Why I disagree that God is the God of ‘second chances’

God needs to make mates with folks, even when they’ve offended Him.

When the primary people transgressed, God instantly reached out and inquired, “where are you” (Gen. 3:9)? Jesus and the Apostles emphasised that God at all times dealt personally, they usually famous Him because the God of Abraham and of Isaac and of Jacob (Mark 12:26; Acts 7:32). Notably, Abraham “was called a friend of God” (James 2:23).

God has at all times taken private curiosity in folks, “calling as at other times, Samuel, Samuel” (1 Sam. 3:10). So God continues to ask folks “to come now and let us reason together … though your sins are like scarlet, they shall be as white as snow” (Is. 1:18).

Certainly, “all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God” (Rom. 3:23). But God is gracious, and I consider that the great thing about His forgiveness can proceed to be manifested in folks.

I don’t must persuade anybody of the common truth that folks expertise ethical wrongdoing, actively and passively. It’s not that we’re made to really feel responsible by somebody’s criterion, or by some ethical principle or perhaps a non secular dogma, however that we’re inherently wired with a conscience that experiences plain proper and flawed. People “show that the work of the law is written on their hearts, while their conscience also bears witness” (Rom. 2:15). It’s fascinating how cultural thought is at all times able to finger-point the ethical shortcomings of individuals, whereas being dismissive of the implicit attraction to goal ethical regulation. Even when theorists speculate that folks could also be genetically predisposed to sure immoral habits, the ethical regulation is invoked to determine what’s objectively immoral.

So why ought to or not it’s incredulous that in a world of goal ethical brokenness God can take away an individual’s sins and create redemptive magnificence? What’s so unusual about it? Maybe it’s actually a few twisted perception that repentance will end in doing much less life, whereas His grace truly offers new beginnings and real success. Because the distinguished Harvard psychiatrist, Dr. Armand Nicholi wrote about God’s grace, “I know that he always offers forgiveness followed by the opportunity and the resources to start again.” ^[1] Nicholi’s essay unpacked psychologically how Christ offers the internal “resources” that fulfill the wonder God meant.

Sin causes emotional weight, and its elimination by God’s forgiveness is characterised by inward peace; peace which isn’t a short lived or therapeutic repair. Neither is that this peace a human fabrication, exactly as a result of it doesn’t originate from any human effort or initiative. The American deep Christian thinker, Jonathan Edwards defined in his Spiritual Affections: “These are principles which are of a new and spiritual nature, vastly nobler and more excellent than all that is in natural man.”^[2] The facility of God’s grace is utilized by His Spirit and the repentant expertise a transition from the heavy burden of sin to the inward peace of forgiveness.

I’ll always remember the primary Sunday that I attended church as a Christian. I returned residence with this lovely sense of peace and emotional lightness that my burden of sin was eliminated by Jesus. Like the sensation one will get when carrying heavy baggage after which placing it all the way down to loosen up at a trip resort. What John Bunyan’s Christian mentioned rhetorically in 1678 when encountering God’s grace has remained related: “Must here the Burden fall from off my back? Must here the strings that bound it to me crack? Blest Cross!” ^[3] Certainly, the expertise of God’s forgiveness has transcended time, cultures, and persevered over philosophical and psychological oppositions all through historical past.

It is also lovely how God’s work of grace strengthens the repentant to forgive themselves, for regret will be burdensome. C. S. Lewis aptly commented in a private letter to a pal, “I think that if God forgives us we must forgive ourselves. Otherwise it is almost like setting up ourselves as a higher tribunal than Him.” ^[4] I bear in mind as a younger Christian attending a Bible examine the place I discovered for the primary time that the good Apostle Paul was previously Saul of Tarsus, who persecuted Christians. I truthfully couldn’t consider it. Then I spotted that if Paul authored all of these impressed letters and taught the world about private peace with God, then he will need to have absolutely forgiven himself. I then took nice encouragement and utterly forgave myself. Once we are at peace with God and ourselves, it’s additionally a lot simpler to forgive others.

Lastly, the great thing about God’s forgiveness is that it’s completely free. “Thanks be to God,” exclaimed Paul, “for his inexpressible gift” (2 Cor. 9:15)! So why is God so beneficiant? What’s the catch? What’s in it for Him? Nothing in any respect. In reality, it’s expressive of how a lot He loves us unconditionally. Paul defined, “God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us” (Rom. 5:8). God needs that we be regenerated and stroll within the path He meant for us, “for to set the mind on the flesh is death, but to set the mind on the Spirit is life and peace” (Rom. 8:6).

I disagree, nonetheless, that God is the God of “second chances,” as a result of I consider that He’s the God of innumerable probabilities, longsuffering and of nice mercy. So even on this chaotic and rebellious world individuals are welcome to expertise the great thing about understanding that “as far as the east is from the west, so far does he remove our transgressions from us” (Ps. 103:12).

Notes

1. “Hope in a Secular Age” In Discovering God at Harvard, ed. Kelly Monroe (Zondervan: Grand Rapids, 1996), 111-120.
2. (Multnomah Press: Portland, OR, 1984), 82.
3. The Pilgrim’s Progress (Barbour and Firm: Westwood, NJ), 36.
4. The Quotable Lewis, Wayne Martindale & Jerry Root, eds. (Tyndale Home Publishers: Wheaton, 1990), 221.