“Forgiven and Forgiving”
Matthew 6:12
April 28, 2002
Dr. Jerry Nelson
Last November I told you the story of Marietta Jaeger.
Have you ever been deeply hurt?
· Abandoned?
· Someone you loved killed?
· A spouse unfaithful?
· Your income or business or retirement stolen?
· A child or best friend betrayed your trust?
· Repeatedly slandered?
Most of us have had enemies, acquaintances, friends and even loved ones who have hurt us, hurt us deeply; who have sinned against us greatly.
Some offenses against us we shrug off as inconsequential.
But others cut too deeply to dismiss and we find that even when we try to forget about them, they keep coming back to mind and hurting all over again.
The world says, and even something in us says, “Keep score and get even” or at least “Beware.”
But Jesus says, “Forgive.”
Knowing how seemingly impossible forgiveness sometimes is, the Apostle Peter asked Jesus how many times we should forgive someone who sins against us?
Peter magnanimously suggested an answer to his own question by indicating that he might be willing to forgive seven times.
But Jesus answered, “I tell you, not seven times, but seventy-seven times!”
Then to drive home the point of how and why we are to live with an attitude of forgiveness toward others, Jesus tells a story.
Please stand as I read from the Sacred Scriptures:
Matthew 18:23-35
“Therefore, the kingdom of heaven is like a king who wanted to settle
accounts with his servants. As he began the settlement, a man who owed
him ten thousand talents was brought to him. Since he was not able to pay, the
master ordered that he and his wife and his children and all that he had be
sold to repay the debt.
"The
servant fell on his knees before him. `Be patient with me,' he begged, `and I
will pay back everything.' The
servant's master took pity on him, canceled the debt and let him go.
"But
when that servant went out, he found one of his fellow servants who owed him a
hundred denarii. He grabbed him and began to choke him. `Pay back what you owe
me!' he demanded.
“His fellow servant fell to his knees and
begged him, `Be patient with me, and I will pay you back.' "But he
refused. Instead, he went off and had the man thrown into prison until he could
pay the debt. When the
other servants saw what had happened, they were greatly distressed and went and
told their master everything that had happened.
"Then
the master called the servant in. `You wicked servant,' he said, `I canceled
all that debt of yours because you begged me to. Shouldn't you have had mercy on
your fellow servant just as I had on you?' In anger his master turned him over to the jailers to be tortured,
until he should pay back all he owed.
"This is how my heavenly Father will treat each of you unless you forgive your brother from your heart."
It is the last sentence, Jesus’ commentary on his own story, which led me to this text.
Remember that Jesus told the story because Peter asked how many times we should forgive someone who sins against us.
And his answer, in the story and after the story, I think is much more significant and profound than Peter expected.
Regarding forgiveness, what two issues does Jesus tie together?
He inextricably links God’s forgiveness of us with
our forgiveness of others.
This is not the only time Jesus does this.
In Luke 6:37 we hear him saying, “Forgive and you will be forgiven.”
In Mark 11:25 we read, “If you hold anything against anyone, forgive him, so that your Father in heaven may
forgive you your sins.”
And in our continuing study of and wrestling with the Sermon on the Mount, in the section we call “The Lord’s Prayer” we find the same striking idea:
Matthew 6:9-15
"This, then, is how
you should pray:
" `Our Father in heaven,
hallowed be your name,
your kingdom come,
your will be done
on earth as it is in heaven.
Give us today our daily
bread.
Forgive us our debts,
as we
also have forgiven our debtors.
And lead us not into
temptation,
but deliver us from the evil one. '
For 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.
Again, what two issues does Jesus tie together? –
Our forgiveness of others and God’s forgiveness of us!
“Forgive us our debts,
as we also have forgiven our debtors.”
The implications of this
are disturbing to us.
Does
Jesus mean that we have to forgive others before
the Father can forgive us?
Is Jesus saying that God’s forgiveness of us is dependent on our forgiving those who have sinned against us?
Doesn’t the Bible teach that we don’t earn
forgiveness?
I think the best way to answer these and similar questions is to go back and think carefully about what Jesus said we are to pray.
