The Face of Forgiveness

A Pastoral Theology of Shame and Redemption

Philip D. Jamieson

• Publisher: IVP Academic
• Year: 2016
• Print ISBN: 9780830840991
• eBook ISBN: 9780830899531
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Christian Theology

Jesus tells Peter to forgive "not seven times, but seventy-seven times" (Matt 18:22), and the atoning work of Christ is at the center of Christian thought. Yet many followers of Christ often struggle with offering or receiving forgiveness. The Face of Forgiveness seeks to address this dilemma and present a way forward. Utilizing contemporary distinctions between shame and guilt, Philip Jamieson shows how traditional Western atonement models have frequently failed to deal adequately with the full extent of Christ's victory. Jesus Christ has answered the problem of both human guilt and shame. It is only in facing Christ that we find our sins forgiven and receive a new identity. The author concludes by offering several strategies to aid Christians in understanding and appropriating the fullness of God's loving and forgiving work.

ONE

Whatever Happened to the
Forgiveness of Sins?

It’s been a long day: a senior Bible study in the morning and hospital visitation in the afternoon. The ideas are there, but the sermon is still not ready. At nearly five o’clock, you grab two commentaries to look over this evening when there is a knock at the study door. Opening it, you see Jane. Jane is very active in the congregation. She teaches Sunday school, attends the evening Bible study and rarely misses worship. Divorced nearly two years earlier, Jane is also struggling with one of the key practices of the Christian faith.

“Pastor, I know that I’m supposed to . . . I know that Jesus commanded us. But it is getting to the point that I don’t even want to pray the Lord’s Prayer. You know the part I mean: ‘Forgive us our sins as we forgive those who sin against us.’ Pastor, I want to . . . I really, really want to, but I just can’t forgive my ex. Not after what he did to me and especially how he hurt the kids. I just can’t forgive him.” And what do you say to Jane at nearly five o’clock? Jane who desperately wants to follow Christ and yet is deeply troubled by the inconsistency between accepting forgiveness for oneself and the inability to offer that to others—what do you say to Jane?

It is very tempting to offer several replies: “Well, Jane, these things take time. You really mustn’t be so hard on yourself.” Or, “Jane, are you praying for him? You know it’s very difficult to simultaneously pray for someone and not forgive them.” Or perhaps, “Jane, I found this very disconcerting. Perhaps you should take some time off from teaching the children until your life better reflects the teachings of the church.” Such responses run the usual gamut from the clichéd to the therapeutic to the judgmental. But the inadequacy of the responses is not their main problem. Their main problem is that they profoundly fail to share with Jane the heart of the Christian message. Each response assumes that Jane has the inner strength and inner resources to forgive. And each one also fails to turn Jane toward the source of forgiveness, which is not her work, but the work of the triune God.

This book is an attempt to offer an answer to Jane and to all Christians who struggle with offering faithful responses—disciple-like responses. And to begin to formulate a faithful response, we must acknowledge the changing context in which forgiveness is discussed within the church. The language of forgiveness is undergoing a dramatic change in connotation. In part, this is due to a slow but thorough loss of the language of sin among Christians. And ultimately, forgiveness will be re­defined if sin talk is either muted or disappears altogether.

Cornelius Plantinga Jr. remarks on the change in our understanding of sin: “Nowadays, the accusation you have sinned is often said with a grin, and with a tone of that signals an inside joke.”1 To say the least, the language of sin, if used at all, sounds rather antiquated in the ears of many clergy and laity. This is often noticeable in congregational confessions of sin. You will look long and hard for the words forgive us our sins but they are frequently absent. Instead, multiple euphemisms rule the day. We miscalculate, make mistakes, underestimate, overestimate, goof up, stray, trip, wander, lose our way; but never, never under any circumstances do we actually sin. However, there is a deep and abiding problem with the loss of sin language and it is specifically this: Without acknowledging sin, how can there be the forgiveness of sins? And without the forgiveness of sin, how can there be salvation? Plantinga again: “For slippage in our consciousness of sin, like most fashionable follies, may be pleasant, but it is also devastating. . . . Moral beauty begins to bore us. The idea that the human race needs a Savior sounds quaint.”2

When we lose our understanding of the magnitude of sin, we also begin to lose our appreciation for the grandeur of God’s answer to sin. Miscalculations and mistakes do not need to be forgiven. For such matters, a simple reassessment of the known situation and redoubled efforts ought to suffice. But in the end, such attempts to fix ourselves seem to fall short of the goal. Such attempts frequently leave us anxious and full of questions. Why are we so shy of the language of sin?

