You Are Forgiven

On my way to the hospital at Fort Gordon (a large Army base in Augusta), I passed by the Church of the Atonement, an Episcopal mission near the base. The sign that is usually reserved for worship times had the following message that I snapped with my cell phone:

If you are having trouble reading the sign it says:
We forgive you. Please return the grill.

So many times I would prefer forgiveness and restitution that is not "messy." That is - I would rather be forgiven without having to do anything about it. But that's not how forgiveness works, at least not exactly. In the Old Testament, especially in the Book of Leviticus, whenever a person sins, they are required to make restitution. Eugene Peterson's The Message records this from the sixth chapter of Leviticus:
God spoke to Moses: "When anyone sins by betraying trust with God by deceiving his neighbor regarding something entrusted to him, or by robbing or cheating or threatening him; or if he has found something lost and lies about it and swears falsely regarding any of these sins that people commonly commit—when he sins and is found guilty, he must return what he stole or extorted, restore what was entrusted to him, return the lost thing he found, or anything else about which he swore falsely. He must make full compensation, add twenty percent to it, and hand it over to the owner on the same day he brings his Compensation-Offering. He must present to God as his Compensation-Offering a ram without any defect from the flock, assessed at the value of a Compensation-Offering.

In other words, if you sin against someone, make amends with them and God. Forgiveness is freely given to us, but it is not cheap. Jesus, in his prayer that we repeat each week, asks the Father to forgive us our trespasses and we forgive those who trespass against us. Is our forgiveness conditional on our forgiveness of others?

When we sin, God will forgive us. But God wants us to clean up the mess we've made. God has forgiven us - but we need to return the grill.