I fully agree and Jesus did an excellent job of it in Matt. 18, but that takes some explaining to get to the Spiritual meaning. So looking at scripture does a forgiven debt also require payment?
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I fully agree and Jesus did an excellent job of it in Matt. 18, but that takes some explaining to get to the Spiritual meaning. So looking at scripture does a forgiven debt also require payment?All that matters is how God defines forgiveness.
I agree with you here, but some seem to be saying, you're taking the injury, means you are paying the price punishment, Just thinking about it even if they are punished you still were injured, so it would be double payment?
It's not about what it sounds like, it's about what it is."Canceling" sounds mechanical and forgiving a debt is more then just canceling a debt which can be done with a payment of the debt and no forgiveness is needed. God forgave a debt that could not be paid.
It does if you want to get technical in that someone is going to "lose "money in the cancelling of a debt, the guy who owes and pays the debt, or the debtee who is out the money of the unpaid cancelled debt, in effect, paying himself.I fully agree and Jesus did an excellent job of it in Matt. 18, but that takes some explaining to get to the Spiritual meaning. So looking at scripture does a forgiven debt also require payment?
By just saying "forgiveness" is "cancelling" the debt, your minimizing righteous forgiveness to something almost mechanical.It's not about what it sounds like, it's about what it is.
No, he does not "pay himself" he is out the money and may have to declare bankruptcy.It does if you want to get technical in that someone is going to "lose "money in the cancelling of a debt, the guy who owes and pays the debt, or the debtee who is out the money of the unpaid cancelled debt, in effect, paying himself.
Where are you getting the idea “God says, "I have paid the debt"”? The debt was forgiven. Christ paid the ransom, but who was that to and why?This seems like a conflation between forgiveness and justification.
Justification includes forgiveness, but justification is also a whole lot more than forgiveness.
We receive both forgiveness and justification as pure grace. Not only does God release us from our debt, but God also satisfies that debt and declares us not only forgiven, but reconciled and just. God says, "I have paid the debt". Not only is the debt forgiven, it is also paid for--satisfied. That satisfaction is made on our behalf. And because it is satisfied, the decree from Mt. Calvary is not only that we are forgiven, but much more than that, that we are guilt-less before God. The Judge has not only pronounced pardon, but has pronounced all accounted for, all settled, all accomplished and finalized: the accused is accused no longer, charges are dropped. The offender is an offender no longer.
I would first say by the son’s words: he is wishing his father was dead so he could have his inheritance.In the Parable of the Prodigal Son, the son tells his father that the father is dead to him, that is the meaning of taking his inheritance while the father is still alive. It was to regard the father as dead. After having squandered it, and now living in pig slop, the son thinks about returning to his father's house; not as a son, for he has forfeited any right to be called a son because the father-son relationship died. So the son says to himself, perhaps he could become a slave. But then see how the father acts when the son approaches over the horizon. The father runs out to meet him, and before the son can even say the words he had been rehearsing, the father calls to have the prodigal cloaked and receive a banquet, and says, "My son, who was dead, is alive".
Yes, we were in satan’s army against God, hating God, but it is a hard fight, the macho can stay to the end, but some wimp out, give up and surrender to out hate enemy while He is still our enemy. We are just willing to humbly accept pure undeserved charity from our enemy and that is all God needs to shower us with unbelievable wonderful gifts.We were, St. Paul says, enemies of God. Set against God, with every animosity. In our sin, we were dead to God, dead in our sin. In Adam we had thrown away our birthright, estranged ourselves, become hostile and raged against God--though He only ever loved us.
St. Paul says, in light of our baptism, to reckon ourselves no longer slaves of sin, but slaves of righteousness; dead to sin now and alive to God (even as we had previously been dead to God in our sin).
But Paul goes further elsewhere, that we are not merely slaves in God's house, but sons. Heirs, joint-heirs with Christ.
This is the love with which God has lavished upon us. That we, who were enemies of God by our sin and anger and hate, are not merely restored as slaves, but adopted as sons and heirs. It would be mercy and grace if we could merely be slaves, but God reaches further and calls us sons, calls us children, His children, His beloved children.
Forgiven, oh yes. But even more, justified. Even more, He will keep us and hold us in His arms. So that those whom He knew, those whom He chose, those whom He justified He will keep and hold, and glorify. So great a salvation, so great a mercy, so great a Father. Who sent His only-begotten Son, the Righteous One and reckoned among the unrighteous and cursed under the Law for us; that the curse of the Law should no longer be held against us. And not only this, that we should be presented before the Father blameless and without guilt as sons and daughters. Clothed with robes of righteousness in Christ, clothed with Jesus Himself, that we should be covered, found spotless, blameless, and perfect before the Father. Not on our account, but on Christ's account.
