Thoughts from Mark "Hat" Rackley

Salvation is far fromthe wicked, for they do not seek out your decrees.

• Psalm 119:155

For if you forgive other people when they sin against you, your heavenly Father will also forgive you. But if you do not forgive others their sins, your Father will not forgive your sins.

• Matthew 6:14-15

for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God,

• Romans 3:23

For the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.

• Romans 6:23

I was watching a video from the Gospel Coalition the night before I wrote this.  The person being interviewed was Collin Hansen, who had recently published a book called Where is God in a World with So Much Evil?  In the video, he is asked about the claim of a morality shift in the Twentieth Century based on Adolf Hitler.  You can find it with an easy search.

His point, crediting an English author, was that during World War II, Germany was presented as okay, but they were run by an evil man, Hitler.  The Japanese were basically denigrated as a race.  After all, these two nations were our enemies. The reason for this was that in Europe, we needed to have a strong Germany to be the front line in the looming Cold War.

But what that did was that we so hated Hitler that we have painted him with a brush that left eternal marks.

Mr. Hansen’s premise, that was shared by another author at least, was that we no longer had to live up to the Godly standard in the Bible, which is impossible to maintain.  All we had to do was be better than Hitler.

I have warned against the sin of comparison before.  We are still held to that biblical standard.  Yet, God washes away our sin.  That cleansing does not give us free reign to sin all we want.  The standard still exists, and God within us should give us the desire to achieve that impossible goal.

But I have seen this idea pervade the church.  I just have to be better than the other guy.  And I am surely better than Hitler.

I was teaching a Sunday school class several years ago and the command by Jesus to love our enemies came up.  I talked about how Jesus said after giving us the Lord’s Prayer in the Sermon on the Mount that we will not be forgiven our sins if we do not forgive each other.

That sounds like salvation by works, forgiving others being a work, but it is a natural outpouring of the Holy Spirit.  We will want to forgive them because God indwells our heart.

That is when I was attacked.  There were people that the people in the class could not forgive, and they just KNEW that God would never forgive those bad people either.

I replied, “So, what happens when you get to heaven and Adolf Hitler is your next-door neighbor on one side, Attila the Hun is your next-door neighbor on the other side, and Jeffrey Dahmer was the neighbor across the street?”

They muttered that I was speaking heresy.  They said that was insanity on the face of it.  There is no way that could happen.

I said, “Who says that?  You?  God decides who goes to Heaven.  We do not!  Is it unlikely?  Yes, but with God, nothing is impossible, and if we cannot forgive the Hitlers in our lives, we have two options.  We either do not make it to Heaven or those enemies become our neighbors.  After all, they are held within the baggage that we carry.  We take nothing but the love of Jesus to Heaven and that cannot coexist in a heart that cannot forgive.”

I think a few people decided to move on to another class after that, but when you add this idea of a morality shift.  We do not have any real standard at all.  We are simply good people who are better than Hitler.

But in that thinking, we can never forgive Hitler.

If we forgive Hitler, then there is no evil that we can compare ourselves to be better than.

Frankly, Romans 3:23 says it all.  We have all sinned.

None of us are sinless and that is the standard.

It may be hard and painful, but Corrie ten Boom gives us a methodology.  As the person stretches out a hand after confessing their sin and begging for forgiveness, we pray a simple prayer, “God, I do not feel forgiving.  But I will extend my hand, and I pray that you will provide the feeling.”  And what happened to her was something that tingled every sensor in her body.

Should we forgive the Hitlers in our life?  Yes.  Is it possible?  Maybe not for us, but we too often forget that God is within us, and nothing is impossible for God.

Soli Deo Gloria.  Only to God be the Glory.