HoHum:
It sounds like something out of a horror movie, but it’s real. In recent years, scientists have discovered a kind of bacterial infection called necrotizing fasciitis, more commonly called flesh eating bacteria. Once this bacterium enters a human body, it can multiply rapidly. Within 24 hours, its victim begins to experience flu like symptoms, severe thirst, and extreme weakness. Within 3 or 4 days, the limb or area of the body most affected will being to swell, and dark blisters filled with blackish fluid will appear. At 5 days, the victim’s blood pressure will drop severely, and he or she will go into toxic shock. If it’s not discovered early and treated quickly and aggressively, it can consume a person’s health and well being from the inside out and eventually take that person’s life. Now before we panic, we can relax. Flesh eating bacteria is rare, fewer than a thousand cases a year in the US. Flesh eating bacteria has its parallel in the spiritual realm and just like its physical counterpart, this spiritual affliction can fester and grow. If it’s not discovered early and treated quickly and aggressively, it can consume a person’s spirit and soul from the inside out and eventually rob that person of his or her spiritual life and vitality. Hebrews 12:15: “See to it that no one falls short of the grace of God and that no bitter root grows up to cause trouble and defile many.” Had a professor who agreed with these statements but would add that having unforgiveness in any area does not affect a person’s salvation. We all have things that we struggle to forgive and if this disqualifies us for salvation, then we are all condemned. I have issues with this thought especially as we consider the teachings on this subject from Jesus. As I look at my experience in life with forgiveness, I also hope this professor is correct as far as salvation. Keep considering this as I teach on this subject.
WBTU:
When Jesus taught His followers to pray, He linked the petition for daily bread with the petition for forgiveness. Look at Matthew 6:11-12 and then Luke 11:3-4. My hesitation with debts but we see here that these are linked together in both Model prayers. I think this is intentional. I think both the plea for bread and the prayer for forgiveness are supposed to be daily requests because we need both, every day; food and forgiveness. We should pray for both, every day. That same professor said that we should pray this not so much as a petition but as a reminder that all of our sins have been forgiven. Okay, but Jesus’s words appear like a petition to me. Notice that Jesus said “Forgive us as we forgive” (Matthew 6:12 brings this out the best). That is the biggest 2 letter word imaginable- as. It can be taken several different ways. That is intentional because each of the possible meanings contained in that little word is instructive and potentially life changing.
Thesis: In what ways are we to forgive?
For instances:
1. Pray to forgive willingly
“Forgive us as we forgive,” teaches us that our forgiveness of others somehow activates the Father’s forgiveness for us. This can be taken to mean, “Forgive us in the same way we forgive others.” It can be understood as a suggestion that our forgiveness of others will set the tone for the Father’s forgiveness of us. Jesus said as much. Jesus gives more comments on this teaching in Matthew 6:14-15 (Read). I don’t know how He could be any more straightforward. On another occasion, Jesus told a parable to get across this point: Matthew 18:23-35 (Read it). I don’t know how Jesus could make it any clearer: forgiveness is a big deal. This is a big deal because it is bad for us. It’s a soul eating infection. It will eat away at us from the inside out, and it will short circuit our experience of forgiveness. James Mulholland asks this question, “Do we want God’s forgiveness to be diminished or our mercy to be expanded?” Jesus teaches us to pray for our mercy to be expanded. The answer to our prayers is implicit in the prayer itself. “Forgive us as we forgive others.” I don’t want God to forgive me grudgingly. I want God to forgive me willingly. I want Him to run to me as the father of the prodigal son raced to his son, meeting him, embracing him, even interrupting his confession with grace! So when I pray, “Forgive us as we forgive others,” I am saying I want my mercy to be expanded. I want to forgive willingly because that’s the kind of reception I want from God. I don’t want God to measure out my forgiveness in human ways; I want to measure out forgiveness to others in big ol’ God ways, I want to be willing to forgive, I want to be quick to forgive. I want to turn that phrase from the Lord’s Prayer around and “forgive others as God forgives me,” which is exactly what Paul later wrote in Colossians 3:13: “Bear with each other and forgive one another if any of you has a grievance against someone. Forgive as the Lord forgave you.”
