THE MYTH OF THE UNFORGIVABLE

            Truth is we do possess the awful power to separate ourselves from God.  But the larger truth is nothing can separate us indefinitely beyond a stubborn refusal to accept His forgiveness and be reconciled in Christ. 

            There are passages in Hebrews 4 and 10 in which the author says sin after baptism leaves no going back, and persisting in sin places one outside the Kingdom for which Christ once redeemed him. Jesus Himself says in Matthew 5 that if salt (us) loses its saltiness it is nothing.  But the Hebrews passages use sin in its Greek noun form; it is a no-brainer to see that there can be no contact between a state of sin and a state of grace.  It should be just as much a no-brainer to see that repentance – turning back to face and re-focus on Jesus Christ – is all He has ever required to cross over from the state of sin into the state of grace.  The over-riding word against the Matthew passage is always Jesus’ other word that what is impossible for men is possible for God; he who abides in Christ will never be forsaken or overthrown.

            One of the stories I told that so moved these estranged children of God was of the bridesmaid who approached me at a wedding rehearsal years ago.  She said she could not bear to be in church.  I asked her why and she explained that she had been so strung out on heroin at one time that she prostituted herself to get money for the drug.  At this point, although she had been clean and sober for some time, she was convinced that God could not stand the sight of her.  When I asked her if she wanted to come home she burst into tears of YES.  When I said, “In the Name of Jesus welcome home,” she fell into my arms – really the arms of her Lord Jesus as represented by this priest – just like the prostitute who washes His feet with her tears in Luke 7:36-50.

            Another concerns the elderly woman with such serious arthritis in her hands that her fingers could not be uncurled from the twisted claws they had become.  She confessed that she had been in a state of unforgiveness with members of her church for more than twenty years.  It was not that she wanted or accepted that condition; she found herself helpless to leave it after stating she had forgiven her friends over and over.  When I, speaking as a representational leader of the Body of Christ, released her from her unforgiveness, she too burst into tears of joy.  Before I could reach down to touch her hands in prayer her fingers were already uncurling as God’s healing spread through her body.  God’s love trumps all our inadequacies.  All He expects of us is that we stay in the game until He catches and releases us.

            The most helpful illustration in the scriptures addressing that crossing over from the state of sin to the state of grace occurs in John 8 with the story of the woman taken in adultery and dragged before Jesus in the Temple courts.  As Jesus listens to the Pharisees’ incompetence – they mis-read and mis-apply the Law in Deuteronomy 22 – and being unable to certify themselves as the sinless witnesses the Law requires – He says (in multiple albeit later places) they remain in their sin even though they retreat after being unmasked as hypocrites.  What He waits for is those of us who are so hungry to hang with Him that we will step across the line He has drawn in the dust of the Temple floor – sometimes known as the Line in the Sand.  He waits on people so hungry for His company that they don’t care who else they stand beside as long as they can stand beside Jesus.

            The only unforgivable sin – the sin against the Holy Spirit – is the refusal to accept His forgiveness and step across that line.  Even that sin is forgiven once we stop committing it.  He is always ready to do the heavy lifting in forgiveness; all He asks of us is that we stay in the game.