The Revolutionary Power of Forgiveness
When the first missionaries came to Alberta, Canada, they were savagely opposed by a young chief of the Cree Indians named Maskepetoon. But he responded to the gospel and accepted Christ. Shortly afterward, a member of the Blackfoot tribe killed his father.
Maskepetoon rode into the village where the murderer lived and demanded that he be brought before him. Confronting the guilty man, he said, "You have killed my father, so now you must be my father. You shall ride my best horse and wear my best clothes. Tell your people that this is the way Maskepetoon takes revenge."
In utter amazement and remorse his enemy exclaimed,
"My son, now you have killed me!" He meant, of course, that the hate in his own heart had been completely erased by the forgiveness and kindness of the Indian chief.
His father’s murderer continued "Never in the history of my people has such a thing as this been known. My people and all men will say ’The young Chief is brave and strong and good. He stands alone.’"
Forgiveness is costly. Forgiveness is vital. There is a power in forgiveness. It is a revolutionary power, it is the power of altering, healing, fixing reality -the reality of relationships. And especially if you are a follower of Jesus Christ today, you possess, in Jesus Christ, this costly, profound and revolutionary power.
Romans 12:17-21: "Do not repay anyone evil for evil. Be careful to do what is right in the eyes of everybody. If it is possible, as far as it depends on you, live at peace with everyone. Do not take revenge, my friends, but leave room for God’s wrath, for it is written: "It is mine to avenge; I will repay," says the Lord. On the contrary: ’If your enemy is hungry, feed him; if he is thirsty, give him something to drink. In doing this, you will heap burning coals on his head’. Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good."
Forgiveness is very, very hard for humans to do on their own. There are reasons not to forgive. To forgive means to absorb the pain of an offense. It means taking that pain which is insulated a little by the anger and bitterness that the pain caused, and acquitting the offense that is the cause of the pain, exposing it to the light of grace. Unmerited, perhaps undeserved, favour.
There is a lot of mental and emotional work involved in forgiving someone. If you’ve ever tried to forgive someone a very real offense, you know what I’m talking about. There is a serious price to pay when the choice is made to forgive a person. Sometimes we can get use to being angry at a person or at people.
That anger focuses us like nothing else in life, or so we think. We feed off that anger. So to forgive, to release that anger, really changes something very familiar in our life. Without that anger to focus on, we may not know what to do with ourselves.
To forgive means to say, “What you have said or done has truly and deeply hurt me, yet though I feel the pain of what you have done, I choose to release you of penalty.
"You have earned and you deserve my anger but instead I release you from your guilt". That is the problem of forgiveness, and that is why many do not want to go there. The cost. The cost is too high.
It’s been said that true forgiveness is hard to extend because it demands that people let go of something they value -- not a piece of jewelry, but pride, perhaps, as sense of justice, or desire for revenge.
There are two things I want to say about forgiveness. The first is The Importance of Forgiveness
A Sunday School teacher had just concluded her lesson and wanted to make sure she had made her point. She said, "Can anyone tell me what you must do before you can obtain forgiveness of sin?" There was a short pause and then, from the back of the room, a small boy spoke up. "Sin," he said.
Humans have a lot in common. With our world at war it seems like all we have in common is our differences. But we have a huge amount in common. A huge amount that shows that we’re all on the same page in some important ways.
We all need to eat. We all need shelter and clothing. We all need to give and receive love. And we all sin. Actually, I’m not sure about that last one...is there anyone here who never sins? O.K. just checking. So we all sin.
What is sin? “ To sin is to do something that offends God. We have all offended God. “For all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God” [Romans 3:23]
Do we really need that scripture to inform us of that? I knew it before I ever read that passage. Or at least I knew I sinned. I figured the rest of you were all angels.
Rabbi David A. Nelson likes to tell the story of two brothers who went to their rabbi to settle a longstanding feud. The rabbi got the two to reconcile their differences and shake hands. As they were about to leave, he asked each one to make a wish for the other in honor of the Jewish New Year. The first brother turned to the other and said, "I wish you what you wish me." At that, the second brother threw up his hands and said, "See, Rabbi, he’s starting up again!"
