We often think that it is only we who must go to God for forgiveness, but there is a sense in which God asks us to forgive Him.
No, it is not that God has sinned, but that He knows how much pain and suffering have come upon the world because of how He set it up to run. There was, of course, no other way the world could function and still accomplish God’s goal of having genuine, free relationships with humanity, but still, God in a sense “feels bad” about the way things have turned out, and as part of accepting responsibility for all the evil and violence in the world, on the cross, God also asks us to forgive Him for what has happened.
Some might object that God does not need to say “I’m sorry” for what He does not actually do.
Yet as humans, we do this all the time. One way to empathize with others who are experiencing great loss and pain is to come along side them in their suffering and say, “I am sorry.” Is their pain your fault? No, of course not. But saying you are sorry for what they are experiencing helps them know that someone notices their pain, cares about what they are going through, and is with them in their suffering.
Nevertheless, saying “I am sorry” is not the same thing as asking “Will you forgive me?” Yet even here, we have all experienced time sin our lives where we have accidentally caused pain in someone else’s life, and though we did not do it intentionally, we nevertheless ask for their forgiveness.
I have three daughters, and my wife and I have taught them that if, in the process of playing with each other, one accidentally hurts another, they should say “I am sorry” and “Please forgive me” even if they did not intend to hurt or harm their sister. Such behavior is expected. Such behavior is godly.
I believe it is on the cross where God shows the entire world that He is sorry for the pain we are experiencing, and He asks forgiveness for His part in this pain. Though He did not cause the pain and suffering (nor was it an accident on His part), because He is the Creator God who made the universe as it is, He accepts responsibility for how things have turned out, says He is sorry for what we are going through, and begs our forgiveness.
Dare we discern anything so outrageous as the idea that here God is making an atonement toward man for all that his desired creation costs man in the making: that he was making love’s amends to all those who feel, and have felt, that they cannot forgive God for all the pains which life has foisted, unwanted, upon them?
… Love in God’s fashion is indeed outrageous and a scandal because it does stoop and condescend to what, by lesser standards, it need not. Perhaps God in his love stands, not only as the bestower of forgiveness, but as the Father who, for the sake of the created who glory is his desire, even stoops to invite the forgiveness he cannot deserve in order to make it one degree easier for man to be drawn into the orbit of love (Elphinstone, Freedom, Suffering, and Love, 147).
God stooped to become one of us, and took our sin upon Himself, so that He might be both the forgiver and the forgiven.
In Jesus, God asks us for forgiveness, so that we, in Jesus, might both bestow forgiveness to God and receive forgiveness from God.
The God who in Christ was reconciling the alienated uncomprehending world to himself is perhaps more ready than his defense counsel to admit responsibility and show that he is sharing the consequences.
… God does know more intimately than any the price his creatures have been paying for his huge adventure of making this universe of accident and freedom and pain as the only environment in which love could one day emerge to receive and delight in and respond to his joyous love. He still believes the outcome will outweigh the immense waste and agony, not least the agony of his seeming indifference and inaction. So, knowing we cannot understand, cannot forgive, what he is doing, God [in Christ] has come among us a fellow-being and fellow-sufferer to make amends and to win back trust (Taylor, The Christlike God, 204-205).
In Christ, God came to say, “I am sorry.”
Do you forgive God?
Do you forgive God for the pain you have experienced?
For the heartache of broken relationships?
For the suffering of sickness and death?
For the sin that rages all around us unchecked and unpunished?
For the loss, the fear, and the anguish of life?
For “not making a better world” (though none better was possible, See Kushner, When Bad Things Happen, 161)?
God has said, “I am sorry. Will you forgive me?” How will you respond?
How can a God who says "Love your enemies" (Matthew 5:44) be the same God who instructs His people in the Old Testament to kill their enemies?
These are the sorts of questions we discuss and (try to) answer in my online discipleship group. Members of the group can also take ALL of my online courses (Valued at over $1000) at no charge. Learn more here: Join the RedeemingGod.com Discipleship Group I can't wait to hear what you have to say, and how we can help you better understand God and learn to live like Him in this world!
Have you read RT Kendall’s “Totally Forgiving God?” To be honest the idea of forgiving God sounded heretical to me but I seem to understand it in contrast to blaming God.
Sorry Jeremy, I understand the angle from a writer’s perspective but their is no truth in this. Ultimately you seem to start with the attention getting headline and then walk it back. I would prefer a straight approach with the empathy aspect of God highlighted in the headline.
