When?
“ . . . for I will forgive their iniquity, and their sin I will remember no more.” Jeremiah 31:34 NASB
I will forgive – When does God forgive? You might answer, “At the moment you repent?” That seems correct until we ask, “Did God forgive prior to the death of Yeshua?” Maybe what you meant to say is that now that the crucifixion has taken place, God forgives immediately upon repentance but prior to the cross, He forgave with an eye toward the future crucifixion. In other words, He forgave eschatologically, applying forgiveness in a kind of retroactive way after the future event of the cross. That interpretation allows Jeremiah’s prophecy to be about the future cross event when “I will forgive their iniquity” would become a reality.
There’s just a small problem. The Jeremiah declaration is about the time of the renewed covenant, a time when “they will all know Me, from the least of them to the greatest of them,” when teaching is no longer needed because all men follow Torah from the heart. As far as I can tell, that time has not yet arrived. It will – someday – when the Messiah returns to establish His kingdom on earth. But until then this prophecy is about events that have not yet occurred. And that means that the declaration “I will forgive” has not occurred either. If Jeremiah’s words are about the future coming “new” covenant kingdom, then his words about forgiveness must also be about the future coming forgiveness. That implies that we are all waiting to be forgiven, not for the cross but for the fullness of the kingdom to arrive on earth. You can’t have it both ways. You can’t insist that half the verse is about the coming covenant kingdom but the other half of the verse is about something that has already occurred on the cross.
What’s even more difficult is that this Hebrew verb is in a Qal form. That means it is a kind of present tense. It is also an imperfect. That means it is a continuing action. When God speaks to Jeremiah, His forgiveness is already a reality (as the entire Tanakh affirms) but it is not yet finished. It will go on until all iniquity is forgotten. This statement is true today and it was true at the time Jeremiah declared it. Forgiveness is not postponed until the cross or until the return of the King. It is manifest now, but it will be even more apparent later. This verse does not imply that we are waiting for forgiveness. It implies that forgiveness is now an incomplete act that will finally be finished in the renewed covenant kingdom. Those who see this verse as if it implies God was waiting until the cross in order to forgive simply misunderstand the Hebrew Qal imperfect.
Why do we care about when? We care because the Bible affirms that God has always forgiven, from Genesis to Revelation. The foundation for that forgiveness is the atonement provided by the obedience of the Son. Adam is forgiven on exactly the same basis as you and me. He is forgiven because of Yeshua’s faithfulness. What this means is that there is no separation between the redemptive process of the Tanakh and the writings of the apostles. We all come on the same grounds and for the same reason. That’s why we are children of Abraham.
God forgives – now! As soon as we repent (and if the stories in the gospels are true, sometimes even though we have not repented), God forgives. The action of forgiveness is possible throughout human history because atonement has already been accomplished before the world was created. If you don’t believe this, then you better settle in for a long haul because God tells you in Jeremiah that it won’t actually become reality until the return of the King.
Topical Index: forgive, cross, repentance, Jeremiah 31:34
My, my!
So much that is hidden from us by only reading the English translation.
It seems each TW has enough to chew on for years to come.
My, my!
Lately, I’v been fascinated by having several chaisms (sp?) pointed out in the Tanakh. (For example: Genesis 17:3-17) It is amazing what is there in the Hebrew language but deeply hidden from view in our English translation. The Tanakh is like a flash drive of information. TONS of information compacted in a very rich Hebrew language that needs many, many English words to represent one Hebrew word! And that’s where our English (and others) translations have been lacking in so many ways.
I’m looking forward to this new book as I’m still floundering somewhat fitting all this ‘of late’ stuff together.
“God forgives – now! As soon as we repent (and if the stories in the gospels are true, sometimes even though we have not repented), God forgives.”
Skip, can you give some examples where the gospels say that God forgives even though we have not repented?
In Luke 17:3 I see a relation between forgiving and repentance. “Watch yourselves! If your brother sins, rebuke him. If he repents, forgive him. 17:4 Even if he sins against you seven times in a day, and seven times returns to you saying, ‘I repent,’ you must forgive him.” [NET]
@Rein – maybe it is more that ‘we’ forgive even if not asked (Luke 17:3) because it releases us to walk in the blessings of life and freedom instead of focusing on the offenses (whether real or perceived). At least that’s how I see Luke 17:3-4.
