The Great Forgiver
A look at how God balances justice and mercy—and how this balance affects us all
Corrie ten Boom couldn’t believe what she was seeing. It was 1947, two years after World War II had ended; and Corrie just finished talking to an audience in Germany about forgiveness. As everyone filed out of the room, a man walked toward her. Corrie recognized him immediately. He had been one of the most vicious Nazi guards at the Ravensbruck concentration camp where she was imprisoned during the war and where her beloved sister Betsie died.
Corrie acted like she didn’t see him, but he came directly to her. He complimented her on her speech and its topic. And then, to her surprise, this evil man extended his hand and told her, “I have become a Christian.
“I know,” he continued, “that God has forgiven me for the cruel things I did [at Ravensbruck], but I would like to hear it from your lips as well. Fraulein, will you forgive me?”
Corrie knew forgiving this man would be one of the hardest things she would ever do, but she also knew she must do it. Slowly, she extended her hand and grasped his. With tears in her eyes, she said, “I forgive you, brother! With all my heart.”1
Knowing what she suffered at Ravensbruck, some people might wonder how she could forgive someone who had committed such heinous acts. The answer is that Corrie knew God had forgiven her sins through Christ, and that was why she could forgive someone else.
What Exactly Is Forgiveness?
God is just, and “every morning He brings His justice to light” (Zeph. 3:5). Since we are made in God’s image (Gen. 1:27), with a conscience that can distinguish between right and wrong (Rom. 2:15), we have an innate sense of justice. If you don’t believe that, just stand in line for an hour at a theme park to get on a ride and notice how you feel when someone cuts the line to get on before you. Your innate sense of justice will quickly rise to the surface.
Justice demands payment for wrongs. That payment can be in the form of punishment or restitution. Either way, a wrong must be made right. Injustice, therefore, implies an indebtedness. The one wronged is owed something by the one who inflicted the wrong.
When someone mistreats us, there are two ways we can respond: We can either make the person pay, or we can forgive.
In the Jewish Scriptures, the Hebrew words often used to translate the concept of forgiveness mean “to take away” or “to cover.” For example, “Blessed is he whose transgression is forgiven [taken away], whose sin is covered” (Ps. 32:1).
Another Hebrew word in the Old Testament closely resembles the Greek word for “forgiveness” in the New Testament. Both carry the idea of releasing material or moral debt. When you forgive someone, you release that individual from the obligation to pay you back.
For example, in the Jewish Scriptures, God directed the Israelites to release people from material debt every seven years:
At the end of every seven years you shall grant a release of debts. And this is the form of the release: Every creditor who has lent anything to his neighbor shall release it; he shall not require it of his neighbor or his brother, because it is called the LORD’s release. Of a foreigner you may require it; but you shall give up your claim to what is owed by your brother (Dt. 15:1–3).
In the New Testament, Jesus told a parable to illustrate forgiveness. He spoke of a “certain king who wanted to settle accounts with his servants. And when he had begun to settle accounts, one was brought to him who owed him ten thousand talents” (Mt. 18:23–24).
Ten thousand talents would have been the equivalent of 60 million denarii. A denarius was the average pay for a day of labor (20:2). Therefore, for this servant to pay off his financial debt would have taken him almost 165,000 years! The debt was insurmountable. That’s why the text says, “He was not able to pay” (18:25).
“The servant therefore fell down before him, saying, ‘Master, have patience with me, and I will pay you all.’ Then the master of that servant was moved with compassion, released him, and forgave him the debt” (vv. 26–27). So, the servant was released both physically and financially from his obligation to pay. He was forgiven.
What God Has Done
The parable illustrates perfectly what God has done for us spiritually. We owed God an insurmountable moral debt that we could never repay. We wronged Him. We offended Him. And we were completely unable to make things right.
The Bible refers to that debt as sin. The payment God requires for that debt is death: “The soul who sins shall die” (Ezek. 18:20). “For the wages of sin is death” (Rom. 6:23). And no one is guiltless: “There is not a just man on earth who does good and does not sin” (Eccl. 7:20). “Through one man [Adam] sin entered the world, and death through sin, and thus death spread to all men, because all sinned” (Rom. 5:12; cf. 3:23).
But God is the great forgiver. If He weren’t, all of us would be doomed to hell: “If You, LORD, should mark iniquities, O Lord, who could stand? But there is forgiveness with You, that You may be feared” (Ps. 130:3–4). As a forgiver, God has made a way to release us from the obligation to pay Him back.
This does not mean the debt won’t be paid. The debt must be paid by someone. God is just, and justice demands a payment. The question is, who will pay it?
The answer is amazing. Although God is the one owed, He is also the one who paid the debt! He did this through the promised Messiah, Jesus. When Jesus died on the cross, He died in our place. Jesus was both the payer on our behalf and the payment: “All we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned, every one, to his own way; and the LORD has laid on Him the iniquity of us all” (Isa. 53:6). “In this is love, not that we loved God, but that He loved us and sent His Son to be the propitiation [satisfaction] for our sins” (1 Jn. 4:10; cf. Rom. 3:24–26).
When Jesus died, taking the punishment we deserve, God’s justice was satisfied. No more payment needs to be made. But because Jesus also died as our substitute, God’s forgiveness was also satisfied. “Now where there is remission [forgiveness] of these, there is no longer an offering for sin” (Heb. 10:18).
But God didn’t stop there. By raising Messiah Jesus from the dead, He ensured that all those who put their faith in Him alone would be forgiven and saved forever: “For if when we were enemies we were reconciled to God through the death of His Son, much more, having been reconciled, we shall be saved by His life” (Rom. 5:10).
God is the ultimate forgiver. Through His Son, He not only has released us but taken our debt completely away:
And you, being dead in your trespasses and the uncircumcision of your flesh, He has made alive together with Him, having forgiven you all trespasses, having wiped out the handwriting of requirements [the Greek means “certificate of indebtedness”] that was against us, which was contrary to us. And He has taken it out of the way, having nailed it to the cross (Col. 2:13–14).
The payment for our sin has been made. But if we reject it, the only recourse is to pay the debt with our own lives. In that case, nothing but eternal punishment awaits us: “He who believes in the Son has everlasting life; and he who does not believe the Son shall not see life, but the wrath of God abides on him” (Jn. 3:36).
After considering what God has done for us through His Son, we can attest that God is ready and willing to forgive anyone who comes to Jesus in faith. Have you done that?
ENDNOTE
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- Corrie ten Boom, with Jamie Buckingham, Tramp for the Lord (Fort Washington, PA: CLC Publications, 1974), 55–57.
Photo: Adobe Stock
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