A man learns the true meaning of forgiveness.

Sweet forgiveness.
Oh, the sound is so sweet.
How could you love the unlovable?
How could you love me?

Chris Driesbach, a WELS singer and songwriter, has a hard time singing his song "Sweet forgiveness." "You know, you can't sing and cry at the same time," he says. But it is still one of his favorite songs to sing because it tells about the struggle of sinners and the love of Christ who took away the burden of sin—a message Driesbach holds dear.

HOW COULD YOU LOVE THE UNLOVABLE?

Driesbach didn't always feel this way about his Savior. In fact, for a long time he didn't believe in God at all.

As a youth in Idaho, Driesbach attended church sporadically with his parents and read parts of the Bible, but he was never baptized. When he was 14, he began asking his parents questions about religion. Their reply? "Why don't you decide for yourself."

Driesbach began attending different churches—he mentions Mormon and Catholic—with his friends. "I began to see pretty quickly that these churches disagreed with each other," he says. "I basically decided I didn't agree with anybody." By the time he was 16, he had declared himself an atheist.

"One memory I have of my youth is writing a paper in senior English class explaining why God is dead," says Driesbach. "My teacher asked me if I believed the things I wrote. He began to weep and said, 'Mr. Driesbach, I despair for you.' I was proud of myself for making my English teacher cry."

A troubled youth, Driesbach began drinking when he was 14—a lifestyle that he continued as an adult. "Drinking was the only time I really felt okay," he says.

After receiving a partial music scholarship, Driesbach went to college but quickly dropped out, joined the Air Force, and became a member of the Guard. He also kept playing music in bars and continued drinking . . . a lot.

Driesbach kept the party atmosphere going for more than ten years, even through a marriage, two children, and a divorce. "That was a stormy relationship," he says, "and I was basically the storm." He was an alcoholic—"I was drinking a bottle of whiskey a day at that point," he says—and had no use for God.

SWEET FORGIVENESS

One morning Driesbach woke up in a motel in Alaska, and he had the shakes. "That never happened to me before, and it really scared me because I knew what that was—I was starting to die of alcoholism," says Driesbach.

He decided to join a recovery group and quit drinking. "I went to this meeting and found out the solution to being a drunk is God," he says. "I was disgusted, but on the other hand I was so desperate that I didn't care." He followed all the group's suggestions and has been sober for more than 23 years.