Psalm 130:1-4
1 Out of the depths I cry to you, O Lord.
2 Lord, hear my voice!
Let your ears be attentive
to my cry for mercy!
3 If you, O Lord, should mark iniquities,
Lord, who could stand?
4 But there is forgiveness with you,
so that you may be feared.
Kallistos Ware points out that while the psalms frequently talk about forgiveness, they do not very clearly talk about the fact that we are called to forgive one another. Jesus teaches us to forgive one another. He teaches us to pray, “Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us.” And he tells Peter that he must forgive the one who sins against him not merely seven times but seventy times seven.
We are touching one of those seemingly clashing chords here. It seems to be unresolvable. A shallow reading would say something like this: the psalms teach vengeance on our enemies while Jesus teaches forgiveness of our enemies. But there is harmony here. It’s deep and beautiful if we have ears to hear. The tension is there and it’s there on purpose. If music didn’t have tension in it, it would be boring. This is what ensures the harmony: we confess that the voice that speaks in the psalms is the same voice Peter heard walking the shores of Galilee.
Sarah Coakley argues that this line in Ps. 130:4 (“But there is forgiveness with you, so that you may be feared”) unearths a deep theological insight: forgiveness is actually impossible. The psalms are testifying to the fact that: only God forgives.
The Fearfulness of Forgiveness
To our ears this line in v. 4 seems odd (“Forgiveness is with you, therefore you are to be feared”). It even seems backwards. What do forgiveness and fearfulness have to do with one another? Surely they are opposites. To forgive someone—to have mercy on them—is not a fearful thing. Imagine neighborhood kids saying, “Watch out for Old Man Jenkins at the end of the street! He forgives people!” Mercy is not something that strikes terror in our hearts. If anything we think the opposite: someone who is merciful and extends forgiveness is wimpy or weak. Forgiving is not fearful behavior. And yet the psalm insists that because God forgives therefore he is to be feared.
Interestingly, the root of the noun “forgiveness” in v. 4 is the Hebrew word salah. Salah is one of the few words that is only properly used of God in the Hebrew Bible. Another example would be the word bara which means “to create.” Only God creates in the sense of bara, and only God forgives in the sense of salah. Jacob Milgrom says that salah is “exclusively a divine gift… Only God can be the subject of salah, never man!”
Only God can forgive, but why should this result in fear?
Sarah Coakley notes that this isn’t the only passage that puts forgiveness and fear together like this. In Solomon’s dedication prayer at the temple he articulates the same movement from forgiveness to fear: “Then hear in heaven your dwelling place, forgive…so that they may fear you…” (1 Kings 8:39–40)
In both Ps. 130 and 1 Kgs. 8 fear is a result of forgiveness, not the other way around. We are more likely to think that if fear and forgiveness are related in any way, the fear would come first—someone is fearful God won’t forgive them—then as a result of their proper fear of God, he forgives them. But these passages say the forgiveness comes first and fear is the result.
In ancient Israel Ps. 130 was one of the texts read aloud on the Day of Atonement (along with the book of Jonah, a story of forgiveness, anger, and fear of the Lord). One ancient rabbinic commentary on the Day of Atonement puts it like this:
“Israel is steeped in sin…but they do repentance and the Lord forgives their sins every year, and renews their heart to fear him” (Exodus Rabbah 1.6).
Rashi, an important medieval rabbi, continues the point: “You have not given the authority to any intermediary to forgive…and therefore no person will trust in the forgiveness of anyone else [but God].”
Most striking to me is the end of the Joseph story. Joseph is reunited with his brothers who had sold him into slavery. They end up begging him for forgiveness. Joseph responds: “Do not be afraid! Am I in the place of God? Even though you intended to do harm for me God intended it for good…” (Gen. 50:19–20)
The fear that comes in forgiveness is the recognition that only God can forgive. This is “the fear of the Lord” which is unlike any other fear.
The Son of Man, Forgiveness, and Fear
The Gospels also bear witness to this theme, but with a surprising twist. In the story of the healing of the paralytic man (Mk 2, Matt 9) Jesus sees the faith of the man’s friends and before anyone says a word he declares the the man’s sins are forgiven. The religious leaders put their finger on the same point: “This man is blaspheming,” they say, “Who can forgive sins but God alone?” Jesus then heals the man in order to show that “the son of man has authority not the earth to forgive sins.” And in Matthew’s account all those standing there were filled with fear.
