You Want Me to Forgive. What does that mean?

In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.

Glory to Jesus Christ!

The Call to Forgiveness

The call to forgive is all around us. For those of us who are here in Church and who attempt to live a Christian life, it is baked into the very fabric of Christianity. In the Our Father, the oldest prayer of Christianity, we hear the line “Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us.” We are familiar with Gospel admonitions to forgive seventy times seven; that when we forgive those who sin against us, our Heavenly Father will forgive us; that in the same way we judge others, we will be judged. We remember the words of our Lord, God, and Savior on the Cross, “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.”

Forgiveness is not only a popular topic in the Church, but has gained increasing popularity. We hear pop-psychology tell us that we should forgive others because we only are harming ourselves, not those whom we have failed to forgive. We hear that we must not only forgive others, but even that we must forgive ourselves. In these cases, forgiveness, conventional wisdom says, is not something that we’re really giving to the other person. It’s not something we do for their sakes. It’s something that we do for our sakes.

In this instance, secular self-help fads agree to a certain extent with the wisdom of the Church. Forgiveness is something that is indispensible to our lives. The question is - what is the nature of forgiveness?

The Nature of Sin

Before we can ask ourselves about the nature of forgiveness, we have to ask ourselves what the nature of sin is. If we do something for someone that they recognize as good, we obviously don’t expect them to need to forgive us. Most of the time, we wouldn’t even ask. Therefore, if we are going to talk about forgiveness, we have to talk about what there is to forgive.

Sin is an unpopular topic in our modern society. We don’t like to talk about it. We honestly don’t even like to think about it. When we do think about it, our ideas of what sin is are frequently marred by distortions from the society around us. “After all,” society wants to tell us, “if such an outdated concept as sin exists, it is manifested by transgressions against our agreed, enlightened moral compass. The sin is even greater if it was acceptable under some previous darkened age’s moral compass.”

But what is the actual nature of sin? That is, what does the Church tell us about sin? The Greek word for sin is amartia, which comes from the practice of archery and literally means to miss the mark. It is to shoot an arrow at a target and, in so doing, miss the bulls-eye. If the head of the arrow embeds in the ring just outside the bulls-eye or if it flies past the target entirely, it is still a missing of the mark.

So when it comes to our lives and to sin, what is the mark that we are missing? The mark that we are missing is the telos, or the end or purpose of our lives. That purpose lies not in our occupation, or where we live, or how much money we have. The purpose is that which is inherent in our nature - to be in the image and likeness of God.

We are tempted to blame the sins we commit, or the passions that they become when we give into them over and over, on our nature. Regardless of what our sin is, we are tempted to make excuses and to say “This is my personality” or “We all have or vices” or “I was born this way.” We want to make it so these things are not a missing of the mark, but to widen the circle of the mark to include them.

But our nature is in the image of God, and made to grow into the likeness of God. Sin is that which misses the mark and stunts that growth. It is that, essentially, which is our misuse of the nature that is given to us. Like a gift that we give to another and they misuse, we are misusing the gift which God has given to us. This creates a debt for us. If we love God, it is incumbent on us to use properly the gifts which He gives us. We owe it to Him, not because He is some cosmic tyrant, but because in our love for Him, we are called to make proper use of those gifts and to not do so creates a debt, for what we owe, we are not paying.

The Nature of Forgiveness

This view of sin creating debt is where we arrive at understanding the nature of forgiveness. The core of forgiveness, as we see expressed in today’s Gospel, is the remission of debt. It is not a denial that something is owed, but is the statement that even though something is justly owed, it is owed no more.

When we sin, we create two debts - a greater debt and a lesser debt. We create a greater debt to God, for, out of love, we owe Him for the nature that we misuse when we sin. But we also create a lesser debt to our neighbor, whom we are also called to love. This debt is created because in missing the mark, in not living to the likeness of God, we are not acting toward our neighbor in a Godly way.

We see this reflected in today’s Gospel. The difference between the debts owed is staggering. A denarii is roughly the wage that a laborer could expect to earn for a day’s labor. A talent, according to St. Epiphanius of Salamis, is the equivalent of 100 denarii. So a single talent is equal to wages for almost a third of the year. The amount that the unjust servant owes to his ruler, who stands in for our Heavenly Father in the parable, is more than the servant would earn in over 3000 years. The amount owed him by his fellow servant, on the other hand, is minimal.

So, when God forgives us, and when we forgive others who sin against us, it is a cancellation of a debt rightly owed. It is not a release from the expectation of acting out of love. God still expects us to love Him, to approach with reverence and piety. We are still expected to love our neighbor. The remission of debt is not a cancellation of the obligation we owe going forward.

Because the debt is remitted, we no longer remind the other of what was forgiven. This is not to say we forget it, but neither do we hold it over them. It is not our place to hold over them a greater debt for the remission of a smaller one. Yet, our reaction to forgiveness, whether from God or from our neighbor, must always be gratitude. Gratitude comes not because it is demanded, but because it is freely given.

We then are called to forgive and to ask forgiveness. As much as we strive not to sin, when we fall, we run to God for forgiveness and also should run to our neighbor to ask forgiveness. When others come to us and ask, we ought to be quick to forgive and to ask their forgiveness, even if we do not see the debt we owe them. In this lies our salvation.

To our God, who forgives us all our debts, be all glory, honor, and dominion, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, unto the ages of ages. Amen.