2. Pray to forgive fully
Can also mean, “Forgive us to the extent that we forgive others.” None of us wants partial forgiveness from God (my sin not in part but the whole is nailed to the cross and I bear it no more, praise the Lord, praise the Lord, Oh my soul), so we pray for grace to forgive fully, because that is how God forgives us- and this is what we need. Jesus’ parable in Matthew 18 has as its main character a king and one of his servants. This was not any ordinary slave or servant but a high official like the chief financial officer or secretary of the treasury- an important man who handled large sums of money. Jesus depicts this man as owing an enormous sum, a gargantuan amount. In a day when the gross national product of the entire province of Galilee was only 300 talents, Jesus chose an unimaginable high debt (10,000 talents). How could one person owe the amount of our national debt? Anyway, Jesus goes on and says that since he was not able to pay, “his master ordered him to be sold, with his wife and children and all that he had, and payment to be made.” That was how debts were met in those days. No filling for bankruptcy, it was common in ancient times for a man and his family and possessions to be sold for such a debt. So the servant did what any of us would do- begged for mercy. Matthew 18:26. Something is happening in the details of this story. Notice that the servant begged for time: “Be patient with me, and I will pay back everything.” Really, impossible! The king did not give an extension, what the man asked for. What did the king do? Vs. 27. Noticed, “Cancelled the debt!” This is key. The servant begged for mercy but the king gave him immeasurable grace. The servant pleaded for a little wiggle room, but the king granted him complete amnesty. That is the picture of how those who have experienced new life in Christ have been forgiven. We begged for mercy and received grace. We bartered for help and received the Helper. We asked for heart medicine and received a heart transplant. Key to the ability to forgive is the grace to grasp the reality, the depth, the height, the extent of our own forgiveness, of how much and how completely we have been forgiven. Unfortunately, we are too often like the servant in Jesus’ parable, who went out, found someone who owed him a small amount, a hundred denarii, less than 20 bucks, and rather than forgiving as he had been forgiven, demanded immediate payment in full. Despite the incredible debt that has been willingly, graciously, generously canceled for us, we withhold mercy, harbor a grudge, and nurse bitterness in our hearts toward someone who has hurt us. Like flesh eating bacteria, that unforgiveness is causing more damage to us than to anyone else. In fact, according to this parable, somehow God will take His cue from us. He wants our mercy to be expanded, but if we choose instead to limit His forgiveness, He will not overrule our wishes. He will “forgive us as we forgive.” For some of us, that will mean we must face the wrong that’s been done to us. Some of us run hard and fast from conflict and we will do anything but face someone who hurt us. Maybe we do this because we are not about to give that person the satisfaction of knowing he or she hurt me or maybe because if I face the wrong that was done I might have to pursue reconciliation, and I don’t want to. It scares me, or it’s too much work. Leave it alone and let it be. But if I’m going to avoid the soul eating bacteria of unforgiveness in my life, I’ve got to face the wrong that’s been done to me. Not only that, but for some of us, the process of forgiving someone who has wronged us will mean facing our responsibility. It may mean coming to grips with the part we may have played- any wrongs we may have committed- toward the person who hurt us. Often this is not one sided. God commands us to forgive, but He never commands us to do something we have no control over. So forgiving means to decide, to will, to let go of the wrong that has been done to us, to throw out the scorecard, to erase the debt. Sound too hard? Can seem that way. Here are some ideas: write down the wrongs we choose to forgive and then burn them as a way of letting them go. Or prayerfully place all those offenses on a paper boat and send it off down a stream until it disappears from our sight. Or bury a hatchet, the way American tribes did- just don’t mark the spot so we can come back later! For some reason we think that withholding forgiveness is going to make us feel better. It is like drinking poison and expecting it to affect the one who wronged us. We will be miserable, still struggling, still trying to move on, as if something keeps eating away at our happiness and our hope and our spiritual strength. If we do it the Bible way we can actually move down the path toward healing. Maybe healing comes as we learn to pray, “Forgive us as we forgive.” Maybe forgiving fully opens the door to healing fully.
3. Pray to forgive constantly
“Forgive us as we forgive.” That little word as can mean “while.” That is, it is possible to understand that prayer to mean “Forgive us while we are in the act of forgiving those who sin against us.” Now when God forgives, it’s a done deal. The Bible says when He forgives, he forgets, or does not hold it against us, does not bring it up. Psalm 103:12 says, “as far as the east is from the west, so far has he removed our transgressions from us.” The bad news is: we are not like that. Very often, with us, forgiveness is not so simple or so complete. Often, with us, forgiveness must be a daily decision. See that person and what they did comes to our mind and so we have to forgive again, let it go again. Remember, Jesus structured His model prayer to include the prayer for forgiveness in the same breath as the prayer for daily bread. Just as we pray for daily bread, we pray for daily forgiveness. “Forgive us as we forgive,” also, “Forgive us today as we are forgiving today.” Now we don’t have to feel forgiveness. We don’t have to conjure up within ourselves warm feelings for that dirty, rotten, low down…. But we can refuse to retaliate today. We can wipe the slate clean today. We can forgive again today. As we do, day by day, week by week, month by month, the forgiveness that accompanies our forgiveness will place a growing distance between us and the thing we have forgiven, like setting a toy boat into flowing stream or river. Once we release the boat into the current, it will be taken farther and farther away until, sometime in the future, we will lose sight of it and it will be gone.
So what do we think, is our salvation dependent on our forgiveness of others? No one will be able to stand before God demanding that his sins be forgotten simply because he has forgiven others. No, we are forgiven through the blood of Christ. Even so, if we fail to have a forgiving spirit, have we really been saved to begin with? Ephesians 4:32: Be kind and compassionate to one another, forgiving each other, just as in Christ God forgave you. Much food for thought and prayer!