Jesus is a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief. He has provided for human suffering by offering His comforting and sanctifying presence in the midst of the evils perpetrated by image bearers against fellow image bearers.
He has shown responsibility for this world by providing redemption for humanity in the person of Jesus Christ both in His gift of salvation and his manifest judgment at the end of the age.
I respect your overall perspective and corrective to modern evangelicalism but ve careful when it confuses your Christology.
Doug,
I actually agree with everything you have written in your comment. You may not know it, but this post is a small part of a much longer series on how to understand the violence of God in the Bible, and in those other posts I have presented ideas quite similar to what you are saying in your comment.
This would be more compelling if there was any word from God that could be mentioned and not just other authors. . . as it is, seems more the product of reasoning. In seeking to understand violence and justify God, is the right step to put words in God’s mouth? He delivers and saves and deserves thanks not forgiveness. Know you’re trying to figure things out but this road doesn’t seem clear.
Point taken. As I continue to write on this series, I will look for ways to explain this same point from Scripture. Thanks for the honest and gracious input.
Yuri Wijting, No, I have not read that book. I like RT Kendall, and should check it out. Thanks!
Brett Blair, You think I walk it back? How so? The full post is pretty clear that God asks for our forgiveness on the cross for all the bad things that have happened to us in His creation.
Hi Jeremy,
i agree with you that God took on full responsibility for the existsnce of evil in his creation (spiritual and trmporal) through the redeeming death and resurection of Jesus – the incarnate word of God – on the cross.
Actually he did it even before creating anything ?
Rev 13:8
1 Pet 1:20
Eph 1:4
would you agree that the earth was created dead and the hovering spirit of God planted the seed of life befor he said “let there be light”?
Hmm. That is a good question. I see your point. Maybe so, since Adam also was created lifeless, and then the breath of life was breathed into him. Though the word “dead” implies “that which was previously alive,” so maybe “dead” isn’t the right word. Lifeless maybe?
Respectfully I submit this as my reason for saying it and sincerely I thought you were intentional in this due to your article’s qualifying ideas:
God has not sinned
No other way for the world to function
God “feels bad” about it
Empathy is coming along side
God experiences our suffering
Saying you’re sorry for their pain
God notices
Cares about what we’re going through
Saying I’m sorry is not the same as saying “Forgive me.”
Imply that God accidently caused us pain
There just seemed to be a whole lot couching of the meaning so as not to be misunderstood. So, if it doesn’t really FULLY mean what it would typically mean (by definition that is) then why assert it in the first place. Why not just use the empathy model?
I do understand you go back to the concept in a strong way at the end: “In Jesus, God asks us for forgiveness, so that we, in Jesus, might both bestow forgiveness to God and receive forgiveness from God.” But I still sense that the qualifiers are hanging all around this cause no one could possibly say, and it be biblically sound (or provable for that matter from a hermeneutical standpoint), that God asks us to forgive him. This is, at best, a literary device, not a biblical concept.
Grace and peace to you.
Jeremy Myers, I am of the opinion that God never held any record of our wrongs and therefore, is really “above” forgiveness. If God is the very one who set EVERYTHING into motion, there must be a “teleological” type of property/element to God’s will. Which would entail us being as much as part of the same, in holding no record of wrong, against our Creator. Such is the nature of love…if love is the total essence of God. What say you?
I see your point, but I meant what I said in the title. The clarifications were exactly for that purpose: to clarify.
But I stand by the title and main point of the post, that God does ask for our forgiveness. I often ask people for forgiveness even though I didn’t sin against them, such as when I unintentionally hurt or harm them.
Herbey there is one great problem with your proposition. Why then the cross? It would be wholly irrelevant. You could make a case for the incarnation from a fellowship standpoint (with your thoughts) but the cross would be rendered meaningless.
God is sorry, is an original thought, but much like someone who feels empathy for the death of a loved one. Very inspirational on my view of God is love Jeremy. God bless you ministry
I hope it is only a typo:
‘In the process of paying with each other”
should be
“In the process of playing with each other”.
Typo, yes! Fixed now. Thanks for pointing it out.
Brett Blair: The cross is not meaningless, to the religious people of that time. That is the religious people who put him there. To them it meant you were “cursed” of God and you should have nothing to do with such a one. And why they were strongly motivated to put him there, as a sign to the public that even God did not approve of him. And that is putting it politely. It was the Apostle Paul who said, that if they had known the “wisdom” of God. Jesus would never have been crucified, in the first place. Much less God having to go against his own wisdom of putting him there.
