What Does God Require To Be Forgiven? | Theocast

This is what makes the gospel preposterous. It's what makes it a stumbling block to the self-righteous, because God says to be forgiven, all you must do is ask. That's the requirement. All you must do is ask to be forgiven, and the Father will take all of your sins and remove them as far as the east is from the west.

As Isaiah says, he throws it behind his back and he sees them no more. It's in the depths of the sea. That's the requirement. So what ends up happening is, in a relationship, one will not offer forgiveness if one feels as if they have the upper hand.

So I'm not going to offer it, even if someone asks for it. Why would I ever forgive you because of what you have done for me? You don't deserve forgiveness. You deserve to feel my wrath and my anger. You deserve to sit and think about all that you have done.

You need to feel just how much you've violated me, how much you have hurt me. You cannot repay. If you give me enough money, if you give me enough fame or wealth or whatever you want to give me, you cannot restore the time, emotion, and how you violated me.

And so you do not deserve forgiveness. Therefore, I will not give it to you. This is how we treat people. And then you think about the God of the universe. I mean, the way in which we're doing some studying on covenant theology, and we're going to be putting this out soon.

God as King and Creator

And one of the thoughts that helped me think about my relationship with God is that God is the King of the earth. I mean, He's the Creator. He's the Founder. He's the Sustainer. So He's King, and He decides how you relate to Him in this King relationship.

And the King relationship is, you love and serve and worship me. And no one has ever loved and worshiped and served God ever. They've only loved and served and worshiped Him. They have maybe tipped their hat to Him, but that's not what He said.

He said, you are to love, worship, and obey me. And if we think about the constant way our life violates God, God has every right.

No, you're exactly right. No, that our sins against an infinite, eternal, and holy God are so much greater in scope and scale than our sins against one another could ever be. And yeah, if God, like, because my sin against you, John, is not an assault on your holiness, because you don't have any holiness.

You know, my sin against you, John, is not, you didn't create me. You don't have any claim on me the way that God does, in that He made me, and He made the world, and it's all His. And He is completely good and upright and true, and He is the father of lights.

There's no shadow of turning within Him at all, and He is the one against whom we have sinned. And I'm thinking, I'm looking at Psalm 32, and five verses from Psalm 32, I think, beautifully illustrate just our posture before God and this whole forgiveness piece.

David’s Confession and Forgiveness in Psalm 32

David writes these words. It's one of my favorite Psalms. Psalm 32, blessed is the one whose transgression is forgiven, whose sin is covered, blessed is the man against whom the Lord counts no iniquity, not that there isn't any, but that God doesn't count it against him, and in whose spirit there is no deceit, and he's going to explain what he means there.

No deceit, meaning you confess your sin and you acknowledge your sin. Verse three of Psalm 32, for when I kept silent, my bones wasted away through my groaning all day long. For day and night, your hand was heavy upon me, and my strength was dried up as by the heat of summer.

I wasn't confessing my sin. Then he says, I acknowledged my sin to you, and I did not cover my iniquity. I said, I will confess my transgressions to the Lord, and you forgave the iniquity of my sin. Beautiful.

I just, blessed is the man whose sins are forgiven, whose sins are covered, and against whom the Lord does not count any iniquity. This is our great need before God, and this has everything to do with our relationship with other people.

The Need to Feel Our Need of Forgiveness

I'm mindful of a verse, last thing I'll say about this in terms of, you said it before, what is the requirement, to use your word, of God, like if you're going to be forgiven by God, what's the requirement, is that you ask for it?

I agree, and I might even phrase it a different way. It's to see and feel your need of forgiveness, which then would prompt you to ask for forgiveness from God. In a verse from the hymn, come ye sinners poor and needy, it goes this way, let not conscience make you linger, nor of fitness fondly dream.

Fitness before God. All the fitness he requires is to feel your need of him. It's like, man, all the fitness, the only thing I need to do in order to be fit before God and to come to him is to feel my need of Christ and to know that Christ is the only one in whom I can find forgiveness and absolution.

That's our posture before God. We are really guilty. We have blown it. As the day is long, we have blown it. God is gracious and offers forgiveness and absolution through his son.