Column: Bottled sin remover

By DR. MARK ROSS/Columnist

The bottle on my desk is blue and white with bold red print. It contains 8 oz. of a mysterious liquid, the ingredients of which I can hardly pronounce much less reprint here. I have never seen a product label exactly like this one. It reads “Wash Away Your Sins Hand Cleanser.”
The bottle and its contents was a gift from a comedic family member. The bottom-half of the label says, “For Liars, Cheaters, and Wrong-Doers.” I am glad they were thinking of me. However, that description also covers about everyone else. The advertising continues, “For All 7 Deadly Sins.” Universal in applications and conditions, I keep the bottle on the edge of my desk so that it is convenient for those who come into my office, but neither is it far out of my own reach.
I like the advertising, “Gentle and Nonabrasive.” It is nice to fantasize that eradicating sin can be gentle and nonabrasive. My own experience is that cleaning up my act is always dirty business. Oh, I know that forgiveness ultimately comes from God. However, Paul is not talking to God when, referencing fornication, impurity, passion, evil desire, and greed, he says, “Kill it.” It is hard to kill something like a destructive habit and still be gentle and nonabrasive.
Neither was Paul particularly gentle on himself when he confessed, “The evil things I do not want to do, I do. The good things I do want to do, I do not do. Oh, wretched man that I am.” Most of us understand Paul’s trouble and frustration.
Yet, if washing away our flaws and failures were as easy as a pump bottle fewer of us would identify so readily with Paul’s experience. Even killing habits and behaviors is “easier said, than done.” Something more radical is required.
One can read the New Testament carelessly and come away with the idea that washing away our sins or forgiveness is a forgone conclusion, a finished issue that requires only our acceptance. To put it in a crass manner, “Jesus did it, come and get it.”
There is, of course, an element of truth in that thinking. Grace is God’s willingness to grant us something we do not merit. Freely it is given and freely we receive it. Forgiveness is not the product of good behavior. The matter would end there if it were not for the words of Jesus. He has a habit of throwing a wrench into the works.
On more than one occasion, Jesus directly and indirectly said that forgiveness is reciprocal. I wish he had not said that. “If you forgive others their trespasses, your father will forgive you, but if you do not forgive others, neither will your father forgive your trespasses.” I thought forgiveness was free! To simplify an idea that Dietrich Bonheoffer inferred, “It is free but it is not cheap.”
I think that forgiveness is reciprocal because that is the only proof that we have actually experienced forgiveness rather than simply getting off the hook. To use an old expression, “Are we sorry we did something or simply sorry we were caught?” When we forgive others, it means that we have received grace and forgiveness as a gift and not simply a break. If you want grace, give it.
I am always anxious to receive grace. I am just not nearly as quick in extending it. Maybe someone will come up with, “Grace in a Bottle.” It would not come to us any easier but it sure would be a lot easier to give away.
Dr. Mark Ross is the pastor of Marion Baptist Church. To learn more about MBC, visit http://www.marionbaptistchurchva.com/