But a lot of the passages being looked at to justify penal substitution, will boil down to the type of hermeneutic method, being employed. A true blue linguist scholar (and they are rare, but around) who is without bias, knows all our English text bibles are synthetic in the modeling of their interpretations. Juxtaposition of many passages are lost, due to such modeling. And because of it, many passages appear to be for the doctrines of “sin theology” versus the “son theology” passages they are really for. A fluid model versus synthetic models of interpretation will bring out the parental language that is being employed, by most passages. No sane parent would put any son or daughter through such a torturous death! Much less allow any child to volunteer for one, so as to satisfy the whims of a wrathful parent! Jus, say’in. :-
Hey Jeremy. This post is getting some action!
You finished the post with this assertion/question:
“God has said, “I am sorry. Will you forgive me?” How will you respond?”
So far as I can see in any plain reading of the Bible, God is very empathetic toward humanity, but I don’t see him ever assuming a position of guilt and asking for forgiveness. He seems rather to place himself above his creation. That he steps in, in the many ways that he does, including especially in the incarnation, is ‘above and beyond’.
God owes me absolutely nothing. I have no demands on him, apart from my place in the Beloved, which place he grants me because I trust him, and look to him for my ultimate care. At the same time, God is evidently OK with whatever range of emotions I might express towards him. He’s not thin-skinned, and understands if I’m overwhelmed and stand screaming in the wind. But he’s not guilty of anything I need to forgive him of.
Job comes to mind as a guy who God might reasonably (in your line of thinking) ask forgiveness of. I don’t recall that being God’s posture. Not that he didn’t care or didn’t appreciate Job’s suffering, but he didn’t say “Job, that was really rotten of me and I’m so sorry. Please forgive me!”
God has said “I love you so much I have entered this broken creation in order to redeem it so that you can be free to turn from your self-trust, to me. Trust my love and wisdom and purpose and let me live in you and among you to demonstrate myself to all who do not yet trust me. Please hear me and follow me!”
In light of the entire argument I have presented so far, I think that it is precisely on the cross where God asks for forgiveness and pleads “guilty.” But that point takes a lot of writing to get to…
As for Job, I intent to show that saying “Sorry” is almost exactly what God does at the end of Job. Stay tuned!
hereby I can read the NT in its original language. It still focuses on the substitutionary death of Christ? you are inventing ideas to support your claims that have no bases in fact. where’s this parental translation? Where can I buy it. What group of theologians supports it and translates it that way from Greek?
Substitutionary Death is very true, if it is like a marriage. Jesus takes on our identity, and we take on His. It isn’t true, when it’s about God demanding a pound of flesh so He won’t have to vent His anger. If this view of God is true, it’s as if God, as a father, got mad at his son, and He couldn’t just forgive Him, but He had to penally vent His anger onto the cat by kicking the cat across the room. Then God goes, ‘Awwww. That’s better. Now I can forgive you.” In contrast, God tells us forgive people seven times seventy, and love you enemies unconditionally. If God tells us to do that without having to proverbally “kick the cat” then does that make us more loving than God, because we don’t have to “kick the cat” to forgive or love our enemies. No no no, God is love and therefore, substitution cannot be the traditional penal substitutionary idea of St. Anselm and John Calvin, but the propitiation is the wrath of our anger and the wrath of Satan and Demons, and God turning His back on Jesus/Sin as He forsook him, because He had to give him over to us and the demons. This is the view of the early church, Christus Victor, and this is the view of a truly loving God who would free us from our freely-chosen subjection to Satan, sin and death.
@Brett: Dr. Michael W. Jones FB: Kaine Diatheke (Founder of the New Covenant Group) is a linguist of the original languages both of the Old Testament and New Testament. He is more than willing to enlighten people concerning the linguistic side of things. That to include the reconstruction of said languages, that may or may not be possible to do, once the smoke clears. He is a theist who constantly engages atheist in civil discussions about the nature of such matters. And why he himself believes Jesus to be central to all that we believe. He is not trinitarian in belief as myself, but still lays claim to the deity of Christ. As one who was God. But then again, he recently quoted one of his own quotes as follows. “Give yourself permission to be human. The divine has been marketed too perfect to be authentic. So, walk in the reality of your journey, not the ancients. ~michael w. jones 🙂
Sounds like we have an emerging cult.
