John the Baptist: “By the Forgiveness of Their Sins”

June 24, 2007

Luke 1.57-80

Our gospel lesson this morning includes the canticle known as “Benedictus,” the beautiful song of praise sung by Zechariah after the birth of his son John—the one, of course, who will be known to the world as “John the Baptist,” the forerunner of Christ. This is a passage that has for centuries been associated with the liturgy of Morning Prayer, and it is one that has been a regular part of my morning prayers for several years now. Singing it every morning, I’ve grown to love these words. I suspect the reason for that connection to “morning” comes near the end of the passage, where Zechariah sings that “the dawn from on high shall break upon us to give light to those who sit in darkness.”

But today I find myself drawn to the verse before that: this child, Zechariah sings, will “give his people knowledge of salvation by the forgiveness of their sins.” To me that is the heart of the song, and really the heart of our faith. So I’d like to spend a few minutes trying to unpack just what this means.

First, “knowledge of salvation.” This is a little misleading, because we usually think of “knowledge” as an intellectual thing. In the Bible, however, “knowledge” is much more comprehensive. It refers, we might say, as much to the heart as to the mind. We have a sense of that distinction today—sometimes people talk of “heart knowledge” as opposed to “head knowledge.” We even use the word with regard to relationships: “I know her very well,” we say, and by that we don’t really mean that we know all the facts and figures, the birth date, height and weight of the person, but we mean we know her—we have heart knowledge, we have a relationship with her. So when Zechariah speaks of “knowledge of salvation,” he’s not just advocating memorizing the catechism! He means that “salvation” is something that can be deeply known, experienced in a personal and intimate way, in the heart.

Of course that leads to the question, “What is salvation?” Books have been written about this! In a nutshell, there are two different sides to the coin. “Salvation” in the Bible can mean rescue, deliverance from some danger or evil. Earlier in this passage, Zechariah speaks of being “rescued from the hands of our enemies.” He no doubt has in mind the enemies faced by ancient Israel, from Philistines to Babylonians to Romans. But as we read it in a Christian context, we are thinking of other enemies, spiritual ones—the ones Luther calls “sin, death, and the devil,” or sometimes “the devil, the world, and my sinful self.” So “salvation” is speaking being set free from bondage to sin and death, from all the forces of evil that hold us human beings captive.

But there’s another sense of “salvation” as well. The word actually means something like “health” or “wholeness.” To “know salvation” is to be a whole person, a healthy person. It’s still about being free from sin, of course, but it is picturing sin not so much as a physical enemy but as a sickness. To “know salvation” is to be healed from the sin that infects us like a disease.

But there’s more. Zechariah sings about “knowledge of salvation by the forgiveness of their sins.” Ah, now here’s the heart of it! For Zechariah, the enemy is sin—whether you think about it as an antagonist against which you battle, or as a sickness with which you struggle. Salvation—freedom, rescue, health, wholeness, however you picture it—salvation comes by the forgiveness of our sins.

Of course “sin” is a controversial topic in today’s world—always has been, I suppose, but today we are particularly reluctant or resistant to talking about “sin.” It seems like such a negative concept. That’s partly the fault of the church, which has often equated sin with drinking and gambling and, of course, sex. That rather superficial view can keep us from really coming to terms with the depth of sin in our own life—sin, which is at the heart of it, disobedience to God, and putting ourselves ahead of just about anything else.

We begin our liturgy each week with what we call “confession and forgiveness,” or sometimes “confession and absolution.” I think confession is a really good thing. It’s “good for the soul,” the old adage has it—and it certainly can be that. I’ve mentioned before that part of my own spiritual discipline is private confession; I regularly take the opportunity to confess my sins privately to another pastor, and to hear from his lips the words of absolution. Confession is a good thing.

And yet notice that Zechariah doesn’t speak here of confession, but of forgiveness. I think we often talk about confession as if the real point of it all is to wallow in your guilt. I recently came upon a web site sponsored by a church in Florida—a Baptist church, if I’m not mistaken. It’s called “Iscrewedup.org,” and what they invite you to do is to post your confession—anonymously, so no one knows who it is. Dozens of people have posted, sometimes in great detail, the sins of which they are ashamed. It makes for some fascinating and disturbing reading, and perhaps it helps somebody.

But what is missing is absolution, forgiveness. These people bare their souls on the internet, and there is no process for saying to them, “Your sins are forgiven.” That’s the whole point of confession, you know—whether it is private confession to a pastor, or the prayer of confession at the beginning of the liturgy, or the prayer of confession you make in your own heart, the point of it is receive “knowledge of salvation by the forgiveness of your sins.” The early Lutherans, you know, continued the practice of confession, but they most often called it “Holy Absolution.” In our liturgy, we call it “Confession and Forgiveness” or “Confession and Absolution.” The confession of sins, you see, is nothing in and of itself, unless it brings you “knowledge of salvation by the forgiveness of your sins.”

John Wesley, the founder of the Methodist movement, described what is often called his “conversion” in very touching and beautiful terms. He was the son of a clergyman, had been raised and educated in the church, was himself ordained—but the decisive spiritual moment for him came when, he said, he found his “heart strangely warmed” and he suddenly knew—heart knowledge, you see, not just head knowledge—he knew that Christ had, in his words, “taken away my sins, even mine, and saved me from the law of sin and death.”

Well, it’s not unlike Luther’s words in the Catechism on the second article of the creed: “I believe that Jesus Christ is my Lord. At great cost he has saved and redeemed me, and delivered me from sin, death, and the devil.” It’s about what Christ has done for me—for the rest of humankind too, of course, but above all for me. It’s ironic that this decisive moment for Wesley came while listening to someone reading from the writings of Martin Luther! I think Luther would have been thrilled that Wesley had this experience, this “knowledge of salvation by the forgiveness of his sins.”

But I also think Luther would want to say to him, “It isn’t a once and for all thing, you know! We need continually, day after day, to hear those words, to have that sense, that heart knowledge that I am forgiven.” And so we hear them, again and again. We hear them in the words of absolution: “I declare to you the entire forgiveness of all your sins.” We hear them in the words of Scripture, as in Zechariah’s canticle, or in so many other wonderful passages. We hear them as we come to the table week by week: “The body of Christ, given for you; the blood of Christ, shed for you.” It’s all about forgiveness, you see, all of it, all of it.

We are forgiven “by the tender mercy of our God.” And when we hear those blessed words, when we take them to heart, then indeed the “dawn from on high” breaks upon us, and light is given to us who have been sitting in the darkness of sin and death. And then indeed we find our feet set on the path of peace.