The Power of Mercy and Forgiveness in Marriage

A couple great quotes from Dave Harvey's book, When Sinners Say 'I Do'.

"Mercy sweetens marriage. Where it is absent, two people flog one another over everything from failure to fix the faucet to phone bills. But where it is present, marriage grows sweeter and more delightful, even in the face of challenges, setbacks and persistent effects of our remaining sin." 

"Mercy takes people who are capable of open warfare over toothpaste tubes and toilet seats, and enlarges their vision to include a Savior. Mercy confronts a sinner wrapped in self pity and protected pride and shows him the way out of the darkness into the light. Mercy inspires us to move beyond the power and government of self love back to the nobler and benevolent principles of our new nature" 

"Forgiveness and repentance is the powerful tool that repairs the damage done to sin-torn marriage relationships. And where forgiveness is employed, and repentance is lived out, it transforms. Forgiveness humbly sought, and humbly given, profoundly expresses the glory of God. Why? Because forgiveness is at the heart of the gospel-the true demonstration of God's love for those who deserved his wrath....We have all been forgiven the greatest debt. Let's learn how to forgive the debtor we married." 

Dave Harvey, When Sinners Say 'I Do' (Wapwallopen, PA: Shepherd Press, 2007) 80, 82, 113,  

Checking Yourself In

Then David confessed to Nathan, 

"I have sinned against the LORD."
2 Samuel 12:13

These are David's words following his horrendous actions in committing adultery with Bathsheba and then essentially killing her husband. To top it off, David lied and tried to cover the whole thing up before coming clean. 

This verse is also a bite-size preview of Psalm 51, wherein David confesses and repents to the LORD. The reason I love this story is because I think it gives a good snapshot of what Christianity is really about. This story shows one of the Bible's most Godly characters (David) fall into complete and utter sin and despair. It shows a hero of the faith fall.

But herein lies the beauty of the gospel. Where the seeming "hero" falls (David), the true Hero of the story is brought to center stage. The gospel is not about cleaning yourself up, hiding your sin, covering up your brokenness, or your own personal spiritual strength. Quite the opposite actually. It is about how we are all like David; ruined, broken, weak sinners who are in need of a divine act of grace on our behalf. The gospel is about us being honest with our sickness, sin, evil, and brokenness, and then turning and clinging to the only one who can actually save us. It is about looking to the true Hero for forgiveness and new life.

Think about it terms of a drug addict. It would simply be stupid for a drug addict,who is obviously addicted to keep living their lives as if they don't have a problem. It would be futile for them to attempt to clean themselves up on the outside, so they appear to be 'clean', but on the inside, they are still sick and addicted. The only solution is for them to ditch their delusion, be honest with themselves and realize they are jacked up and desperately need help. The solution is to check themselves in to rehab. Likewise, we are addicted to sin. We might not have killed anyone of committed adultery as David had, but I have absolutely no doubt, that if you look at your life honestly, and compare it to God's standard of love, truthfulness, compassion, and justice, you will cringe at your sickness. Like a delusional drug addict, our tendency is to live our lives as one big cover up. We try so hard to hide the inner sickness of sin that is ruining our lives. We try to cover up our inner brokenness with big houses, fashionable clothes, successful careers, relationships, alcohol, sports, the latest gadgets, and the list goes on and on. Our tendency is to cover ourselves up and save face, rather than be real with the situation.

The beauty of the gospel is that we no longer have to save face. You no longer have to cover up all the crap in your life. There is healing. There is redemption from this addiction and enslavement of sin. There is a solution. The solution is Jesus. Christ's death and resurrection on our behalf is the only solution.  All it takes is being honest with yourself, and checking yourself into rehab (yes that's a Lecrae reference :). All it takes is knowing your absolute need for him. Like David, when he was finally honest with himself, and turned and confessed to God, it was there he experienced what Christianity is really about.