Time. And eternal life.
The Bible is God’s great intervention of both!
As Skip points out, forgiveness has been for all time.
It has been available. It is now available. And it will be
more apparent in the renewed covenant kingdom.
Every step of time (including what happened on the cross) is
working toward completion.
Every single second is precious and vitally important, and each
moment is bursting with God’s pro-activity. What we see as the natural
is actually the supernatural unfolding bit by bit.
God knows we could never see it all, until all is completed.
Including our completion in Him!!!
“For now we see in a mirror, dimly, but then face to face. Now I know in part,
but then I shall know just as I also am known.” 1 Cor 13:12
Okay!This makes far more sense than a turning point in the middle of history for the forgiveness of sins.I am like one of the dicsipels that Yahshua would have said,(are you still so dull)?I have taught that there was no sacrifice for intentional sin,only unintentional sin in the tanahk.And when Yashua died on the cross he covered the intentional sin.I now do not think this happened at the time of the cross,but I am at a loss as to why there was no sacrifice for intentional sin in the ot.
Because there was no need. Grace was already available for intentional sin since the Lamb was slain before the foundation.
Hi Brian, while I don’t think that there’s any “one” answer to this question, here are some considerations that may help you see the larger issue. As Skip (and others) often state, we’re ruled by the paradigms we construct or that have been constructed for us. One of these paradigms is that because a sacrifice for intentional sin isn’t given, there is no forgiveness available for those sins. God through scripture, seems to say otherwise.
Both men of God and great sinners alike seem to have been forgiven, and that without sacrifice on their part, for very great, very intentional sins. David and Bathsheba and Ahab are two examples that come immediately to mind.
That being said; the reasons are, so to speak, up for grabs. However, we can look at the whole of scripture and the heart of God as He reveals Himself and arrive at some “possible” conclusions.
Perhaps one of the reasons is that God understands our propensity to avail ourselves of “cheap grace.” In other words, a sacrifice given for an unintentional sin (once discovered) had the effect of immediate and guaranteed forgiveness and cleansing, whereas, there is no/was no guarantees in regards to intentional sin. God reserves that prerogative based solely on His Judgment and Grace.
I would suggest that the same is true today, look at the narrative in acts, regarding Simon the sorcerer. By every indication he was a true believer, yet Peter addressed him in regards to the sin that he was committing as, “perhaps” you’ll be forgiven, not guaranteed.
I understand that this has vast implications in view of our current religious culture. I’m not trying to divide or cause fear for anyone, just trying to get to the bottom of things.
However, I will say this, one has to wonder that if we (in support of “current” Christian theology) haven’t “turned around” the original intention of God towards His people and the saving of souls in general. By any measure, Grace and Forgiveness as understood currently, if laid alongside the pattern given by God in the “old testament” is contrary, ie; the forgiveness of intentional sins is a prerogative held exclusively by God himself, made available from the foundation of the world, not coerced by human endeavor. If we, as claiming to be God’s people, continue to commit high handed sin and insist that we’re forgiven simply based on the atonement made available to us through Yeshua’s sacrifice, we’ve (attempted) to remove God’s divine prerogative from Himself and placed it on ourselves. I tend to see that as “anti Christ” or, contrary to God.
The big question for us, I suppose, is how do we expect to be blessed by the same God we struggle against by “messing up” His order? He still says to us, “come, let us reason together”…..
I know this is a bit lengthy, (windy 🙂 ) it wasn’t originally intended as so. Please forgive me in consideration of the issue at hand. I hope this gives you something to consider and perhaps come to a more solid conclusion about these things.
YHWH bless you and keep you………
Hey Brian,
It’s complicated. Much more complicated than the usual, “Jesus died on the cross so that I can be forgiven of everything” idea. Here’s a hint. John tells us that the whole cosmos was involved when the Son of Man was lifted up. So, how does the crucifixion affect the last star of the known universe 1 billion light years away? Do you think it has anything to do with “forgiving MY sins”?
