The following Scripture passages are offered to aid beginning fellowships. The readings and commentary for this week are more in line with what has become usual; for the following will most likely be familiar observations. The concept behind this Sabbath’s selection is forgiving sins.
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Weekly Readings
For the Sabbath of October 16, 2010
The person conducting the Sabbath service should open services with two or three hymns, or psalms, followed by an opening prayer acknowledging that two or three (or more) are gathered together in Christ Jesus’ name, and inviting the Lord to be with them.
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Then Peter came up and said to him, “Lord, how often will my brother sin against me, and I forgive him? As many as seven times?” Jesus said to him, “I do not say to you seven times, but seventy times seven. / Therefore the kingdom of heaven may be compared to a king who wished to settle accounts with his servants. When he began to settle, one was brought to him who owed him ten thousand talents. And since he could not pay, his master ordered him to be sold, with his wife and children and all that he had, and payment to be made. So the servant fell on his knees, imploring him, ‘Have patience with me, and I will pay you everything.’ And out of pity for him, the master of that servant released him and forgave him the debt. But when that same servant went out, he found one of his fellow servants who owed him a hundred denarii, and seizing him, he began to choke him, saying, ‘Pay what you owe.’ So his fellow servant fell down and pleaded with him, ‘Have patience with me, and I will pay you.’ He refused and went and put him in prison until he should pay the debt. When his fellow servants saw what had taken place, they were greatly distressed, and they went and reported to their master all that had taken place. Then his master summoned him and said to him, ‘You wicked servant! I forgave you all that debt because you pleaded with me. And should not you have had mercy on your fellow servant, as I had mercy on you?’ And in anger his master delivered him to the jailers, until he should pay all his debt. So also my heavenly Father will do to every one of you, if you do not forgive your brother from your heart.” (Matt 18:23–35)
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In his Gettysburg Address, President Abraham Lincoln said, “The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here” … the world will little note nor long remember what we, as Philadelphians, did with most of our lives; with most of our time, our energy, our money; but it will never forget what we say in this endtime age for our words are being written on hearts and placed in the minds of a people that are epistles in the Book of Life.
When we read the writings of Moses, we believed them. We then heard the words of the Son of Man, and we believed the One who sent Him, and we received indwelling eternal life. We—our inner selves, not our fleshly bodies—passed from death to life without coming under judgment. But we first believed Moses because the Father drew us out of this world (John 6:44, 65). The Father made the first overture. The Father forgave our sins: because the inner self was dead through being consigned to disobedience [i.e., slavery to the Adversary], the Father didn’t count our many transgressions against us (Rom 5:13), and He raised us from the dead (John 5:21) to “walk in newness of life” (Rom 6:4). “For if we have been united with [Jesus] in a death like his, we shall certainly be united with him in a resurrection like his” (v. 5).
If we, as sons of God, have been forgiven much so that we might live (i.e., have indwelling eternal life), should we not also forgive others so that they might live? For we, as sons of God, have it in our power to forgive the sins of anyone, or to withhold forgiveness—
On the evening of that day, the first day of the week [te mia sabbaton the first after Sabbath], the doors being locked where the disciples were for fear of the Jews, Jesus came and stood among them and said to them, “Peace be with you.” When he had said this, he showed them his hands and his side. Then the disciples were glad when they saw the Lord. Jesus said to them again, “Peace be with you. As the Father has sent me, even so I am sending you.” And when he had said this, he breathed on them and said to them, “Receive the Holy Spirit. If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven them; if you withhold forgiveness from any, it is withheld.” (John 20:19–23 emphasis added)
Yes, we as individual sons of God, have it in our power—have it within the authority that comes with being born of God through receipt of the breath of God [pneuma Theon], the holy spirit [pneuma hagion], a second breath [pneuma] of life—to forgive sins as we have been forgiven our sins. Likewise, we have the power to withhold forgiveness, with withholding forgiveness becoming a salvational issue. But if we do not forgive sin after we have been forgiven, are we not like the unforgiving servant? This is not to say there isn’t a time and occasion to withhold forgiveness, but it is to say that we need to be quick to forgive and very slow to withhold forgiveness.
