A LICENSE TO SHOOT (NOT)

"The gospel is not a license to shoot people." A beloved brother in Christ issued this challenge to me many years ago. It is a challenge that is very difficult to remember in the heat of a Wild West showdown.

How do we use the gospel to "shoot" the people around us?

I use the gospel to justify attacking you personally, with the excuse that I understand God's Word and his purposes better than you do. To use another analogy, I wield right doctrine like a bludgeon, to try to beat some sense into you.

I am not opposed to passionate and animated discussions about matters of faith, but nowhere in Scripture do I read that it is okay to shoot people up or tear people down with my words. When I am engaged in a passionate discussion, or when I am talking about others whose understanding of Scripture is different from mine, do my words, countenance, and body language communicate respect for my fellow Image-bearers?

Yes, we must confront error (and we may get exercised in the process!), but we should endeavor to do so with humility, grace, compassion, and the consciousness that only God can change the hearts of men. When someone confronts me about error in my own life, do I want them to come at me with pistols blazing, like we're engaged in some kind of a Wild West shootout? - or - do I want them to come alongside me as a concerned and loving sister or brother?

It's okay if I mow you down with my words today like I'm firing bullets from the ammo belt of a machine gun; I can ask forgiveness tomorrow. (This is like the fat lady who eats everything she can get her hands on the week before she plans to start a new diet. Been there, done that.)

The thought is, it's okay if I sin against you today - because you made me mad/hurt my feelings/offended me, because I'm having a really bad day, etc. - because I can always ask for your forgiveness tomorrow. Since we're both professing Christians, you have to forgive me, right?, so it'll all be good.

It is true that in Christ, all of my sins are forgiven, the sins I unknowingly commit and the sins I willfully commit, even the sins I have not yet committed! But a right understanding of the gospel never leads to flippancy regarding sin. Rather, the security and freedom that are ours in Christ create in us a desire for personal righteousness and motivate us to put sin to death (Romans 12)!

Because of the magic of the gospel, the bullets I shoot don't cause any real lasting damage: the gospel transforms real bullets - wrong or hurtful things I say about you or do to you - into pretend bullets. If I'm forgiven, it's like those words/actions never happened.

This error (like the one above) springs from a distorted understanding of forgiveness. Scripture commands us to forgive and forget, right? Isn't that what God does with us? Isn't that what we are supposed to do with one another?

In Isaiah 43:25, we read: "I am he who blots out your transgressions for my own sake, and I will not remember your sins." Again, in Jeremiah 31:34, we read: "I will forgive their iniquity, and I will remember their sin no more."

I sit here this morning fully justified by the work of Jesus on my behalf, fully accepted and wonderfully loved by my heavenly Father, absolutely and completely secure - but not because God forgot that I was angry with my children, that I lied to my husband, that I coveted my neighbor's possessions. The truth is: I was angry with my children; I did lie to my husband; I did covet my neighbor's possessions. To pretend otherwise would be a lie. God does not lie. He does not pretend that what is true is suddenly untrue. God is not a God of make-believe.

God has not forgotten, but He has, praise Jesus!, chosen not to remember. More precisely, God has chosen to not call to account those transgressions: He has forgiven my debt, my account is paid in full, and God no longer keeps the ledger of my sins before him. The beauty of forgiveness is not that God forgets my sins (as if the all-knowing, unchanging God could possibly forget anything), but that He does not bring them to remembrance. Forgetting is passive; remembering, "calling to mind" - or intentionally not remembering, not "calling to mind" - is an action. Forgiveness is not a lapse of God's memory, but a purposeful act of his divine will!

Likewise, God's forgiveness does not mean that I am free from any of the consequences of my sin. God does, however, transform those consequences from an expression of his wrath and judgment into tools used by him for my growth in grace and godliness.

In heaven, my beloved Savior bears in his body evidence of my sin and evidence of his payment for my sin. When I stand in glory, I will not look at Jesus's nail-scarred hands and think, "Well, I wonder what caused those scars?" I know now - and I will know then - what caused those scars, and so does my Lord. The gospel does not remove the scars - it transforms them into something beautiful.

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Are your gospel guns smoking? Do you have an itchy trigger finger? Are you like a middle-school kid shooting buffalo on Oregon Trail, tempted to use the gospel as a license to shoot anything that moves, yet denying the consequences?

I encourage you to take my friend's counsel to heart: "The gospel is not a license to shoot people."