Cultivating a Heart of Forgiveness

Introduction

We don’t often think of forgiveness, or church discipline, or peacemaking as life and death matters, but the Bible says that they are. It is the peacemakers that are the children of God (Matt 5:9); Church discipline is a mark of a true gospel-believing, Bible preaching Church as we learned in our series on the doctrine of the Church. As we are going to see today, a person’s attitude toward forgiving others is a reflection of their attitude toward the forgiveness of God and has eternal ramifications.

Peacemaking is hard. Forgiveness is harder. There is a lot of truth to the question of the Pharisees when they asked Jesus, “who but God can forgive sins?” And yet, the Bible commands us in plenty of places to forgive others (eg. Eph. 4:32; Colossian 3:13) even passages that suggest that our forgiveness from God will match the way that we forgive others (Matt. 6:14-15).

How do we develop hearts that are willing and ready to forgive? The great apostle, Peter, asked a similar question. In Matthew 18, Jesus began to prepare his disciples for what life would be like without him once he was crucified, resurrected and in heaven. The disciples anticipated that one of them would ascend to leadership. In Matthew 18:1-4, Jesus refutes their idea of any one of them “being the greatest” and calls them to humility instead. He calls them to service and not to be served. To illustrate the point he takes up a child on his lap and says to be like this child.

In verses 6-9, Jesus reminds his disciples about the seriousness of sin and says that if anyone causes one of these child-like believers to stumble that it would be better for them to be dead! Sin is so serious that Jesus, hyperbolically - and maybe literally for some - says that it would be better to cut off whatever makes you sin from your life lest it destroy in hell. That’s how serious sin is and making others, especially God’s children, to stumble in to it.

What is our attitude toward those who succumb to temptation, especially those caught in sin in God’s household? Verse 10 says, “ See that you do not despise one of these little ones...” There is the chief attitude that keeps us from forgiving others: we think we are better than them somehow and so we “despise” them. To despise, here is active. It means to look upon someone with contempt; to look down upon as if you are better; to overlook; to have disregard for or toward. Instead, verses 10-14 teach us that we are to restore “lost sheep” to the fold. The good shepherd leaves the 99 to run toward the one lost sheep for reclamation and restoration. Galatians 6:1

Galatians 6:1 (ESV)

Brothers, if anyone is caught in any transgression, you who are spiritual should restore him in a spirit of gentleness. Keep watch on yourself, lest you too be tempted.

In Matthew 18:15-20, Jesus lays out the process for forgiveness and restoration. “If your brother sins against you, go and tell him his fault, between you and him alone...” The context and purpose of Jesus describing this is the reclamation of lost sheep. The stated purpose is the reclamation and restoration of lost sheep. It is winning back God’s children from sin. Church discipline is family discipline. Church discipline, the restoration of believers to the fellowship of the fold and is a reminder that you are your brother’s keeper (contrary to Cain’s answer and actions in Genesis 4, Cain’s response to perceived offense was murder on the slippery slope). Jesus is teaching his disciples peacemaking responses to conflict in the kingdom.

Peter’s Inquiry & Jesus’ Answer

What a great program!! What an exhausting program though! Anybody who has ever had to deal with personal conflict knows just how stressful some of those situations can be. Long standing family disputes. Fights with co-workers that make the work environment toxic. Church feuds that can lead to splits or hurt people that diminish the witness of the gospel. All very stressful.

I think Peter realizes this. Peter is a realist but he has also tasted a bit of the grace of God in his life. So Peter asks the question: “Lord, how often will my brother sin against me, and I forgive him? As many as seven time?”

Peter is actually being very generous when judged by the theological and cultural standards of his time. According to Jewish traditions, it was believed that 3 was the limit for how many times a person could ask for forgiveness before they could be despised and disregarded. That’s pretty generous considering that human nature has a built in curse of 1 time from the song of Lamech in Genesis 4:23-24).

Peter is asking the practical question of going through the emotional, psychological and, perhaps, time consuming process. “Hey, Jesus, what’s the limit on all of this forgiving others stuff? You’ve taught us a great deal about God and so I think that 7 is enough to outdo the culture.”

Jesus’ response attacks Peter’s assumptions about standards and attacks his understanding of grace of God’s forgiveness. Jesus says, “I do not say to you seven time, but seventy times seven.”

What is Jesus saying here? What he does not mean is for Peter to actually carry around a notebook with him like some sort of “sin bookie” keeping track of who owes how much. He is not telling Peter to hold off until the 491st sin in order to now begin to despise those who go off in sin. Jesus is speaking in and to a culture that would recognize very clearly what Jesus is saying: that there should be no limit to forgiveness!

