Nothing that is worth doing can be achieved in our lifetime; therefore we must be saved by hope. Nothing which is true or beautiful or good makes complete sense in any immediate context of history; therefore we must be saved by faith. Nothing we do, however virtuous, can be accomplished alone; therefore we are saved by love. No virtuous act is quite as virtuous from the standpoint of our friend or foe as it is from our standpoint. Therefore we must be saved by the final form of love, which is forgiveness.
No, I didn’t write that. I wanted you to read it as though it were something just written, so I left off the quotation marks. It’s from page 63 of "THE IRONY OF AMERICAN HISTORY," a 1952 classic by America’s premier public intellectual of the time, Reinhold Niebuhr.
“Christian realism” is the phrase Niebuhr’s name often brings to mind. He had a wry way of saying things, and I remember the irony I could see in the slightly upturned corner of his mouth when he said things like forgiveness sometimes doesn’t work and unforgiveness never works.
He keenly felt that realism in the prayer of Jesus which we Christians call the Lord’s Prayer. Let’s see....
“Our Father...
YOUR kingdom (rule, governing) come
[every human government is defective and deformed];
YOUR will be done on earth as it is in heaven
[the Bible says “God is love,” and less than love is not allowed in heaven and will not work, cannot survive, on earth];
Give us this day our daily bread [worthy religion addresses the needs of the body individual];
And forgive us our sins, as we forgive those who sin against us [worthy religion addresses the needs of the body social, whose health and even existence-against-anarchy depends on forgiveness]....”
As persons-in-community, we human beings must have our needs met:
our physical needs—for short, “bread”
our interpersonal needs—for short, “forgiveness”
our spiritual need—cohesive centering in worship.
Now please notice that in the first paragraph (above), Niebuhr has used, as its spine, the trinity of “Christian virtues”--FAITH, HOPE, and LOVE. The great love-poem, the New Testament’s First Corinthians 13, ends thus: “And now abide these three—faith, hope, and love—and the greatest of these is love.” Why the greatest? Because without it, faith and hope become ashes. And why is forgiveness (as Niebuhr said) “the final form of love”? Because it fulfills Jesus’ command to “Love your enemies.”
Love in the form of forgiveness is so powerful that it overrides morality: forgiveness is immoral. My willingness to forgive is to be so overwhelming that I stand in the way of my enemies’ getting their “just deserts,” “what they got coming to them.” If you think this is not so, you must think that Desmond Tutu’s “Truth and Reconciliation Commission” was and is immoral and insane even though it is world-spectacular confirmation of Jesus’ teaching. (That cigar-chomping Christian statesman, Winston Churchill, put the truth in a way Washington now needs to hear: “You don’t make peace with your friends.”)
The Christian Story shows God modeling forgiveness for us.
“God proves his love for us in that while we were still [impenitent]
sinners, Christ died for us” (Romans 5:8). Of this most basic Christian idea, the immorality is obvious: somebody suffering as a stand-in (“vicar”) for somebody else is unfair to the stand-in and unjust to the escapee from “consequences.”
“Grace” (the Christian word for this) cancels “law.” Love has many forms, but “the final form of love [God’s love and human love] is forgiveness.”
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