-CryptoLutheran
Where are you getting the idea “God says, "I have paid the debt"”? The debt was forgiven. Christ paid the ransom, but who was that to and why?
If the debt is forgiven than: The Judge has not only pronounced pardon, but has pronounced all accounted for, all settled, all accomplished and finalized: the accused is accused no longer, charges are dropped. The offender is an offender no longer.
God’s Love is great enough for unconditional forgiveness, but we humans still have an issue, like children we not only need forgiveness we need Loving discipline.
I would first say by the son’s words: he is wishing his father was dead so he could have his inheritance.
While in the foreign land the father using Christ’s words given him, describes the son as dead. The son has done nothing to deserve being a slave/servant of his father, but the son was willing to humbly accept pure undeserved charity from his father.
Yes, we were in satan’s army against God, hating God, but it is a hard fight, the macho can stay to the end, but some wimp out, give up and surrender to out hate enemy while He is still our enemy. We are just willing to humbly accept pure undeserved charity from our enemy and that is all God needs to shower us with unbelievable wonderful gifts.
It is indeed that!By just saying "forgiveness" is "cancelling" the debt, your minimizing righteous forgiveness to something almost mechanical.
The love is his giving his own Son to pay the debt.True unconditional forgiveness is an act of Love for the debtor and God.
It is indeed that!
God is obligated in justice to cancel my debt when Christ has paid it.
What?? God is never "obligated" to do anything for us. The Bible never talks about God "cancelling our debt", but He forgives our debt.The love is his giving his own Son to pay the debt.
His obligation to cancel my debt because of faith is justice.
God is required to be just. If Jesus has paid for my sin, in justice God must cancel (forgive) it.What?? God is never "obligated" to do anything for us.
To forgive is to cancel.The Bible never talks about God "cancelling our debt", but He forgives our debt.
Christ did not "pay" the debt, which is way beyond being paid, Christ paid the ransom. God forgave the debt.
To forgive is to cancel a debt.You are right to realize if Christ had paid the debt, God would not have to forgive us and the debt would have been cancelled without being forgiven.
There is a third way to look at it:There are two ways to look at that. Ransom Theory would say that payment was made to ransom us from the devil, a key text here would be Hebrews 2:14. Satisfaction Theory sees the need to satisfy justice, such justice is satisfied in Christ bearing our sin in His body (1 Peter 2:24).
Colossians 2:13-14 is forgiveness in that there is a cancellation of debt. This is not in contradiction to the making satisfaction of righteousness (remembering that justice and righteousness are one and the same in Scripture), where Christ is the hilasmos for our sins (1 John 2:2), the one who atones, reconciles, expiates, is the propitiation--the amends-maker, the One who satisfies.
Scripture uses a lot of ways to describe the Mystery of the Atonement.
WOW!! Fully agree with the idea of more being needed, but you nor Christ cannot make “amends” for what was done.Forgiveness releases one from punishment, but it does not necessarily account for all.
Let's consider an earthly example. A victim may forgive their abuser, but that does not mean the abuser is now in a state of righteousness in relation to the victim. I can forgive what was done to me, but the offender still remains in a state of their own guilt, especially if they are without any remorse for what they have done. If they do not come to me to make amends, then amends are not made even if I forgive them.
Do you feel God needs amendment?In Christ there is not only forgiveness, but amends are made. Christ has amended our relationship with God, by satisfying righteousness and presenting us before God as holy and righteous.
We cannot come to God to make amends and have our communion and relationship restored with Him. "Not by works of righteousness which we have done" as Paul says in Titus 3:5, and "not by works" as Paul says in Ephesians 2:9. But rather by the gift--the grace--of God alone.
Our Godly type Love (which is way beyond anything we could learn, develop or payback) automatically is gifted to us when we humbly accept God’s Love in the form of forgiveness (Luke 7). It is not that we take on Christ’s Love, but this is our Godly type Love.The work of restoring our relationship to Him is His work. in our sin, even as we were God's enemies, Christ died for us. God has not purchased us when we were friends, or even just as stranger, but rather He purchased us, loved us, came near to us when we were enemies. Even as we raged against Him, God loved us; even as we raged against Him, God reconciles and restores us and makes us right with Him.
