re you really forgiven?
But you can be certain. You can know, without a shadow of a doubt, that you really are forgiven. How? Because Jesus sent His pastors to forgive your sins, that’s how! Whatever sin your pastor forgives, it really is forgiven. By your pastor’s Word of forgiveness “your sins are forgiven before God in heaven” (Small Catechism). Your pastor’s word “is just as valid and certain, even in heaven, as if Christ our dear Lord dealt with us Himself” (Small Catechism). That’s exactly what Jesus says. “This
fornications, thefts, false witness, blasphemies” (Matthew 15:19). If we’re honest with ourselves, we know it’s true! We need Him to “Create in me a clean heart, O God, And renew a right spirit within me” (Psalm 51:10). And He does! His promise is that He “will give you a new heart and put a new spirit within you” and “will take the heart of stone out of your flesh and give you a heart of flesh” (Ezekiel 36:26). This is is what happens in the Absolution! He wipes your sin away. “As far as the east is from the west, So far has He removed our transgressions from us” (Psalm 103:12). Your omniscient, all-knowing heavenly Father, doesn’t even “remember your sins” (Isaiah 43:25) because of His all-knowing Son’s death and resurrection, which won forgiveness (Luke 23:34) and the opening of Paradise (Luke 23:46). It’s delivered in the forgiveness spoken by your pastor, as Jesus commanded and promised (John 20:22-23), and that absolution “cleanses us from all unrighteousness” (1 John 1:9)— unrighteousness of thoughts and desires included! When we sadly give in to the temptation, the desire, we can’t wrap our minds around Absolution being for our desires, too. Your pastor is certainly there for you to
is what St. John the Evangelist writes in chapter twenty: The Lord Jesus breathed on His disciples and said, ‘Receive the Holy Spirit. If you forgive anyone his sins, they are forgiven’” (Small Catechism). Now, when we confess our sins, we confess that we’re “poor miserable sinners” (Divine Service: Setting 3), that we’ve sinned in “thought, word, and deed” (Divine Service: Setting 1), that “my thoughts and desires have been soiled with sin” (Individual Confession and Absolution). But most of the time, we equate “sins” with bad things we’ve done. That’s not all that sin is, though, is it? We all know that we have thoughts that we don’t want anyone to know about. How many friends would we have left then? We all have desires (lusts) we’re ashamed of. If anyone knew about those, maybe our moms and dads would still love us, but that might be it! And if we’ve acted on those desires, well, good luck! We might be alone then. But you’re never alone, and that’s the problem! God’s omniscient—all knowing! He knows your thoughts. He knows your desires. He knows “the imagination of man’s heart is evil from his youth” (Genesis 8:21). He knows “out of the heart proceed evil thoughts, murders, adulteries,
forgive you when you’ve fallen into sin, when desires and temptations have overwhelmed you. He’s there to restore you “in a spirit of gentleness,” to help “bear one another’s burdens” (Galatians 6:1). He does this with the Absolution: forgiving your sins and the deep-seated desires that produced them. But wait there’s more! Yes, more! Absolution covers even more! What if you wanted to do something bad, really bad, maybe even horrible, but you didn’t actually do it? That’s great! By the power of the Holy Spirit, you’re a new man in Christ, created in Holy Baptism and sustained by the Spirit in the Word and Body and Blood of Jesus. God be praised! He answered your prayer to “lead us not into temptation.” The Holy Spirit truly has and continues to sanctify you (Third Article of the Apostles’ Creed). To God alone be the glory! What if it bothers you, though? I mean, you’re supposed to be happy, right? It’s a very good thing when temptation is ignored, when evil is avoided. It’s awesome! It should make you happy that it was. But you’re not. Why? Well, maybe you’re worried that people will judge you for it. If they only knew what you’d planned, they’d judge
Has your heavenly Father really forgiven you? Did Jesus’ death really pay for your sins? Sure! Then you sin…again. Then you think about that sin…again. Then you think about doing that sin…again. Not so sure then, huh? You want to do better, but that doesn’t bring you any assurance that your sins are forgiven.
Absolution Is the H I G H E R T H I N G S __ 6
