“Forgiveness”
Matthew 18:21-35
Robert Warren
February 17th, 2002
I have made things easy for those who come on Wednesday night, because today I want to share some thoughts from God’s word that we discussed then. You’re not excused, but you should be ahead of the learning curve. On Wednesday, I put the following sentences on the dry-erase board:
• _______ is commanded by God for the Christian.
• _______ is intentional, it is not just a matter of emotions.
• _______ is for who people are, not for what they do.
• _______ is often hard to do.
I asked the Wednesday night people to guess what word would go into this blank and make all of these statements true. Because it was the day before Valentine’s Day, and I hope because I just preached on this the Sunday before, they correctly guessed that the word is “Love.”
Remember what I shared last week about love.
• Love is commanded by God for the Christian.
• Love is intentional, it is not just a matter of emotions. (We sometimes have to love people we don’t like or who we’ve ‘fallen out of love with.’
• Love is for who people are, not for what they do.
• Love is often hard to do.
However, there is another word that fits into each blank and likewise makes each statement true. That word is ‘forgiveness.’ Think about it:
• Forgiveness is commanded by God for the Christian.
• Forgiveness is intentional, it is not just a matter of emotions. (We sometimes have to Forgive people we don’t like or who we don’t think deserve our forgiveness.
• Forgiveness is for who people are, not for what they do.
• Forgiveness is often hard to do.
Like love, forgiveness is something that we know that we should do, but often don’t stop to think about all the implications involved in forgiving someone. We often think that we love because there are people that we love; we think that we forgive because there are some people whom we have forgiven. We think that we love because we love most people, forgetting about those who we don’t love. We think that we forgive because we have forgiven most people, forgetting about those whom we haven’t forgiven. As C.S. Lewis said, “Everyone says forgiveness is a lovely idea, until they have something to forgive.” Often, we don’t understand all the implications of love and forgiveness for two reasons: one, we sometimes haven’t put together all of what scripture says about love and forgiveness, and more importantly, we haven’t truly experienced the love and forgiveness of God in our own lives. Let’s try to do both of these things today.
The first thing that we have to realize is that we are commanded to forgive. This is not just a suggestion or an option that we can consider; it is a command from God. Put another way, it’s not just a good idea, it’s the law.
And why is forgiveness commanded? After all, a lot of people might think that so long as we are holy and religious, it doesn’t really matter how you conduct your personal relations. But, as we learned last week, how we relate to others is directly tied to our relation with God. If we know God’s love then we can know love for others. The opposite is also true, if you do not love, you do not know God because God is love. This is true for forgiveness. Whoever knows true forgiveness knows God because God is all about forgiveness. If you do not know how to forgive, you do not know God because God is the source of all forgiveness. If you have been truly forgiven by God for your many sins, then you will be better able to understand how to forgive others the sins that they have committed against you. “Forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us,” is our prayer in the Lord’s Prayer. Sometimes I think we are hoping that God doesn’t take that “as we forgive those who trespass against us” too literally.
Second, we are commanded to forgive because forgiveness is all about love. Remember, the two greatest commandments are to love God and to love others. There is no way to forgive without loving, and there is no way to love without forgiving. We are all fallen humans, full of sin and selfishness, and if we are going to be around each other at all in loving relationships then we are going to have to learn to forgive. Just ask any couple who has been married for over a decade if you need to learn to forgive in order to keep love alive. If you are obeying God’s command to love him and his creation, then you have to know how to forgive.
Finally, we are commanded to forgive because God has forgiven us. The parable I read today illustrates this perfectly. We owed God a billion dollar debt that we could not hope to repay in terms of sin. Yet, through Jesus, he erased that debt of sin and death once and for all. If you know that and truly appreciate God’s grace in forgiving your sin, how can you hope to collect on the sin-debt that you have on another person. Would you really beat someone up for a ten dollar debt when you have been forgiven a billion dollar debt? This is why when the bible commands us to forgive it often reminds us of the debt of sin that God has forgiven from our account. Our command is this: forgive as God has forgiven you. That is, completely and irrevocably.
Ephesians 4:32, Be kind and compassionate to one another, forgiving each other, just as in Christ God forgave you.”
Colossians 3:13, Bear with each other and forgive whatever grievances you may have against one another. Forgive as the Lord forgave you.”
Notice that in each of these scripture references what our standard is: to forgive as God has forgiven us.
The next point is that forgiveness is intentional, it is not just a matter of emotions. If you remember about love, the point here is that we can not just love when we feel like it. We can’t just love people who we feel love for. We have to decide to love. If people relied on feelings of romantic love to keep their marriage alive then no couple would be married longer than a year. There comes a time when you have to choose to love, even when those emotions are not there in order to keep you going for when those feelings return. Think about mothers with their babies. They probably don’t feel very loving when their child is covered with all sorts of bodily fluids and is crying uncontrollably; in those times the mother chooses to love their child anyway. This principle applies for forgiveness as well. You can’t just wait until you feel forgiving towards a person; you might never forgive in that case. I know that there are people here today who have forgiven people who they still can’t stand to even think about. Their anger at what was done to them has not died down, but they have chosen to forgive them in obedience to God’s commands. Likewise, God does not hate our sin any less when he forgives us, but he chooses to forgive us because of his great love.
