Listening to many sermons and lectures on the topic, I imagined God as a cosmic Santa Claus, keeping a list of my naughtiness and then, because of the gentle pleadings of Jesus, mercifully crossing out the sins I confessed. Though I knew that was obviously inaccurate, it was not until I spiritually observed the phenomenon of forgiveness that I finally understood its triumphant power.
To explain what I observed, I must first define that which we call “sin.” John offered this short definition: “sin is lawlessness.”3 The word “lawlessness” means, quite literally, “without the Law.”4 As I explained previously, the Mosaic Law was the Word of God, and Jewish men and women were able to lay up the Word in their hearts by obedience to the Law. On the basis of this connection between Law and Word, we can modify John’s definition to be: sin is Word-lessness, or any action that is absent of the Word.
John expanded on his definition of sin:
No one who abides in [God] sins; no one who sins has either seen him or known him. […] He who commits sin is of the devil; for the devil has sinned from the beginning. […] No one born of God commits sin; for God’s seed abides in him, and he cannot sin because he is born of God. By this it may be seen who are the children of God, and who are the children of the devil: whoever does not do right is not of God, nor he who does not love his brother.5
Sin is the linguistic label used to describe the absence of God’s seeds. When a thought or action welcomes the seeds of God’s Word within us, then that act of faith empowers us toward becoming a child of God. When a thought or action is not accompanied by God’s seeds, then it is called a sin. In contrast to faithful action, sin gradually deforms us into “the children of the devil.” Nothing we do is spiritually neutral: either we are sowing the seeds of the Word or we are sowing the shadows of the Deep.6 A sin, therefore, is any thought, word, or deed that welcomes the Deep within us.
Not long after I came to understand the intricate subtleties of faith and grace, I felt a pain in my chest that seemed to be saying, “You have some work to do.” For decades I had carelessly cultivated shadowy selfishness behind the guise of pathetic rationalizations.
I need this...
But she did that to me...
Look at what I've been through...
Oh, it doesn’t really matter if I do...I had whispered so many lies to myself. Now, with the eyes of my soul opened wide, I felt naked and ashamed.7 I could see the countless shadows that I had woven within me. It was time to pause my spiritual investigations and actually live what I was learning.
Every afternoon for a week, I looked back through my life—year by year, one relationship after another—and found the many shadows that had long held me captive. From the depths of my heart, I prayed that God would breathe the seeds of Light onto the weeds of darkness I had sown.8 As I did so, the golden Light encircled each and every shadow, holding them in a sphere of gold until they disappeared, as wax melts before the fire.9 By the end of that exhausting and victorious week, my eyes were red from weeping, and the shadows were no more.
When I had earlier imagined that forgiveness entailed God crossing items off my heavenly record whenever I prayed the right prayer, I could not have been more wrong. Forgiveness is a baptism of Light whereby we are clothed with God.10 As we repent, consciously laying aside our selfish preoccupations, a river of golden water flows from the resplendent pearl within us and washes us clean. God is Light, and when God abides in us, darkness scatters and we are set free.
Love Perfected
Beloved, if God so loved us, we also ought to love one another. No man has ever seen God; if we love one another, God abides in us and his love is perfected in us. […] God is love, and he who abides in love abides in God, and God abides in him. In this is love perfected with us, that we may have confidence for the day of judgment, because as he is so are we in this world.11
As it was in the beginning, so it is with us. On the first day of Creation, Light separated the waters of the Deep in order to create the golden foundation upon which something new could be made. Likewise, every day within the hearts of the faithful, Light overcomes the shadows of the Deep in preparation for that which ought to come next.
Love is the culmination. On the second day of Creation, God spoke Love and created the sphere of Heaven within the waters of the Deep. God longs to speak Love in us as well. When we act with love toward others, reaching out to them with our souls, then Love enters through the doorway in our chests and abides in us. If we love without ceasing, day after day, year after year, then the shadows of the Deep will eventually vanish altogether and only Love will reign within us. Love will be perfected, and we will be “as he is.”
When Jesus told his followers, “You, therefore, must be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect,”12 I don’t think he was exaggerating. The labor of perfecting Love is a command for all who seek to live as Jesus did. However, it is impossible for our love alone to achieve perfection. Because Jesus voluntarily poured out his blood for us, our works of faith are infused with the presence of God. By living in freedom, Life is breathed within us. By laying aside selfishness, Light conquers the Deep. And by loving all that surrounds us, everyday for the rest of our lives, we will become Love.
Grace For All Creation
My little children, I am writing this to you so that you may not sin; but if any one does sin, we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous; and he is the expiation for our sins, and not for ours only but also for the sins of the whole world.13
Grace was never meant to be an individual affair. The Tree of Life was not planted in my heart so that I alone could feast on its fruits. Rather, that fountain of abounding grace, which makes possible both the forgiveness of sins and the perfection of Love, was given to me for the sake of the whole world. From the fulness of the Word within Jesus’s blood, we have received grace upon grace, so that through us the entire Earth and all created beings may shine with the glory of God.14
We are the ones created in the image of the Creator. Grace is ours so that we can give it to all men and women, animals and plants, mountains and oceans, and so on. Just as the first man was placed in the Garden to “keep” and to “cultivate,” so too are we to drive out the Deep and fill all Creation with the seeds of Love. And as we do so, we will grow God’s Garden “on Earth as it is in Heaven.”15
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1 John 1:5,7,9
Acts 2:38
1 John 3:4
The Greek word is anomia, which is the negation of the word nomos or “law.”
1 John 3:6–10
Matthew 12:30
Genesis 2:25; 3:7
Matthew 13:24–25
Psalm 68:2
Galatians 3:27
1 John 4:11–12,16–17
Matthew 5:48
1 John 2:1–2
Revelation 21:11
Matthew 6:10