Recently, my wife, Tricia and
I watched and enjoyed two movie versions of the interesting and informative,
nineteenth century novel “The Scarlet Letter” which was written by American
author Nathaniel Hawthorne. I read the novel
last year and I would highly recommend it to virtually all age groups from
teenage up.
In this article, I would like
to link this story with the Feast of Unleavened Bread and to focus on some of
the good, strong lessons we can learn from them both.
But first, let me ask: What
is pictured by the seventh and last Day of Unleavened Bread which, unfairly
perhaps, tends to be somewhat overshadowed by the busy-ness of the pre-Passover
season, the Passover itself, the Night to be Much Observed, and the First Day
of Unleavened Bread? We think of the
number seven in the Bible as being the number of spiritual perfection and
completion. We are taught by God that,
before and during this season, we are to think a lot about sin. So, on the Last Day of Unleavened Bread we
have been traditionally led to think of:
These are all very good
topics to focus on when we celebrate this special day each year. But there are some others which I would like
to home in upon in this article:
Adultery and fornication
The story of “The Scarlet
Letter” – thought to have been based upon
actual events, the details of which Hawthorne had unearthed in some dusty old
records – is set in seventeenth century
New England, where a young woman by the name of Hester Prynne is publicly
tried, pilloried, shamed and imprisoned by a Puritan court for her sin and
crime of adultery. Hester has an
additional penalty inflicted upon her, however as she is condemned to wear a
large embroidered, red letter “A” on the front of her dress whenever she
ventures out in public. The letter “A,”
of course, stands for “Adulteress.” This
additional, continuing punishment is meant to shame her perpetually and to
frighten others into avoiding committing this same sin.
Nowhere in his book does
But how does this story apply
to God’s church today? We do not live in
seventeenth century Puritan America. We
live in the bustling twenty-first century, and today’s immoral world generally
cares little about the twin sins of adultery and fornication. Still, if a woman has a baby out of wedlock,
for the few who do care, these
particular sins carry some obvious, built-in penalties and shame.
A few weeks ago, the parents
and the young people of our
Despite their many dangers,
adultery and fornication are fundamentally no worse than any other sin any of
us might commit. With the evidence of
the young mother’s expanded waistline and the eventual, resultant infant, the
results are just more obvious than most others!
These built-in “signs” negate the need for the mother of a child born
out of wedlock to have to endure the added shame of wearing a large, red letter
“A” or “F” on her bosom.
Again, the sins of a fornicator
or an adulteress and her partner – the adulterer – are really no worse than any
other sin; for example, the sins of gossip or lack of mercy. We may not have committed the sins of
adultery or fornication (or we may not think
we have), but how would we like to be forced to wear the letter “G” because we
habitually gossip? Or the letter “M”
because we lack true Christian mercy and are thus branded as “Merciless”?
But such sins are small
compared with immorality, are they not?
No, they are not! To God there is
no such thing as a “small sin,” in the same way as there is no such thing as a
“white lie.” Sin is sin! And every single sin has contributed to the
death of Jesus Christ. Yes, every sin,
whether it be pre-marital or extra-marital sexual activity, mass murder, lack
of mercy, or a seemingly harmless gossip session.
All done it?
At this point I would like to
emphasize that it is not my wish to pick on the sins of adultery and
fornication specifically, but just to use them as cases in point.
Some time ago, I was talking
with the mother of a young man who had sired a child out of wedlock. Nine months of pregnancy and a cute new baby
made it obvious to everyone that he and his girlfriend had committed the sin of
fornication.
During our conversation, I
was shocked by one observation from the young man’s mother. I do not know whether it was just a
side-comment or whether she had thought her words out in advance, but, after
telling me of the pregnancy, she said, almost as an aside, “Yes. But we’ve all done it, haven’t we?”
My first astonished reaction
was to answer with a resounding, “No! We
have not all done it! We have not all had pre-marital sex! We have not all fathered or borne what used
to be termed ‘illegitimate children’!”