A parable is a special kind of metaphoric speech … a metaphor is where one thing is said to be another thing without a qualifier. But one thing cannot be another thing without actually being the other thing. Therefore, metaphors are fictions. A parable is a fiction. To tell a parable is to tell a fictional story. And Jesus used fictional stories to conceal the things of God from the general public that was entirely composed of outwardly circumcised Israelites who claimed Abraham as their father.
In the parable Jesus told about the unforgiving servant (Matt 18:21–35), the servant who was forgiven asked for patience, asked for time, and did not ask that his debt be forgiven: Have patience with me, and I will pay you everything (v. 26). The servant didn’t ask to have the debt renegotiated, or for a Federal bailout, but asked for the granting of additional time so that he could get the moneys together to pay the king, a metaphoric representation of God …
If the wages for sin [the transgression of the law] is death (Rom 6:23), then the granting of additional time to pay the debt incurred by transgressing the law is continuation of life, not forgiveness of the transgressions. The person will live a little longer, but live under the debt-load of impending death. And is this not the conditions under which every person lives? Death is certain, but hopefully sometime in the distant future. Thus, as a person ages, the certainty of death [the wages for transgression of the law] can be put off for less and less time, with half of all moneys spent in a person’s life on healthcare statistically occurring in the last six months of a person’s life in a vain effort to extend life and not pay what is owed to God.
Ancient Israel was not promised forgiveness of sin, but long life for obedience. The debt-load incurred by ancient Israelites for disobedience remained with them, with their sin offerings being nothing more than interest paid on their debt-load [i.e., their accrued record of debt with its legal demands]. Therefore, when ancient Israel came before God for atonement, the nation only received additional time before it would be required to pay the death penalty for individual and national transgressions of the Law. Ancient Israel had no authority to forgive sin; so ancient Israelites could not forgive the transgressions of other Israelites or of other nations, but could only extend to others additional time before the incurred debt must be paid.
Forgiveness of sin came with receipt of a second breath of life; thus, the man Jesus of Nazareth who was without sin needed to receive the breath of the Father [pneuma Theon] (Matt 3:16) before He took on the sins of Israel as the Passover Lamb of God. So to fulfill all righteousness, Jesus was baptized and afterwards received a second breath of life, the divine breath of the Father.
Mediate for a moment on the above reality: forgiveness of sins comes with receipt of the holy spirit [pneuma hagion], for the forgiveness of sins comes through the one forgiving the sin taking upon himself the debt-load of the one being forgiven. In the parable of the unforgiving servant, the king is willing to absorb the debt of the servant who owed him ten thousand talents, or about five hundred years worth of wages. The king would no longer have these moneys available to him, either in hand or on his books. So in forgiving the servant a debt-load of ten thousand talents, the king was fiscally worse off than he was before.
At Calvary, the man Jesus of Nazareth paid the death penalty for all of Israel, with none of Israel, except Himself, being born of God. Therefore, Israel had no debt-load in the heavenly realm that needed to be paid; Israel’s entire debt-load was in this world. And Jesus willingly gave life that He had to pay the death penalty Israel had incurred in this world, thereby erasing [blotting out] with His blood the record of debt that Israel had accumulated and put-off paying for a while so that the inner nation could receive a second breath of life … the outer nation had already paid the temporarily delayed death penalty for its transgressions through the physical death of individual Israelites [temporarily delayed because Israelites didn’t immediately die when they transgressed the law that they had and knew that they had].
The inner selves [persons] of disciples born of God as sons through receipt of a second breath of life were “dead” prior to receiving the holy breath of God. The death of the inner self originated with Adam who was driven from the Garden of God before he could eat from the tree of life. This death was perpetuated through consigning the inner selves of all human beings to disobedience (Rom 11:32) as the humanly born slaves of the Adversary … with God, slavery equates to death. Liberation from slavery equates to receiving life, or being raised from death. Thus, Israel in Egypt died when “there arose a new king over Egypt, who did not know Joseph” (Ex 1:8), and who enslaved the nation. This death wasn’t instantaneous, but occurred gradually as the king dealt shrewdly with Israel, first setting taskmasters over the Hebrews, who became manual laborers, not archers and spearmen, before ordering male babies killed at birth before they could be circumcised on the eighth day and included in the nation, and thereby defended by the nation.