Peter learned a difficult lesson on this point from Jesus. He asked Jesus in Matthew 18:21, “Lord, how many times shall I forgive my brother when he sins against me? Up to seven times?” Of course we don’t know why Peter asked this, but I have a feeling that I can guess. Most likely there was someone who had sinned repeatedly against Peter, maybe even seven times. Peter was getting tired of forgiving this person and thought that there must be a limit to his generosity in forgiveness. So he asked, how many times must we forgive. In other words: I don’t feel like forgiving this jerk anymore, when can I stop. But Jesus made it clear that you forgive even when you don’t feel like it in verse 22, “Jesus answered, “I tell you, not seven times, but seventy-seven times.” How do you forgive the same person seventy-seven times? Not by feelings, I assure you. You do so out of the conviction that God has forgiven you by choice and because you are responding to his love and forgiveness. It’s a matter of deciding to obey God. There are some people who have done things to you that are so heinous that you will never feel like forgiving them. This is when we must pray to God for the strength to forgive them even though we don’t feel like it. It is easy to forgive a person who comes to you on their knees with flowers in their hands begging for forgiveness. It is only through the work of the Holy Spirit when we can forgive the person who doesn’t deserve it; that involves a dose of grace. I am sure that Peter was glad that he had had that conversation with Jesus about forgiveness after he had denied Jesus’ name those three times.
This leads right into the next point. Forgiveness is for who people are, not for what they do. In my sermon last week I read a scripture in which Jesus commands us to not only love our neighbor, but also our enemies. He says that it is to no credit at all if you love those who love you, even those who don’t know God do that. But to love those who are your enemy and who are persecuting you, that is the road to Godly perfection. The same is true of forgiveness. It’s easy to forgive those who we feel emotions of love for. A parent can forgive a child with ease, a husband can forgive a wife. Family can often forgive one another. But it’s a lot harder to forgive someone who is truly detestable or who has done some particularly hurtful (and this often includes family). But this is where we must remember what forgiveness is about. We are not forgiving the person for what they did, but for who they are: a human being created by God. Furthermore, we are acknowledging that they are human and are therefore just like us, fallen, sinful, and imperfect. We don’t love them because they are good people, but because they are just that: people.
The same is true about God’s forgiveness for us. Jesus did not die on the cross for the saved. No, he died on the cross for sinners. He didn’t forgive only the righteous, but the lost. He said in Matthew 9:12, “It is not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick.” Likewise, it is not the good folks who need forgiveness, it is the sinner. The person in your life who you most need to forgive is the one who you are having the most trouble forgiving, for they no doubt have the greatest debt against you.
So, to sum it all up, we are commanded to make a conscious effort to forgive all those who have wronged us, whether we feel like it or not and whether they deserve it or not. But, you know what that means? It means that my final point is true as well: Forgiveness is hard to do. It’s not always easy to do the things that God has commanded us to do, which is why we must learn to obey the leading of the Holy Spirit as it makes us into what we are called to be. It’s not always easy to choose to do the right thing when our emotions want to do the opposite, which is why we must rely on the strength that God gives us. It’s not always easy to forgive the unforgivable person, which is why we need to see them with the eyes of God.
But there is a reason for us to wrestle with forgiveness.
• First, we must be forgiving if we claim to be Christian, for forgiveness comes from love, and love comes from God.
• Second, forgiveness is as much a benefit for us as it is for the other person. You can not truly be happy in your life nor content in your relationship with God if you are carrying a grudge. Forgiving others is a way to bring freedom to your life by removing the burden that you are carrying around. “When you carry a grudge, it is only your back which gets sore, not the other person’s.” Robertson McQuilkin said, “The sin of unforgiveness is a cancer that destroys relationships, eats away at one’s own psyche, and– worst of all– shuts us off from God’s grace.”
• Third, learning to forgive does not come naturally, it comes from growing in understanding and maturity as a Christian.
• Therefore, we must turn over our inability to forgive to God for his help and strength.
I want to make a similar invitation to you that I did last year. If you have a need to grow in forgiveness, or if you need help in forgiving someone, come to the altar and seek that help from God; he is waiting to give you the strength to do this. Some of you have been deeply hurt in ways that have left scars on your very soul. You have been hurt in unimaginable ways. You have been hurt by those you loved and trusted. These things are affecting not only your life, but your relationship with God and others. Quit trying to bear this cross yourself, bring it to God today and ask him to help you.
We are about to receive the Lord’s Supper, but don’t come to this table if you are still harboring a grudge of unforgiveness against another person. You don’t have to work out all your feelings this morning, but you can come and give that burden over to God. Mark 11:25, And when you stand praying, if you hold anything against anyone, forgive him, so that your Father in heaven may forgive you your sins. Let God help you forgive that other person so that your Father in heaven may forgive your sins.
There are others here who will never know how to love or forgive because you have never truly experienced the perfect love and forgiveness of God. You can’t understand what it means to forgive a debt because you have never had your debts forgiven. If you’ve not asked Jesus to be your Lord and Savior, showering you with love and forgiveness, then you can never know the power of loving and forgiving others with the grace that only comes to God. You will never be able to forgive yourself if you’ve not been forgiven by god. So, if you need to be forgiven by God, all you have to do is come before God and ask for his free and perfect salvation. He chose to love you, even when you were yet an enemy to him, by sending his Son to die on the cross. Won’t you come and accept that forgiveness today?
