Oh Thou, who Man of baser Earth didst make,
And ev’n with Paradise devise the Snake:
For all the Sin wherewith the Face of Man
Is blacken’d—Man’s forgiveness give—and take!
—Rubayat of Omar Khayyam

Khayyam’s assertion that God needs humankind’s forgiveness for the pain of sin just as much as it needs his is not a concept with which Adventists are comfortable. Our Great Controversy theodicy clears God of any blame for sin and sheets the responsibility for the tragedy of sin home to another supernatural being—Satan. Nor would we Adventists be comfortable with the idea that the True Church, the Remnant Church of Bible prophecy, needs to be forgiven just as much as it is authorized to forgive.

This week’s lesson deals exclusively with "sin in the church" (Sunday and Monday’s lessons) without ever mentioning the sin of the church. But unless we are able to forgive the corporate body as well as receive the church’s message of Christ’s forgiveness we will be in danger of being consumed with bitterness and cynicism. Contrariwise, if the church senses no need to be forgiven, it is in danger of arrogance.

A favorite text of mine is Ephesians 4:32, which no doubt refers to attitudes at the personal level. Nevertheless, I believe it applies just as truly between the individual and the community: "and be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, as God in Christ has forgiven you" (Eph. 4:32 NRA). Perhaps when we wash one another’s feet as a group, forgiveness is vouchsafed not only to each participant, but also to the body as a whole.

The most frequent and the most demanding commandment in the New Testament is to love one another (John 13:34; 15:12, 17; Rom. 12:10; 13:8; 1 Thess. 4:9; 1 Pet. 1:22; 1 John 3:11, 14, 23; 4:7, 11, 12; 2 John 1:5). Indeed love for one another is the litmus test of our love for God: "Those who say, ’I love God,’ and hate their brothers or sisters, are liars; for those who do not love a brother or sister whom they have seen, cannot love God whom they have not seen" (1 John 4:20 NRA).

The lesson rightly reminds us of the need for us as a community to be ready to restore the erring back into the fellowship: "to reaffirm [our] love" for the erring (quoting 2 Cor. 2:9, in Wednesday’s lesson). However, there is a danger of love degenerating into a postmodern tolerance of every subjective preference no matter how immoral. This does not seem to be true to the many uncompromising imperatives in the New Testament (for example, 1 Cor. 6:9–11; Eph. 4:25–5:5).

This week’s lesson begins with a true story taken from Philip Yancey’s well-known book What’s so Amazing about Grace (Sabbath afternoon’s lesson). Yancey relates how a prostitute, in order to support her drug habit, sold her own two-year-old daughter to fee-paying paedophiles. When it was suggested to her that she might go to the church for help, she replied: "Church!…Why would I ever go there? I was already feeling terrible about myself. They’d just make me feel worse." This supposedly demonstrates some grave shortcoming in the attitude of the church. Personally, I think Christianity ought to make mother’s who sell babies to paedophiles feel damned terrible. My compassion is for the victim, the baby daughter, not the mother and the clients who conduct such evil transactions.

In saying this I do not wish to put a limit on the forgiveness of God; I want to protect it from becoming a cloak for evil. Forgiveness is not some device to erase my sins so I can keep on doing evil with joyous abandonment and a clear conscience. It is not a mechanism to make a drug-dependent prostitute feel good about herself as she sells her two-year-old daughter for sex. Forgiveness must never be isolated from the forgiver. To receive the gift is to receive the giver.

Some seem to want forgiveness to be a means for guilt-free sinning. Forgiveness is not just about God fixing up the mess in my life; it is more his allowing me to enter into a relationship with him. Forgiveness neutralizes the disruptive, divorcing, and distancing power of sin. The purpose of forgiveness then is reconciliation with God. Healthy relationships impact profoundly on behavior. Hence, being restored to him transforms one’s life. The true desire of our heart then is God and not simply the removal of guilt.

In dealing with sin in its midst, the institutional church is often more concerned "to safeguard the name of the church" (Church Manual, as quoted at the end of Friday’s lesson) than it is for justice. The incident of the man living with his stepmother (1 Cor. 5:1–13, lessons for Sunday-Friday) concerns Paul for several reasons, and the reputation of the church does not seem to be the major one.

First, he is alarmed that the Corinthians are proud of their tolerance of such an immoral act—one that even the pagans abhor. Paul reminds them that Christ’s Passover-death has ushered in the spiritual days of unleavened bread (v. 7). For him, that meant that the cross-event was a potent moral power (v. 8). Tolerating sexual immorality like the man cohabiting with his stepmother contradicted the unleavened nature of the post-cross period.

Second, boasting of such immorality in their midst and allowing it to continue brought the purity of the whole community into jeopardy. Sin begets sin (James 1:14–16) as surely as righteousness begets righteousness (James 3:17–18). We should note that the purity of the community is not synonymous with its reputation. Third, putting the man out of the community’s fellowship (the handing of the man over to Satan, verse 5) has a redemptive objective. He is cut off from the fellowship meal (possibly the Lord’s Supper, verse 11), to bring him (and perhaps the community) to repentance and ultimate salvation ("So that his spirit may be saved in the day of the Lord," verse 5).1

The frequency of the moral admonitions in the New Testament makes it clear that the early church, with its pagan past, struggled against the sins of the flesh (see for example, 1 Pet. 4:3–6). Yet, even so, 1 Corinthians 5 is the only incident of community discipline in the New Testament that involved putting someone out of the fellowship (it could also be implied in Matt. 18). This should curb any tendency we might have to be overly zealous in a drive to purify the community.

The lesson rightly reminds us of our frailty and the power of mercy— "For judgment will be without mercy to anyone who has shown no mercy; mercy triumphs over judgment" (James 2:13 NRA). Blatant and destructive sin has to be dealt with. The church is not a haven for unreformed paedophiles, thieves, or those given to violence (1 Cor. 5:11). Be that as it may, conscious of its own shortcomings, the church must in all humility "forgiveness give—and take."

Notes and References

1. Unlike the lesson, I do not relate the man of 2 Corinthians 2 with the man of 1 Corinthians 5. The destruction of the flesh (verse 5)

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