Killing a people without utterly destroying that peoples from the face of the earth, a paradoxical situation that hasn’t been well understood by endtime Christians, occurs when the people lose their freedom and become the slaves of another people. To kill human beings without utterly destroying all human beings comes through consigning human beings to disobedience [for the wages of sin is death] as the bondservants of the Adversary. Therefore, the Lord permitted the nation of Israel to die in Egypt as the man Israel died in Egypt—the man represented the nation, with Joseph representing Israel and the children of Joseph becoming the sons of Israel (Gen 48:5), with Joseph’s younger son Ephraim continuing in the line of second sons to receive the blessing as Isaac received the promise instead of Ishmael and as Jacob received the promise instead of Esau. So the man Israel set Ephraim before Manasseh. And the man Israel died in Egypt, but asked not to be buried in Egypt but in the cave Abraham had bought from Ephron the Hittite (see Gen 49:29–33).
When a people is enslaved by another people and is not free to worship God in spirit and in truth, the nation that is enslaved does not have its sins reckoned against it; for the people are not free to obey God. If, however, a free people will not obey God so that God is under obligation to slay the people, the Lord will deliver the lawless nation into national slavery so that future seed of the nation can eventually sprout and grow an obedient people from righteous roots … all of humankind has as one of its parents the man Noah, a righteous man. All human sons of God have as one of their parents the man Jesus of Nazareth, a man without sin until He took upon Himself the debt-load of Israel (and by extension, of all humanity).
Until a person is born of God, the sins of the person are more of a debt-load than the person can long bear. The person is certainly not able to bear the sins of another person; hence, there was no true human forgiveness of sin—
Without birth as a son of God, King David could not forgive Joab, a man close to his heart, for killing Abner (2 Sam 3:26–30) who had made peace with David (vv. 12–21). David could only extend the years of Joab’s life to the end of his, David’s, life. Thus David commanded Solomon, “‘Act therefore according to your wisdom, but do not let his [Joab’s] gray head go down to Sheol in peace’” (1 Kings 2:6).
David also commanded Solomon,
And there is also with you Shimei the son of Gera, the Benjaminite from Bahurim, who cursed me with a grievous curse on the day when I went to Mahanaim. But when he came down to meet me at the Jordan, I swore to him by the Lord, saying, “I will not put you to death with the sword.” Now therefore do not hold him guiltless, for you are a wise man. You will know what you ought to do to him, and you shall bring his gray head down with blood to Sheol. (1 Kings 2:8–9)
When Jesus relayed the parable of the unforgiving servant, the spirit had not been given. God would do for men what David did for those over whom he reigned; for David was a man after the Lord’s heart. But the Lord was only reigning over Israel, the nation for which a ransom had been paid in the days of Moses.
The Adversary as the prince of this world has reigned over the entirety of the single kingdom of this world from Adam to Moses (Rom 5:14), when a ransom was paid for the liberation of Israel, the firstborn son of God (Ex 4:22). But Israel rebelled against the Lord and returned to sin at Sinai and was prevented from ever receiving indwelling eternal life—but the life of Israel as a nation was extended as David extended Joab’s years.
