Bishop Stewart’s Easter Message 2008

EASTER MESSAGE – Anglican Bishop of Wollongong

Forgiveness

Forgiveness is almost always acknowledged as a good thing. But what is forgiveness and why is it hard to forgive?

We know intuitively it is somehow letting someone off the hook for something they have done.  Here is the best definition that I have heard.  When someone hurts us we have the moral right to hurt back.  You have wronged me therefore in some way I have the right to hurt you back, to punish you whether that be physically or verbally or to gossip about you or whatever.  Essentially it is the moral right to revenge of some sort.  To forgive someone means to refuse to take that moral right, to choose not to hurt them back.  It means the party who is wronged must absorb that pain.  That is why it is easier to ask for forgiveness than to give it because to forgive means to absorb the pain of the wrong done to us.  It costs us to forgive.

When we think about people who have truly wronged us in some way, at the thought of cancelling that debt, on forgiving them of refusing to hold a grudge or hurt them back, we begin to feel that cost of forgiveness.  And yet when someone has forgiven us the wrong that we have done to them there is that great feeling of release from a debt or the joy that forgiveness brings.

That is what Easter is about.  It is about the cost of God’s forgiveness of the wrong that we have done.  We have done wrong before God, the Bible calls it sin, we deserve to be punished.  That God offers to forgive us at great cost.  God came into our world in the person of Jesus and died on a cross to take our penalty for the wrong that we have done.  In this way God is just, the penalty for our wrong is paid but God can also forgive because God himself takes that penalty.

All forgiveness is costly.  If you want to understand how much it cost God to offer us forgiveness look at the cross and Jesus’ terrible death in our place.  As we come to Easter this year it is a reminder of God’s offer of forgiveness.  The price has been paid all we need do is reach out and accept that offer.  If we will trust Jesus’ death and turn around to live with God at the centre of our lives he promises us full, complete and free forgiveness.

The motivation for living as a Christian is not guilt or obligation but gratitude, the joy of understanding free forgiveness and how much it cost.  Hope you can make it to church at Easter time, and we’ll be grateful together.

Alan Stewart
Anglican Bishop of Wollongong