Paul Aurandt tells this story of General Thomas Jackson who was the
right arm of General Lee. The Confederate soldiers were so impressed with
his bravery in battle as he stood out in front that they called him Stonewall
Jackson. His first brigade was the most devastating war machine the South
had in the Civil War. The Union Army dreaded any encounter with his
troops.
In May of 1863 he pulled off a victory near Chancellorville, Virginia that
made it into the textbooks. He divided his troops, and then divided them
again, and made a surprise attack. The Union Army had never seen such a
strategy, and they were defeated. But as Stonewall returned to his own camp
his own men hearing him come through the woods opened fire. He was hit
three times and died a few days later, and this ended the unbeatable war
machine of the South.
So often good men die at the hands of their own troops. Our own recent
history as a nation reveals how often our own soldiers perish because of
friendly fire. Warfare is complicated, and it is hard to avoid mistakes. The
same thing is true in spiritual warfare where the forces of light fighting the
forces of darkness often shoot out the lights of their fellow soldiers. When a
soldier of light comes under attack by the enemy and falls wounded on the
battlefield of life because of being enticed into sin, the rest of the troops often
leave them to be captured by enemy forces. This was not the strategy of
General Paul. Every Christian soldier was precious to Paul, and he
established a tradition in spiritual warfare that has become a tradition for
American soldiers. That tradition is that you pay the cost and suffer great
risk to rescue your own.
The wounded soldier may have been stupid to do what he did. He may
have been disobeying orders even, and deserved to be left bleeding and dying
alone for his folly, but the effort is to be made to rescue him and not leave him
to the enemy. So Paul says to the Corinthians that the Christian man who has
been so sinful in your midst, and who has brought grief to us all by his
immoral behavior, is to be rescued from the clutches of Satan and restored to
fellowship. The man he is referring to is the man who was sleeping with his
step-mother, and bringing shame on the whole church, for even the pagans
round about them did not condone such immorality.
The church listened to Paul and put this man out of the church, and they
shunned him, but now Paul says to them that the goal is not to get rid of him
and let the enemy have him. The goal of punishment is to get him to repent so
that he can be forgiven and restored to the ranks of the soldiers of light. The
bottom line Paul says is not to let Satan outwit us, but to outwit him, and the
key weapon of spiritual warfare to achieve this goal is the weapon of
forgiveness. This is a weapon that comes from the arsenal of heaven, and
from the very heart of God. If God was not a God of forgiveness there would
be no spiritual warfare, for all men would be captives of Satan with no hope
of escape. But God is a God of forgiveness. Here are just a few texts that
focus on this fact:
"Thou are to God ready to pardon, gracious and merciful. (Neh. 9:17)
Thou hast forgiven the iniquity of thy people, thou hast covered all their sin.
(Psa. 85:2)
Thou, Lord, art good, and ready to forgive...(Psa. 86:5)
Who forgiveth all thine iniquities...(Psa. 103:3)
I will forgive their iniquity, and I will remember their sin no more. (Jer.
31:34)
If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins, and to
cleanse us from all unrighteousness. (I John 1:9)
These do not exhaust the subject, for the forgiveness of God is
inexhaustible. God knows how to use this weapon perfectly. He is the expert
in forgiveness, but for us it is not automatic. We need a lot of practice before
we can wield this weapon well and be affective in rescuing the fallen from the
clutches of the enemy. Dr. Neil T. Anderson is the leading authority today in
dealing with helping Christians and churches get released from the bondage
of sin and ignorance. In his many books he makes it clear that there is no
escape from bondage without forgiveness. The truth will set you free, and the
truth in forgiveness is the key to getting out of almost every kind of bondage
that Satan has in his bag of tricks.
In his 7 Steps To Freedom In Christ the third is forgiveness, and I want to
give you the gist of his teaching, for he has helped thousands of Christians
learn how to use this weapon to outwit the devil. The thing I find fascinating
about his teaching is that his focus is on the forgiver, and not the forgiven.
That is, the value of forgiveness is in what it does for you, and not just in what
it does for the one you are forgiving. He begins by encouraging Christians to
pray this prayer: "Dear heavenly Father. I thank you for the riches of your
kindness, forbearance and patience, knowing that your kindness has lead me
to repentance (Rom. 2:4). I confess that I have not extended that same
patience and kindness toward others who offended me, but instead I have
harbored bitterness and resentment. I pray that during this time of
self-examination you would bring to mind only those people whom I have not
forgiven in order that I might do so (Matt. 18:35). I ask this in the precious
name of Jesus. Amen."
The point of forgiving is to get Satan's foot out of the door of your life so
that he cannot use the offenses of the past to spoil your present and future.
As long as a person holds on to a past offense it is still hurting them. If you
forgive it you cast it into the past and eliminate its present impact. The
Corinthian church was still feeling the pain of the punishment of this
offender, and he was still feeling it. Paul feared he could become
overwhelmed by excessive sorrow. There is no point in letting pain dominate
your life is Paul's point. There is a limit to the value of suffering. After it has
done its work it is to be eliminated. It is an abuse to go on punishing when the
offender has repented. It is time then to put the pain of the past behind you,
and move on to the pleasure of love and forgiveness. If you keep focusing on
punishment you are in a spirit of bitterness and revenge, and you will be
playing right into the hands of Satan.