I have already mentioned in passing the song of Lamech in Genesis 4:23-24. As part of the song, Lamech boasts in song how much punishment he is going to extol on the one who merely touches him. “If Cain’s revenge is sevenfold, then Lamech’s is seventy-seven fold.” Jesus’ words, as an allusion to the Genesis text, seem to be reversing Lamech’s curse and boast!

When somebody wrongs us- when they snitch, when they catch us, when they harm us physically or emotionally - we make it our life-quest to get them back!

- We get our parents back when we say, “I’ll never be like them when I grow up!”

- We try to get lost loves back by saying, “I’ll never let anybody break my heart again!”

- We try to hurt our abusers by becoming abusers ourselves.

Some of you may have read, or seen the movie, “Unbroken.” It’s a true story of Louie Zamperini who was shot down over the pacific ocean and miraculously survived the ocean for 47 days before being caught by the Japanese. Placed in Japanese prison camps, survivors endured the most brutal physical and psychological torture. One of his particular torturers was a commander that they nicknamed “the bird.” Eventually Zamperini was was rescued but when he came home, he was still captive to his captors. His anger toward his captors was unleashed on his new bride and eventually on his daughter.

Zamperini reveals some of the insight he learns about anger and unforgiveness. One of the lessons he learned was this: “The paradox of vengefulness is that it makes men dependent upon those who have harmed them, believing that their release from pain will come when they make their tormentors suffer.”

When we hold on to our grudges and anger, we feel so righteous by making ourselves feel so wronged, so hurt, so self-pitied, so self-centered....

Frederich Buechner said, “Of the seven deadly sins, anger is possibly the most fun. To lick your wounds, to smack your lips over grievances long past, to roll over your tongue the prospect of bitter confrontations still to come, to savor to the last toothsome morsel both the pain your given and the pain you are giving back - in many ways it is a feast fit for a king. The chief draw back is that what you are wolfing down is yourself. The skeleton at the feast is you.”

When Jesus confronts Peter’s seemingly generous offer of forgiving a person up to 7 times before vengeance is allowed, Jesus is essentially calling Peter, and his disciples, away from a spirit of vengeance altogether. Instead, he is calling them and us into a spirit of readiness to forgive and restore.

What Forgiveness Should Look Like

In order to drive home, Jesus tells Peter a story/parable (vv 21-35). In the story, the great king begins to settle accounts with various servants. These are not mere household servants. These are probably something closer to regional governors who oversee territory and revenue for the great king. These guys must have had access to the royal credit cards or something because one servant racks up a debt of about 10,000 talents which some commentators say is the modern equivalent of about 6 Billion dollars!

The amount is highly exaggerated for the purposes of the point of the story. A talent is about 75lbs. The story does not say whether it was gold or not, but it was a lot!

The servant’s lifestyle has caught up with him and he cannot pay. So the king begins to have all the assets of the servant liquidated and sold so that the king can begin to get back some of the revenue that was lost by the servant. The man’s wife and children are even affected as they are ordered to be sold. The man’s private sin was now gushing into the life of his family.

But the man begs and pleads with the king for time and a chance to pay the king back. Now, in all seriousness, there is no way that this man can pay back 10,000 talents but that is the point of the exaggerated amount. It’s like in the movie Hot Shots in which the pilot, played by actor Charlie Sheen, is told that he wrecked a 30 million dollar airplane and he responds, “Yes, I know. I’m paying that back at $10 a month!”

The point is that our sin before God, the great king, is an incomprehensible amount. That we think we can pay back God for what our sin has robbed him of is a joke. It is ridiculous and an insult to God. The sum of our sin is beyond repayment to God. Even in hell, the debt is never paid back which is why hell is eternal.

The king selling all that the servant owes reminds us that God has every right to reclaim what is his that we have lost because of sin.

What does the king do? Out of sheer grace, v27 says that the great king forgave him the debt.

Somebody has to pay, but here is the kicker when it comes to forgiveness in the story. The king pays. The king is the one who absorbs the cost and takes on the financial debt of the servant bearing the cost himself.

The response of the servant, however, is where Jesus begins to answer Peter’s question about how many times he has to forgive and where we start to see how we can cultivate a heart of forgiveness toward others.

This servant begins to hunt down his own servants who owe him only a few hundred dollars or few thousand dollars (v28). The actions of the servant who owed the lesser amount are the same as this servant who owed the ridiculous amount. They fell down and pleaded and even used the same words that he had just used on the great king. But these words hit a stone wall. He refused his familiar words and actions and instead throws the servant into prison until payment can be made. Did he really expect the servant to pay off the debt in a place where he couldn’t work or make money to? Probably not, but he felt justified in his actions.

