In part two we were briefly showing some of the biblical types represented in the life of Joseph. We will conclude this portion with one more. For those of us who have had the joy of hearing Ron Oja teach, some of this will be review.
This was in his series he gave to us in Atlanta in March 2003. The four-hour series is called No Sign Given but Columbia—referring to the crashing of the space shuttle in the month before.
Those audio lectures are available from us in Album A-114, No Sign Given But “Columbia,” plus The End of Witchcraft, also by Ron Oja; 5 CDs , $22 + $7 s & h. Or obtain the four hours of lectures in video (DVD) format: D-106 No Sign Given But “Columbia” - 2 DVDs, 4 hrs., $24 + $7 s & h.
Previously, we had just read that Joseph was embalmed and then placed in a coffin. The Hebrew word for coffin is H727 'arown {aw-rone'}. Besides coffin, it means a chest, or a money chest, or an ark, such as the Ark of the Covenant. In fact, it is translated ark 105 times in the KJV. But this is not Noah’s ark. That is a different word. So coffin and ark are the same word.
Now in seeing that Joseph is a type of Christ, he dies and is placed in a coffin, or shall we say, he is placed in the ark. From our Tabernacle in the Wilderness studies, we learned that the Ark of the Covenant was the only piece of furniture in the Holy of Holies.
We also learned that symbolically, the Tabernacle corresponds to our human body. In my view, the ark is actually in three places in the body: the mind-brain, the heart, and the reproductive organs. That is why when Christ arises in our hearts, he will reproduce himself and will bring forth new life in us. It will culminate in our resurrection body.
When Jesus was talking about the sign of the prophet Jonah, He referred to Himself when He said that after He was crucified that He would be placed in the heart of the earth. He didn’t simply say that he would be placed in the earth; Jesus specifically stated “in the heart of the earth.”
Matthew 12:40 For as Jonas was three days and three nights in the whale's belly; so shall the Son of man be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth.
Adam was formed of the dust of the earth, so therefore our bodies are the earth, and so Jesus came to lay in the heart of your earth. So Jesus is in your heart, in seed form; dormant, as it were, until we are born anew in the resurrection.
The question arises, Well, what about Christians? Aren’t we different from non-Christians? Yes, we are. Because in us the growth process is already started. However, we are not yet actually “born again.” But we are pregnant. Spiritually pregnant with the manchild. Christ is in the process of being formed in us, in embryonic form, spiritually. That’s why the apostle Peter said in…
1 Peter 1:23 Being born again, not of corruptible seed, but of incorruptible, by the word of God, which liveth and abideth forever.
Jesus is the word. He is the incorruptible seed which had to die and fall into the ground (your earth) so that He could bring forth 100-fold or 100 million-fold, to be sure.
Now again, going back to our studies of the Tabernacle, we recall that only once a year, on the day of atonement, the High Priest of Israel could enter the Most Holy Place and sprinkle blood on the Ark. By so doing, he was making atonement for the sins of the people for the past year. That is why the ark is the place of the forgiveness of sins.
Therefore, if Jesus is the one who forgives sins, and He is in our hearts, then if we are to become fully manifested sons of God and the younger brothers of Jesus, and we are to become just like Jesus, then we too must learn how to forgive sins (those offenses committed against us by others). Does that make sense?
And now you see that we have just segued almost transparently into our new series where we are going to be learning about forgiveness. We saw how forgiveness was one of, if not the chief key for Joseph to learn how to be an overcomer.
As we will see, it will be the same for us. Learning forgiveness is paramount. First, I want to delineate several different kinds of forgiveness. Then we will turn our attention to the most important one of those, because ultimately, it will be the only one which really counts…with God and for your own sake.
In a study like this, I am sure you understand that all of this material does not come from my poor little pea-brain. I research and I read and see what God has shown others. Then once in a while, your Father provides a new insight to me and all of that gets put together and simmers a while in my mind, and then gets served up to you.
Along those lines, we stock the book called Choosing Forgiveness. (2025: Due to downsizing our inventory, we no longer carry the book, but you can probably find in online.)
I read Choosing Forgiveness a long time ago. It is excellent and I am recommending it as a companion to this oral presentation.
But since I am recommending Choosing Forgiveness as a companion study and it is really a guide for us on how to implement forgiveness, I want to assure you that I did not use that book in preparation of this material. In other words, when you read the book, it won’t be a repeat of what you just read in this series of essays based on my lectures on Jubilee Forgiveness.
