Forgive Us Our Sins
October 3, 2021Today's message was the 4th in a 6-part series about the Lord's Prayer. Today's section of the Lord's Prayer was "Forgive us our sins as we forgive those who sin against us." The message is here.
Pastor Patrick started out his message today with a few words about fasting and the upcoming church fasting period, October 18-22. In keeping with "what does the Torah say about that," I'll mention that the Old Testament is loaded with fasting, sometimes commanded, sometimes voluntary, sometimes in ritual. It's a "dispruption restoration" process. Generally in the Old Testament, there is virtually no teaching about fasting but occurences of fasting in the narratives. It is refered to as "afflicting oneself" as in Leviticus 16:29, 31. In the Torah specifically, this includes the "nature of the food prohibition in the Garden of Eden, the supernatural fasting of Moses on Sinai, the injunction of personal affliction on the Day of Atonement, and the various dietary restrictions of the law" (see "Fasting In The Old Testament And Ancient Judaism: Mourning, Repentance, And Prayer In Hope For God's Presence)."
I'd like to focus on the Torah contributions around the notion of forgiveness. And in particular, forgiving others of their sins. Forgiveness is not a new notion of the New Testament.
Lev. 19:17-18 - don't hate your brother, don't take revenge, don't bear a grudge.
Gen. 20:17 - Abraham prays for Abimelech, forgives him, in essence, and calls on God to forgive Abimelech (after Abraham misleads him). This in an intercessionary prayer on behalf of someone else as opposed to a petitionary prayer on behalf of oneself.
Yom Kippur (Leviticus 16:29, 23:27) is the holiest day in the Jewish calendar. It is the Day of Atonement, saying your sorry and asking forgiveness. Interestingly, given our earlier discussion, fasting is a key component.
Observant Jews pray three times a day, and each contains an element of forgiveness, which has three spiritual components: knowledge/wisdom, repentance, and forgiveness from God (in addition to forgiveness from those one hurt).
This is a tangent on a tangent, but very powerful in terms of understanding forgiveness. Simon Wiesenthal wrote a book about his experiences during the holocaust. It's titled The Sunflower. The book focuses on a moral dilemna: does he offer forgiveness to a dying Nazi for horrible things done to others, or not. The book includes a narrative of Simon's experiences leading up to and including the forgiveness request, what he does, and how a couple dozen prominent thinkers react to what Simon did. The second edition of the book is out now which includes 53 additional responses by various people. It may not surprise you that the responses run the gamut from one end of the specturm to the other.
On his death bed, Joseph's father told his other sons to say to Joseph, "Forgive, I pray thee now, the trespass of thy brethren, and their sin; for they did unto thee evil: and now, we pray thee, forgive the trespass of the servants of the God of thy father" (Genesis 50:17).
The Torah does discuss sins that are not forgive-able. The Ten Commandments include a sin for which God himself will not forgive the offender - carrying God's name in vain (discussed earlier here). This is in keeping with the notion that some sins are not take-back-able, such as defaming a good name, murder, etc.
The Torah using forgiveness in the sense of lift up/off or remove, e.g. Genesis 21:18. Totally as aside, this word in Hebrew is na-sa - interesting that our acronym NASA has to do with lift off! Needing forgiveness is part of having free will to screw up.
Another Torah aspect of forgiveness is "face up" to it. Jacob and Esau are very good at not facing up to things directly, offering only incomplete and indirect apologies. The word used is panim or paneh (פּנה / פּנים). See "Face it".
There are a couple concepts in the Torah that relate to forgiveness in that they are about guilt and tendencies to be good or bad. The Torah recognizes that humans have both a good urge/inclination (yetzer hatov) and a bad urge/inclination (yetzer harah). This leads to another concept of the Torah that people can only be guilty of actions, not thoughts. There does appear to be one exception - the Commandment not to covet.
Many of the sacrifices in Leviticus are to attain pardon (סלח, salach). The sacrifical system in Leviticus is a fascinating topic unto itself which someday we may pursue. For now, suffice it to say there remains wisdom to be had therein.