THE FORGIVEN IS UNFORGIVING!!

The lender forgot that he was also a borrower! He, like us, liked receiving forgiveness but he did not like giving it. He, like us, made his sins against others small and the sins of others against himself large. Implied in Peter’s question is our own hearts as well: we love to receive forgiveness but we hate giving it!

So the king finds out as other fellow servants (probably other regional governors) make the actions of the servant known. The king summons him and now calls him a “wicked servant.”

He rebukes the servant and tells him what his life should have looked like in light of the forgiveness he had just received: “Should you not have had mercy on your fellow servant as I had mercy on you?”

In other words, our forgiveness toward others should be patterned off of God’s forgiveness toward us. Jesus is telling Peter: “Peter, don’t forget your many sins when others sin against you! Don’t forget that If you have been forgiven of your many sins, then you must also forgive those who sin against you.”

How to experience and Give Forgiveness

The story ends with a threat: the great king gives the wicked servant to the jailers and he must now pay what he owes. Jesus says these words: “So also my heavenly Father will do to every one of you, if you do not forgive your brother from your heart.” (v35).

If we do not forgive, we are not forgiven; But if we are not forgiven, we cannot forgive. We have to see and experience forgiveness to give it.

What does forgiveness involve? Jay Adam’s says that forgiveness is essentially a promise with three elements: to not bring the matter up to the person, to not bring up the matter with other people, and to not bring up the matter to ourselves. In other words, to not hold and use the sin against them, to not use the sin to manipulate others with gossip and other speech sins, and then to not dwell or brood over the sin.

A. So how do we find forgiveness from the only real debt that will cast us into the greater prison of God’s wrath?

First, you need to see your debt before God. You owe God everything! He made us, He gave us life, breath, etc...

we, like the wicked servant, have misused God’s resources for our own selfish ends (lied, cheated, stolen, gossiped, slander, adultery, lust, idolatry, etc…)

We all owe God a debt we cannot pay. Do you see that? Or are you still convinced you can pay God back? Are you still deceiving yourself, like Saul, who thought he could use what he gained from disobedience to offer to the Lord in burnt offerings?

2. We need to come to God, the great king, and in light of our debt to him, beg and plead for his forgiveness. We must not assume that God has to forgive us. We must not wait! There should be an urgency when your debt is realized!

3. When you come to the great king for forgiveness, you need to see that somebody still has to pay.

We see this at the cross of Jesus Christ.

On the cross, we see the great king bearing our sin debt. On the cross we see the great king paying off an infinite debt and pardoning his servants at great cost to himself.

On the cross, Jesus was handed over to the darkness, to experience the great prison where he paid God the Father to the last penny for our sins.

The only way that God is merciful to us is because it cost him the life of his own Son.

God knows that we cannot pay without. We cannot escape his wrath. God must forgive out of sheer grace toward us but at infinite cost to himself.

B. How do we give forgiveness?

Jesus has given us the pattern for forgiveness in verse 27:

We must have pity “And out of pity for him...”

What does it mean to have pity? Pity can be defined as “the humane quality of understanding the suffering of others and wanting to do something about it.”

As a verb it can mean to share in the suffering of others

to have your heart go out to the other person

to identify with the person

to feel what they feel

to put yourself in their shoes

the deliberate looking at the person and seeing how much you have in common

our natural reaction is not pity. Rather, our natural reaction to offense is accentuate and magnify the differences that we have with those people who offend or wrong us.

We usually remain bitter and hurt by caricaturing other people and reducing them to their sin… we turn the person into a “one dimensional being.”

eg. “That person is always just a liar” “They are just a drunk...”

The Scarlet Letter is a classic example of reducing Hester Pryne to an adulteress by forcing her to wear a letter “A” on her clothing. She was reduced to her sin by her accuser and her community.

But when we lie - it’s not because we are liars - rather, “it’s complicated” and “God’s knows my heart” or “I didn’t mean to...” and we let ourselves go based on our intentions. But it’s never because we are liars.

We may not commit murder but we won’t see ourselves as capable of murder and even murderers in heart as Jesus taught when we are dismissive and despise others.

The doctrine of Total Depravity means that every single one of us is wholly and radically corrupt and therefore capable of the most heinous sins should God just give us over.

If you don’t believe that about your own heart and its own corruption, you will never find pity in your heart. Self-righteousness will be those things that we use to look down on and despise the “real sinners.”

Miroslav Volf, in his book “Exclusion and Embrace” said, “Forgiveness flounders because I exclude the enemy from the community of humans even as i exclude myself from the community of sinners...”