When Jesus speaks of forgiveness where
does he start?
He starts with our relationship with God:
“Father forgive us our debts.”
Most of you know that the word “debts” speaks of our obligations to God.
Karl
Barth said it this way: “We are God’s debtors. We owe him, not something,
whether it be little or much, but, quite simply, we owe him (everything); we
owe him ourselves, since we are his creatures, sustained and nourished by his
goodness.” (Barth Prayer According to the Catechisms of The
Reformation Philadelphia, Westminster, 1952 p65)
Another more common way to
think of “debts” is as sins or in older language “trespasses”.
We
have sinned against God.
The Bible teaches that as
creatures created by God and loved by God, we have an obligation to God.
Anything short of full obedience and allegiance to
God is sin.
Outside of church, the word
“sin” sounds strange today – almost embarrassing!
Who
speaks this way any longer except preachers?
Tongue
in cheek I ask, “Haven’t we learned enough about the human psyche to know that
people don’t sin today, they are simply maladjusted or they are in error or
they do something with negative consequences?
We
don’t speak of “sin” because “sin” is believed to be an obsolete category for
describing human behavior.
Well if sin disappears then
so too does guilt.
Guilt
then changes from objective guilt (being guilty for doing a sinful thing) to a
guilt complex (a feeling of guilt).
If
that is true then we don’t need the forgiveness of sins, we need to help in
overcoming the psychological complex.
But God teaches that we are
sinful and we are guilty.
We
have violated the holy standards of God, we have not lived in obedience and
loyalty to him, we have rejected his overtures of love and we have violated each other.
The
Bible indicates that the reason why we feel guilty, is because we
are guilty!”
Most of the people of the
world, as evidenced by the religions of the world, spend a great deal of time
attempting to deal with their sense of guilt.
And
even among the so-called “enlightened” secular people of the world, those who
reject religion, countless hours and millions of dollars are spent in
psychotherapy and other means attempting to get beyond the feelings of anger,
resentment, and guilt that people have mostly because of broken relationships.
We
may not call it “forgiveness” but forgiveness is what people long for.
The first time the
conjunction “and” is used in The Lord’s Prayer is between the request for bread
and the request for forgiveness.
You
won’t find it in the NIV but in the New American Standard and in the Greek from
which the translations come, the word “and” sits between the two requests:
“Give
us today our daily bread (AND) forgive us our debts…”
Forgiveness
is as daily and as necessary as bread.
When we preachers talk about sin, we are not just trying to get people to feel guilty so that they will turn to the church or the preacher to get help.
We
are not just creating a market for our ecclesiastical wares.
We
believe what God says and we see it in ourselves and in all the people around
us – we have sinned against God and each other and we are guilty.
That’s
why forgiveness is so necessary.
Without
forgiveness we would have no relationship with God or others – we would live
estranged from God and all others.
Forgiveness
and reconciliation are essential human needs – as necessary as bread.
And forgiveness, when
granted, is an awesome experience!
God’s
forgiveness of us is miraculous. We are
do desperately in need of it!
“The
wonder and glory of Divine forgiveness lies in the measure of its necessity.” (Oudersluys
in Kuiper p109)
Jesus makes this point
clearly in the story we read earlier:
The servant owed the king
10,000 talents.
Jesus’
used 10,000 talents to make it clear that it was more than could ever be
repaid.
Recognizing his predicament,
the servant pleaded for mercy instead of justice.
This
was no half-hearted plea. He knew he
was in trouble.
The king was compassionate
and was deeply moved to pity.
The
king was the lord of the slave and had the RIGHT to do with the slave as he
pleased – the lord was under no obligation.
The
slave asked for patience, but the king, knowing the impossibility of ever
repaying the debt, instead forgave the debt.
It
was an act of pure grace.
Many of us treat forgiveness
as if it was required of God when we make up for the sins we’ve committed.
By
analogy we might say, “He forgot her birthday and so he brought flowers to ask
forgiveness.”
She
measures his sincerity by the contrition in his voice and the value of the gift
and decides that he has done enough to make up for what he did and thus is
worthy of being forgiven.
