Credo: A 12-part series on the creed
Editor's note: This article is the tenth of 12 in a new series on the Creed by Deacon Matthew Newsome. Explore the series
When early 20th-century English writer G.K. Chesterton was asked why he became Catholic, his answer was characteristically pithy: “To get rid of my sins.” While in an essay entitled, “Why I Am a Catholic,” he would articulate many reasons to become Catholic (which he said all amount to one reason: that Catholicism is true), the forgiveness of his sins was perhaps his most personal motivation for conversion.
The good news of Jesus Christ cannot be rightly understood apart from the concept of forgiveness. Through His passion and resurrection, Christ saves us from our sins and from the wages of sin, which is death (cf. Rom 6:23). One of the chief challenges for evangelists today is proclaiming this good news to a population who no longer believes in sin, at least of the personal sort. We have no problem accepting the idea of societal sins, such as racism, environmental exploitation, wars of aggression and unjust distribution of resources, but when it comes to personal morality, the general feeling is “I’m OK, you’re OK.” To each his own! Whatever floats your boat! The one personal sin we do recognize is the sin of judgmentalism, which curiously is found only in others.
Before we can talk about forgiveness in Christ, we need to establish what is being forgiven. Sin is defined in the Catechism as “an offense against reason, truth, and right conscience” and “a failure in genuine love for God and neighbor caused by a perverse attachment to certain goods” (CCC 1849). There are multiple Hebrew words for sin used in Scripture, which may be translated into English as “iniquity,” “trespass” or “to fail.” The Hebrew word “hata” literally means “to miss the mark.”
This provides us with a good visual. Imagine you are an archer shooting at a target. You aim for the center, so anything other than a bullseye is missing the mark. But you can miss by varying degrees. Your arrow may land just a little off-center, missing the mark but still on target. If, on the other hand, you aim your arrow in the complete opposite direction of the target, not only will you miss, but you’re likely to cause serious harm by hitting something (or someone) you shouldn’t! Sin is like this, only the target we are aiming at is love. The bullseye is to “be perfect as your heavenly Father is perfect” (Mt 5:48).
All sin is a failure to love as we ought. When Adam and Eve trusted the serpent’s conniving words more than they trusted their Creator, that was a failure to love the God who made them. When Adam subsequently blamed Eve for his transgression, that was a failure to love his wife. When a man commits adultery that is a clear failure to love, but when he ignores his wife because of a “perverse attachment” to the football game he’s watching, that’s also a failure to love, but to a lesser degree. None of us consistently hits the bullseye of perfect divine love, and so “all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God” (Rom 3:23). This means we all need forgiveness.
But what does forgiveness gain for us? As sin is an offense against love, its negative effects damage our relationships. Serious sin can rupture relationships entirely. Forgiveness is necessary to restore those relationships.
Many erroneously equate forgiveness with the idea of “getting over” emotional harms. It can be hard to reconcile this with Jesus’ command to forgive, and with our need for forgiveness from God. When Jesus speaks about forgiveness in the gospels, he often uses the image of monetary debt. This makes the nature of forgiveness easier for us to understand. If I loan you $100 and you fail to pay it back, you have made me $100 poorer. That unresolved debt now hangs over our relationship like a dark shadow. By forgiving your debt, I accept the loss of $100 and release you from any expectation to pay it back. The act of forgiveness restores the borrower to good standing in the eyes of his debtor. Forgiving non-monetary offenses such as betrayal of trust or other kinds of personal harm works in the same way, even if you can’t put a dollar sign on it. To forgive means accepting the harm and letting go of any claim on repayment for the damage.
So why do we need forgiveness from God? Any time we act unjustly or unlovingly toward our neighbor it is also an offense against God, because we are made in God’s image and God commands us to love one another. Our sin does not harm God in the literal sense – God is perfect. But it does harm our relationship with God by turning our hearts away from His goodness (see CCC 1850). Only God can forgive the debt we owe for disobeying His divine will. This is why when Jesus tells the paralytic man that his sins are forgiven, the scribes accuse Him of blasphemy (Mt 9:3).
The scribes were correct that only God can forgive sins. They were incorrect in their understanding of who Jesus was (and is). Jesus healed the paralytic to show them that “the Son of Man has authority on earth to forgive sins” (Mt 9:6). Jesus bestowed that same authority on the Apostles on the day of the resurrection, telling them, “Receive the Holy Spirit. Whose sins you forgive are forgiven them, and whose sins you retain are retained” (Jn 20:22-23).
The successors of the Apostles today continue to carry out this mission of mercy and forgiveness. We receive God’s forgiveness initially through baptism, which cleanses us of original sin, and subsequently through the sacrament of penance (confession) which reconciles us to the Father any time we repent of sins we have committed after baptism. Repentance means turning away from our sins and turning back to God and His goodness, which is what the Christian faith is all about – “repent and believe in the gospel” (Mk 1:14).
Heaven is eternal union with God, which makes the forgiveness of sins essential to our salvation. As St. Augustine rightly preached, “Were there no forgiveness of sins in the Church, there would be no hope of life to come or eternal liberation. Let us thank God who has given His Church such a gift” (Sermon 213, as quoted in CCC 983).
Deacon Matthew Newsome is the Catholic campus minister at Western Carolina University and the author of “The Devout Life: A Modern Guide to Practical Holiness with St. Francis de Sales,” available from Sophia Institute Press.