We have noticed once or twice in our series on the Apostles' Creed that there are one or two phrases or statements in it that seem to capture people's attention, or even their imagination. There are two of them in particular: The idea that Jesus “descended into hell” (that is a statement that intrigues Christian people), and for many people in the Protestant tradition, that we should say we believe in the “holy catholic church”. I know that after David Lauten spoke on that statement there were people who were grateful for the fact that they now understood something that they said almost every Sunday in their lives – "I believe in the holy catholic church".

I actually find this statement very intriguing: “I believe in the forgiveness of sins" – not because I don't believe in the forgiveness of sins, but because of the location of this statement in the Apostles' Creed. The Apostles' Creed began with marvellous statements about God the Father, and then it has gone on to marvellous statements about God the Son, and then it has gone on to marvellous statements about God the Holy Spirit. But what it is talking about now is what happens in the context of the life of the church. My guess is that if most of us had been writing a creed, we would have said, “Isn't it God the Father who forgives sins? So shouldn't the forgiveness of sins be near the beginning of the Creed?” Or didn't Jesus die to bring the forgiveness of sins? So shouldn't that statement be located in the context of what Christ has done? And isn't it the Holy Spirit who brings us assurance that our sins are forgiven? So there would be a place for it in talking about the Father or in talking about the Son or in talking about the Holy Spirit.

I think it is rather interesting that the statement about the forgiveness of sins is found within the context of this statement about the church. Is that because the church can forgive your sins? Well, if you can find the church that can forgive your sins, I am pretty sure it would be crowded. No, the church cannot forgive your sins. It is not within the power of the church to forgive your sins. So what is the explanation for the location of this statement, "I believe in the forgiveness of sins"? What is the explanation for the location of this statement?

Does God Simply Forgive Everyone?⤒🔗

In order to understand the location of the statement about the forgiveness of sins, I think we need first of all to understand the explanation for believing in the forgiveness of sins. I wonder if you know anybody who does not believe in the forgiveness of sins. In my experience, it is the thing most people say that they believe in. We all believe in the forgiveness of sins. Some of you know the famous words of Catherine the Great. "God will forgive me: That is His business". I think that probably most people think that. Of course God will forgive my sins. That is the kind of thing that God does.

(Transcription of audio file from 10:24 to 10:31 and 10:36 to 10:45 omitted.)

I have never forgotten a lecture that one of my theology professors gave. One day in the middle of a lecture he quoted a hymn by Frederick W Faber. It has this verse:

There is no place where earth’s sorrows
Are more felt than up in Heaven;
There is no place where earth’s failings
Have such kindly judgment given.There’s a Wideness in God’s Mercy, 1854

I remember my theology professor leaning over the podium and saying, "I wonder.” Is that just wishful thinking? There is no place where earth’s failings have such kindly judgment given as in heaven.

Let me probe this just a little. People who aren't Christians will say to us, "Of course I believe in the forgiveness of sins”, and we are far too polite and we know we would get bad press if we began to ask them searching questions, so we sometimes just remain silent. But it is a good thing to say, “Why do you believe that God forgives sins?" Then perhaps as they stutter and stammer to find an answer you could say, "Which sins do you think God forgives?” Let's try some. Stealing? Is that okay? Well, some stealing. Lying? That's not so bad. Adultery? Well, we all forgive adultery these days. Murder? Rape? Child molestation? A holocaust? What do we do with people who steal, murder, rape or molest children? We believe in forgiveness, don't we? Don't you believe in forgiveness? We forgive them! Well actually, we don’t forgive them. We punish them. So how does this curiosity develop that it is right for us to punish sin and yet it is not right for God to punish sin?

Actually, one of the things that has happened in our society is that that false thinking about God has led to a very false thinking about man. And actually, it is very logical. Because you can't actually answer the question, “Why is this wrong?” Just, “Why is it socially unacceptable?” Socially unacceptable behaviour doesn't merit severe punishment. So the whole ground for punishment shakes and shudders in the Western world. Why? Because the Western world has diminished in its understanding any concept of a God who is so righteous that He will punish wrong doing. The idea that God just forgives because it is His nature turns God into a kind of prisoner, who at the end of the day nobody wants, except for themselves.

God Forgives Confessed Sins←⤒🔗

Actually, the Bible doesn't say simply, “God forgives”. What the Bible says is that God forgives sins that are confessed. Remember how John puts it in a very amazing statement in 1 John 1:9: The great thing about the gospel for sinners is that we have a God who is “faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.” Now, the great question is: When does God do this? And John answers the question. He says, “If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins...” So one of the most important points that we need to grasp and we need as Christians to learn to communicate to people is that it is not committed sin that God forgives, it is confessed sin that God forgives. And in fact, without the confession of sin there is no actual forgiveness. When people say, “I believe God forgives”, they don't really believe that God forgives, [because] they have never confessed what they need God to forgive. So they have never actually experienced the forgiveness that God promises.