Despite my amazement, and
trying hard to exercise diplomacy, I merely answered her comment with a neutral
clearing of the throat. However, I kept
this new grandmother’s observation in my heart and I thought very much about it
during the following months. As I
explored my thoughts on her comment, I began to remember Jesus’ admonitions,
and I eventually came to realize how right the young man’s mother was and how
wrong and how self-righteous I had been:
You
have heard that it was said to those of old, ‘You shall not commit
adultery.’ But I say to you that whoever
looks at a woman to lust for her has already committed adultery with her in his
heart. (Matthew 5:27-28)
What mature human being –
except Jesus Himself, of course – has never lusted after a member of opposite
sex? Even if only a
little?
What? Only a little? Just a little? Have we not already established that, to God,
there are no little sins? We know very
well, by the arrival of the Last Day of Unleavened Bread each year, that even a
little leaven leavens the whole lump (I Corinthians 5:6; Galatians 5:9).
Cast the first stone!
One of the best-known
scriptural examples of sexual immorality is the one recorded in John chapter
8:
But
Jesus went to the
Did you ever wonder what
Jesus was writing on the ground?… In
the dust?
Then
those who heard it, being convicted by their conscience, went out one by one,
beginning with the oldest even to the last.
And Jesus was left alone, and the woman standing in the midst. When Jesus had raised Himself up and saw no
one but the woman, He said to her, "Woman, where are those accusers of
yours? Has no one condemned
you?" She said, "No one,
Lord." And Jesus said to her,
"Neither do I condemn you; go and sin no more." (Verses
Just like Hester Prynne’s Puritan magistrates in “The Scarlet Letter,” these
scribes and Pharisees were exposed by Jesus as merciless, self-appointed,
self-righteous judges.
Yes, these scribes and
Pharisees surely were self-righteous.
But were they really righteous? Truly righteous?
Jesus knew they were not. And they knew they were not!
Again, what did Jesus write
in dust with His finger? We do not know
for sure, of course. But we may
speculate. Was He perhaps jotting down
times? Dates? Names? Places?
Of the woman’s accusers’ sins, perhaps? Perhaps sexual sins? Possibly of encounters with
this very same woman?
Did you ever ask yourself:
How did this woman’s accusers know exactly where and when to catch her in
adultery? And what
about her partner? Why did he get
off so lightly? If they caught her,
surely they must have caught him at
the same time. So why was
he not also dragged into the temple, and before Jesus? Was the adulterer somehow not as guilty as
the adulteress? Was his sin somehow not
as great as hers? Perhaps he was a crony
of the scribes and Pharisees. Perhaps
the whole episode was staged, as might be implied by verse 6, in their efforts
to trap Jesus:
This
they said, testing Him, that they might have something of which to accuse Him.
Again, please do not
misunderstand me. Let me repeat that I
am not picking on those who have fathered or borne children out of
wedlock. But neither am
I condoning adultery or fornication.
There is no doubt at all that both activities are sins. Like the author of “The Scarlet Letter,”
Jesus Christ – the same YHWH who engraved the seventh commandment into the
tablet of stone, possibly with the same finger with which He wrote in the dust
of the temple grounds – does not condone sins of fornication or adultery. He thunders out His command to all
generations:
Thou
shalt not commit adultery. (Exodus
20:14)
Although Jesus exercised
great compassion on the adulteress that day, He also warned her very firmly,
“Go, and sin no more!”
What about fornication –
pre-marital sexual activity? Is it any
less sinful than adultery? Not at
all! Through the apostle Paul, God repeatedly
commands His people – perhaps especially the young people of His church:
·
Flee
fornication! (I Corinthians 6:18)
·
Avoid
fornication! (I Corinthians 7:2)
·
Let fornication
not be once named among you! (Ephesians
5:3)
·
Abstain from
fornication! (I Thessalonians 4:3)
After reviewing these well-known
scriptures and others, and after thinking and praying much more about these
things, I was led to the conclusion that that young man’s mother was
right! We have all done it! We never
talk about it. We do not like to even think about it. But it is nonetheless true! From God’s point of view, if we have lusted,
then we have thought about it. And if we
have thought about it, then we have as good as done it! All of us!