This pattern of debt and the granting of an extension in paying this debt is seen when Israel again rebelled against the Lord in the wilderness of Paran:
Then all the congregation said to stone them [Moses, Aaron, Joshua, and Caleb] with stones. But the glory of the Lord appeared at the tent of meeting to all the people of Israel. / And the Lord said to Moses, “How long will this people despise me? And how long will they not believe in me, in spite of all the signs that I have done among them? I will strike them with the pestilence and disinherit them, and I will make of you a nation greater and mightier than they.” / But Moses said to the Lord, “Then the Egyptians will hear of it, for you brought up this people in your might from among them, and they will tell the inhabitants of this land. They have heard that you, O Lord, are in the midst of this people. For you, O Lord, are seen face to face, and your cloud stands over them and you go before them, in a pillar of cloud by day and in a pillar of fire by night. Now if you kill this people as one man, then the nations who have heard your fame will say, ‘It is because the Lord was not able to bring this people into the land that he swore to give to them that he has killed them in the wilderness.’ And now, please let the power of the Lord be great as you have promised, saying, ‘The Lord is slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love, forgiving iniquity and transgression, but he will by no means clear the guilty, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children, to the third and the fourth generation.’ Please pardon the iniquity of this people, according to the greatness of your steadfast love, just as you have forgiven this people, from Egypt until now.” / Then the Lord said, “I have pardoned, according to your word. But truly, as I live, and as all the earth shall be filled with the glory of the Lord, none of the men who have seen my glory and my signs that I did in Egypt and in the wilderness, and yet have put me to the test these ten times and have not obeyed my voice, shall see the land that I swore to give to their fathers. And none of those who despised me shall see it. But my servant Caleb, because he has a different spirit and has followed me fully, I will bring into the land into which he went, and his descendants shall possess it. (Num 14:10–24)
Israel’s rebellion against the Lord was not forgiven, even though the people of Israel acknowledge their sin: “When Moses told these words to all the people of Israel, the people mourned greatly. And they rose early in the morning and went up to the heights of the hill country, saying, ‘Here we are. We will go up to the place that the Lord has promised, for we have sinned’” (Num 14:39–40). None of the nation numbered in the census of the second year, except for Joshua and Caleb, entered into God’s rest because of national unbelief (Heb 3:19). However, the lives of the rebelling nation were extended until the nation died from natural causes.
The Adversary’s life has been extended as Israel’s life was extended in the wilderness of Paran, and as the lives of Christians will be extended after the Apostasy [great falling away] of day 220 of the Affliction. But the Adversary has not been forgiven, and will never be forgiven; for no one can absorb the debt-load of the Adversary and still live spiritually.
The nation of Israel numbered in the census of the second year, except for Joshua and Caleb, never entered into God’s rest, the Promised Land. The natural nation of Israel, with an exception like that of Joshua who served Moses, has never received indwelling eternal life. Why? Because when this nation rebelled against the Lord at Sinai (Ex chap 32), the Lord told Moses, “‘Whoever has sinned against me, I will blot out of my book. … Nevertheless, in the day when I visit, I will visit their sin upon them’” (Ex 32:33–34). The nation’s sin hasn’t been forgiven. And in Moses commanding the people, “‘You shall kindle no fire in all your dwelling places on the Sabbath day’” (Ex 35:3), the sin is remembered weekly, for fire represents life as in either the dark fire of cellular oxidation of simple carbohydrates that sustains physical life or as in the bright fire that is the glory of the God (see Ezek 1:26–28) that sustains eternal life, or life in the timeless heavenly realm. The Sabbath represents entering into God’s rest, into His presence. Therefore, to not have fire (or to not kindle a fire) on the Sabbath is to not have life in the heavenly realm.
After the golden calf rebellion of the people lead by Aaron, Moses pleaded with the Lord, asking for patience from the Lord:
But Moses implored the Lord his God and said, “O Lord, why does your wrath burn hot against your people, whom you have brought out of the land of Egypt with great power and with a mighty hand? Why should the Egyptians say, ‘With evil intent did he bring them out, to kill them in the mountains and to consume them from the face of the earth’? Turn from your burning anger and relent from this disaster against your people. Remember Abraham, Isaac, and Israel, your servants, to whom you swore by your own self, and said to them, ‘I will multiply your offspring as the stars of heaven, and all this land that I have promised I will give to your offspring, and they shall inherit it forever.’” And the Lord relented from the disaster that he had spoken of bringing on his people. (Ex 32:11–14)
If Moses’ request is read carefully, Moses doesn’t ask for the Lord to forgive Israel, but for the Lord to relent from bringing upon Israel immediate destruction, consuming the nation while the nation remained camped at Mount Sinai (Ex 32:10). Moses asked for patience, for time so that the offspring of Israel will be multiplied so that the offspring of Israel can inherit the land promised to the offspring of Abraham, Isaac, and Israel (v. 13).