There are a number of answers to that question, but I would begin by asking another: What part has Christian theology itself played in causing Christians to be hesitant in acknowledging sin’s reality? I want to focus in this book on the way in which a different emphasis within the doctrine of the atonement might cause us to face our sin with greater honesty. And more importantly, I want to focus on how a different emphasis might cause us to face our sin with greater hope, including the hope of transformation.

It is the primary argument of this book that in order to properly understand, appropriate for oneself and offer to others forgiveness, we must begin not with human experience but with the activity of the triune God. In other words, in order to truly forgive others we must know what God the Father does through Jesus Christ the Son and how we come to appropriate that work through the power of the Holy Spirit. No other beginning point will create a suitable foundation for the power to forgive. No other place allows us to take seriously and honestly our own sin and need for forgiveness. Karl Barth states, “Only those who taste and see how gracious the Lord is can know their sin.”3 To begin with God’s gracious work grants the freedom for an accurate assessment of one’s condition. Christians are all too often accused of hypocrisy: denouncing the sins of others while failing to acknowledge their own. This is not the way it ought to be for people of faith. Rather, it is meant to be and can be different for Christians. Barth continues, “It is because they are held by God and cannot escape that they see that they are fleeing from Him; and it is because they are not let go and finally abandoned that they see that they are held. Known sin is always forgiven sin, known in the light of forgiveness and the triumphant grace of God.”4 To know one’s sin is good news and not bad. To recognize one’s alienation is to remember that God has drawn near to us. To know one’s moral failure is a call to remember Jesus Christ, the only perfect one who has the power to forgive sin (Mk 2:10). Christians stand in a place of privilege in that their sin is meant to be a call to remember the God who forgives. There is no healing in the inward glance of self acceptance, but then there need not be because the God who does accept, forgive and restore has been, is and will continue to be at work.

So why do we hesitate to acknowledge our sin? As stated above, I believe that there is a great need for a new look at the doctrine of the atonement. In particular, the Western church’s emphasis (since at least Anselm) on the satisfaction theory has caused us to focus primarily on our guilt. The shorthand version goes along these lines: The guilt we have accumulated as a result of our sin exacts a death penalty upon us. Jesus, who is not guilty of any sin, takes our place and dies our death. Therefore, the slate has been wiped clean and we are offered a new beginning. Thanks be to God, this is most certainly true, but what if our individual sins are not really the heart of our problem? What if it is our shame rather than our guilt that most needs to be addressed? What if our essential problem is not so much what we do or don’t do, but who we are, or who we think that we are? In other words, what if our essential problem is not our failure to behave but instead our failure to recognize the truth of who God is and who we are in relationship to that God?

Asking the Questions in the Proper Order

In Christian theological terms, to ask the question, whatever became of the forgiveness of sins? is to ask a question of pastoral theology. That is, we are asking a question regarding the human appropriation of or participation in God’s activity. The answer to that question will be deeply influenced by the answers to two other concerns. The first concern is the who question. That is, who is this God at work? Second is the what question. What is the work of this God? Then and only then can we adequately take up the topic of the human activity of forgiveness. James Torrance writes, “From the history of Christian thought we can see that our doctrine of God determines our understanding both of the doctrine of atonement and of the nature of Christian assurance.”5 If we do not recognize who God really is, we will never be able to understand what God does; thus, we will never be able to know how to respond appropriately to this God. We will remain with our questions and our worries; we will remain with our sin.

For instance, if one begins with a concept of God that is essentially marked by a legalistic scorekeeping, we all too quickly move to the conclusion that such a God must be convinced to go contrary to his essential nature if we are to be forgiven. Such an image of God tends to generate great doubts that are manifested in one of two ways: Are we among those for whom Jesus has atoned or have we ourselves done enough to be included in the work? In this way, human beings look inward again and again to find the answer to their own forgiveness and the demand to forgive others. But such a turn inward only aggravates and reinforces our tendency to misidentify God.