Skip, I must make a comment or three about the Hebrew word אֶסְלַח – eslach. You wrote;
Oops – I forgot to close the “blockquote” tag…
Wow. Thanks for this Rodney.
~ The days are coming,” declares the LORD, “when I will make a new covenant with the people of Israel and with the people of Judah ~ (Jeremiah 31.31)
Jeremiah lived B.C. This “new covenant” had not yet happened at the time of this writing.
The epistle of Ephesians was written A.D. (or after the death and resurrection of the Messiah)
~ This is the New Covenant in My blood.. ~ In the same way He took the cup also after supper, saying, “This cup is the new covenant in My blood; do this, as often as you drink it, in remembrance of Me.” ~ (1 Corinthians 11.25)
~ In Him we have redemption through His blood, the forgiveness of sins, in accordance with the riches of God’s grace ~ (Ephesians 1.17)
James exhorts us to ~ draw near unto God.. ~ How is this even possible, since God is holy and we are certainly not? Only one possible answer: “atonement.”
~ But when Simon Peter saw it, he fell down at Jesus’ knees, (a wonderful place to be) saying, “Depart from me, for I am a sinful man, O LORD.” ~ (Luke 5.8) What, or who convinced or convicted him of this?
Did YHWH hear and answer this prayer of David?
~ O LORD, have mercy on me; heal me, for I have sinned against you ~ (Psalm 41:4)
~ If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness ~ (1 John 1.9) When does God forgive and when does He cleanse us? According to His will and in His time.
Here is a very sweet devotional commentary on the “Prayer of the Prodigal.” (let us remember,- it was actually the Father who was “prodigal”- in His grace, forgiveness. and “lavish”love!
http://www.morninglightministries.org/commentary/prodigal-prayer.asp
My question to Skip is to prove his statement that God forgives before repentance. I can’t see this from Scripture. Forgiveness is combined with a restored relationship. This is something I really struggle with. Is forgiveness is a one way street? Do we have to forgive unilaterally or should it be that we have to be ready to forgive in case somebody asks for forgiveness? Should it be a request that is accompanied with repentance, i.e. return to God’s ways?
● Doesn’t Scripture teach that God’s forgiveness is conditional upon repentance?
1Ki 8:35 “When heaven is shut up, and there is no rain, when they do sin against Thee; if they pray toward this place, and confess Thy name, and turn from their sin, when Thou dost afflict them; 36 ** then ** hear Thou in heaven, and forgive the sin of Thy servants, and of Thy people Israel, when Thou teachest them the good way wherein they should walk; and send rain upon Thy land, which Thou hast given to Thy people for an inheritance.”
Jer 36:3 “It may be that the house of Judah will hear all the evil which I purpose to do unto them; that they may ** return every man from his evil way**, and I may forgive their iniquity and their sin.'”
● In Ex 32, God refuses to forgive: Ex 32:33 “And the LORD said unto Moses: ‘Whosoever hath sinned against Me, him will I blot out of My book. 34 And now go, lead the people unto the place of which I have spoken unto thee; behold, Mine angel shall go before thee; nevertheless in the day when I visit, I will visit their sin upon them.’ 35 And the LORD smote the people, because they made the calf, which Aaron made.”
The same in Num 14:19 “Pardon, I pray Thee, the iniquity of this people according unto the greatness of Thy lovingkindness, and according as Thou hast forgiven this people, from Egypt even until now.’ 20 And the LORD said: ‘I have pardoned according to thy word. 21 But in very deed, as I live – and all the earth shall be filled with the glory of the LORD – 22 surely all those men that have seen My glory, and My signs, which I wrought in Egypt and in the wilderness, yet have put Me to proof these ten times, and have not hearkened to My voice; 23 surely they shall not see the land which I swore unto their fathers, neither shall any of them that despised Me see it.”