I will admit that I have done it!
And if you are honest with yourself, you too will admit it – not to me
or to anyone else, but between you and God – that you have done it too. Hopefully, we have all repented of our sins
of fornication and adultery, whether committed in body or in thought.
Sins made public?
Referring back to “The
Scarlet Letter,” it is probable that the Puritans took their authority for
their harsh stance on the public shaming of adulterers from scriptures such as
these:
For
God will bring every work into judgment, including every secret thing, whether
good or evil. (Ecclesiastes 12:14)
Therefore
do not fear them. For there is nothing
covered that will not be revealed, and hidden that will not be known. (Matthew 10:26)
For
there is nothing hidden which will not be revealed, nor has anything been kept
secret but that it should come to light.
(Mark
For
there is nothing covered that will not be revealed, nor hidden that will not be
known. Therefore whatever you have
spoken in the dark will be heard in the light, and what you have spoken in the
ear in inner rooms will be proclaimed on the housetops. (Luke 12:2-3)
Therefore
judge nothing before the time, until the Lord comes, who will both bring to
light the hidden things of darkness and reveal the counsels of the hearts. (I Corinthians 4:5)
More questions come to mind
as a result of reading these well-known scriptures. Some of the questions are quite
disturbing. For example:
The answer to the first two
questions is quite obvious: No! And the
answer to the last of the three questions is both simple and comforting: God will not reveal what He has forgiven,
and He cannot reveal what He has
forgotten. Yes, forgotten! Let us explore this concept a little.
On at least two occasions,
David, in a repentant attitude, begged God to forget his sins:
Do not remember the sins of my youth, nor my transgressions; according to Your mercy remember me, for Your goodness’ sake, O LORD. (Psalms 25:7)
Have
mercy upon me, O God, according to Your
lovingkindness; according to the multitude of Your tender mercies, blot out my
transgressions… Hide Your face from my sins, and blot
out all my iniquities. (Psalm 51: 1, 9)
Were David’s earnest requests
mere wishful thinking? Not at all. Also, is
God like those cruel, unforgiving scribes, Pharisees and Puritans we have been
discussing? No. Of course He is not. We well know that He is infinitely forgiving,
loving and merciful. But…
But He does require
repentance. He wants – no, He demands –
of His children a real, sincere change of direction. Then He will forgive us:
Wash
yourselves, make yourselves clean; put away the evil of your doings from before
My eyes. Cease
to do evil, learn to do good; seek justice, rebuke the oppressor; defend the
fatherless, plead for the widow. “Come now,
and let us reason together," says the LORD,
"Though your sins are like scarlet, they shall be as white as snow; though
they are red like crimson, they shall be as wool. (Isaiah 1:16-18)
In the same way as we human
parents will happily forgive an errant child if he or she shows real fruits of
change, if we will truly repent, then God will gladly forgive our sins, and
will even forget them. Though our former
sins were glaring like letters and words boldly written in brilliant red ink on
a white page, upon our sincere repentance, the shed blood of Jesus Christ blots
out and completely covers them. Those words, symbolically written in scarlet
ink, which detail our sins and our guilt, then become like invisible ink which
is designed to turn white and to totally disappear:
I,
even I, am He who blots out your transgressions for My
own sake; and I will not remember your sins.
(Isaiah 43:25)
“No more shall every man teach his neighbor, and every man his brother, saying,
‘Know the LORD,’ for they all shall know Me, from the
least of them to the greatest of them,” says the LORD. “For I will forgive
their iniquity, and their sin I will remember no more.” (Jeremiah 31:34)
For I will be merciful to their unrighteousness, and their sins and their
lawless deeds I will remember no more.
(Hebrews 8:12)
Their sins and their lawless deeds I will remember no more. (Hebrews 10:17)
Because of our sins, we are
all guilty of the death of our Elder Brother – the Son of God. But our loving Father tells us again and again
that if we will repent of our sins, He is so very willing to forgive them. Yes, and even to forget them! To totally blot them out of His perfect
memory, just as though we had never committed them!