For sure Brett. We like to call it the “The Cult of Honesty”. That is if one is a truth seeker of where the evidence leads. Especially on the linguistic side of things. 🙂
Sample of Dr. Jones: The Crucifixion Wasn’t Moral Nor Is It The Gospel
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kZLpguMdZlE&list=PLEA4CDB609C8EBECC
Yep. Cult!
Brett. If you believe it so. Dr. Jones takes all who disagree to be on his show and attempt to prove any premise of their choosing, as to why they believe it to be. And he is even humble enough to concede when others are making valid points to their arguments. Cult groups do not allow as such. Just food for thought. Shalom to you and your familia! 🙂
Brett, I know absolutely nothing about this Michael Jones, and so won’t agree or disagree with you. But how does one go about determining what is a “cult”? I have always wondered. More specifically, why would you name that group a cult? Just curious.
WHICH SCRIPTURE SUPPORTS THIS?
Titus,
In case nobody has ever told you, TYPING IN ALL CAPS is bad manners on the internet. It indicates yelling.
Anyway, as to your question, I would say that all Scripture supports this. Especially the revelation of God in Jesus Christ on the cross. So the real question is, “What Scripture does not support this?”
I never heard anything so ridiculous in my life. I am not a theologian but it seems pretty simple: God creates man to fellowship with him. God gives man dominion over a perfect creation and a free will to choose good (God) or evil (Satan). Man commits treason against God by trusting Satan over Him (ie man chooses evil). Therefore man hands dominion of the world over to Satan. God is immeasurably hurt and yet still manages to redeem mankind through Christ’s sacrifice.
And you want God to apologise?!! Man is responsible for every pain, sickness, corruption, imperfection etc in this world. All the hurt I have experienced in this world is because of sin (mine or others). I never blame God. Admittingly, I would like a greater revelation/understanding as to why it all panned out this way but I know it will be revealed to me in the end.
In the meantime I apologise to God continually (repentance) for betraying Him and his precious Son who died for me so that I might gain an undeserved place in God’s eternal kingdom.
“I believe it is on the cross where God shows the entire world that He is sorry for the pain we are experiencing, and He asks forgiveness for His part in this pain.”
Unfortunately, you believe wrong. First, perhaps, understood correctly, God may be “sorry” in the sense of the empathetic solidarity He has with us shown in both the Incarnation and the Cross; in other words, yes, God is “sorry” if you mean heartbroken. That is one definition of “sorry” and this meaning presupposes no wrongdoing requiring forgiveness.
Second, however, in no way is God asking any “forgiveness for His part in the pain.” According to the second definition of “sorry,” and for God to say He’s sorry and seeking forgiveness presupposes wrongdoing, that is, an act of sin against another. God has done mankind no wrong at all; in Him is no sin. The Cross was God’s display of His forgiveness towards us; it was not an appeal for us to forgive Him.
What I’ve stated can be demonstrated as true from numerous explicit and implicit places in Scripture and its whole tenor. What is telling here is that, unlike the other blog postings that I have those far read from you, there are no Scriptural references at all!
We have only ourselves to blame fro our present fallen situation and, in general, for all the sufferings put upon this world beginning with our First Parents. You are, perhaps meaning well, nevertheless, taking your “theology,” too far outside the revelatory bounds of Scripture.
“As for God, his way is perfect; the word of the LORD is tried” ~ 2 Samuel 22:31.
I have to say this series has been challenging and very difficult to think through and I’m grateful to you Jeremy for the reading references and thoughtful input that opens up a debate that has been raised throughout the church era with little resolution and troubles so many of us.
The idea of forgiving God, from my pretty traditional standpoint, is shocking and even unpalatable, but maybe it’s the terminology used rather than the idea that God, in His supreme fairness, sees and openly acknowledges His part and even cause, in our struggles, where a propensity to sin and go astray is our default weakness.
I’ve often secretly thought that’s a bit unfair especially when I hear it preached that I’m born in sin and don’t deserve God’s grace!
The scripture from your thoughts that came to mind was
“God was in Christ reconciling the world to Himself” (2 Cor 5:19)
Reconciliation is two way..irrespective of who is the guiltiest ..it’s about seeing why both parties acted the way they did and forgiving it…maybe this is easier to understand…and ‘forgive’ God in this case, because He’s explained His reasons so graphically in Christ for us.