Deu 29:19 “and it come to pass, when he heareth the words of this curse, that he bless himself in his heart, saying: ‘I shall have peace, though I walk in the stubbornness of my heart – that the watered be swept away with the dry’; 20 the LORD will not be willing to pardon him, but then the anger of the LORD and His jealousy shall be kindled against that man, and all the curse that is written in this book shall lie upon him, and the LORD shall blot out his name from under heaven; 21 and the LORD shall separate him unto evil out of all the tribes of Israel, according to all the curses of the covenant that is written in this book of the law.”
● In Jer 31 forgiving goes to getter with having the Torah written upon once heart.
● In Numbers 15, God forgives because they admit it was an error. Num 15:25 “And the priest shall make atonement for all the congregation of the children of Israel, and they shall be forgiven; ** for it was an error, and they have brought their offering **, an offering made by fire unto the LORD, and their sin-offering before the LORD, for their error.”
● In Exo 34 the LORD is merciful and gracious, long-suffering, and abundant in goodness and truth [vs6] but it is accompanied with the command: “Observe thou that which I am commanding thee this day;” [vs11]
Now I hasten to say that we should be like the father in the parable with the [two] lost son[s]. The father’s heart was cut to pieces when his son basically said: “I wish you were dead, give me my inheritance.” He didn’t get over it, forgave him and moved on, but waited every day to see if his son would return. He relived the pain every day. And I think our prayer should be: “Father, make me like that father ready to forgive”, despite the pain…..
Rein, as Skip has also pointed out on several occasions, forgiveness is also conditional on our willingness to extend forgiveness to others as it has been extended to us. (Ref. the parable of the unforgiving servant).
I think, though, that it is important to separate the concepts of atonement and forgiveness, or the provision for forgiveness (atonement) from the act of forgiveness. which as you point out goes hand in hand with repentance (teshuvah, returning to the right path) and restoration of relationship.
Go back and re-read the last paragraph of today’s TW:
But I did provide you with an example. Yeshua forgives the sins of the man lowered through the roof but that man never even asks for forgiveness nor does he demonstrate repentance. Basically, God can do what He wants to do. Your verses show us the normal and expected pattern, but does that mean God is no longer sovereign?
Furthermore, we have James 5:15. (I have written about this in a TW). According to James, the elders of the assembly offer prayers for healing and the result in the forgiveness of sins along with healing, but there is no indication that the one to be healed must repent. It is the faith of the elders that produces the result.
I grant you that these are unusual (of course, James is giving instructions for every assembly), but even ONE example is sufficient to show that our expectation of repentance may not always be the case. This reminds me of Micah 6:8. What is required of Man? YOu don’t find the word “repentance” there. Of course, it is implied in “walk humbly before the Lord” but it is significant that it is not listed as one of the three.
By the way, your example of Moses leads me to pint out that God forgives the hardheartedness of the people and does not destroy them because of Moses’ faithfulness, not because they repented.
For the record, let me state that I agree with the main point of the TW. God forgave before the coming of Yeshua. And not eschatologically. I am concerned about the individual.
I am not sure if you are referring to a different TW, but the example of the man lowered through the roof is not in this TW. Your argument essentially is that since repentance is not mentioned here, one can conclude that God can forgive without repentance or before repentance because He is sovereign.
I don’t think that this is an issue of sovereignty. Why would we use a text that doesn’t mention repentance to conclude that God will forgive without it?
I agree that this is a problematic passage. When Luke says “seeing their faith” is he referring to the faith of the four man, or does it also include the faithfulness of the sick man?
It just seems to me that one should avoid making theology from a text that is unclear. It looks like an argument from silence to me. I don’t deny God could do this, but nowhere does it specifically state that He does.
I tried to find your TW on James 5:15. I could find one on James 5:16 and one that mentions James 5:14 by Barry Jenkins.
I have listened to most of your audio. You frequently point out that we have to first answer the question what it meant to the people that first heard it. What would they have thought? And I would venture to guess the text I quoted before would have come to mind: 1 King 8: 33-40.