We all sin. And, if you are a follower of Jesus Christ, if you have received Him by faith and trusted in his sacrificial death on the cross for you...you have been forgiven every sin you ever imagined or ever committed.
This might not be too pleasant, but stop for a second and just think about a few of the sins you’ve done...the biggies. Now think about the reality of God’s forgiveness that you have received through Jesus Christ.
“But that’s God, forgiving me. I’m a person. I can’t forgive a person their offense against me!!!” Apparently Jesus knew that we would have this objection.
John 20:23a" "If you forgive anyone his sins, they are forgiven".
And
Matthew 6:14-15: “If you forgive men when they sin against you, your heavenly Father will also forgive you. But if you do not forgive men their sins, your Father will not forgive your sins”.
O.K. So the truth is, as Christians we can find the grace to forgive. Note that the point is that if
we do not forgive we are not forgiven.
I truly believe forgiveness is essential to the building of a community of faith. It is not optional, it is not an add-on that I can ignore if it suites me.
And we want our community, our church to grow...to deepen in our commitment to God, to deepen our roots in Christ. To do that, we need to go where God’s Word takes us, even if it smarts a bit.
When we forgive others it is evidence that we get how much we’ve been forgiven by God. When we forgive others it helps us to know that we get the importance of the forgiveness we ourselves have received from God.
When we are a forgiving people, our pasts loose their strangle-hold on the present and we are free to follow God without the chains and bitterness and malice choking our every thought and action.
Forgiveness is a funny thing; it warms the heart and cools the sting.
The Power of Forgiveness
Not long before she died in 1988, in a moment of surprising honesty on television, Marghanita
Laski, one of the best-known atheists and novelists, said, "What I envy most about you Christians
is your forgiveness; I have nobody to forgive me."
There’s a Spanish story of a father and son who had become estranged. The son ran away, and the father set off to find him. He searched for months to no avail. Finally, in a last desperate effort to find him, the father put an ad in a Madrid newspaper.
The ad read: Dear Paco, meet me in front of this newspaper office at noon on Saturday. All is
forgiven. I love you. Your Father. On Saturday 800 Pacos showed up, looking for forgiveness and love from their fathers.
Forgiveness heals relationships. The truth is any relationship of any depth - from a friend you may not see often but always seem to connect well with, to your best friend, to the marriage relationship itself - all relationships thrive when there is an understanding that forgiveness is an important thing, an important value to both parties.
Why do they thrive? Because it gives us the freedom to not be perfect. We can make a mistake, a
misjudgment, we can have a misunderstanding without it being the end of the world or at least the end of the relationship.
Without that freedom, freedom which is there because forgiveness is part of the relationship, we cannot have relationships of any depth or length.
Do you want to have deeper and more meaningful relationships with each other, with your husband or wife, with others in the community - Yonge Street Mission is a big community - being a forgiving person and a forgiving community means we give each other the freedom to be ourselves - warts and imperfects and bad moments and all; and strengths and beauty and
kindnesses as well.
That’s part of the power of forgiveness.
Another part of the power of forgiveness is its power to release us from bondage.
In his book, Lee: The Last Years, Charles Flood writes about an incident that happened after the American Civil War. Brigadier General Robert E. Lee, The son of Revolutionary War hero, visited a woman from Kentucky after the War She took him to the remains of a huge, grand old tree in front of her house.
She stood there and wept - bitterly crying that its limbs and trunk had been destroyed the Federal
artillery fire from the north. She looked to Lee, expecting him to say something condemning about the north or at least sympathizing with her loss. After just a short silence
Lee said: "Cut it down, my dear Madam, and forget it." It is better to forgive the injustices of the past than to allow them to remain, let bitterness take root and poison the rest of our life.
We like to nurse grudges sometimes, don’t we. So-and-so did this to me and so and so did that. Sometimes they are small offenses and sometimes they are huge offenses where we have very seriously sinned against. We’ve been a victim.
