How To Forgive - Matthew 18:15-35 Series

Matthew 18:15-35 If your brother sins against you, go and show him his fault, just between the two of you. If he listens to you, you have won your brother over. 16 But if he will not listen, take one or two others along, so that 'every matter may be established by the testimony of two or three witnesses.' 17 If he refuses to listen to them, tell it to the church; and if he refuses to listen even to the church, treat him as you would a pagan or a tax collector. 18 "I tell you the truth, whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven. 19 "Again, I tell you that if two of you on earth agree about anything you ask for, it will be done for you by my Father in heaven. 20 For where two or three come together in my name, there am I with them." 21 Then Peter came to Jesus and asked, "Lord, how many times shall I forgive my brother when he sins against me? Up to seven times?" 22 Jesus answered, "I tell you, not seven times, but seventy-seven times. 23 "Therefore, the kingdom of heaven is like a king who wanted to settle accounts with his servants. 24 As he began the settlement, a man who owed him ten thousand talents was brought to him. 25 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. 26 "The servant fell on his knees before him. 'Be patient with me,' he begged, 'and I will pay back everything.' 27 The servant's master took pity on him, canceled the debt and let him go. 28 "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. 29 "His fellow servant fell to his knees and begged him, 'Be patient with me, and I will pay you back.' 30 "But he refused. Instead, he went off and had the man thrown into prison until he could pay the debt. 31 When the other servants saw what had happened, they were greatly distressed and went and told their master everything that had happened. 32 "Then the master called the servant in. 'You wicked servant,' he said, 'I canceled all that debt of yours because you begged me to. 33 Shouldn't you have had mercy on your fellow servant just as I had on you?' 34 In anger his master turned him over to the jailers to be tortured, until he should pay back all he owed. 35 "This is how my heavenly Father will treat each of you unless you forgive your brother from your heart."

Introduction

The hardest commands in the Bible are always the ones that involve emotions. If God commands you to perform a physical action you can just decide to do it. But when you are required to feel a certain way – to feel joy or compassion or hope or fear or love – you can decide to do it and nothing happens. Then what? We are taking a little interlude in the midst of our study of the Sermon on the Mount to look in depth into one of those commands – the command to forgive. Forgiveness extends a soft, gracious heart to the person – how do you do that when your heart is cold?

So far we have learned in this study that there is a difference between forgiveness and patience. Patience is the love you show the person while the sin is still ongoing, forgiveness is the love you show after they repent. And so we did a whole sermon last week on how to bring the person to repentance.

If he says, “I repent,” forgive him

But suppose you do all that, and the person claims to be repentant – how do you know if it is really repentance? How do you know when their repentance is adequate so you can forgive them? It is very simple. They say, “I repent.”

Luke 17:4 If he sins against you seven times in a day, and seven times comes back to you and says, 'I repent,' forgive him.

If they claim to be repentant you assume they are repentant. When you assess your own repentance you need to set the standard very high, and be very suspicious about your sincerity and motives. But when you assess someone else’s repentance you just simply take them at their word.

Inadequate sorrow

“But what if they are not really taking it seriously? What if they do not appreciate how much they hurt me? What if they are not properly remorseful?” Well then, they are a lot like you, right? Isn’t it true that when you first came to God and repented of your sins, you did not take your sin anywhere close to as seriously as what was warranted? Didn’t God accept your repentance and forgive you even though you barely felt a fraction of the remorse that was called for given how guilty you really were? No sinner has ever come close to appreciating the full gravity of their sin against God. But thanks be to God that in His infinite mercy and grace He accepts our lame, inadequate, partial, half-hearted, weak repentance and forgives us anyway. God accepted that from us and He calls us to accept one another’s half-baked repentance. If a person admits what he did was sin and claims to be repentant – that is enough.