He forgives us, and He comes to us and makes us right with Him. He steps in and gives us faith, and through faith gives us Christ's righteousness, Christ's innocence, Christ's goodness. All the good we did not have, He gives us, and then some, for He gives us Christ and all that Christ is. Exchanging our unworthiness for Christ's worthiness. Our unworthiness is nailed to the cross, and buried in the grave; Christ is risen and His life is now ours as a gift.
OKYes. But between those two things is adoption as children.
If you murder my child and I--somehow because I am unreasonably merciful--forgive you, that doesn't make you my child. But God, who is most unreasonable in His mercy, makes us--murderers all of us--His children by His grace.
When you came to the realization it was your personal sins which cause Christ to go to the cross, did you not feel a death blow to your heart (the worst feeling you could experience and live like those 3000 on Pentecost (Acts 2:37)? As your Love grows for Christ and you partake of the Lord’s Supper do you not feel an even stronger hurt and Love at the same time?As children, then, God has become our Father in Christ; the Father of our Lord Jesus is now our Father as well. And it is now as children that, through the Spirit, we are being sanctified. That is where discipline and being a disciple, "Take up your cross and follow Me" happens. This is where "work out your salvation with fear and trembling" takes place. This is where "do not be hearers of the word only, but doers of the word" is found. This is where, "created for good works in Christ Jesus" is. That's sanctification, that's being shaped and molded by grace and the Spirit into the likeness and image of Christ.
Just as the father of the prodigal son did not send servants after his son to bring him back nor did the father have servants drag the older son to the party, God allows us to make the choice if we have the information to make the choice, our choice. We do have to be willing to humbly accept the gifts and party as pure undeserved charity or we can be macho and willing to take the punishment we fully deserve and die in the pigsty of life.Justification is God's declaration of our being right with Him in Christ, because Christ has made satisfaction, Christ has satisfied all righteousness and unites the enemies of God with God and makes them children. We are forgiven and justified, this is most certainly true--and it is present in all the works and gifts of God: His Word and Sacraments. That we should always be comforted in our conscience that we belong to Christ, and if to Christ we belong to God; that God loves us, forgives us, reconciles us, keeps us, preserves us, both now and at the hour of our death--through faith which He grant us, works in us, strengthens us with by His grace.
Sanctification is the daily struggle between the old man and the new; between the flesh and the Spirit; the life of the cross-carrying disciple of Jesus Christ who needs the loving discipline of a good Father, that we should be corrected by the Law and comforted with the Gospel.
The son gave up the right to be called a son, and he knew it. That is why he comes to his father determined to be a slave. It would have been mercy enough to be given a roof over his head and fed daily as a servant in his father's house.
The father, however, would have none of that. The father does not concern himself with what the son deserves or doesn't deserve, but cares only that the son is alive, "My son who was dead, is now alive". The son was dead to the father because the son killed that relationship, the son terminated his sonship, rendering himself dead to his father and his father dead to him. Perhaps this is difficult for us to imagine because this was a very different culture than ours, but Jesus' original hearers would have understood this, as well as the original readers of the story in the Gospel texts.
The father does not wait for the son to humbly accept anything. The father rushes out, recklessly, to embrace his dead son. And in so doing, the son is restored to life to the father.
Empty hands of faith from beggars, now overflowing with the gifts of God who has become our Father in Christ.
God needs nothing from us to shower us with His gifts. He has instead entered enemy territory, and loved the enemy soldiers and captives by spilling blood for them. And taking them out of enemy territory, brings them into His house and calls them children. Holy, just, and blameless in His sight. All on account of His Son.
God has to do stuff to be consistent, but that is not “for us”, but for Himself.God is required to be just. If Jesus has paid for my sin, in justice God must cancel (forgive) it.
Cancel is not always forgiving, but to forgive does also cancel.To forgive is to cancel a debt.
That's what ransom means.
Precisely, his justice requires that he cancel the debt of those who believe in and trust on the atoning work (blood, Ro 3:25) and person of Jesus Christ for their remission of sin and right standing with God; i.e. "not guilty," declared forensically righteous.God has to do stuff to be consistent, but that is not “for us”, but for Himself.
God can be obligated to Himself, but not us.
Previously addressed.If Christ “paid” the debt, then God is not forgiving the debt but enters “Account paid and cancelled” and not forgiven which applies only to debts not paid (Like you find in accounting).
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