PARDON ME!

Date: Tue Dec 30 09:32:26 2008

"Happy are those whose sins are forgiven, whose wrongs are pardoned." Psalm 32:1

Unless you are an ostrich with your head in the sand, you cannot avoid the issue of pardons. It comes up every time a President leaves office. Remember when Marc Rich was pardoned by former president Bill Clinton? (what a name for a billionaire, huh? Wonder if he had a son named Richie!) He owed $48 million in taxes and ran illegal oil deals with Iran. Not a bad bailout. One wonders with inflation and with the recent wave of bailouts where a billion dollars is chump change whether the $50 billion Ponzi scam by Bernard Madoff would qualify for a pardon from outgoing President Bush. Probably not - particularly since Democrats were stung the most. Meanwhile, hard core drug dealers have been pardoned by Prez Bush, while ironically, the two border guards who shot a fleeing major drug dealer without asking permission first sit in prison and have been refused pardons.

Historically, presidential pardons seem to have more to do with politics than with pure justice. Many in jail under questionable circumstances remain there while those where there is no reasonable doubt as to their guilt are set free. Jimmy Hoffa. Richard Nixon. Patty Hearst. Even George Steinbrenner. There were also sweeping pardons for the sake of healing a fractured nation - the participants in the Whiskey Rebellion, the Confederate Citizens after the civil war (with some exceptions requiring individual pardons), and the Vietnam era Draft Dodgers.

Is God as politically motivated and as capri-cious in dealing out HIS pardons? Or will he issue a blanket pardon, applying the blood of Jesus to everybody regardless of whether they personally accepted his sacrifice as the price required for a full and unconditional pardon? People accuse God of being capricious, but there has been a move toward universalism by people who simply cannot reconcile a loving God sending billions of people to hell.

Let's look at this, because our very lives are in the balance. First, let us look at how God treats the sinner vs. how man treats the sinner. What are the similarities, and what are the differences?

God has compassion on the sinner and does not condemn him or her unless there is a lack of belief in Christ (John 3:17-18). Jesus showed us in his life how God views the sinner. Without rejection, making fun, or removing a personís dignity, Jesus confronted people in their sin, offering forgiveness and change. His encounter with the prostitute and with tax collectors showed how God views sinners. He treated them with dignity and respect, but he gave them a decision to make. Would they accept forgiveness and sin or more, or would they continue in their sin?

Despite the harshness of Jesus toward hypocritical religious professionals, he was just as kind as he was to anyone else to the sincere religious leaders of his day such as Nicodemus, and offered them the same path to forgiveness. Our most precious scripture, John 3:16, was spoken to Nicodemus as he implored him to accept his love.

Man treats sinners with love too - it makes him feel comfortable not to be alone! It is the righteous that man gives a hard time to! However, when a sinner gets caught, man offers punishment, ridicule, and condemnation, forgetting his own frailty. What a contrast with Christ!

Perhaps it is best to now define what a pardon is ó it is a noun that means the remission of penalty or punishment. Similar words with a similar meaning include absolution, amnesty, acquittal, exculpation, exoneration, indemnification, forgiveness, remission, justification, and vindication. Antonyms include conviction and condemnation. The reason we have different words to say similar things is that there are important shades of meaning, and precision is important. The reason your pastor may use a Hebrew or Greek word to expand on a point is that these languages often are more precise. I am a scholar in neither, but since the Bible uses the word pardon and some of words above speak of the same situation, I am choosing forgiveness and justification as the synonyms of the moment and condemnation as the antonym of the moment. Fair enough???

Many people define right and wrong based upon the penalty or punishment received. If two people defining right and wrong that way commit fornication, they do not see anything wrong as long as the woman does not get pregnant and neither ends up with a sexually transmitted disease. They are looking at the penalty, not the principle. However, in fact when people seek to justify their sin, they often do not see the penalties very clearly either. People who run the gauntlet and who somehow manage to avoid both preg-nancy and the multitude of sexually transmitted diseases (and many of those show up years later) still have lost something God holds precious - the joys of faithfulness and purity and utter confidence in your mate which have been proven beyond any doubt to facilitate long, happy marriages. My wife and I can testify to that - we are in our thirty-fifth year as man and wife, but the bedrock trust that we have in each other was proven by doing the hard thing and keeping our friendship from being consummated until our wedding night. A tremendous number of young people even 11 or 12 years old have now taken up oral sex because they view it as problem free. God forbid. What type of adults will these kids become unless God makes new creatures out of them by his grace?

Right and wrong are based not upon the penalty, but on the law. Relatively few people are punished. Only a small number of those who cheat on their taxes or who plagiarize their speeches and term papers ever get caught. Only a minute fraction of speeders ever get stopped. Only a small number of those who use drugs are ever punished. Even rapists and other violent criminals get away with what they do more than anyone would care to admit.

God's standards are absolute, and no one gets away with anything with God. With the pardons in the news, these folks were caught in what they did. Many others have not been. The pardons they were granted were by the President, who was given the absolute authority to do so by the Constitution. While he could require loyalty of an admission of wrongdoing, which has some-times been the case, in many other cases he did not require repentance, restitution, or anything else be done to make the situation right.

Some altar calls are like that - no mention of sin, repentance, or making things right. Just grace extended, no strings, no anything. Be a friend of Jesus - TRY Jesus - he is the "real thing", etc. No blood, no atonement, just a new relationship. A new high. Perhaps a mea culpa for good measure. Pardons without any willing-ness to change or without Christ as the master of our redemption are not pardons by God at all, so if you did not admit your sin to God, perhaps your salvation is incomplete and another trip to the altar would be a good idea.

The opposite of pardon is condemnation, and many people who have ìtried Jesusî are condemned today. Their hearts condemn them because they have never truly been saved from their sins. How much better is the forgiveness and justification of God which is freely offered to all men and women who are simply willing to repent and place their lives in his hands!

God's pardons are different from man's - by his grace alone he gives the ability to repent of our sin, and when we place ourselves on his mercy, and accept the sacrifice of Jesus Christ in our stead, God pardons us. Unlike Mr. Rich, we do not have enough money in Switzerland to cover our debts. No amount of good works can balance out our sins. Unlike man, where money to the pardoner can sometimes obtain the pardon, God cannot be bribed. Donít even try a tenth of one percent. He would laugh. You can tithe or double tithe, or give everything you have to the poor, or even give your body to be burned (remember I Corinthians 13?), but without love, it means nothing.

There is no number of billions which can atone for even one lie, one act of prejudice, one moment of unfaithfulness. Only the blood of Christ can justify us and make it right - JUST AS IF WE HAD NEVER SINNED. We are utterly forgiven and no Act of Congress or anyone else can change that. God is sinless, and his authority to pardon comes from himself and his very nature, and is not granted by the Constitution or the beliefs of any church. As the creator and master of the world, it is in his innate nature to do so. Yet even God requires that payment be made for the sin. Only one person had enough to pay, and that was Godís precious Son, Jesus the Christ. He shed his sinless and most precious blood to pay for our sins. How tragic to have this provision and not take advantage of it! It is like those ads in the paper offering unclaimed fortunes which were never claimed. If you have not claimed Christ today, and accepted the pardon from God the Father which goes with it, do not delay any longer. Today is the accepted time. Today is the day of salvation.