So here is one of the things the Bible is teaching us, and that the writers of the Apostles' Creed well understood. The forgiveness of sins is very intimately related in my personal life to my confession of my sins. If I don't confess my sins, I am as much as saying, “I don't need forgiveness”. It is only those who confess their sins who see that it is forgiveness that they need.

This is a very different thing from what people sometimes think. Why will God forgive me? Underneath it all, many people will say, “God will forgive me because basically on the scales I think I have probably done as many good things as I have done bad things.” But that wouldn't be forgiveness, would it? If at the end of the year your income and your expenditure more or less balance one another, you don't go to your bank manager and say, "Please forgive me." You go to the bank manager and you say, "Give me more credit." That is what you actually do nowadays. No, the balancing act doesn't work. And it is fascinating to me how often people will say they believe in the forgiveness of sins on the basis of the moral balancing act that they have accomplished, usually [saying] that they are at least as good as the next person. But you see, even if you had done any good things and you take them out of one side of the balancing act (even with that kind of worldly rather than biblical thinking), you would still have a mountain of sin that would need not balance but to be pardoned and forgiven!

The Pharisee and the Tax Collector←↰⤒🔗

Jesus told a very brilliant story about this very thing. He describes two people who went up to the temple to pray. One of them was a Pharisee (that is, he was a spiritually committed individual) and the other was a tax gatherer. Tax gatherers were much further down the totem pole of social loves in the 1^st century than they are in the 21^st century. It is a very respectable job these days to be a tax collector; not in those days! It was a franchise in those days – you made as much money as you possibly could. Jesus describes these two people. He lets you be, as it were, a fly buzzing round the temple listening to their prayers. One of them is praying, "Father, Lord God, I thank you that I tithe my possessions, I fast twice a week, and God, I am so grateful to you that I am not like him over there in the corner." And the other guy is standing in the corner, and he won't lift up his eyes to heaven, and he is saying, "God, be merciful!" Actually, quite literally it is, "God, be propitiated to me, the sinner." And Jesus is asking the question, “Which of these two left the temple justified or forgiven?”

The right answer is: The Pharisee. Why? First of all, because he was profoundly grateful to God. He didn't begin his prayers without saying, "God, I am so grateful to you." Second, because he was resolutely committed to the life of his church – he tithed his possessions. Thirdly, because he lived a disciplined, spiritual life – he fasted twice a week. And fourthly, because he realized that it was a privilege to be different from the tax collector. There would hardly be anybody listening to Jesus who would not have concluded, “That is the man who is forgiven.” But most of you know the story better than to have believed what I said just a minute ago, because you remember what Jesus said. He said, “No, it was actually the other man.” It was the other man – who didn't begin with thanksgiving, who couldn't confess his commitment to the church, who didn't live a disciplined, spiritual life and was a rogue – who left a forgiven man.

Why? Think about it. The first man never asked for forgiveness. He didn't think it was forgiveness he needed. But the thing that possessed the mind of the other man was that his only hope was forgiveness. So Jesus says the person who receives forgiveness, is the person who asks for forgiveness. That seems so obvious. We could teach the youngest of our children the story of the Pharisee and the tax collector and we could explain that to them. Yet somehow or another it is one thing to be able to see that that is the truth of the story, and it is another thing to sense that what I need most of all in my life actually is forgiveness, and to understand that the only way to get that forgiveness is to ask for forgiveness.

The Important of Repentance←↰⤒🔗

I remember a minister telling me when I was a student that he had had a phone call from a woman who was very anxious. I think she was a physician, and she was deeply anxious about something in her life. So they arranged to meet. And I remember this minister saying to me, “We talked, and as we talked I said to her at one point, ‘Have you ever asked the Lord to forgive your sins?’". She became absolutely livid, picked up her purse and stormed out of the room. I think I know what must have been going on in her heart: "I came to see you to solve my problem, not to find forgiveness."

I wonder if anybody has ever come to you and said, just out of the blue, “I forgive you.” I wonder if you have ever been in that situation and inwardly you have reacted by gritting your teeth and saying, "Who do you think you are, forgiving me? I don't need your forgiveness." Even [thinking it toward] God. In a way, that is what the cross is saying. The cross is saying, “[I am] for those who cry out to me and say, ‘God, be propitiated towards me, cover over my sins and pardon me.’" The cross is saying, “[I am] for those who will come to me and say to me, ‘Please forgive my sins. Please, God!’"