Moses did not ask for the Lord to forgive the sin of Israel until the next day:
The next day Moses said to the people, “You have sinned a great sin. And now I will go up to the Lord; perhaps I can make atonement for your sin.” So Moses returned to the Lord and said, “Alas, this people has sinned a great sin. They have made for themselves gods of gold. But now, if you will forgive their sin—but if not, please blot me out of your book that you have written.” But the Lord said to Moses, “Whoever has sinned against me, I will blot out of my book. But now go, lead the people to the place about which I have spoken to you; behold, my angel shall go before you. Nevertheless, in the day when I visit, I will visit their sin upon them.” / Then the Lord sent a plague on the people, because they made the calf, the one that Aaron made. (Ex 32:30–35)
Israel at Sinai wasn’t forgiven, and will never be forgiven except through Christ Jesus, not something that rabbinical Judaism wants to hear; for the significance of Moses waiting until “the next day” to ask the Lord to forgive Israel has not been understood: in this present era, represented symbolically by the day on which Israel broke loose, will end when the Day of the Lord begins. And in the Day of the Lord, or Lord’s Day, the children of Israel will appear before the Lord in the great White Throne Judgment. No sacrifice or covering will exist for these children of Israel except their obedience—and the person who has sinned against the Lord will not be forgiven but will be blotted out of the Book of Life. Sin will then be simple unbelief, with idolatry [having another god before the Lord] coming from any manifestation of unbelief.
Today, the sin of Christendom is unbelief, either manifested as outright lawlessness as in the case of Christians who worship on Sunday, or manifested as idolatry as in the case of Sabbatarian Christendom who idolize a prophetess or God’s essential endtime man or even the Sabbath itself. The person who makes his or her signature on a contract to be of more importance than obedience to God has made the person’s word the idol that the person serves.
Now, where all of the above is going—when the glorified Jesus directly transferred the holy spirit to ten of His disciples, He gave to His disciples the authority for them to take upon themselves the debt-load of others in this world, for He would cover their debt-load regardless of how high it became as long as they presented themselves as obedient servants of righteousness. If they needed to forgive someone seven times seventy (490 times), thereby incurring a huge debt-load, He would cover their debt-load. So it became the prerogative of genuinely born of God Christians to forgive the debt-load of others and thereby add to their own debt-load that the glorified Jesus has promised to cover.
Is forgiving sin always wise?
When sin is understood to be unbelief, with the wages for unbelief being death and with death being debt-load under which every person struggles, can a person truly take upon him or herself the unbelief of another person and still live? The answer is that if the person’s unbelief causes the Christian to not believe God—as was the case in the 1st-and 2nd Centuries CE—then the person should not forgive the other person; the person cannot absorb the debt-load of the other person and still live. If, however, taking on another person’s unbelief results in the person believing God, then the Christian should, by all means, take upon himself or herself the other’s unbelief that resulted in the commission of a transgression of the Law.
When a person truly accepts that Christ Jesus will cover the debt-load incurred by a son of God taking upon himself the unbelief of another person, then this son of God should never find himself in the position of not believing God regardless of what happens to the son of God. And in a literal manifestation of this reality, the son of God who truly believes Jesus will, when facing martyrdom, be as Stephen was when being stoned to death: “‘Lord, do not hold this sin against them’” (Acts 7:60). Stephen took upon himself the debt-load incurred by the crowd for the stoning of himself, with Christ Jesus covering Stephen’s increased debt-load.