Have you ever erased a
favourite audio tape and wished that you had not? You fast-forward through the tape in the
desperate hope that its contents are still somehow there. But all you hear is total silence! The tape is blank! Or you computer users, have you ever erased
an important file by mistake and you have not able to retrieve it? You search and search in the vain hope that
your file is still hiding somewhere on your hard disk. But alas, no!
Even ‘Norton Utilities’ will not bring it back. It is gone forever! These two common illustrations picture how
totally and completely God is willing to forgive and forget the sins of His
children, if and when we sincerely repent.
Yes. When God decides to forgive and forget our
sins, they are completely gone out of
His perfect memory. But He did not lose
them by some mistake. He forced them out
of His memory. He erased them. On purpose!
Leave it behind
To a certain degree, we are
to emulate God in His forgetting of our sins.
If you have sincerely repented of a sin, you should not keep dragging it
back up and beating yourself up over it.
When God has forgiven and forgotten it, so should you – but with a
certain qualification, which we will come to presently.
As mentioned earlier, one of the lessons of the Last Day of Unleavened Bread is
that we must come out of sin completely. We believe that the ancient Israelites
marched through the
No. They did not.
The response of so many of them to every trial and difficulty was a
vocal, burning desire to go back to
Then
it came to pass, when Pharaoh had let the people go, that God did not lead them
by way of the land of the
We see here that God knew in advance of the tests He planned to put them
through that they would react this way.
Then
they said to Moses, "Because there were no graves in
And
the children of
As slaves in
And the people thirsted there for water, and the people complained against
Moses, and said, “Why is it you have brought us up out of
I have often wondered about the mention of livestock in this and other similar
verses. If the Israelites owned cattle,
sheep and goats, could they really
have suffered from the level of hunger they complained of in other passages,
such as this one in Numbers 11:4-6?:
Now
the mixed multitude who were among them yielded to
intense craving; so the children of
Here we read of another
example of those perverted Israelite memories!
Notice, as well, how they despised the miraculous manna, as well as the
God who sent it and whom it symbolized (Deuteronomy 8:3; John
Then
you shall say to the people, ‘Consecrate yourselves for tomorrow, and you shall
eat meat; for you have wept in the hearing of the LORD, saying, "Who will
give us meat to eat? For it was well with us in
Again, we see how the
ungrateful Israelites proved to God how much they despised Him.
So
all the congregation lifted up their voices and cried, and the people wept that
night. And all the children of
Our short-sighted,
logic-challenged forebears rejected their true Captain (Hebrews
Then
the children of
This “evil place” as the
Israelites so foolishly and inaccurately described it was Kadesh-Barnea which
means “the holy place in the desert.”
Why was it holy? Because it was
the gathering place – the jumping-off point – for their final entry into the
Promised Land. But because of their
faithless attitudes, God turned this generation of Israelites back from
completion of their goal. Is it not
ironic, seeing that they desired Egypt so much, that God actually sent them
back from Kadesh in that general direction.
Of course, He did not allow them to get all the way to
Then
they journeyed from
What depths of folly could
these people sink to? Did they not
realize that it was their own murmuring that had caused them to remain in the
wilderness? And how could they so openly
loathe the wonderful manna which God miraculously sent them each day – this
“bread” that represented Christ Himself?
And
you complained in your tents, and said, ‘Because the LORD hates us, He has
brought us out of the
These ridiculous accusations are like the totally untruthful and unreasonable
ramblings one might expect of the mentally deranged!
When
you come to the land which the LORD your God is giving you, and possess it and
dwell in it, and say, ‘I will set a king over me like all the nations that are
around me,’ you shall surely set a king over you whom the LORD your God
chooses; one from among your brethren you shall set as king over you; you may
not set a foreigner over you, who is not your brother. But he shall not multiply
horses for himself, nor cause the people to return to
Even after their time of
wandering was over, when they were settled in their new land, God, looking
hundreds of years into the future to the time of their first human king, knew
that that there would still be a strong inclination amongst the Israelites to
want to go back to Egypt. Like a huge
electro-magnet,
It has been said before that
God had no trouble getting the Israelites out of
Are we not the same as our
Israelite forefathers in some respects?