Praying for healing and professing His Name go together. Again, just because James doesn’t mention it, [which is also debatable since in vs 16 he says we need to confess our sins] doesn’t warrant the conclusion repentance is not necessary or that God could/would waive it. The only argument I would find compelling is if one can show from Scripture that God forgives while a person continues living in the sin that is being forgiven by God without the sinner actually showing repentance. All other examples are arguments from silence.
Skip, can you elaborate a little more on why you think that God forgive the people because of Moses’ faithfulness. Is the issue forgiveness or forbearance?
Further to my previous comments, I was studying this passage from Jeremiah 31:31-34 just a week or so ago and looking it a little more carefully than I previously have. Cat, meet pigeons…
The words I’ve enclosed in brackets are not required by the Hebrew text – they’ve been added by translators in an attempt to “improve” the reading in English, but I’m not entirely sure they’re helpful. Firstly, note that the “new” covenant is made with two entities – the House of Israel and the House of Judah. “Gentiles” (pagans, those outside the covenant) need not apply (unless they are adopted into the House of Israel or the House of Judah.
Secondly, the word “new” is the word חֲדָשָֽׁה – chadashah – which means “new of the same type as the old”. Yet, YHVH says that this covenant is “not like the covenant that I made with their fathers…” – more on this in a moment.
Now, this is the verse that got me. The KJV unhelpfully puts a full stop after “house of Israel” but that ignores the natural flow of the Hebrew text. The first word is כִּי – kiy. This is a common conjunction that is usually translated as “because” or “therefore”. It is followed by the masculine demonstrative (definite) pronoun zot, meaning “this one”.
“Therefore, THIS is the covenant that I will make (echrot – there’s another yiqtol qal verb) after those days“, declares YHVH. The “after those days” jumped out at me and I had to ask, “After WHAT days?” The answer, from the context, is the days mentioned in verse 31 (I believe verse 32 should be understood as a parenthetical remark). That is, there will be a new covenant made with the House of Israel and the House of Judah, of the same type as the old, yet not like the previous covenant which they broke, and after those days there will be another covenant made with the House of Israel that is described as “I will put (yes, another qal yiqtol) my Torah within them and on all there hearts I will write it…” (a literal translation from the Hebrew and, yes, another qal yiqtol verb).
That is to say that I think there are two separate covenants being spoken of here in Jeremiah 31:31-34; one is the “renewed” covenant and another following it.
What is different about the “renewed” covenant that makes it “not like the one I made with their fathers”? The covenant made with their fathers was a marriage covenant. The “new, of the same type as the old” covenant I believe was a betrothal covenant (which was made, not at the cross, but at the last supper) – a promise of a marriage to come (which will be the Marriage Supper of The Lamb). I will leave it as an exercise to the reader to study the Hebrew betrothal and wedding customs.
I think the following covenant, described in Jeremiah 31:33-34 and alluded to also in Ezekiel 11:16:20 and Ezekiel 36:22-28, is related to the covenant of Peace as foreshadowed in Numbers 25. Note, though, that it is made only with the House of Israel; the House of Judah is not mentioned, but do not think that they are excluded – this is referring to the whole House of Israel reunited as one flock, with one shepherd (after the return of Messiah).
Could it be that the days that verse 33 refer to are the days mentioned in 29?
The difference than between the “old” and “new” covenant would be that [while being the same] God will be the One who effects/causes the stipulations of the covenant to be fulfilled.
“all their hearts”, not all “there” hearts…bad typo, sorry.
“We care because the Bible affirms that God has always forgiven, from Genesis to Revelation. The foundation for that forgiveness is the atonement provided by the obedience of the Son. Adam is forgiven on exactly the same basis as you and me.”
This simply speaks of a parent’s heart in relation to their children-always ready to forgive, in their hearts even before forgiveness was sought for, and that would be the heart of our ABBA.
“What this means is that there is no separation between the redemptive process of the Tanakh and the writings of the apostles. We all come on the same grounds and for the same reason.” Amein.
This does not appear as obvious for believers who tend to bring a separation between the “OT” and the “NT”, 🙁 claiming that grace came through Yahshua, from the “NT”, whereas grace was there from the very beginning. Grace/chesed comes from ABBA/Yahshua Who are both One and the same.