Transcript

Hello, my siblings in Christ.

I'm Bojan, and I love answering questions.

One of the questions I received got my attention so much that I had to make a separate video on it instantly.

The question is: Why can't God just forgive?

The implication being, why did Christ have to come, become incarnate, suffer, die, rise, ascend, and so on?

Why the sacraments?

Why everything in Christianity?

Why couldn't God just say, You're forgiven, and poof!

Sin disappears in a cloud of stinky smoke?

To explain, let me use an example of a good and a bad hospital.

Let’s say that you’re feeling pretty bad, and you go to a bad hospital for a checkup.

The doctor there says that you’re fine.

You don’t feel fine, but the doctor assures you that you’re just dandy.

Just drink a mint tea or something.

You’re not so sure about this, so you go to the good hospital.

The doctor there runs a couple of tests, and oh my, you require immediate surgery.

Sure, you can postpone, but who can guarantee that you’ll live by the time you get back again?

Immediately, the doctor gets down to business.

You get prepared for the surgery, and tons of stuff gets removed.

You wake up after the anesthetic, and it all hurts like hell, but at least you’re alive.

You have stitches in the most improbable of places.

The nurse takes you to the doctor, barely because your legs are jelly, and you two have a little talk.

“Well, we removed everything,” says he in his thick German accent.

“So I’m fine?”

you ask, feeling relieved.

“Fine?”

he shouts.

“Meine liebe süßes Opfer, you are anything but fine!

You’re just alive.

Your disease requires long therapy.”

You have to change your worldview.

You have to change your diet.

You have to change your lifestyle.

Oh my, poor family!

Yes, change that too.

You will have a regimen of pills.

You will have to eat these veggies.

You need this and that physical activity, lest the worst thing befall thee.

You live, and you live, and you’re alive.

Now, my siblings, which one of these two doctors would you rather go to?

To the second one, of course.

For you see, in this parable, the Church is a hospital, the doctor is Christ, and the operating table—okay, just kidding, we’re not doing that.

But the parable does illustrate why God does not just forgive.

He could, but that would achieve nothing for us.

Why is that so?

First, the question asked, Why doesn't God just forgive?

assumes that sin is nothing more than a moral failing, a breach of a commandment, while sin is that and so much worse.

God is the sole source of our existence, our life, and joy, and when we sin, we get completely cut off from Him.

We lose our color; our life drains away; our bones and flesh rot to fine powder.

Sin isn't just saying no to God; it is quite literally cutting off a branch upon which we sit.

Second, we do not know just how bad sin is.

All our lives, we know nothing better than to cut branches upon which we sit, like the inhabitants of Plato's cave.

All we know is darkness, and as the Nightwish song goes, your mirror is black; only a mere copy stares back at you.

Presently, we are bad copies of our true heavenly originals.

Our liberty isn't made of us throwing away shackles of God's morality, tradition, or whatever have you.

That is a deception.

For one to be truly free, one needs to actually experience light, not fling oneself deeper into the darkness, hoping that some new darkness will make sense or be true.

It is nothing—just the absence of light.

Third, the question presupposes that forgiveness is all we need.

Yes, we need forgiveness, but getting only forgiveness is selling God short.

God gives us not only forgiveness; He gives us His own self.

He does not only bring us back to the tree; He grafts us to the tree.

We lost the grace of our foreparents, but God does not only restore us to that state; He gives us so much more.

For all of that to happen, God has to come down as human to lift us up to His divinity.

Even if Adam and Eve did not sin, Christ would have to come, for only through that can our humanity participate in the divine nature.

The Eucharist isn’t a mere byproduct of our sin; it is a heavenly banquet Adam and Eve would have feasted upon even if they didn’t fall, and we shall feast upon it even in the never-ending day of His glorious kingdom.

For all of this to happen, we need Christ of flesh and among us, not a disembodied voice on Mount Sinai.

To conclude, technically, God could have arranged for things to go like that—only with forgiveness—but it would be to our detriment.

Your sin would go away, but whatever caused you to sin would be alive in you, festering and spreading, and only Christ Himself can stop the contagion.

I hope you liked this video.

In this video, we briefly touched upon why Christ had to come.

In one of the next videos, I will tackle one of the most serious heresies of modern times: the one of penal substitution, the teaching that Christ had to die on the cross in order to take our punishment for sin.

See you there!

Bye!