All negatives have their proper role in the Christian life, but they are only
temporary, and they are to be quickly replaced with positives. Any negative
that is prolonged will aid the enemy in spiritual warfare. If you have any
negative attitude that goes on for a long time, you can count on it that it is a
defect in your life, and you are letting Satan have an advantage over you. But
Christians will often protest: "You don't know how much I was hurt by so
and so. I just can't let it go, for it was terrible." But the fact is, because you
can't let it go you are allowing the hurt to go on and be magnified over and
over. They hurt you a weeks worth of pain, and because of your lack of
forgiveness you have multiplied it into a year, or even decades of pain. The
magnifying and multiplying of pain is not the work of the kingdom of light. It
is the work of the kingdom of darkness. As long as you persist in letting past
offences affect your present, you are, in that area of life, in bondage to the
enemy.
Dr. Anderson deals with the protest of the Christian: "Why should I let
them off the hook? You may ask. That is precisely the problem-you are still
hooked to them, still bound by your past." Then he says something profound.
"You don't forgive someone for their sake; you do it for your sake, so you can
be free. Your need to forgive isn't an issue between you and the offender; its
between you and God." In other words, forgiveness is a weapon by which
you outwit the devil, and eliminate any foothold he may have in your life. It
blows to pieces the sins, the mistakes, the follies of the past, so they cannot
control or obstruct your present and future. Dr. Anderson says in conclusion:
"Freeing yourself from the past is the critical issue."
If you want freedom from bondage, then learn to wield well this weapon
of forgiveness. It is a Satan smasher, and it destroys the devil's devices. It
pulverizes his use of the past, and it fractures his formations. It shatters his
schemes, and it ruptures his resources. It demolishes his demonic delight in
destroying your peace of mind. The victorious Christian life is a life where
forgiveness plays a major role. If anyone in all of history had reason to hold a
grudge and be filled with resentment it was Jesus. He did nothing but good,
and He loved all people. He brought joy and healing wherever He went, and
He proclaimed the good news of the kingdom of God, and yet He was despised
and rejected.
Our human nature would love to see a Rambo-like ending of this story
where Jesus rips His hands from the cross, grabs the sword of the Roman
soldier and begins, like Samson of old, to slay the enemy. A field of dead and
bleeding Pharisees and Saducees seems more fitting than one dead and
bleeding Savior with two dead thieves beside Him. The only problem with
that scene is that Satan would have been the victor. The kingdom of darkness
would have won that day, but Jesus outwitted the devil. He died with not one
note of bitterness and revenge. He cut Satan's influence out of His life
completely with the weapon of forgiveness. He prayed, "Father forgive
them," before He died, and He entered death and Satan's kingdom ready for
hand to hand combat with no bondage whatever which would have given
Satan an advantage.
Jesus died totally free and victorious by means of the weapon of
forgiveness. That is why His sacrifice was accepted by God for atonement for
the sins of the world. By means of forgiveness Jesus was the only perfect and
sinless sacrifice that could be acceptable. If Satan could have gotten Jesus to
hold on to a grudge, and gotten Him to cling to bitterness and resentment, he
could have derailed the whole plan of salvation. Jesus knew his schemes, as
did Paul, and that is why they won with the weapon of forgiveness, and that is
how we will win the battle as well.
We have something in common with God. We have the capacity to forgive
those who offend us, hurt us, and defy us. We have the power to forgive sin.
Not only can we do it, we are obligated to do it, for God gave us this ability,
and if we do not use it we will not receive forgiveness from God. In Luke 6:37
Jesus said, "Forgive, and you will be forgiven."
Jesus adds these words after the Lord's Prayer in
Matt. 6:14-15: "For if you forgive men when they sin again you, your
heavenly Father will also forgive you. But if you do not forgive men their
sins, your Father will not forgive your sins." If you are not a forgiver, you
are not forgiven. It is that simple.
Jesus calls us, not just to be forgiven sinners, but to be forgiving sinners,
and if we do not obey this order of our supreme commander we betray His
cause and support the enemy forces. Not all Christians soldiers are issued all
the weapons of spiritual warfare, and not all have all the gifts, but all
Christians are issued the weapon of forgiveness, and they are expected to use
it effectively. That is what Paul is teaching the Corinthians in this passage.
The goal is not punishment, for that is a means to the end, and the end is
forgiveness and restoration of the sinner to fellowship with the forces of light.
This was no petty sinner he was dealing with. This is a matter of major moral
failure, and yet Paul says the goal is to not let Satan have any victory, but get
back to a place where the past is overcome, and the present is as good as it
could have been if he had never fallen.