God is very desirous to forgive our sins and to completely forget them
when we repent. He forgets them and puts
them completely in the past. But we keep
dredging them up! We do this in two
different ways. First, we might recall
the sin, allowing ourselves to be re-tempted, to like the idea of that
particular sin again, and then to foolishly re-commit it. Secondly, we might keep dragging up the
memory of some sin, and keep beating ourselves up over it again and again; just
as though God had not forgiven and forgotten it as He promised.
Preventative remembering
All of the things we have discussed so far do not mean that we can take lightly the seriousness of our sins or the greatness of God’s mercy. We must beware, once again, of throwing the baby out with the bath-water! In this regard then, it is healthy for us to keep a basic memory of our former sins in the backs of our minds.
Many will remember the 1970
movie, “Love Story,” a tear-jerker of a film, unfortunately and unnecessarily
laced with bad language. Its famous
sub-title which has survived these thirty-five years surprisingly well
proclaims that, “Love means never having to say you’re sorry.” Although it sounds very nice and so
poetically romantic, this saying is absolute, anti-God rubbish! Love and law go hand in hand. Every time God’s law is broken, a sin is
committed. And whenever sin is
committed, sincere remorse, confession and repentance become necessary.
True, sincere repentance is
the key. But true, sincere repentance is
more than just saying “I’m sorry.” Being
sorry is only one small part of the repentance process. It is only the first necessary step. True and total repentance is a complete turning around and walking 180
degrees away from sin. It is actively,
purposefully, continuously walking in the opposite direction, just like the
Israelites walking through the
This Israelite woman did not
do anything wrong. On the contrary, she
did what was right. Once she recognized
the potential grave danger, she immediately took corrective action. We must do the same. We must recognize danger of spiritual
Emulate God
As we have seen, God is so
willing and eager to forgive and forget our sins; we too should emulate His great
mercy by forgiving and forgetting the sins of our fellows against us. Actually, their sins are not really against
us, are they? Sin is the transgression
of God’s law, not ours!
Before the Passover, we were
commanded to examine ourselves. Self-examination
is just that… self-examination!
This is such an obvious statement, but it is one that we should think
carefully about. Self-examination is not
the examination or accusation of others.
We must beware of pointing our fingers of judgment, and we must
concentrate on our own sins. Allow me to repeat the old, well-worn
illustration that whenever a person points his finger of judgment at others,
there are three other fingers pointing right back at him!
Also, if we self-righteously
point the finger of accusation at our brethren, then we are not imitating our
just and merciful God. Instead, we are
emulating Satan, the accuser of our brethren (Revelation
And
forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors… For if you forgive men their
trespasses, your heavenly Father will also forgive you. But if you do not forgive men their
trespasses, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses. (Matthew 6:12,
14-15)
Not easy
But let us face it; it is not
always so very easy to forgive and forget the sins of one who has done wrong or
harm to us, is it? Especially
if that person has done it repeatedly.
And even more especially if the person is obviously unrepentant.
In cases like this, for the
sake of his (or her) self-preservation, the sufferer who is on the receiving
end of a sin must not be passive. He (or
she) must take some common-sense, practical, corrective action. Depending on the specific case, this
corrective action might have to be quite severe.
For example, what if a man
had a wife like the one Potiphar had?
Now, we cannot know this for sure, but I would think there is a strong
probability that young Joseph was likely not the first handsome, young
underling Mrs. Potiphar had tried take immoral advantage of.
In a case like that one,
imagine how difficult it would be for a man to forgive the repeated sins of an
unrepentant wife like that one. And how
could he forget those sins? Especially
in our day and age with over thirty sexually transmissible diseases to be
concerned about! If he did not wish to
divorce her, he would need to be always alert, keeping his eye on her
constantly to make sure that she was never alone with any handsome young men.