This is daring, isn't it? "Please, God." We are really saying, "Please God, if there is any way for somebody else to bear the guilt of my sins, please find that person." And He is saying, "I have found that Person – my Son.” The inner meaning of what He has done on the cross and the reason why He cried out on the cross, “Why have you forsaken me?” is because this is the way that together [God] devised, in order that [He] might righteously deal with [our] sin, and in one and the same act, provide forgiveness and pardon and cleansing for [us].

Forgiving Yourself?←↰⤒🔗

Now, I am very conscious that today if you go to somebody for counselling help (and sadly, sometimes you find it even in spiritual books), because you are burdened with a sense of guilt, one of the things that people will say to you is, "You need to forgive yourself." Now, I understand that some people beat themselves up, and their thinking needs to be clarified. But our reaction to that kind of counsel today ought to be to leave the room in hysterical laughter.

Imagine that Neil Mathias and I had fallen out this morning and I whacked him on the nose. And we all gathered in the room, and there was Neil fresh from the Emergency Room. Since we want to be open together as colleagues, I said, “Brothers, this morning I got furious with Neil. I banged him on one the nose. I didn't mean to break his nose! But it was great, because after I went away and I looked in the mirror and I said, ‘Self, I forgive you. I forgive you for what you did to Neil Mathias.'" I know what they would say to me! He would say, "You can't do that!" It is not that just that it is against the rules. It is actually that you can't do that. And if you think you can, you are just deceiving yourself. Because you can never bring to yourself a deep-seated assurance that your sin against another has been forgiven, unless that other comes to you and says, "Dear brother, I forgive you." That is what would mean something to me.

And the interesting thing is: That is what would lead me to take Neil and cover him in an embrace and say, "Neil, thank you." And that actually would bring Neil and me closer together, probably, than we had ever been before. Because I would think, “This is a man whose nose I crushed, and he has forgiven me despite the pain it has caused him!” You see, that is how it works. The truth of the matter is that until you have come to the Lord and said, as David said, "I have sinned; have mercy upon me", you can never in your heart hear the voice of the pardoning God saying to you, "My son, your sins are forgiven." And you can never feel His grace grip upon you that makes you say, "Lord, you have forgiven me so much, and I love you so much in return."

Forgiveness among Christians←⤒🔗

So what does all this have to do with saying, "I believe in the holy catholic church, the communion of saints and the forgiveness of sins"?

The very first place God puts us down when He says, "I have forgiven you", to test His work, is in our relationships with our fellow Christians. As Paul says in this passage: "As the Lord has forgiven you, so you also must forgive” (Colossians 3:13b). Sometimes we have found in our readings here that in the Apostles' Creed there is this kind of fascinating connection between what God does in our lives and how God uses the church as a witness to Jesus Christ in the lives of others. That is one of the things that people ought to have a sense of when they come among us – that these are not just people who like each other's company, but these are people who have forgiven each other from the heart. How can they do that? It is because they themselves have first of all been forgiven by the Lord. You can't forgive yourself. And no matter how much you respect somebody else who has said to you, “You are a forgiven person”, you can only be conscious you are forgiven when God says, "I forgive you."

Do you remember the mistake the pilgrim made in Pilgrim's Progress (John Bunyan, 1678)? [He had] this great burden on his back – it was a picture of his guilt – and he tried everything to get rid of it. He was longing to be rid of this burden on his back. And the Evangelist said, “Do you see that gate? Go through that gate, and you will find a cross there. That is where your sins will be forgiven." Then poor pilgrim met up with Mr Worldly Wiseman, and he said, “You don’t need to go to all that trouble. It would be so embarrassing for you. What would people think about you if you said that you needed the forgiveness of sins? No, I have a much better solution for you. You need to go to the Village of Morality, and there you will meet a Mr Legality and his rather nice son Civility, and he will tell you that if you just do your best, everything will be all right." And poor Christian found that everything was all wrong, until he was pointed again through the gate to the cross. When he got to the cross, the burden rolled off his back and slipped down the hill into the grave of the Lord Jesus Christ. And he understood, at last, two things. One: There is only one place in the world you can go in order to have your sins forgiven, and that is to the cross of Christ and to the Christ of the cross. Two: When your sins are forgiven there, your life is amazingly transformed. Yes, there is much room for progress and much difficulty, but you begin to live without the burden on your back.

One of my saddest memories as a young minister was asking a man who was obviously dying if he knew that his sins were forgiven. He was a man who was connected with the church. He said "Yes" coldly, but I could see in his eyes that he knew no forgiveness. And thus he died. It is one of my saddest, saddest memories. But it underlined for me that I cannot tell myself I am forgiven; only God can. The glory of the gospel is that He does it through His Son. And then He changes our relationship with others, and when that happens, others begin to notice that we are the community where there is forgiveness.