This is easier said than done, but if it was easy it would not be hard to be
a Christian soldier. Anybody could do it, and Christians would have nothing
distinctive to offer a fallen world. There are some notable successes, but there
are many failures to use this weapon of forgiveness well. I was recently
shocked to learn that one of my favorite Christian authors was a fallen saint
who had been restored to the ranks of the soldiers of light. Many of you may
know Jamie Buckingham. He has authored dozens of excellent books.
When he was a young pastor in South Carolina he yielded to lust and had
an affair. It was devastating to him and his family, and he was dismissed
from the church. He moved to Florida, and because he was a powerful
personality he convinced a large church to call him as their pastor. He had a
great honeymoon time there, but then the rumor followed him of his secret
sin. He was soon asked to leave that church as well. The rumors were packed
with half truths and lies that made a shameful sin even worse. His ministry
had come to a pitiful dead end, and he would have been lost to the kingdom of
God.
He saw a contest for Christian writers one day and decided to submit a
story of a missionary friend. Out of 2000 submissions he was a winner, and
this lead to his being offered an assignment by a major book publisher. A
whole new world opened up to him, and he became one of the most effective
Christian authors of the 20th century. He wrote Where Eagles Soar. In it he
describes his fall, rebirth, and restoration as a soldier of the cross. Here is
one of his paragraphs: "Perfection still eludes me. I am still vulnerable. But
most important, I am no longer satisfied with my imperfection. Nor, thank
God, am I intimidated by it. I reached the point of recognizing that God uses
imperfect, immoral, dishonest people. In fact, that's all there are these days.
All the holy men seem to have gone off and died. There's no one left but us
sinners to carry on the ministry."
Had he not been forgiven for his failure and folly he would have been lost
to the kingdom of God, and his talent may have been used to the kingdom of
darkness. This happens when Christians do not know how to use the weapon
of forgiveness. They force the fallen Christian to forsake the church and find
their fellowship in the world. This means that Satan wins the battle. This
happens often as Christian soldiers shoot their own wounded and abandon
them on the battlefield to be taken captive by the enemy. Paul says not to let
this happen even to the worst of Christian offenders like this man who was so
offensive that he had to be put out of the church.
There was only the one church in Corinth, and so if you intended to be
part of the church you had to deal with the sin issues in that body. It was a
social issue, but today it is often a personal issue, and Christians need to deal
with forgiveness on an individual level. Today discipline is not effective, for
the sinner can just go off to another church and the church does not deal with
forgiveness and restoration. This means that self forgiveness has become a
major factor in modern Christianity. Many sins never become public, and so
they are never dealt with like the one Paul refers to here. Paul deals a lot with
the open sins known by the body, and so he writes in Eph. 4:32, "Be kind and
compassionate to one another, forgiving each other, just as in Christ God
forgave you." He writes in Col. 3:13, "Bear with each other and forgive
whatever grievances you may have against one another. Forgive as the Lord
forgave you."
Forgiveness was a major message of Paul, and he preached it everywhere,
for it was at the heart of the Gospel. But we need to turn to John to see the
need for personal and private forgiveness. In I John 1:9 we read, "If we
confess our sins He is faithful and just to forgive our sins and cleanse us from
all unrighteousness." The Jewish Talmud says, "There is no happier person
in all of Jerusalem than the one who has brought a sin offering to God's alter
and leaves the temple feeling forgiven." Unfortunately, the world is filled
with Christians who cannot see the sufficiency of Christ's offering on the
cross to atone for all sin. The result is that they cannot forgive themselves for
their failure to be what they know they ought to be. There is a vast number of
Christian soldiers who are crippled and out of action because they do not
know how to use the weapon of forgiveness to achieve their own healing and
restoration. That is why the world is so full of Christian counselors.
Leslie Weatherhead, the great English preacher and counselor, dealt with
many such Christians. The walking wounded who cannot be of much service
to the cause of Christ because they are trapped in one of Satan's snares and
are unable to forgive themselves. A young Christian girl had been engaged to
a dentist and the dentist died. She became physically and mentally ill, and
could not function as a person let alone as a soldier of the cross.
Wheatherhead suspected sin and in counseling he learned that she had had
sex with the dentist, and now she felt unworthy to even have another
relationship. He led her to see the grace of God and experience forgiveness.
She was set free from her bondage, and she went on to marry a young man
and have a happy marriage. Here was a prisoner of war set free to live the
life of grace.
There are millions of Christians who go through this bondage to Satan,
and they are paralyzed and ineffective as Christians because they cannot
experience forgiveness. Jesus knew this would be a problem all through
history. That is why He instituted the Lord's Supper. He knew Christians
needed to keep coming back to the cross and to what He did there for them.
He knew Christians would fall in the battle of life, and they would be
wounded in the warfare. As we meet again around the Lord's Table and
celebrate His sacrifice for sin, let us recognize that this is our spiritual
warfare medical center. This is where the Great Physician heals our wounds
and mends our brokenness, and where he restores us to a state of readiness to
march again for His cause and glory. Let us confess our sins and be cleansed,
and go forth to help others to conquer as we wield the weapon of forgiveness.