That’s not forgiveness that’s
compensation.
Forgiveness
is in a totally different category.
Forgiveness
is undeserved!
Jesus knows WE can never
sufficiently compensate for our sin.
He
knows we are hopelessly in debt.
That’s why forgiveness is part of what we call the gospel – good news.
Jesus
came to forgive.
The
words, life, and death of Jesus meet in forgiveness – it is what he was about
here on earth!
His forgiveness is
foundational, critical, and absolutely necessary!
The
miracle of the gospel is that we can be forgiven – no longer under the weight
of the guilt of our sin and no longer liable for the penalty for our sin.
We
can be forgiven!!!
And the basis
of that forgiveness is nothing less than Jesus’ death for us.
He
took the penalty for our sin on himself.
The cross makes clear the true
cost of forgiveness.
On
this side of the cross, historically speaking, we understand something which
the apostles could not have yet understood – that God’s own death was necessary
for forgiveness to be granted.
On
the cross our sin was condemned and conquered:
“We may not know, we cannot tell
What pains he had to bear;
But we believe it was for us
He hung and suffered there.
He died that we might be forgiven
He died to make us good,
That we might go at last to heaven,
Saved by his precious blood.” (found in
Oudersluys in Kuiper 112)
The church is the community
of the forgiven!
It is our message!
Forgiveness
is the remedy for the world’s ills.
It
is the remedy for the world’s relationship with God and with each other.
It is imperative
that we understand and experience the first half of the request about
forgiveness before we attempt to understand the second half.
One man said,
“No one can rightly claim to be Christian unless he has received the
forgiveness of sins.” (Oudersluys in H.J. Kuiper 106)
AND it is the awesome experience
of God’s forgiveness of us that makes the experience of the rest of the prayer
possible:
“As we also have forgiven our
debtors.”
This takes us back to our
earlier questions:
Is
Jesus saying that unless I forgive others God won’t forgive me?
Let’s read his own commentary
on that part of the prayer:
Matthew
6:14-15 “For 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.
That is pointed language.
Is
Jesus saying that we earn our forgiveness from God by our forgiveness of
others?
It would be relatively easy
to conclude that if it were not for the vast majority of Scripture that make it
abundantly clear that we do not and cannot earn our relationship with God.
God’s forgiveness of us is pure grace
not compensation.
But the language Jesus uses
is strong because God’s forgiveness of us and our forgiveness of others are
inextricably linked as cause and effect.
I don’t mean, as I have already explained, that our forgiveness of others causes the effect of God forgiving us.
But
I do mean that the cause of God’s forgiveness of us creates the liklihood of
our forgiveness of others.
Bob Guelich writes, “As the
parable (of the ungrateful servant) indicates, (our forgiveness of others) does
not form the prerequisite for experiencing God’s forgiveness. Rather the genuine experience of
God’s...forgiveness of (our) immense debt conditions (our) ability to
forgive others. (Guelich 298)
Greatly forgiven people
forgive greatly.
Unforgiven
people don’t forgive.
Forgiveness,
properly understood in all its cost and glory, stirs us to gratitude and a
forgiving spirit.
Oudersluys
wrote, “The wonder of Divine forgiveness lies in what it can do to the
forgiven soul, and in what it can make the forgiven soul do.” (Oudersluys
in Kuiper 110)
But it is not only that.
God’s forgiveness of us and our forgiveness of others are linked in another way.
We are not ready to ask for and receive
God’s forgiveness until we are sufficiently broken of our own pride to be
forgiving of others who sin against us.
When
I cannot or will not forgive someone else, when I harbor resentment, when I
refuse to be reconciled, when I intentionally replay the memories over and over
again, I am too proud to sincerely request or receive God’s forgiveness of me.