Christians are not in the habit of equating the commission of a sin with incurring the debt-load of death. For Christians, sins are forgiven: they are covered by grace, by the garment of Christ Jesus’ righteousness. Christ Jesus takes upon Himself the sins of Christians, meaning that Christ is—as the king in the parable was—figuratively poorer each time He forgives the debt-load of a disciple, with Christ including both the uncovered Head and covered [garmented] Body of the Son of Man. Hence, the Son of Man suffers some loss whenever a Christian forgives another Christian, not that forgiveness should not occur. But Christ gains when a son of God takes upon himself the unbelief of a Gentile and thereby brings that person to Christ Jesus.
The above discloses why a ransom price was paid for the liberation of Israel [the left hand enantiomer] from slavery to Pharaoh, and why a ransom price will be paid for the Second Passover liberation of Israel [the right hand enantiomer] from indwelling sin and death, but discloses why in a convoluted way … a person resurrected to judgment in the great White Throne Judgment was not and cannot be part of the firstfruits of God; the person has been lost to God as one of the firstfruits, of which Jesus is First. If the person is a natural firstborn, the person should have been consecrated to the Lord, for the first to open wombs belongs to the Lord. The first to open wombs should also be numbered among the firstfruits, but if God has to take the lives of firstborns—these lives belong to Him—to pay the ransom price for the liberation of Israel from indwelling sin and death, then God loses these firstborns as firstfruits although these firstborns are not yet spiritually lost; for again, they will appear before Him in the great White Throne Judgment. There is, however, a significant loss of potential, not necessarily of numbers, that comes from giving the lives of men in exchange for the lives of Israel (Isa 43:4) at the Second Passover. A price is paid by the Lord, for those firstborns that perish at the Second Passover can never be part of the Bride of Christ: the Bride is necessarily reduced in potential size by their deaths.
For the Lord to take on the present debt-load of visible Christendom, loss will necessarily occur as it occurred for the king when he forgave his servant the ten thousand talent debt, with this loss being manifested in the smaller potential size of the Bride of Christ. This is a “personal” loss, as will be our forgiving of sin. Yet, without our sins being forgiven we would not be able to forgive others; so we would be like the unforgiving servant if we are not willing to suffer loss by taking upon ourselves another person’s debt-load incurred by his or her unbelief.
But the king in Jesus’ parable did not grant his servant relief until it was time for the king to settle debts, and then only granted relief when his servant pleaded not for forgiveness but for additional time to pay the debt. Thus, we are under an obligation to ask for forgiveness [the mirror image of asking for additional time] and then use the additional time we are granted to first incur no more debt and second to forgive the debts of others when we are asked to forgive.
When a Christian sins against his brother intentionally, there is no requirement to forgive the sin; for the intentionality of the sin is contrary to [diametrically opposed to] asking for forgiveness. However, when a Christian unintentionally or unknowingly sins against his brother, the sin is to be forgiven even before the Christian asks his brother for forgiveness. To not forgive unintentional or unknowing sin threatens the Christian’s own salvation.
When a Christian deals with those of this world and has a person in this world intentionally sin against him or her, no forgiveness is expected by the sinner. None need be extended. If forgiveness is extended, the Christian will suffer loss. If the loss can be sustained by the Christian, then it becomes the Christian’s prerogative whether to forgive or withhold forgiveness. If the loss cannot be sustained, the world’s courts exist to right the wrongs of this world.
The problematic situation occurs when a Christian is unintentionally wronged by someone of the world … considering that when the spirit of God is poured out on all flesh, all of humanity will be born of God and born filled with spirit. The person of the world who today unintentionally wrongs a brother will shortly die physically or will become a brother; so it might be wise to treat the person as if he or she were already a brother until evidence exists that intentional harm is being inflicted.
In Jesus’ parable, the master of the servant, the king, not only granted the time requested but forgave the debt … as Philadelphians, we cannot do any less when someone asks for forgiveness; for we have it in our power to truly forgive the person, something King David could not do.
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The person conducting the Sabbath service should close services with two hymns, or psalms, followed by a prayer asking God’s dismissal.
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"Scripture quotations are from The Holy Bible, English Standard Version, copyright ©2001 by Crossway Bibles, a division of Good News Publishers. Used by permission. All rights reserved."