The Gospel Drama in Worship

"In worship, we are invited into God’s holy presence as adopted sons and daughters of whom he is not ashamed because of Christ’s work on our behalf. We come adoring and praising him for his goodness, greatness, and grace. We come confessing our sins and looking to him for forgiveness and strength. We come making requests on behalf of ourselves and others in prayer. We praise and admonish and pray through song. We rejoice in the work of God’s grace in one another as we hear the gospel story expressed through the lives of fellow believers. We profess enthusiastically together what we believe. We listen to God’s Word read, proclaimed, and applied. We offer our lives and our substance to him. We baptize new converts and children of believers as he adds to our number. We gather in table fellowship remembering what Christ has done in his atoning, sacrificial death in our place. We receive his good word in the benediction as he sends us forth to live as salt and light for his glory in every area of life. We are captured and transformed into greater Christ-likeness by the gospel drama represented in a carefully planned worship service that proclaims that gospel story afresh each week."

Mark Dalbey, "Gospel-Centered Worship." 171-172. 

Fight Club

Here is a great excerpt from  Jonathan Dodson's, "Gospel Centered Discipleship." In this excerpt, he is referring to the motion picture, "Fight Club", written by Chuck Palahnuik.

"Fight Club does depict the struggle to recover identity in a post-modern, media saturated world. It shows us that the world is charged with bogus images of what it means to be truly human. In underground fight clubs, groups of men meet after hours in basements and back alleys to fight one another barefoot, bare chested, and bare fisted. It's a bloody ordeal.

In a speech just prior to a fight club, Tyler Durden charges the men, 'We are the middle children of history, man. No purpose or place. We have no great war, or great depression. Our great war is a spiritual war. Our great depression is our lives. We've all been raised by television to believe that one day we'll all be millionaires and movie gods and rock stars-but we won't.'

In this speech, Durden pinpoints something that should confront Christians every day-the great depression of a life lived apart from a noble cause. Christians are tempted daily to believe the empty promises of the millionaire, movie god, and rock star lifestyles. We are tempted to believe that if we had a lithe more money, power, notoriety, respect, beauty, influence, or success we would be truly happy. We need to fight to believe in something better. Palahnuik's Fight Club was an attempt to fill a void left by the Church. In an interview he comments, 'I started to recognized that, in a way, support groups were becoming the new church of our time-a place where people will go and confess their very worst aspects of their lives and seek redemption and community with outer people in a way that people used to go to church...'

God is calling us to recover and redeem this confessional, redemptive, and communal role of the church. He is calling us out of our depressive, self-centered lives into the rewarding fight of faith, out of the great depression into a great spiritual war."

Prayer

HT: Ray Ortlund

“See the man at midnight [described in Luke 11:5-8]. Imitate that man. Act it all alone at midnight. Hear his loud cry, and cry it after him. He needed three loaves. What is your need? Name it. Name it out loud. Let your own ears hear it. . . . The shameful things you have to ask for. The disgraceful, the incredible things you have to admit and confess. The life you have lived. The way you have spent your days and nights. And what all that has brought you to. It kills you to have to say such things even with your door shut. Yes, but better say all these things in closets than have them all proclaimed from the housetops of the day of judgment. Knock, man! Knock for the love of God! Knock as they knock to get into heaven after the door is shut! Knock, as they knock to get out of hell!”

Alexander Whyte, “The Man Who Knocked At Midnight,” in Lord, Teach Us To Pray (New York, n.d.), pages 174-176.

....

This is awesome. Lord, give us hearts of humility, confession and belief in your willingness to forgive, for the sake of Christ.

"And rising very early in the morning, while it was still dark, he [Jesus] departed and went out to a desolate place, and there he prayed."
(Mark 1:35 ESV)

Confession and Community

Following text is from Defiant Grace by Dane Ortlund...

"The fundamental distinction between churches is not that some of them have sinners and others do not. The fundamental distinction is that some churches have honest sinners and other churches have self-protecting sinners. The question is not whether we are sinful or not, but whether or not we are honest about it. James 5:16 was not written to a segment of the church but to all members: 'Confess your sins to one another and pray for one another, that you may be healed.' "

....

I think the more fully we know the Lord's loving desire to forgive us, for the sake of Christ's work on the cross, the quicker we will fall on our knees in confession and repentance. I believe it is in that place where His grace manifests itself most complete in our lives.

