Seeking Ruminating Insight - Easter 2014. . .

Hey it’s Easter, what insight could I ruminate over this week?

In resisting the internet, I pull a book from my study shelves. Its an old one, first published in 1927 by a dead guy—he was alive when he wrote it.

H. R. Mackintosh a Scottish scholar, pastor, and theologian in the earlier part of the 20^th century along with others (see if you can recognize his “buddies" in the pix) sought to address “yes but how” biblically reflected responses to life questions in a questioning age.

Mackintosh’s book in my hand is: “The Christian Experience of Forgiveness” (London: Nisbet). I’m reading along in a chapter entitled, “Sin and Guilt” – cool Easter type stuff.

Here’s what I’m reading . . .

“In anyone who knows God as faithfully and unchangeably Redeemer, there is an abiding sense of guilt. Forgiveness does not destroy the knowledge that we are, and have done, evil. That's why the statement that pardon abolishes guilt is not false but it is an abridged one; and as such, a clear expression of the truth that the power of our former guilty sin to banish us from communion with the Father has been taken away. He remembers our sin no more forever, yet we remember it against ourselves; indeed it is more than doubtful whether in any real sense a Christian can ever ‘forgive themselves’ for wrongdoing. . . .”

“. . . Before reconciliation with God the feeling of guilt is purely disabling and saturates the moral life with the consciousness of radical failure. Later as an undertone of felt unworthiness, it now aids in fostering a humility and receptiveness apart from which God cannot be ours.”

Now as I finish reading it (a couple of times over) I’m asking . . .

So, “What’s the good Professor Mackintosh saying?" –

        WRONG QUESTION JCD!! . . .

A better question would be, “What am I seeing?” . . . 

• An abiding sense of guilt is not a feeling of guilt.

• God’s forgiveness enables us to remember the sin that God forgets.

• Forgiveness doesn't deny the existence of evil; by its very action, forgiveness acknowledges evil.

• God forgives us, we don’t forgive Him.

• An understanding of our past sins is not the same as a preoccupation with them.

• Past sins are forensic facts, not foreboding feelings.

• Don’t just seek to get a hold of forgiveness, let forgiveness get a hold of you.

• Under the “gaze of grace” an abiding sense of guilt is not a feeling of guilt.

• Guilt and grace should add up to gratitude.

 JCD remember . . . 

“Reading and ruminating beats reacting, and leads to responding . . .  

so which insight will you chew on?"