How We Do Forgiveness

Texts: Matthew 18:21-35; Colossians 3:12-15

Pastor Phil Hughes, American Fork Presbyterian Church, UT

July 30, 2023

Showing forgiveness toward others is always a challenge in our Christian faith. Forgiveness is hard to do.  It is hard because it involves our heart when it has been wounded. We’re angry or hurt or sick and tired of repeated action by someone. A large part of forgiveness is about our emotions. How do we do forgiveness? 

Our Lord often taught that we need to forgive.  We have already prayed this morning, “Forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors” as we do every Sunday. That comes from the prayer Jesus’ taught his disciples to pray.  In Matthew Jesus adds this after this prayer: “For if you forgive others their trespasses, your heavenly Father will also forgive you, but if you do not forgive others, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses.”[1]

Our Lord prayed from the cross: “Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing.”[2] My first impulse when I am hurt is not forgiveness.

Jesus’ disciples struggled with forgiveness.  Which is why Peter asks Jesus how many times he has to forgive someone who sins against him.  Would, say, seven times be enough?

Jesus answers don’t forgive the person just seven times but seventy-seven times.  Actually, that can also be translated and some Bibles read “seventy times seven” which is 490 times if you are doing the math. But Jesus isn’t putting a limit on the forgiveness we should show.

This number “seventy-seven” is a number with meaning. Way back in Genesis a man named Lamech, one of the sons of Cain who you might remember killed his brother Abel, is wounded by a man and kills him in revenge.  And Lamech says, “If Cain is avenged seven times, then Lamech is avenged seventy-seven times.”[3] Jesus takes the number of Lamech, 77, and counters the spirit of revenge by showing a different way – the way of the kingdom, the way of Jesus, the way of forgiveness.  Jesus is saying that we must forgive as much as Lamech wanted revenge. When do I know I have forgiven can be a tough question.  But I know if I want to get revenge I have not forgiven.

Then Jesus tells a parable.  It is about a king who wants to square accounts with his servants. He brings in one man who owes him ten thousand talents.  Our pew Bibles read “ten thousand bags of gold” but the biblical measure is a talent. How much is this?  Herod the Great’s income was 900 talents a year.  Ten thousand talents is millions and millions of dollars.  It is an outrageous amount of money and could not be repaid even with a lifetime of work.  This servant is in over his head and more.  His life is over.

The king orders the servant and his wife and children to be sold into slavery. The poor guy throws himself at the feet of the king and begs him to be given the chance to pay it all back.  And the king, in an unexpected twist of mercy, goes beyond what the servant asks for.  He doesn’t give him the chance to repay the debt.  He cancels the debt.  The servant is off scot-free, totally off the hook.  He is forgiven an amount he could never repay. He receives beyond what he asked.

But he leaves and finds someone who owes him a hundred denarii, which in Bible money is a few dollars. And the person who owes him begs in the same way this first servant had done before the king.  But he refuses to forgive him. He refuses to show the same forgiveness that was shown to him for a much lesser amount. If we’ve been forgiven a multi-million dollar debt we don’t run off and try to collect on someone who owes us a few bucks.

The king hears about it, calls the man back and points out that he forgave his entire debt when he begged for mercy, and should he have not shown the same mercy and forgiveness to the man who owed him ridiculously less? So, the king has him thrown into prison until he pays back all he owed.

That’s the parable.  Here is Jesus’ application: He says, “This is how my heavenly Father will treat each of you unless you forgive your brother (or sister) from your heart.” That phrase “from the heart” gets me.  Forgiveness can be so hard because it is about what is going on in my heart.

Here’s the first truth of the parable:  We are in debt to God.  We are that first servant who owes ten-thousand talents.  We don’t have what it takes to pay our debt. No one can pay what we owe God, and what we owe is not a little moral chump change. If you really think that you are so respectable that your debt to God is minimal you neither know the holiness of God, nor how far apart we are from God without his grace.

But here is the second truth: God in his mercy doesn’t ask us to repay what we owe him, but out of his great mercy cancels everything we have done against God.  That happened when his Son, Jesus, took upon himself all our sins and failures on the cross.  Everyone who believes that gets a stamp that says “debt cancelled” upon their record and has peace with God.

We are forgiven.  All of it.  One way we do forgiveness is to know what we have been forgiven.