Let us pray to that end.

The Cross and Confession

"It is none other than Jesus Christ who openly suffered the shameful death of a sinner in our place, who was not ashamed to be crucified for us as an evildoer. And it is nothing else but our community with Jesus Christ that leads us to the disgraceful dying that comes in confession, so that we may truly share in this cross. The cross of Jesus Christ shatters all pride."

- Dietrich Bonhoeffer in Life Together

The Power of Confession

"In confession there takes place a breakthrough to community. Sin wants to be alone with people. It takes them away from the community. The more lonely people become, the more destructive the power of sin over them. The more deeply they become entangled in it, the more unholy is their loneliness. Sin wants to remain unknown. It shuns the light. In the darkness of what is left unsaid sin poisons the whole being of a person. This can happen in the midst of a pious community. In confession, the light of the gospel breaks into the darkness and closed isolation of the heart. Sin must be brought into the light. What is unspoken is said openly and confessed. All that is secret and hidden comes to light. It is a hard struggle until the sin crosses one’s lips in confession. But God breaks down gates of bronze and cuts through bars of iron (Ps. 107:16) Since the confession of sin is made in the presence of another Christian, the last stronghold of self-justification is abandoned. The sinner surrenders, giving up all evil, giving the sinner’s heart to God and finding the forgiveness of all one’s sin in the community of Jesus Christ and other Christians. Sin that has been spoken and confessed has lost all of its power. It has been revealed and judged as sin. It can no longer tear apart the community."

- Dietrich Bonhoeffer in Life Together

....

But if we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus his Son cleanses us from all sin.
1 John 1:7 ESV

How Men Change

The following is by Ray Ortlund, Pastor of Immanuel Church in Nashville, from a recent small group setting a few weeks ago. Attending Immanuel this summer has been so transforming in my understanding of "how we change in light of the gospel". Thanks, Ray.

....

"What steps do we men often walk through to get out of the shadows and into the light?

1. Keeping up appearances successfully, even unconsciously.
2. Failure, followed by brokenness. 'Brokenness' is not dysfunction, but a willingness to be real at the foot of the cross. Unbroken men MUST look good. Broken men need a Savior too urgently to care any more about appearances. The walls fall down. The need comes out.
3. Confession. The proof that our confession before God is sincere is that we are candor about our own sins with one another. Real confession is not general and vague, but detailed and up-to-date.
4. Prayer, forgiveness and cleansing. The biblical response to one another's confession is not therapy, but prayer for healing. All the promises of the gospel converge on the sinner who repents and confesses before God and others.
5. Refreshment, joy, and witness. Whenever people hear fresh stories of God's real mercy to real sinners, they marvel, they are drawn in, and the light spreads."

....

1 John 1: 7 But if we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus his Son cleanses us from all sin.

....

Jesus is in the light. Jesus is the light. We can have forgiveness, healing and life by running to the light (openness and confession with God and others), as we fix our eyes, and throw our lives onto Jesus.

Confession of Our Righteousness

O Lord, we confess our righteousness

Those thoughts, words and deeds that have taken our eyes off of Christ and His finished work

And put them on ourselves.

We have fooled ourselves into seeing our obedience as a substitute for your perfection.

We have failed to see that even our best works are as filthy rags in your sight.

Father, we confess that we have deserted your Gospel.

We have made a mockery of the Cross.

For the sake of your great name,

have mercy on us.

Refresh us with your love,

that we may remain fixed on Jesus alone.

Culprit vs. Child

“There is a difference between confessing sin as a culprit and confessing sin as a Child”

–C.H. Spurgeon

What a great reminder of our standing with God. A culprit confesses in fear. Fear of the consequences of his sins, fear of what the Judge’s sentence will be. As children we know that the court is adjourned. The sentence is in; because of Jesus, we are fully accepted by the Father and are fully approved. We are loved unconditionally as children. Therefore, we are able to freely confess, laying all our sins before our Father. We have been washed with His precious blood and are accepted once and for all. There is no fear in the confession of a child.