Again, Sarah Coakley observes, “the more one insists on the uniquely divine characteristic of forgiveness, the higher one’s Christology is pressed.” Who is this Jesus? Yes, the winds and the waves obey him. Yes, he can heal blind eyes and lame legs. These are miracles that other humans have performed in Israel’s history. But no one can forgive sins but God alone. The forgiveness comes and the result is fear.
The “fear of the Lord” in Scripture is a theme with its own complex harmony. To properly fear the Lord means you aren’t afraid of anything—especially death. The fear of the Lord is an odd kind of fear because it is a fear that liberates us from all other fear. As Maximus the Confessor put it, the fear of the Lord is an “expression of the true law of tenderness.”
It’s a fear that creates love and tenderness. This is a complex chord being played by the Spirit in the Scriptures. And then we get this note added to the chord: in the book of Revelation John falls at Jesus’ feet though dead, but Jesus, putting his right hand on John, says “Fear not. I am the first and the last.” Contained within the chord of “the fear of the Lord” is also “Fear not.”
The 19th century Scottish preacher George MacDonald said that the “fear of the Lord” is another way of referring to the fact that God is a consuming fire. The fire of God “is his essential being, his love” but it is a fire that is unlike earthly fire in that the further you get from it, the worse it burns you. Only at a distance does this fire burn, and the closer we get to it the more the burning turns to comfort, and comfort to bliss.
Forgiveness is a fearful thing because only God can forgive. It is the fire of God. Once we’ve caught a glimpse of that fire, initially it fills us with fear. It burns. But the closer we move into the burning heart of God’s forgiveness (which is simply Jesus), the more the “Fear of the Lord” becomes a “Fear not.”
Forgiving as the Lord
Forgiveness is a uniquely divine capability. No one can forgive sins but God alone. And the Gospels show us that Jesus forgives sins because he and the Father are one. So far so good.
And yet, we come to another complex chord played in Scripture. Jesus repeatedly instructs us to forgive. Peter is instructed to forgive not seven times but seventy times seven. Paul tells the Colossians to “Bear with each other and forgive one another if any of you has a grievance against someone. Forgive as the Lord forgave you” (Colossians 3:13).
To forgive someone seventy-seven times is to perfectly, fully, completely forgive—something that is uniquely divine. And Paul isn’t shying away from this either. We are to forgive as the Lord forgives.
In other words, Jesus is giving Peter permission to forgive with God’s own forgiveness. Peter is invited into the divine activity of forgiveness.
In other words, if Jesus is in God and Peter is in Jesus, then Peter has been brought into share the very life of God. Or as Peter himself puts it in 2 Peter 1:4 in Christ we have become “partakers in the divine nature.”
We are the body of Christ, united to our head. Everything that is true of Jesus he makes true for you and for me. If the head says, “Your sins are forgiven” then he is giving his body the ability to say the same.
Think back to the Joseph story. His brothers plead with him for forgiveness and Joseph says, “Am I in the place of God?”
The gospel gives us this surprising and unfathomable truth: You have been united to Jesus Christ. What is true of him becomes true of you. He is loved by God the Father and so are you. He is resurrected from the dead and so will you be. The son of man has the authority on the earth to forgive sins and by grace you have been given the same divine ability to forgive. Forgive as the Lord!
Here’s a final example to make the point. Hanging from the cross Jesus prays: “Father forgive them, they know not what they do.” And so Stephen, filled with the Holy Spirit, can pray the same thing when he is being murdered: “Father, forgive them!”
Stephen speaks up with God’s own voice and declares his murderers forgiven. And of course they have been. Jesus “is the atoning sacrifice for our sins, and not for ours only but also for the sins of the whole world” (1 John 2:2). Stephen can speak up to God with God’s own voice and forgive declare his persecutors forgiven.
Return to Joseph’s question: “Am I in the place of God?” And in Jesus Christ that’s precisely where we find ourselves. Jesus has made your place his place in the incarnation. And so, too, in the resurrection he has made God’s place to be our own.
Forgiveness is impossible. Only God forgives. But this is just what Jesus does. He is the one who makes a way where there is no way. He is the one who makes forgiveness the impossible possibility.
That’s just another way of saying that he’s resurrected from the grave.