Listen to several other
voices on the matter:
“One’s relationship with others indicates the extent to which one has indeed experienced God’s forgiveness, one’s “capacity” rather than one “deserts”. (Guelich 298)
“The spirit open to receive
love is of necessity open to bestow love”. (Morris The Gospel According
to Matthew p147)
“What Jesus apparently is
saying is the pride which keeps us from forgiving is the same pride which keeps
us from accepting forgiveness, and will God please help us do something about
it.” (Fredrich
Beuchner Wishful Thinking p28)
“If we harbor within our hearts grudges and enmities, petty
jealousies and hatreds against (others), these attitudes become spiritual
obstacles to the entrance of God’s love and forgiveness…We cannot be sons (or
daughters) if we are not willing to be brothers (and sisters).” (Oudersluys in Kuiper 114 and
119)
“To fail to forgive others is
to demonstrate that one has not felt the saving touch of God.” (Morris 149)
To ask God to forgive us when we are not willing to forgive others only shows our insincerity –
We are not ready to receive forgiveness unless we are ready to grant it.
That is precisely what Jesus
so dramatically describes in his parable of the ungrateful servant.
The servant who had been the
recipient of great grace – the forgiveness of an impossible debt - finds a
fellow-servant (another like himself) who owes him a few measly bucks and
demands that he pay him.
The fellow-servant fell down before the servant and promised to repay all.
(In
this second man’s case, such repayment was possible in contrast to the
first servant’s total inability to do so no matter how long he lived and
worked.)
But the forgiven servant’s
response is exactly the opposite of the king’s.
It
says the forgiven servant “refused”.
This
was a matter of his will – a continuing, steadfast unwillingness.
And the penalty from which he was saved was exactly the penalty he laid on his fellow.
This
is the picture of an unforgiving man – it is the height of ingratitude.
The King hears of this, calls him in, and reminds him of the hugeness of the debt he had been forgiven.
The
servant had been the recipient of grace.
The king states the obvious
in a question –
“Shouldn't you have had mercy on your fellow
servant just as I had on you?”
The king then throws him in prison and the evil servant was to remain
there until the debt was repaid – which means he would never get out!
Listen again to Jesus
strong words at the end of the story in Matthew 18:35 “This is how my heavenly
Father will treat each of you unless you forgive
your brother from your heart."
Yes, that is strong, but
remember the question Jesus asks through the king:
“Shouldn't you have had mercy on your fellow
servant just as I had on you?”
It is God’s mercy toward us that we show toward those who have sinned
against us.
It is grace, undeserved favor that we show toward those who have hurt us
so deeply.
And we do so because we have been shown mercy, we have been granted
grace, we have been loved.
That much of the story I
told you last fall.
But there’s
more.
When Marietta was asked
how God taught her to forgive she told of a pastor from the Balkans who came to
visit and she told his story.
When the communists took
over Yugoslavia, soldiers came to his town and told his father, the mayor, to
tell the people to stop going to their church.
The mayor
refused to stop and this flagrant disobedience by the leading citizen brought
down the wrath of the communists.
They persuaded a cousin
to set up an ambush and the soldiers raided a family gathering machine-gunning
to death the pastor’s father and ten of his
brothers and sisters.
The man
visiting Marietta, along with one of his older brothers and an 11-year-old
brother managed to escape and hid for months.
Six months later friends
convinced him that hiding out was not good for the 11-year-old and he allowed
his little brother to go home, believing that certainly such a young boy would
be safe.
On the day he
returned to his village the boy went to the cemetery but soldiers were waiting
and they killed him.
The man himself was
eventually captured and sent to a camp where he was tortured.
He escaped
months later and made his way to Canada and then to Montana.
Twenty five years later,
(having himself experienced the forgiveness of God), he decided he had to go
back to Yugoslavia, find his cousin who had betrayed them and forgive him.
He
had forgiven him in his heart but he felt he needed to stand face-to-face and
express that forgiveness.
At first the
cousin hid but eventually they met and that forgiveness was extended.
Marietta said that as a
result of that man’s experience, “God was working on me.
I
was already feeling a call to be willing to forgive.
I could look at this man and see that it was possible.
He was a beacon for me, showing me that you could have that change of
heart and God would be faithful to you.”
(In Boers Lord Teach us to Pray 122)
By the grace of God alone, operating in us and through us, we can be forgiven and we can forgive.
“Father forgive us our debts as we also have forgiven our debtors.”
Will we ask, will we receive, and will we forgive?