DANGERS OF FORGIVENESS

Deuteronomy 28:1-68; Luke 11:14-36; Psalm 77:1-20; Proverbs 12:18

“When an evil spirit leaves a person, it goes into the desert, searching for rest. But when it finds none, it says, ‘I will return to the person I came from.’ So it returns and finds that its former home is all swept and in order. Then the spirit finds seven other spirits more evil than itself, and they all enter the person and live there. And so that person is worse off than before.”

“Make sure that the light you think you have is not actually darkness. If you are filled with light, with no dark corners, then your whole life will be radiant, as though a floodlight were filling you with light.”

There is a young man I know who has struggled with drug addiction most of his adult life. It began with prescription painkillers he underestimated and overused in an effort to stay in the starting lineup despite an injury.  Finally, mercifully, the scripts themselves gave him away, and he found himself in rehab. The rehab went well, but when he returned to the outside, his craving returned, and the only way to satisfy it then was with illegal drugs. In turn, his need expanded to include pathological lying, theft, jail and a host of lesser problems. All because he never learned to fill his emptiness with any better choices.

It is never enough simply to accept forgiveness. Accepting forgiveness may “clean house,” as it were, but there isn’t much lonelier or tempting than a clean, empty house. Most people feel compelled either to move or fill it up with a lot of stuff they don’t need. The Scriptural mandate, therefore, is that we “repent.” We can’t just stop doing wrong. We need to go beyond confession and forgiveness. Repentance literally requires an “about face.” It takes an affirmative decision not just to turn away from something but to turn and move toward something else, something better.

Indeed, it does us no good to give up sin, if we don’t take up something better to replace it. Otherwise, Scripture is clear that we will eventually succumb to something worse than the sin we gave up in the first place. I think that’s what Jesus was talking about when He encouraged His followers to be sure that the light they thought they had was not really darkness. Substitutes for the Spirit’s indwelling power – including stand alone confession and forgiveness - may seem sufficient in the short term, but over the long haul, they always end up wanting. Without a daily relationship with Christ, daily communion with Him through prayer and Bible study, whatever light we think we have can be no better than a pale imitation of the real Light God wants to put in our hearts.

The danger of forgiveness, standing on its own, is that we think it’s enough to save us. Only Christ Himself can do that. Only the Spirit can give us the strength to face the future without lapsing back into sin. The point of Jesus’ forgiveness of our sins is not just to clear away the junk but also to make room for the Spirit to more fully possess and work through us. We have to let Him complete the process or, more than likely, we will just end up compounding the sin. Forgiveness is the door through which the Spirit will fill the space where sin once lived, as long as we make sure to invite Him in.