The forgiveness of our sins is good news.  We often hear this and want to stop right there and say “glory to God.”  But there’s more. With forgiveness from God comes the responsibility to forgive others.  This is the subversive edge of the parable that Jesus’ teaches.  It isn’t just about what you and I can get and do get.  It is about what you and I must also give.

It is also about forgiving the common, hurtful things that come our way.  The debt that the friend owed the servant wasn’t that much.  This parable is not about the challenge of forgiving massive things.  We’ll get to that in a moment. The problem of that first servant was that he was unwilling to give to another what he had freely received, even though what he was owed paled in comparison to what he had been forgiven. Jesus’ parable is really focused toward those who are owed just a few dollars by others; when the offense is the ordinary, everyday type of stuff. Holding a grudge when angry words were said, or an action hurt, or you were disappointed is not the way of Jesus. We don’t get to enjoy God’s mercy while withholding it from someone else.

Isn’t that the way it is?  We tend to be very aware and keep count of the wrongs done to us while not being very aware of the wrongs we have done to others and God. The crux of this parable is that the grace we have been shown should make us more forgiving of others. Mercy should breed mercy in our lives.  Forgiveness should breed forgiveness.

Paul writes in Colossians, “Bear with each other and forgive one another if any of you has a grievance against someone. Forgive as the Lord forgave you.” This is written to a church community about the faults that can arise. Real wrongs happen in churches. Paul says we have to allow for each other’s faults. I have been a part of churches for a long time and have had to forgive much and be forgiven of much. Healthy churches know how to put forgiveness into practice.

Paul bases the need to forgive on how the Lord forgives us. One of the life-transforming, faith-igniting realities is to realize the forgiveness we have received through the love of Jesus Christ. Do we know how much we have been forgiven?  That first servant in Jesus’ parable did not.

The first servant had received something that he could have extended to the one who was in debt to him. Christians should specialize in this.  Forgiveness should be the radical mark of the church. There are a lot of things the church does not have that the world has, and things the church cannot do that the world can do.  But one thing we have that has been given to us by our Lord Jesus Christ, that no other entity in the world has, is the forgiveness of sins.  Doctors, therapists, the educational system, prescriptions, the Dalai Lama, and all the places people go to try to get better cannot give the forgiveness of sins.

And how many of our conflicts, how many of this world’s conflicts, have to do with lack of forgiveness?  We’ve got conflict management, but what about forgiveness? Maybe that’s why when God came in Christ he made such a mega-deal about it. Maybe the whole reason churches exist is to model it for a world bent on vengeance.  If we don’t who will?

If grace, mercy and forgiveness are not part of our lives maybe we haven’t become a Christian, yet.  Because as Jesus makes tremendously clear with this parable – being right with God is a lot more than just having our sins forgiven. That first debtor to the king lost his forgiveness because though he was forgiven an ocean-full of debt, he couldn’t forgive someone else a cup full.

Now, there are probably levels of forgiveness.  There is level one forgiveness of those petty more common things that hurt us.  There is level two forgiveness of more serious things.  And then level three which is about horrendous hurts. It’s one thing to forgive a neighbor who makes an offensive comment.  It’s another to forgive a family member who continually breaks our trust.  And then another thing to forgive someone who has done something so deeply wounding to you or someone you love that it scars the rest of life.

Eight years ago a young man walked into Mother Emmanuel Church in Charleston, South Carolina.  He joined a bible study and prayer group that was going on.  After an hour of being welcomed in he took out a gun and killed nine people.

The people who were most attached to those victims have spoken and written about how they have struggled to forgive the shooter.  I will point you to them for an example of forgiving something that almost defies imagination. There is wisdom there. They also show forgiveness can happen.

Let’s make sure we understand what forgiveness is.  I’d like to help us do that by understanding what forgiveness is not. If any of this sounds familiar I actually preached some of these things a couple of years ago.  But you know the sermon writer’s strike is on so I have to rerun old material.

Forgiveness is not easy.  It is especially hard if you have suffered something horrific.  You were abused.  Someone you loved was murdered.  Someone you loved took their own life.  You were betrayed.  Or any number of other things that are dark, cruel, and life-altering. It is hard mentally, emotionally and spiritually.  It takes a lifetime of energy, effort, and struggle.  It takes prayer, counseling, venting rage, and courage.  People say “just forgive” and it certainly isn’t that simple. The larger and more horrendous the hurt against us the harder it is to forgive.