If I’m always better than the person who has offended me, then to that degree I’m still clinging to some form of self-righteousness and rejecting the grace of God’s forgiveness because self-righteousness never sees the need for forgiveness from God. It is self-deceptive.

2. Release and Forgive “…released and forgave him the debt...”

This is at the heart of what forgiveness is

“To forgiven someone means to release him or her from liability to suffer punishment or penalty.” The servant was released from his responsibility for payment. It was not to be held against him and we was allowed to be restored back to place. Notice when hunts down his own servants he has “fellows servants” who on the same level with him as these regional governors. He came back restored.

Remember that somebody has to pay. In order to forgive the debt to the servant, it cost the king the debt of the servant. The king could only let the servant go at great cost to himself.

God could only forgive us our sins at infinite cost to himself. Jesus bore the debt we all owed. That is the only way God let’s anybody out of his wrath. He pays for the sin.

In the like manner, when we forgive, we must absorb the debt at a cost to ourselves.

e.g. suppose someone were to come over for dinner and accidentally break an expensive china dish that had been in the family for several generations. You could ask them to pay for it OR you absorb the loss yourself.

Lets be honest here: forgiveness can be painful to ourselves as we bear the pain caused to us rather than retaliate back.

But you also have to let them go… “release” them.

Notice the way that the great king “settled” accounts versus the way that the servant did. The impression of the way the king did it was by an audit of some sort. The word “brought” in verse 24 is passive giving us the impression that this servant perhaps showed up knowing that he was in trouble. But compare the way the servant went to settle accounts with his own servants in verse 28: “seizing....choking” These are active verbs. He went to hunt down whoever he could get his hands on and made attack responses of assault and litigation!

We keep people in prisons of our anger in many ways.

maybe we gossip about them and slander for payback. E.G. “Hey, I just think you should be careful about so and so and their past as this was my experience with them...”) Now we could hide gossip and slander by calling it “facts” and “being objective.” If our motive is to tarnish the reputation of someone we have said we have forgiven, then true forgiveness was never given.

we might ruin their reputation

we might withdraw friendship or even friendliness

you might just tell them off

escape responses (denial, flight, suicide) vs attack responses (assault, litigation, murder).

some of these can remain hidden by just wishing them a bad life or whenever something bad happens you say in your heart, “well surely they deserved that!”

If these acts or attitudes mark your heart or behavior toward someone that you have said you have forgiven, then you really have not.

But this is how we make people “work off their debts” with us. But these make us more like Job’s friends seeking excuses for receiving “justice” or even like Satan being the functional accuser of the brethren.

EXCURSUS

“I don’t feel like forgiving...”

Answer: When it comes to “feeling” like forgiving, the truth of the Bible is that you may have to grant forgiveness before you “feel” like it. If you wait to “feel” it you never will. Forgiveness is not a feeling. Rather, it is an act of the will which is why the Bible commands it. The feelings of forgiveness will follow the acts of forgiveness. When you make an active decision not to roast that person in your heart; when you choose to absorb the debt, when you actively cut off anger and bitterness and not allow them to take a root in your heart, then you begin to experience the feelings of forgiveness. You start to cultivate a heart of forgiveness.

“Unforgiveness is the poison we drink, hoping others will die.”

The more you do this, the easier it is to release others when they sin against you.

Yes, there might be times when the pursuit of justice is called for when the offense is also a civil offense or a crime.

Conclusion

When Peter asked how many times he should be willing to forgive sin against him, Jesus took advantage of a teaching moment to gently tell Peter that his forgiveness toward others needed to match the forgiveness that God had shown toward him.

Forgiveness is not easy for us because it was not easy for God. God gave his own Son. None of us here will ever have to pay for our sin or the sins of others the way that God paid for our sins through Jesus Christ on the cross.

“When we fail to forgive others as God has forgiven us, we are, in effect saying that sins against us are more serious than sins against God.”

The parable revealed how ridiculous it is to think that we can hold others responsible for their sins against us when the greater debt we owe to God was able to be paid by Christ. Jesus uses the parable, in a sense, to reveal the foolishness of an attitude and unwillingness to forgive by anyone who claims to be a servant of God, the great king.

The parable reveals the unreasonableness of an attitude of unforgiveness, the meanness of such an attitude and the danger of such an attitude. “So also....” Not “kind of like” but “so also...” “in the like way” - “…My heavenly Father will do to every one of you...” (No one is excluded - not even an apostle, who were the immediate audience of Jesus’ teaching!) “…if you do not forgive your brother from your heart.”