Tag Archives: forgiveness

Closer to Each Other (Ephesians 4:25-32)

Posted on November 26, 2025 by salooper57

In the Bible, the Holy Spirit is especially concerned with/connected to/impacted by how a person speaks. If a Christian is unaware of the Holy Spirit in her life, the first thing she should do is check on what kind of speech is coming out of her mouth. Continue reading →

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Become Your True Self (Pt. 3: Put on a New Self)

Posted on November 19, 2025 by salooper57

Humans were designed this way. They were made with the capacity to transform into something the Marvel Cinematic Universe never imagined, something that can be astonishingly good and beautiful or hideously bad and ugly. Continue reading →

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Can Erika Kirk Really Forgive Charlie’s Killer?

Posted on September 27, 2025 by salooper57

Forgiveness never happens by accident. It is always a choice—usually a choice that goes against the grain of our feelings. If we put off forgiveness until we feel like it, we will never forgive. We must make a choice to forgive, and we must act on it. Continue reading →

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I Would Have Given You Even More: David and Bathsheba

Posted on September 12, 2021 by salooper57

What might that phrase, “I would have given you even more,” include? What did David miss out on that would have been his? What joys, what adventures, what honors, what insights and raptures might have been David’s, had he not forfeited them by his disastrous choices?

Look at what God says he had given David. An anointing: He anointed him king when he was still a teenager and an unknown. Deliverance: he delivered him from ruin and death at the hands of Saul. Authority: He had given him his master’s house with all its symbols of power. People: He had given him Israel and Judah: their admiration and love, as well as their obedience and submission.

What about us? Has God given us anything? Continue reading →

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Party at My House: How Jesus Thinks of God

Posted on September 3, 2021 by salooper57

One day I met a couple who both had AIDS and had several children at home with the disease. This was in the early to mid-80s. I visited them at their home, and they told me about how people in the pharmacy that week had turned and almost ran the other way when they saw them. They told me how people at work didn’t want anything to do with them. Everyone was afraid that they would give them the virus.

That’s when they asked me if I wanted a cup of coffee, and offered me an old stained, chipped cup. I accepted, but as I sat looking around at their unclean, messy kitchen, I wondered if that cup had even been washed. The idea that the virus might mutate crossed my mind. I drank their coffee, but I wondered if I was putting myself at risk.

We know now there was nothing to worry about, but at the time it seemed like a risky thing to do. Well, in the first century, that’s how people felt about eating and drinking with people who were not Jews, or were not following ritual practices, or who were living sinful lives. Being around them might very well contaminate you. It is hard to overstate how universal and how powerful this idea was. And yet Jesus welcomed these people and whenever they invited him over for a meal, he went.
Continue reading →

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Justice Offers Forgiveness but not Escape

Posted on July 24, 2021 by salooper57

I once called on a mother of two girls who were in our little mission church’s Sunday School. I was nervous about what I had to say. Her daughters were both out of control, disrupting Sunday School classes and even … Continue reading →

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“I Believe in the Forgiveness of Sins”

Posted on April 17, 2021 by salooper57

Many people find the extravagant breadth of Christian forgiveness objectionable. Should even Hitler, if he has expressed “repentance toward God and faith toward our Lord Jesus Christ,” be forgiven? What about the sexual predator? The murderer?

I have had to be clear about this in my own mind. The forgiveness of sins is easy enough to believe when you are sitting in a church pew. It is another matter when you are sitting in a jail cell with a man accused of molesting a two-year-old child or a woman who shot her sleeping husband and then decapitated him so she could be with another man. In such situations, could I honestly say that I believe in the forgiveness of sins?

Yes. I have been able to believe in the forgiveness of sins – even in those cells – because I believe in the God of Jesus. I am, however, in doubt about whether the people I came to see believed. They didn’t stop making excuses long enough for me to find out, but people who believe in the forgiveness of sins make confession, not excuses. Continue reading →

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The Uncommon Politic

Posted on February 14, 2021 by salooper57

According to the political scientist Eiten Hersh, of Tufts University, “politics is for power.” In his book by the same name, Hersh, who self-identifies as a political liberal, complains that Americans have lost sight of this obvious truth. This is especially true of the left who, in recent years, has engaged in what he describes as “political hobbyism … emoting and arguing and debating, almost all of this from behind screens.”

Whether Hersh is right or not depends, it seems to me, on two things: (1) whether power is a means or a goal and (2) what type of power is being considered.

If in politics the use of power is seen as a means to an end and that end is the common good of a people, then the acquisition of power is not only a legitimate pursuit, but also a necessary one. However, power is dangerous even when it is legitimate. And it is dangerous, in part, because it is addictive.

The American Church, particularly its more conservative wing, has suffered from this addiction. In the 1970s and 1980s, under the leadership of the Reverend Jerry Falwell, Sr., conservative Christians began seeking power in both politics and the media. The Moral Majority flexed its muscle to oust liberals from Congress and “The Teletubbies” from the airwaves.

The power conservative Christians wielded grew. Politicians began courting them.
Continue reading →

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The Contrast Society: “See How They Love”

Posted on January 15, 2021 by salooper57

On the night before he was killed, Jesus huddled up with his disciples, told them what was about to happen, and laid out his expectations for them. This is what he said: “My children, I will be with you only … Continue reading →

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Deuteronomy and the Root of Bitterness

Posted on November 25, 2020 by salooper57

When I have preached on Hebrews 12 in the past, I have taken the “root of bitterness” that “grows up and defiles many” to refer to personal bitterness harbored toward another for real or imagined ills that have been done. I have warned people against harboring bitterness and urged them to forgive those who have wronged them.

If a person misses the grace of God (I have said), “there will be a price to pay – or, to be more precise,there will be hell to pay: a bitter root will grow up, a root that springs from the very soil of hell; and it will ’cause trouble and defile many.’”

Many years of pastoral experience have led me to this conclusion, and I believe it is an accurate one. I have seen people’s lives, marriages, relations to children and parents, and mental health destroyed because they harbored bitterness and refused to forgive.

I believe this warning remains true. I further believe it has biblical support. I have begun to doubt, however, that this is the point Hebrews 12:15 is making. Continue reading →

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