So just what are the different kinds of forgiveness. We could categorize forgiveness into three or four different kinds or levels of forgiveness:
1. There is conditional forgiveness.
2. There is distant forgiveness.
3. There is partial forgiveness.
4. There is what I call jubilee forgiveness.
Let us look at them one at a time and define them. The first is conditional forgiveness. That is saying: I will forgive him if he convinces me that he is truly sorry for what he did to me. That’s a condition we are placing on the offender before we will grant that person forgiveness.
Of course, the conditions demanded can be just about anything. A person could demand that they pay them money or give them something else, or make a public confession of how they hurt the person.
Take out a billboard ad and tell the world—or nowadays, demand that the offender go on social media and confess. Anytime there are conditions that have to be met before forgiveness is granted, we call that conditional forgiveness.
Now you and I have probably never demanded that anyone rent a billboard to make a public confession and apology to us, but I have been guilty in my mind many times of practicing conditional forgiveness. By the way, do you think conditional forgiveness is pleasing to our Father?
Secondly, there is distant forgiveness. By distant, we are talking about emotional distance. In other words, there might be some degree of now feeling less negative about a person, but there is no reconciliation or restoration of a relationship with the one who offended you.
My guess is that we have all experienced both sides of that type of forgiveness as well. There are people in your life who were once quite close to you and then somehow they offended you, or maybe it was a string of offenses and finally you just let them fade out of your life.
Now I am not saying that is necessarily bad in itself, to let someone who is continually offensive fade out of your life. It depends on a lot of other factors. But I am talking about how we feel about them now. We might have to admit that in our heart, we still shelter some degree of negativity and unforgiveness towards that person.
That might be due to the fact that they have never said they were sorry, and so what we really have is distant forgiveness combined with conditional forgiveness. It doesn’t hurt so bad now, because time has gone on, but we know that it certainly has not been a healed situation.
I don’t think distant forgiveness cuts it with our Father either, do you? Next is partial forgiveness. Here we find that there is a considerable lessening of negative emotions toward the offender. There is a partial restoration of a relationship. For example, this might happen in a marriage where a spouse has been unfaithful.
In many cases like that, partial forgiveness is about as far as it goes. Consequently, the marriage relationship will never have the wonderful vitality and intensity that it once had.
Finally, there is what I call “jubilee forgiveness.” It is a full forgiveness; a complete forgiveness; a total forgiveness. It is unconditional forgiveness. This means that there is a complete cessation of negative feelings toward the offender and, when possible, the relationship is fully restored.
Those were brief definitions of the various kinds of forgiveness. Before we begin to focus on jubilee forgiveness, let’s first look at some Scriptures and see what God commands and expects of us, His children. In this portion of his epistle to the believers at Ephesus, Paul is exhorting them with these principles for holy living.
Ephesians 4:29 Let no corrupt communication proceed out of your mouth, but that which is good to the use of edifying, that it may minister grace unto the hearers.
30 And grieve not the holy Spirit of God, whereby ye are sealed unto the day of redemption.
31 Let all bitterness, and wrath, and anger, and clamour, and evil speaking, be put away from you, with all malice:
32 And be ye kind one to another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, even as God for Christ’s sake hath forgiven you.
This begs a question, doesn’t it? Namely, if we are to forgive one another as God forgave us, then we need to examine how God forgave us. Was it partial forgiveness? Was it conditional forgiveness? We will get to that in time. Next, we go to Colossians 3.
Here again, this is a rather lengthy passage where Paul is exhorting the Christians in the church at Colosse to grow in the virtues of Christ. Among them we find another exhortation to forgiveness.
Colossians 3:13 Forbearing one another, and forgiving one another, if any man have a quarrel against any: even as Christ forgave you, so also do ye.
Just as we found in Ephesians, so here also Paul defines the type of forgiveness we are to practice when he added “even as Christ forgave you, so also do ye.” Alright, now let’s look in Matthew 6 to see the direct command of the Savior Himself.
This is the famous Lord’s prayer passage, and herein Jesus was suggesting how we ought to pray. And part of that prayer is this:
Matthew 6: 12 And forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors.
13 And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil: For thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory, for ever. Amen.
14 For if ye forgive men their trespasses, your heavenly Father will also forgive you:
15 But if ye forgive not men their trespasses, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses.
In this passage, we see the words debts and trespasses. The meaning is offences and sins. Technically, if you look at the Greek word for debts, that is exactly what it means.
It is the word G3783 opheilema {of-i'-lay-mah}. It is only used twice and both times it is translated as debts. The lexicons say it means 1) that which is owed 1a) that which is justly or legally due, a debt…
But then it adds definition number 2) metaph. offence, sin. So some Christians might wonder, does this mean then that if, for example, you lend your Christian brother the money for a down payment on a house or a car that you must forgive the debt?
