Pardons and Parables

some thoughts on Jesus and the news

Pardons have been in the news a lot lately. As a theologian, I’ve been thinking on that word: pardon.

We say “pardon me” as a more formal way of saying the Minnesotan phrase “Ope, let me just squeeze right past you.”

We say “pardon my French” when we’re about to use inappropriate language.

In both these cases, the infraction at hand is minor and we are preemptively asking for pardon. We are warning our audience of something coming soon so they are prepared for it.

These amount to “Don’t be angry with me for what I am about to do.” They are addressing the immediate future.

Pardons in the legal sense are addressing the past. It is a legally binding removal of past action and any present or future punishment. Whatever punishments that were legally decided are no more.

When you look at the definition of pardon, it includes all these things. And the two main words associated with pardon in definitions are “forgive” and “excuse.”

I find forgive and excuse to be quite different. To excuse one’s behavior is to say, “well, the behavior was not ideal, but it wasn’t that bad.” Or, “that was bad, yeah, but they can’t help it.” Or, “they should not have done that, but they’re actually a really good person.”

To excuse one’s behavior is quite likely to expect that behavior to happen again. We excuse our own behavior all the time. I cut someone off in traffic because, well, I didn’t see them or I’ve had a long day or whatever. I excuse my temper by telling myself that really, deep down, I am actually quite a gentle person.

To forgive is not to excuse or downplay behavior at all. It is to admit: this was wrong. This was bad. It’s so bad in fact that it cannot be excused and I cannot make up for it. The only way out of it is to be forgiven.

President Trump pardoned around 1500 people who were involved in the riots on January 6, 2021. How are you processing these pardons? As excusing? As forgiving? Or something else outside the definition?

As I have been processing these pardons, I was reminded of a parable Jesus tells called the parable of the unforgiving servant. In this story, a King forgives a servant who owes him eleventy billion dollars. All of that debt forgiven just like that. The forgiven servant then goes out and shakes down a fellow servant who owes him a few thousand dollars, getting the fellow servant thrown in prison for not being able to repay the debt.

When the King hears of this, he unforgives the forgiven debt. He unpardons the pardoned man. The King throws him in prison until he pays back the last penny.

All this has made me wonder. Does God pardon us or not? Is that the correct theological word in the English language to describe what is happening in our relationship with God?

Certainly God does not excuse us as we would excuse ourselves. God does forgive us. So in that sense we can say that our sin is pardoned (as many English translations of the Bible do).

But it is a challenging term to use because God has a different relationship to us than those with pardoning power (according to the state) have to us. A future president cannot revoke the pardons President Trump has just issued. Once they’re done. They’re done.

But God is God. He is not at the mercy of some bureaucratic rules. No one comes after God. His Word is Law and Truth and Reality and Gospel. If God chooses to revoke a pardon or forgiveness for whatever reason, He can do that.

But more than that, a president cannot determine reality. A president can legally pardon someone, but they cannot force society to forgive the pardoned person.

God’s word of forgiveness and pardon is absolute. I cannot keep any forgiven person out of paradise when Jesus returns. Their forgiveness is so total that I cannot argue with it. I cannot go through eternal life avoiding someone I think God should have revoked forgiveness from.

So, I would argue, the word pardon is the right word to describe what God does for us in forgiving us right here, right now and releasing us from our past actions and freeing us from any present or future punishments. The problem with the term is that when we give pardoning power to anyone who is not God, they cannot wield it to the degree He does. So a distance is created between what the term can mean in God’s hands vs. anybody else’s hands.

A presidential pardon can only cover one aspect of reality, the legal aspect. It cannot cover the social aspect of forgiveness, nor the internal conscience aspect.

When God says, I forgive you. You are pardoned of your sins. That is reality. Those opposing the reality of forgiveness find themselves opposing God. But also, those who use forgiveness to abuse others will quickly find their forgiveness revoked by the one, true King.

Thanks for reading.

Andy

p.s. Thanks to everyone who has purchased Ten Lies! It’s already on a second printing which means it had a really good opening week. I know there were some shipping delays and some issues with the Kindle version being delayed. Hoping all those are sorted out soon. If you haven’t ordered your copy yet, you can get that here: Ten Lies Satan Loves to Tell.