People Are Like Sponges

By Zachary Stuckwisch

Just after teaching His disciples the Lord’s Prayer, Jesus said, “For if you forgive others their trespasses, your heavenly Father will also forgive you, but if you do not forgive others their trespasses, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses” (Matthew 6:14–14 ESV). Those sound like simple instructions for earning God’s forgiveness, right? But that can’t be right. As Christians we believe that we can’t earn our own forgiveness of sins. And as long as we are being honest with ourselves, we should also realize that we don’t always like to forgive those who sin against us.

When a sponge is dry, it’s just a worthless rag. That’s what all of us are like without Christ. What do you do with a dry sponge? You get it wet. God does the same thing with us in our Baptism. He drowns us, killing our sins and evil desires, and brings us back to life in Christ. Since He is sinless, our sins are removed through Baptism. We are no longer hard, dry sponges but wet ones. In baptismal water, God forgives our sins before we try to do anything for Him or anyone else. He freely gives us forgiveness of sins, and we have as little choice in the matter as a dry sponge has to get put into water.

After we get a sponge wet, what do we usually do with it? Most of the time we take the water-logged sponge and use it to wash something or to slosh the water around. God does something similar with us. After He washes us in our Baptism and fills us with Himself, He uses us to spread Himself around. This can be done when we forgive people, since Christ’s death gained forgiveness for the whole world.

Of course, we aren’t baptized only for the sake of showing His forgiveness to others. We are baptized because Christ died for and forgives us, and Baptism is one of the places where we receive that blessing. We should also not forget that God can even use people who haven’t been baptized to spread His gifts. He doesn’t need us to do anything.

Then what about the Fifth Petition—“Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us”? God never contradicts Himself, but He’s the one who gave it to us, and He’s the one that forgives us before we can forgive anyone else. Here’s a helpful way to look at it: God knows that you are sinful and that on your own you will probably not forgive your neighbor. Because of that, He gives you His forgiveness first, so that in Him we forgive others. We ought to look at Christ’s explanation of the Fifth Petition in reverse order. Your heavenly Father forgives you in Christ, so that you will then forgive your neighbor. In the catechism Martin Luther wrote, “We pray in this petition that our Father in heaven would not look at our sins, or deny our prayer because of them. We are neither worthy of the things for which we pray, nor have we deserved them, but we ask that He would give them all to us by grace, for we daily sin much and surely deserve nothing but punishment. So we too will sincerely forgive and gladly do good to those who sin against us.”

It is good to pay attention to the sentence, “we daily sin much and deserve nothing but punishment.” After you get a sponge wet, it dries out pretty fast. Since we’re like sponges, you can bet that even after Baptism, we don’t always forgive our neighbor. We ought to return to our Baptism daily in contrition and repentance through the Word of God and the Sacraments. That’s how God continues to keep us in a state of forgiveness, just like we keep a sponge wet by continually dipping it in water.

In heaven, we will be eternally and perfectly in Christ. For a sponge, that would be like living in a huge ocean of perfect water that never dries up. Jesus said, “Everyone who drinks of this water will be thirsty again, but whoever drinks of the water that I will give him will never be thirsty forever. The water that I will give him will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life” (John 4:13–14 ESV). Thanks be to God!

Zachary Stuckwisch lives in South Bend, Indiana, with his mom, dad, and six younger siblings. This fall he will be a senior in homeschool high school. He’s a big fan of Higher Things and enjoys writing. You can contact him via e-mail at thepashapook@excite.com.