What if it really stretched you financially to help out the brother and you really need to get the money back? Is Jesus saying that we need to always forgive any and all monetary debts?
What if you run a company—you’re a sole owner and so you are the company. Say you’re a homebuilder. You build a home for a client who happens to be a Christian. You finish the job and he still owes you $80,000 on the house.
He is indebted to you. So is Jesus saying that you have to forgive the debt? …And thereby drive your company into bankruptcy? Of course not. Something else is obviously going on here.
Let’s look at Luke 11 where we find another account of the Lord’s prayer. Luke’s record was divinely inspired to use the word sins instead of debts or trespasses.
Luke 11: 3 Give us day by day our daily bread.
4 And forgive us our sins; for we also forgive every one that is indebted to us. And lead us not into temptation; but deliver us from evil.
Debts, trespasses, sins: those were three different Greek words used, but it is clear they all are referring to someone who offends or sins against us. Let’s go back to Matthew 6.
One might wonder then, why is the word for debt used at all in this context? And the answer is…to point us back to the law of jubilee. The laws of jubilee are spelled out in the book of Leviticus, chapter 25. We did a four-part study on that years ago.
We used that study as the kick-off point for our long train of studies which culminated in understanding how and why God will save everybody—universal reconciliation, i.e., universal salvation. (Not to be confused with the universalism of other sects or religions; we can demonstrate there is a biblical universalism.) But we cannot possibly truly understand universal reconciliation unless we understand the laws of jubilee.
We do not have time in this lecture to give any substantial amount of details about the principles of jubilee, and yet, it is fundamental to understanding the type of forgiveness God wants us to practice.
Therefore, I would suggest to anyone who has not heard them to obtain our lectures on CDs on the Laws of Jubilee. They are number CDs #271, 272, 275 & 276. Or wait until we get them put into blog-essays here; but we cannot give any time frame on that. A-101 The Doctrine of the Eons/Ages and The Laws of Jubilee 6-CD set. $26+ $7 s & h. The Doctrine of the Eons/Ages is likewise essential to understanding biblical universalism.
But to summarize those four lectures in a couple of sentences, it is this: Our heavenly Father looks upon all sin as a debt. It is a debt that we cannot ever repay. But by the law of jubilee, there comes a time when Father declares a jubilee, which means that every person is unconditionally forgiven and returns to his inheritance.
For those of you who have heard the jubilee series, do you remember that? Remember how, in the fiftieth year, if a man has not been able to pay back his debt, he is totally forgiven and he goes back to the family farm that he lost in debt.
Now I know some of you to whom this is new are immediately thinking that this gives carte blanche to sinners to keep on sinning, but I tell you just very emphatically that such is not the case. But as I said, we cannot get into all the step-by-step logical progression of teaching all the principles of jubilee. We already did it. It’s available. Let’s read Matthew 6:15 again. Jesus said:
15 But if ye forgive not men their trespasses, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses.
Therefore, a second question which may arise in the minds of some of us is that this sounds a whole lot like salvation by works. We have to do something in order to be saved—namely, forgive those who sin against us. Again, such is not the case.
Otherwise, this would be in direct and total contradiction to many other Scriptures. This is not about your eternal salvation in terms of whether or not you will make it. Instead this has to do with the rewards you may or may not receive.
This has to do with the degree of fellowship you will enjoy with the Father, with Jesus the Son, and with the Holy Spirit. How do we know that? Well, we read it earlier. Listen as I repeat from …
Ephesians 4: 30 And grieve not the holy Spirit of God, whereby ye are sealed unto the day of redemption.
You see, when you become a Christian, the Holy Spirit dwells within you. But even as Christian believers, you and I are not perfected yet, and so when we have bitterness, anger, unforgiveness, etc. …these things quench or grieve the Holy Spirit and our fellowship with Him is squelched. And so Paul continues that if you don’t want to grieve the Spirit, then:
31 Let all bitterness, and wrath, and anger, and clamour, and evil speaking, be put away from you, with all malice:
32 And be ye kind one to another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, even as God for Christ's sake hath forgiven you.
And so our salvation is a free gift, but our level of rewards in the kingdom is based upon performance. And of course, if we desire to be among the very elect, the overcomers, to participate in the very best “rewards program,” then above all, we must become jubilee forgivers.
When that happens—unconditional jubilee forgiveness—then the Holy Spirit is not grieved. The Spirit is then able to dwell more abundantly in our hearts.
(To be continued.)
~END~
