Sin and Forgiveness – for Christian/Muslim Dialogue

In the Bible sin has two dimensions as follows:

1. Sin is a personal offense against God or another person.
2. Sin is a transgression of the law.

The first definition relates directly to East Asian thinking. In the Chinese language, for example, there is originally no word for the Biblical concept of sin, but the concept of personal offense is well understood. The second definition should be most useful in talking with Muslims who think in terms of God’s law or sharia.

One who transgresses the law is unqualified for heaven. No impure thing is permitted; therefore even one sin is a sufficiently disqualifying element. One tiny sin is like a tiny spot of fecal material on a wedding dress or someone accidentally dropping the Holy Book into a mud hole during prayers. The occasion is suddenly ruined. Heaven is a place of absolute purity. God is a consuming fire, and God’s presence itself destroys everything impure.
The Jews had the law of Moses, and they made every effort to keep it, but they failed to fulfill its requirements. The Gentiles also had God’s law. It was written on their hearts. Even without revelation from God, everyone has the law of God written on their heart, but all fail to keep it.

The prophet Jeremiah was one of the most unpopular prophets in the Old Testament. He told the king to surrender to an invading army. The king’s advisors told the king that since God’s holy temple was located in Jerusalem, no foreign army would ever be allowed to come and desecrate the place. Jeremiah responded that God was tired of all the insincere prayers, financial misdealing, sexual immorality, and oppression of the poor, and God was sending the army of infidels and idol worshippers to destroy Jerusalem, because the holy place had been defiled.
Jeremiah then wrote that some day God would take his law, written on stone tablets and given to Moses— God would one day take that law and write it on human hearts. Only when the law had been fully internalized would the people be qualified to enter God’s presence. Not the prayers or the sacrifices or any other pious service would satisfy God until the law was written fully on human hearts.

Jesus is the man who never sinned. He alone is qualified to enter heaven, for he
demonstrated sufficiently the kind of love that shows the law written on his heart.
Law has to do with punishment and it controls behavior by means of fear. Heaven is a place of no fear and no punishments; so in heaven it is essential that love governs rather than fear. In the place where fear does not exist, a person restrained only by fear rather than love would turn heaven into hell. “Perfect love removes fear,” and when love is internalized to the degree that we see in Jesus, then fear disappears while respect for God remains. True respect is never motivated by fear.

It is the perfect love of God revealed in Jesus that governs heaven, and Jesus displayed that love by dying for us. Only the sacrifice of his own life could fully demonstrate the quality of love that God has for us, a love that overcomes all our shame of failure and fear of possible disapproval. Those who love Jesus are known by their love even for their enemies. If anyone does not love his or her fellows, that person does not love God or know God.

God forgives our sin when the offense of sin has been removed from our hearts. Since
Jesus was the only human in history without sin, God made him the model for all to copy. When we surrender our lives to Jesus, in that very act we submit to God. If the Holy Spirit of Jesus is allowed to enter and rule the place of our deepest affections, he brings God’s law with him and writes it on our hearts. This is a mystery only God understands, but which becomes real to us when we accept by faith the truth that God is both willing and able to forgive us and change us because of Jesus. Then we will have no fear of offending God when we see him.