One of the downsides of living in our modern, consumer-driven American culture is that we can become accustomed to thinking about life as a series of transactions. We go to our jobs and we put in a day’s work and we get paid a certain amount of money. We go to a restaurant or a store and give some of our hard-earned money, and we get something in return. We can even begin to think about relationships in this way: if we become acquainted with the right people, we may be able to cash in on those friendships in the future or use them in beneficial ways when we find ourselves in need. After all, it’s not what you know but who you know that counts, right?
With all this emphasis on transactions, we can begin to think of God in similar ways. All the laws and “thou shalts” and commandments we find in the Bible must be given because God wants something FROM us, like obedience or honor or offerings, we think.
At our district pastor’s conference this past month, our presenter, Rev. Scott Rische, discussed a different way of talking and thinking about God. As opposed to the transactional view of a God who wants something FROM us, he presented a number of Bible passages that show how God’s main focus in the Scriptures is wanting a people of His own to be WITH.
All too often, we think of God’s commandments and all our talk about sin in the church as a way to control or manipulate others. On the other hand, we can begin to see God as a cosmic candy machine, someone we can control or manipulate with our good behavior or good works in order to get what we want. But in reality, sin’s biggest danger is that it leads to separation. Sin ruins relationships. It destroys them. When Adam and Eve sinned in the garden of Eden, their sin introduced a separation between each other and between them and God. Their sin and subsequent shame led them to isolate themselves from God, hiding themselves from Him. After they ate the forbidden fruit, God was left with three choices. He could overlook their sin, which would have done nothing to reconcile the relationship. He could punish them for their sins, which would mean putting them to death as He had promised. Or He could forgive them.
God’s choice was to forgive Adam and Eve so that His relationship with them could be reconciled. But forgiveness is never free. There is always a cost to forgiveness, and the cost is paid not by the one who commits the offense, but by the one who is offended. I think that this is one of the reasons forgiveness can be hard for us. If we truly forgive someone, we are letting go of what we feel we are owed by that other person for their transgression. We are giving up on what we feel we deserve FROM the person who sins against us.
If we truly forgive someone’s sin, we give up on our personal demands for respect or repayment. We are giving up the emotional release of making snide comments that demean the person who sinned against us. We are giving up on complaining about what the offender said or did to us in the past. We are giving up on sharing our sensational experiences and stories about others that put them in even the slightest negative light, even if they are completely true. We are giving up on our right to be impatient and short with someone because “this isn’t the first time.” This can be a significant hurdle to forgiveness for a lot of people, but this is the price that must be paid so that relationships to be reconciled and restored and we can reflect God’s desire to be WITH us as we live with each other.
The parable of the prodigal son gives us another example of God’s priority on relationships, reconciliation, and restoration. The only thing the father in that story wants is a relationship with his sons. He was willing to pay any price so he could see that relationship restored. He knew his son was going to leave home, whether he gave the son his share of the inheritance or not. If he had not given his son the inheritance, the son would have left anyway. However, the point of the story is that the son knew without a doubt that his father was generous, and so knew he would always find a home in his father’s house. The father’s love was demonstrated in the sacrifice the father was willing to make in order to make a way for his son to come back home.
What makes that story so powerful is that it captures the love of our God for us. Our God doesn’t need or even want something FROM us. He simply wants to be WITH us, and so He pays the ultimate price, the life of Jesus, to forgive our sins, to be reconciled with us, and to restore the relationship He wants to have with us so that He can be WITH us forever.