Our life has been altered for the worse by the actions of another. And it is quite normal to dwell on what happened, even to dream up revenge scenarios where the playing field is leveled again after an offense.
And yet, if we don’t move on pretty quickly from that state of mind, if we get stuck in our anger and bitterness - who suffers? We suffer.
Our today is affected and our tomorrow is affected and we end up in bondage to our own bitterness. When we don’t forgive - when we don’t seek God’s power and grace to enable us to forgive - We suffer. We carry the hurt into our future. Bitterness takes root and poisons the rest of our lives, as Lee said.
You’ve heard about the notion of “Forgive and Forget”? That’s a myth and is some really, truly awful advice. Far better advice is “Forgive...and daily choose to walk in that forgiveness”. And use your common sense.
Don’t stay in an abusive relationship, don’t position yourself to be hurt in the future by staying close to someone who has proven again and again to be untrustworthy.
You can forgive a person...release them of the guilt of what they’ve done, and put up some very tough boundaries around the relationship. An abusive person will accuse you then of not forgiving them by doing that. You should expect that. Nowhere in scripture are we counseled to live the life of a victim.
The power of forgiveness is that it enables us to move forward, to live a live that is not strangled by the past. Jesus wants us to have abundant life. Abundant life happens in part when we let go of the past.
Where Does This Leave Us?
I want to give some practical points for developing the art of forgiveness in your own life. As
Christians, we need to look to Jesus Christ:
1) Think of Christ’s suffering. Think of what he endured. Ask yourself...how does the way I have
been wronged compare to the way that Christ was wronged. This may help to give some perspective.
2) Recall the many kind deeds that have been shown to you, perhaps even by the person who has harmed you.
3) Make a list of the good things you have received from the Lord.
4) Thank Him for blessing you with His love and forgiveness each day.
5) Make an honest effort to pray for the one who has injured you.
6) Go even further by looking for an opportunity to help him.
7) If the offense is especially hard to forget, ask for God’s grace to replace the memory by gracious and generous thoughts.
8) Finally, before you fall asleep at night, repeat slowly and thoughtfully that phrase from the
Lord’s Prayer, "Forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors."
Ravensbruck was a concentration camp built in 1939 on a small lake opposite the city of Füürstenberg, 56 miles north of Berlin, Germany. It was built for women most of who were part of the resistance to Nazi occupation.
The Ravensbruck women were an active part of the Dutch Resistance, French Resistance and many countries who took a stand against fascism and were among the first to be taken prisoners by the Nazis. It is of special importance because of the collective courage of these individuals that united against fascism and racism.
Over 90,000 women and children perished in Ravensbruck, and little, if anything, is written
about them in history as we know it today.
But there is at least one thing we have left from Ravensbruck. It was written on a tattered, ripped
and worn sheet of paper. It was found in the clothing of a dead child at Ravensbruck.
“O Lord, remember not only the men and woman of good will, but also those of ill will. But do not remember all of the suffering they have inflicted upon us:
"Instead remember the fruits we have borne because of this suffering, our fellowship, our loyalty to one another, our humility, our courage, our generosity, the greatness of heart that has grown from this trouble. When our persecutors come to be judged by you, let all of these fruits that we have borne be their forgiveness".
Colossians 3:12-14: "Therefore, as God’s chosen people, holy and dearly loved, clothe yourselves with compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness and patience. Bear with each other and forgive whatever grievances you may have against one another. Forgive as the Lord forgave you. And over all these virtues put on love, which binds them all together in perfect unity".
Let’s pray. Lord God, it seems forgiveness is an important thing. Thank you that you want us to live as free people.
We come to you, Lord Jesus, as a people who need to learn how to forgive so that we can be the people you want us to be. So we can be the kind of church where people just simply feel your presence, and feel free to be themselves.
Truly. Alive. Deepen our commitment to you, holy God. And deepen our commitment to each other. In your name we pray. Amen.