So now, in conclusion, let me
repeat the lessons to be learned from our comparison of “The Scarlet Letter”
and the teaching of God’s Word about the Last Day of Unleavened Bread:
-
God is our Judge;
not men,
-
We must examine
ourselves, and we must do so continually,
-
We must look at
our own sins, and resist judging others,
-
In God’s eyes,
there are no small sins,
-
Every sin is
responsible for the death of our Saviour,
-
If we will
sincerely repent, God will totally forgive and forget our sins,
-
God will not
shame us or expose our repented-of sins at Christ’s return,
-
We must put our
own sins behind us,
-
We must forgive
and forget any wrongs others have done us.
As we leave the Feast of
Unleavened Bread behind us and as we venture out into a new year of God’s
sacred calendar, we can be encouraged by His boundless love, compassion and
mercy.
But in addition, let every
one of us, on an ongoing basis, apply to ourselves our
Saviour’s loving dismissal and admonition: “Go, and sin no more.”
2005.04.30
Side-bar
Did God forget David’s sins?
Upon reading the accompanying
article, some may ask, “What about David?
If God has forgotten his sins, why are they recorded forever in the
scriptures?”
This is a very good
question. Does this mean that there are
some scriptures which contradict each other?
Not at all! Let us review the scriptures
in question. First of all, David’s pleas
for God to forgive and forget his sins:
Do
not remember the sins of my youth, nor my transgressions; according to Your mercy remember me, for Your goodness’ sake, O
LORD. (Psalm 25:7)
Have
mercy upon me, O God, according to Your
lovingkindness; according to the multitude of Your tender mercies, blot out my
transgressions… Hide Your face from my sins, and blot
out all my iniquities. (Psalm 51:1, 9)
Would David even have wasted
his time asking this favour of God, if what he asked were not possible? Asaph, another Psalmist, asks the same
blessing, but upon on all
Oh,
do not remember former iniquities against us!
(Psalm 79:8)
David asks the converse on
the wicked and deceitful enemies of God and His people:
For
the mouth of the wicked and the mouth of the deceitful are opened against me:
they have spoken against me with a lying tongue…. For my love they are my
adversaries: but I give myself unto prayer… Let the iniquity of his fathers be
remembered with the LORD; and let not the sin of his mother be blotted
out. (Psalm 109:2, 4, 14 KJV)
So what is the answer? God certainly does promise to forget all the sins of His people, and yet David’s
sins – and those of Paul, Abraham, Noah, Moses and others – remain recorded for
every generation of mankind to read about.
I believe that the answer is this:
For the majority of His
people, God forgives and forgets our sins immediately upon our repentance. But for now and for good, powerful examples
to His people, God has left some of the sins of David, Paul, etc. recorded in
His Word.
But He will forget their sins at some future time – probably after their
lessons have been fully learnt and are no longer necessary for mankind. This time might be at the time of the end of
the Great White Throne Judgment period when all sin has finally been purged
from the earth and God the Father comes to dwell with His children:
For
behold, I create new heavens and a new earth; and the former shall not be
remembered or come to mind. (Isaiah
65:17)
It is my own conjecture that,
at that time, God will cause Himself and all others to forget these
things. Does God really have this kind
of power?
It is logical that, if God
really does have the power to force Himself to forget our sins, then it should
be no problem for Him to oblige His children to do so. God has ultimate, total power over our minds,
memories, recognition and understanding.
This stupendous power is illustrated in the episode of the two disciples
walking with Jesus on the road to Emmaus:
Now
behold, two of them were traveling that same day to a village called Emmaus,
which was seven miles from
First, their eyes were
restrained so that they did not know Him.
Later, their eyes were opened so that they knew Him. Who restrained then opened their eyes? Who else but God Himself?
So, again: Did God forget
David’s sins? The probable answer is
“No, not yet.” But He did forgive them
and He will totally forget them in
the future.