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Matt 5:43 Ye have heard that it hath been said, Thou shalt love thy neighbour, and hate thine enemy.An inspiring sermon, to say the least, and a surprising one considering the "Father" to which Jesus was referring. This text, attributed to Jesus and supposedly written by one of his disciples, tells us that, as the old adage goes, "to err is human, to forgive divine." But is this really the case? Does "our Father in heaven" forgive the way Jesus allegedly taught we should forgive?
44 But I say unto you, Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them which despitefully use you, and persecute you;
45 That ye may be the children of your Father which is in heaven: for he maketh his sun to rise on the evil and on the good, and sendeth rain on the just and on the unjust.
46 For if ye love them which love you, what reward have ye? do not even the publicans the same?
47 And if ye salute your brethren only, what do ye more than others? do not even the publicans so?
48 Be ye therefore perfect, even as your Father which is in heaven is perfect.
The principle which states that we should forgive is a good one, by and large, and, I dare say, one that not many would disagree with. But, the model of this forgiveness, "our Father in heaven" is hardly a good one. According to this text, it would seem that we should forgive unconditionally, without asking a price. A wrong done to us should be expunged and the perpetrator should be set free of his "debt". Does YHWH, the Biblegod, forgive this way? Not according to the Bible, he doesn't. Why then is he used as a model of unconditional forgiveness?
YHWH requires sacrifices in order to be placated -- "propitiated" as theologians are so fond of calling it. His sits on his throne in heaven, thundering against sinners. He is angry with them and demands not only repentance, but a sacrifice in order for their sins to be forgiven.
Psalms 7:11 God judgeth the righteous, and God is angry with the wicked every day.In Old Testament times YHWH required animal sacrifices. Thousands, even millions of them, if the Bible numbers are to be believed, were not enough to satisfy this deity since, Christianity tells us, They were only the precursors to the "ultimate" sacrifice, God's own Son. Since the first century of the common era, he has accepted, according to the NT, only one sacrifice:
Acts 4:12 Neither is there salvation in any other: for there is none other name under heaven given among men, whereby we must be saved.The above verses tell us that YHWH had to be propitiated -- appeased, if you will -- and the only way this could be done is through the death of his Son on the cross. This is the "loving Father" who is our model of unconditional forgiveness??? Please!Rom 3:24 Being justified freely by his grace through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus: 25 Whom God hath set forth to be a propitiation through faith in his blood, to declare his righteousness for the remission of sins that are past, through the forbearance of God; 26 To declare, I say, at this time his righteousness: that he might be just, and the justifier of him which believeth in Jesus.
Jesus tells us that we must forgive and we must do so unconditionally, giving us as a pattern to imitate, his Father in heaven. He tells us that even the bitterest enemy must be forgiven on the grounds of the goodness of his Father. My question then is: if "the Father" is the model, then why can't he do the same as is required of us? Why can he not forgive and forget, unconditionally? Why does blood have to be shed? After all, isn't the example given one of sheer goodness, i.e., to forgive unconditionally, the Father being the example of this goodness? In other words, why the dog and pony show if this "Father" is so good?
If we are to believe Jesus' testimony, the Father, who is gracious even to the unrighteous, makes his sun to shine upon all of them. The text suggests that he does out of pure goodness, out of grace. This is our model, we are told by Jesus, the teacher of righteousness. Could he have been referring to YHWH the god of the Old Testament? Surely not, or else he would have told them to go sacrifice an unblemished lamb, or kill some other innocent animal on the alter if they wished to be forgiven.
What is the difference between the picture which Jesus paints of his Father in heaven and YHWH? The difference, as the text so clearly indicates, is that his Father in heaven is the model of unconditional forgiveness, but YHWH requires that blood be spilt in order to satisfy his "justice".
So which model do we follow? The Father in heaven who forgives unconditionally, or the bloodthirsty YHWH who would have his own Son nailed to a cross like a common criminal, and that, for sins not even his? Are we not told in the OT that God abhors human sacrifice? Are we not told that he was filled with anger when the Isrealites immitated the Canaanites, who were reported to have passed their children through fire, as a sacrifice to their god Molech? What then makes YHWH so different from Molech?
Which testimony and what part of the Bible are we to believe? The part that says the Father forgives without asking for a price, as is taught in Matthew 4? Or, do we believe that we are to, by faith, accept that YHWH will love us and forgive us if, and only if, we give ascent to his brand of forgiveness, the blood atonement? Don't you sometimes get the feeling that Jesus was speaking of a very different god than YHWH, the god of the OT? The Gnostics did, among others.
One would be hard put to try harmonizing these various texts and try to make sense of this unholy mess. Christians would accuse us of distorting their holy book by "taking a few verses out of context," but how can one harmonize such opposites? By divorcing reason? Surely we are not asked to do this, are we? The plain truth is that the Bible offers such an array of contradictions with regards to the character of its deity, that it is impossible to reconcile such opposites.
We have, at once, a god who loves and forgives without asking a price, and we have a god who will not forgive unless the blood of his own Son is shed for us. Truly, the Bible is a wonderous book... wonderous in its capacity to err.
