How often do you use the words enjoy or forgiveness? What situations or emotions come to mind? Perhaps they seem an odd juxtaposition.

Enjoy means “to have joy, to take delight in, to benefit from, to find security in.” And who doesn’t want that? The word tugs at our hearts because we are created with deep longings for joy. 

While enjoy connotes delight, the word forgiveness niggles at us. It connotes wrongdoing and can bring up feelings of embarrassment, shame, disconnection, or defensiveness. You know what it’s like when you have done wrong or been wronged.

But in the vulnerable moments—often fleeting—when real forgiveness is offered, some small thing cracks open in your heart. Shame is lifted, anger is quieted, disconnections are mended..

Yet every human moment of forgiveness is incomplete and impermanent. We fall back into dysfunctional patterns. New conflicts arise. We remain suspicious and self-protective. We aren’t able to sustain a stance of forgiveness. Joy falters.

In Jesus Christ, however, God gives his frail and broken people an ultimate-and-forever forgiveness. Although Jesus never had to seek forgiveness, he willingly took our shame, disconnection, and brokenness upon himself when he died on the cross. 

Note the full phrase: Enjoy Your Forgiveness. Squeezed between the words enjoy and forgiveness is a small possessive pronoun—your. God in Christ does not give a general, vague, positive-thinking forgiveness. Instead, we are given a unique and personal pardon for the things we know we’ve done and feel terrible about; for the things we don’t even know we’ve done; for the things we haven’t done and should have; and for our very condition—the fact that we are broken and cannot fix ourselves.

In other words, God’s forgiveness is directed like an arrow straight at YOU. It reaches to the deepest parts of your secret acts, thoughts, regrets, pains, and heartaches. It takes them away from YOU forever. This lavish and abundant forgiveness sets YOU free. 

And that’s why we, at Calvary St. George’s, declare to one another and to the world: “Enjoy Your Forgiveness!” Our debts are paid and we can freely take delight in God’s mercy every day of our lives.