Freedom and Forgiveness

At the risk of a little heresy, I want to suggest that the cross of Jesus has more to do with freedom than with forgiveness. Bear with me for a second while I try my best to explain.

Jesus came announcing that the Kingdom of God was at hand, i.e. that God had forgiven Israel of her sins and that he was returning to be her King and her God. Furthermore, this forgiveness was not just for Israel and her sins but for the sins of the whole world. This forgiveness was a precursor to coming of the Kingdom, not a result of its coming. Every Jew of Jesus’ day knew that the Exile would not, could not ever end until God decided to forgive Israel of the unfaithfulness that led to the Exile in the first place. Once God had decided to forgive, he would return to Israel, restore his people, and establish (or re-establish to be more exact) his kingdom.

So when Jesus came proclaiming that the Kingdom of God was “at hand,” he was saying that all the above had occurred: God had forgiven them of their sins, he was now beginning the process of restoring his people and returning to Jerusalem. That’s why Jesus ate with tax collectors, prostitutes, and others classified under the general heading of “sinners.” There was no longer any need to exclude “sinners” from mainstream religious society; God had forgiven them and was restoring them to himself and his people. It’s why Jesus, when some men brought him a paralyzed man, said to him, “Your sins are forgiven.” (Matthew 9:2) Present tense, denoting current status. Not future tense: “You sins will be forgiven when I die on the cross and am raised from the dead.” Present tense. Right now, your sins are forgiven.

Similarly, when a woman who was called “a sinner” cleaned Jesus’ feet with her hair and tears and anointed them with ointment, Jesus told his Pharisee host that her sins had been forgiven (past tense), and said to her, “Your sins are forgiven,” (present tense, current status) (Luke 7:48)

God had forgiven, just like he had done so many times before. The book of Judges records a repeated pattern of sin/judgment/repentance/forgiveness. So the issue isn’t so much forgiveness as breaking the cycle. Sin had a power over humanity that seemingly couldn’t be broken. As Paul puts it, we were slaves to sin, which leads to death (Romans 6:16).

The cross was Jesus subjecting himself to the forces of sin and death—the domination systems of our world which use violence, cruelty, and torture to lead people into lifelong subjection. These domination systems—in Jesus’ day the Roman Empire, Herod’s complicity with the Romans, and the corrupt Temple cult—use the language of religion, peace, and divine rights, but are really forces of hatred, violence, and enslavement.

At the cross, Jesus exposed these forces for who they really are, and also exposed their impotence in the face of a loving, merciful, and forgiving Father. The cross defeated the forces of sin, and the resurrection defeated the forces of death. In their defeat, we became free. Forgiven, yes, but not just forgiven from sin, but freed from the power of sin and death. Once again, as Paul puts it, “But thanks be to God that you, having once been slaves of sin, have become obedient from the heart to the form of teaching to which you were entrusted, and that you, having been set free from sin, have become slaves of righteousness.” (Romans 6:17-18)

We sin still, and God forgives us, but the cross broke the power that sin and death had over us. To paraphrase author/speaker Shane Claiborne, Jesus didn’t come so much to make bad people good as to make dead people alive.

To make dead people alive. That is the power of the cross.

© 2009 by Larry L. Eubanks