“I Have Another One…”

In a second season Frasier episode, Frasier tries to help Sam Malone, Frasier’s old friend and bartender from Cheers, reconcile with his fiancé Sheila, whom he left at the altar just days before. Frasier realizes that they both have infidelities in their pasts and decides, in the interest of saving their relationship, that Sam and Sheila should be honest with each other, and ask for forgiveness. “Honesty,” he says, “is the cornerstone of any healthy marriage.”

Sam confesses an infidelity to Sheila, and she forgives him. Sheila confesses an infidelity to Sam, and he forgives her. Everything seems to be back on track until Sheila says, “I have another one.” Sam says, “It’s okay, don’t worry about it. This is what it’s all about…honesty and forgiveness.” But then she says that it’s Cliff, from Cheers (the frumpy mailman played by John Ratzenberger). “Cliff?!?!?!” Sam explodes. This is over the line for him. He can’t take it and storms out of the room, calling off the marriage.

All too often, this is how we think of God’s forgiveness, and why assurance eludes us.

If God said, like Sam, “Oh, it’s okay, don’t worry about your transgressions,” we’d always be worried that one day one of our transgressions would be a Cliff. What then? What if it stopped being okay? But God doesn’t say it’s okay. Paul says that God “made you alive together with him, when he forgave us all our trespasses, erasing the record that stood against us with its legal demands. He set this aside, nailing it to the cross.” He nailed our indiscretions, our infidelities, our trespasses to the cross. He paid the ultimate price, laying our sins on the shoulders of his son. He doesn’t ignore them…he pays for them.

Today, remember that our God isn’t like Sam Malone! We need never worry that when we say “we have another” indiscretion—when we add a sin to the enormous stack that separates us from God—he’ll storm out of the room and call off our relationship. He has dealt with our sins forever, and cast them into the sea of his forgotten memory.