Sometimes the obstacle to forgiveness is our own pride.  We are too self-oriented to get there.  But sometimes the offense is so hard that it isn’t about our pride at all.  It is just so big that forgiveness is really, really hard.

Forgiveness is not forgetting. You’ve heard the phrase, “forgive and forget”.  What a bunch of garbage.  We will never forget what was done to us.  “Forgiving does not erase the bitter past.  A healed memory is not a deleted memory.”  But forgiveness can get us to a place where the memory no longer controls us.[4]

Forgiveness is not saying “it’s all right” or ignoring the wrong.  In fact, forgiveness assumes real wrong was done.  When we forgive we are not rubber-stamping or erasing what happened.  The wrong was real. Justice is called for. In fact, we can’t show mercy until we claim justice.

Forgiveness is not about staying in hurtful situations, or necessarily coming back together.  A woman being abused by her husband should not stay with him even if he continues to say he is sorry.  Just because we forgive a person doesn’t mean we need to remain in relationship with them.  Maybe there can be reconciliation, but maybe not.  Distance may be the best and healthiest thing.

Forgiveness is not about fairness.  When we are hurt we want justice or even revenge.  But even revenge cannot reverse the wrong.  Hitting back can’t change the pain and hurt of the past. It is not about fairness but about mercy. Forgiveness helps us move forward. The wrong is still wrong.  But we move ahead so that the offender and offense have no power over us.

Forgiveness doesn’t necessarily clean up all the mess.  It doesn’t change the wrong we have suffered. Forgiveness doesn’t mean all the memories and hurt goes away.  But it does mean that we don’t wish any hurt to come to that other person. The feelings and bad memories may come and go.  But we will know we have forgiven when we do not want to see harm come to the offender.  We may not have any deep love for them, but we aren’t interested in seeing them destroyed.

Forgiveness can be a process more than a one-time happening. It can take time.  Sometimes a lot of time.  In fact, some people would say that to forgive too quickly isn’t really forgiveness.  Is the father of a child who has been shot and killed in a random shooting, and tells the TV cameras an hour or two later that he has forgiven the gunman, really forgiving?  Has he really come to know the pain and anger of what has happened?

Petty hurts should not be nurtured.  But many things we suffer can’t be forgiven overnight. There are unspeakable wrongs that have been done to people. There are spouses who were unfaithful to us,

…parents who abused or neglected us,

…employers who cheated us and devalued us,

…strangers who stole from or violated us,

…others did violent things to those who were the absolute dearest to us.

Jesus knows the struggle to forgive.  Our constant prayer may be for him to give us the grace to help us get to that place. It may come in inches.

Forgiveness is costly. We give up the right to get even.  It cost us energy.

Forgiveness is the way of Jesus. When we forgive we imitate God.  “Forgive as the Lord has forgiven you” is what the scripture says.  We embody his mercy and love.  He came into this world in Christ to make forgiveness possible.

When we forgive we acknowledge that honoring our heavenly Father and being in relationship with him is more important than our hurt.

How can we do forgiveness given what happened to us?  There is no formula.  Because every wrong is different.  Every person who was wronged has a different capacity to forgive, depending on their maturity, faith and strength.  And what effects one person one way may effect another person in a different way.  There are different wounds, different people, different circumstances.

But part of the process has to be to realize how much the Father has forgiven me.  Then my heart begins to soften in mercy toward those who have wronged me.  When I stand at the foot of the cross and see Jesus hanging there for

…my rebellion,

…my anger,

…my selfishness,

…my lack of faith,

…my judgmentalism,

…my impurity,

…my greed,

…a lot of things look different.

How do we do forgiveness?  God knows us and he knows our desire to forgive even if we aren’t there yet. Maybe the main thing is putting ourselves in the hands of our merciful God and just plain asking him to help us do this. Letting him into the hurt. And asking him for what we need.

Prayer: Lord, all of us in this room are working out forgiveness with someone in our lives.  It may be right in front of us today.  It might be way back.  We ask your Holy Spirit to help us get there. Helps us with the memories, the burdens, the anger. We all need a healing.  Our families need healing.  Our world needs healing.

We especially pray for any who are in the struggle of how hard the often long process of forgiveness can be.

We turn to you, O Lord.  Amen.

[1] Matthew 6:14,15

[2] Luke 23:34

[3] Genesis 4:24

[4] Lewis Smedes, The Art of Forgiving, p.171