But beginning with a different concept of God will yield much different results. Torrance again: “Conversely, however if our basic concept of God is that of the Triune God of grace who has being in communion as Father, Son and Holy Spirit, and who has created us to share that life of communion, then our doctrine of atonement will be seen rather as God in grace bringing these loving purposes to fulfillment in redemption.”6 The trinitarian understanding of God made known to us through Jesus Christ allows for the only place to begin in order to understand forgiveness both properly and adequately. This God does not need to be convinced to forgive; this God forgives according to his very nature at great cost to the divine life itself. This God calls human persons to look away from their own abilities, however strong or weak they may be, and trust in his work that is always prior to any human capacity or action. And the result of that looking away from the self is to place oneself on a firm foundation in which one continues to participate in God’s forgiving love. This may then be experienced and acted upon as the power to forgive others.

This book seeks to ground human forgiveness in the prior work of the triune God and then and only then take up the possibilities of our accepting and offering our own forgiveness. In this way and following the excellent work of Andrew Purves, the scope of pastoral theology becomes much more closely related to systematic and historical theology. A pastoral theology of forgiveness is first the study of the ongoing work of the triune God through the participation of the church. Purves writes, “Pastoral Theology, as I intend it, is principally concerned first with the practice of God, that is, with what God does as a result of who God is. Second, it moves to reflection on the participative practice of the church within that theological perspective through our union with Christ.”7 If, as I will argue, much of our problem with forgiveness is grounded in our misidentification of God, then it is essential that we begin with a proper understanding of God. As crucial as psychology and other social sciences may be, they too prove an inadequate foundation for understanding forgiveness. And with the failure to understand God’s work of forgiveness, we ultimately fail in the practice of forgiveness, be it offering it to others or accepting it for ourselves. So our emphasis will move from a focus on what the lone individual does to what God is doing. Furthermore, only when we consider the individual in community is it proper and helpful to consider the acts of accepting and offering forgiveness. The initial human context is that of the person in community; and the most important community is within the life of the triune God. Secondarily, the immediate human community to be considered is the church, the body of Jesus Christ. This expansion of the context of forgiveness is absolutely crucial in order to counteract the temptation toward the therapeutic and individualistic inward gaze.

But once this proper context is set, the conversation with social sciences and psychology in particular can be very helpful in understanding the importance of forgiveness for human thriving. The topic of forgiveness is a relatively new object of study for psychology. “In 1970, virtually no one had studied forgiveness scientifically. Forgiveness was seen as within the domain of religion. . . . Scientific study of forgiveness began in earnest only in the mid-1980s and has accelerated since that time.”8 After the 1980s, there has been an explosion of scholarly books and articles on the psychology of forgiveness. One annotated bibliography runs to well over one hundred pages.9 In addition, there are far more popular books that utilize the discoveries of psychology on forgiveness. Forgiveness continues to be an increasingly important topic both inside and outside the church.

But there can be a downside to such popularity. Those who struggle with forgiveness may actually have their problems increased once they become aware of the physical and emotional health consequences that are associated with an incapacity or an unwillingness to forgive. Furthermore, once the topic is thought of within the field of human endeavor, Christians in particular are tempted to separate forgiveness from reconciliation, as the two are consistently separated in the psychological literature. This is a significant problem in that the Bible knows little of forgiveness separated from the restoration of relationships. “In the New Testament, while each has its nuances, forgiveness always leads to reconciliation and reconciliation results from mutu...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title page
• Dedication
• Contents
• Acknowledgments
• 1 Whatever Happened to the Forgiveness of Sins?
• 2 Covering Our Nakedness: Healing Through Therapy
• 3 Guilt and Shame
• 4 Opened Eyes and Downturned Faces
• 5 The Shame of the Cross
• 6 “As One from Whom Others Hide Their Faces . . .”
• 7 Living Before Christ’s Face
• Epilogue: Answer to Jane
• Notes
• Bibliography
• General Index
• Scripture Index
• Praise for The Face of Forgiveness
• About the Author
• More Titles from InterVarsity Press
• Copyright