How To Forgive The Unrepentant Series

This past week the famous and formerly beloved comedienne, Bill Cosby, has been on trial. And I happened to watch a documentary about his accuser, and the 50-some other accusers whose cases have extended past the statute of limitations. Among those who were interviewed was one of his first alleged victims, who experienced her alleged drugging and rape some 40 years ago. She was strong in claiming that she hadn't allowed Cosby to ruin her life, and then she made an interesting statement, interesting in light of the fact that she had come out in support of the woman who had brought the criminal case against Cosby. She said, "I have forgiven him, because he's a sick man."

It was indeed a very noble statement for someone who likely had been terribly taken advantage of as a young woman. But for me, it begged for the question: What did she really mean that she had forgiven him? For if she were really using the strictest Biblical definition for forgiveness, then that would mean she would have continued in relationship with him without letting any of her future behavior being affected by her past offense. Clearly, even in speaking out about what had happened to her, she had not done that.

And then that begs for a bigger question. Do we, especially as Christians, really have to forgive the unrepentant—do we really have to forgive someone whom, if they were able, would repeat the offense against us if they were given another chance?

Now it's a very serious question for those of us who are Biblically-obedient Christians. One of the imperatives in the Christian life is the matter of forgiving people who have wronged us. Jesus in Matthew 18:21-35 made that abundantly clear when Peter asked him, “How many times must I forgive my brother, up to seven times?. And Jesus replied, up to 70x7, obviously meaning as often as someone sins against us, we must be willing to forgive. And then in Matthew 18:35, Jesus concludes his discussion about the matter by essentially saying that if we do not forgive our brothers for their sins against us, then neither will our heavenly Father forgive us.

Now I always thought I was great at forgiving until some people sinned against me in a very grievous and damaging way some years ago. And they were completely unrepentant about it. All of a sudden, I found myself struggling to forgive, and then asking some very difficult questions. First, why would God ask me to do something He Himself does not do, in other words, to forgive the unrepentant. Because it was obvious to me from many places in Scripture, including Luke 13, Matthew 25 and Revelation 20 in the Great White Throne Judgment that God does not by any means forgive the unrepentant. In fact, He ultimately sends them to hell for judgment.

And then the second question that I was faced with was this: If the Bible's definition of forgiveness is not holding something against someone, not counting their sins against them, and my future behavior should not be governed in any way by a wrong that an unrepentant person has committed against me in the past, then if I forgive the unrepentant, am I required to give him a chance to sin against me in the future in the same way? To me, that seemed awfully foolish—who in the world would do that!

So, I'm going to seek to answer this morning, from the Bible, first, whether we really are required to forgive the unrepentant ourselves, and if not, exactly then how are we to treat them.

And my conclusion is this: Don't get even, but be on guard & give the offender over to God's Justice. Don't get even, but do be on guard. Do give the offender over to God's justice.

And to prove my assertion this morning we're going to go to the very end of the great Apostle Paul's life, to his last inscripturated words in II Timothy 4:14-18.

The Apostle Paul is in a Roman prison as he writes this letter to his protégé, Timothy, who is back pastoring a church Paul had founded in Ephesus, on the west coast of what is now known as Turkey. And he's in very difficult straits. He has been convicted of some crime worthy of death, no doubt preaching Jesus as God during the time of the wicked Emperor Nero's sadistic persecution of Christians in Rome. The penalty for his crime is death, and in his case it would come within a few months, by means of beheading just outside Rome in 67 A.D. Paul knows he is a condemned man and he has only a few months to live.

But more than that, He knows whose testimony had sealed his fate. A fellow by the name of Alexander the coppersmith. And He also knows who did not come to His aid to defend Him during his trial—any and all of the other Christians in Rome—the very Christians he had ministered to and risked his life for for a number of years. Apparently, the persecution of Christians was so great under Nero that no one even dared to associate with Paul or claim to be a Christian for fear that they would suffer the same fate as a martyr.