This morning we continue with our third message in the series: Restoring Hope for Marriage. No one I know goes into marriage planning to fail or to be miserable. Most go into marriage with great hopes and dreams. But over time, misunderstandings, selfishness, unmet expectations, violation of trust and careless words create a series of hurts that diminishes the hopes and fractures the dreams.
Tim Jackson, a licensed counselor in Michigan, noted, “If we’ve lived and loved long enough, we all know the pain of a broken relationship.”
A couple of weeks ago, I read a storybook to Esther. It was about a bunny that moved into a snail’s house. The bunny didn’t know the house belonged to the snail. Every time the bunny broke something in the house, the next morning, the vase or the plate would be repaired. The snail, named Gluey, glued the pieces back together overnight, but the bunny credited the house with magic.
There is no magic to mending relationships. Mending relationships can be complicated and messy, emotionally draining and without guarantee of success. Yet, God gives us the glue for fractured and broken relationships. He calls this glue “forgiveness.” But like God’s design for marriage and true love, forgiveness is often misunderstood and suffers from malpractice.
Some believe forgiveness minimizes the wrong done against a person. Others equate forgiveness with forgetting or restoring trust automatically. A college girl came to me and said her boyfriend hit her, and she is having a hard time forgiving him. By forgiving him, she meant deleting the hurtful event from her mind and trusting him again. To forget the event and trust someone who is untrustworthy is not forgiveness but foolishness.
Our text is Luke 17:1-6. From the words of Jesus, we will discover the true understanding and practice of biblical forgiveness.
Jesus tells his disciples that people will sin, and that includes his disciples. Christians are not perfect, but we are forgiven. If you cut a Christian he will bleed. Christians get angry. They will lie. A wise old lady once told me, “Pastor, be careful. Just because they hold a Bible in their hands and smile, doesn’t mean they are good.”
After Jesus’ sober introduction regarding the sinfulness of mankind, Jesus gives the remedy of forgiveness for sins against one another. He provides a four-step process for the practice of forgiveness. We will look at forgiveness in the context of the marriage relationship.
First, forgiveness is prompted by sin. “If your brother sins….” The process of forgiveness can begin right after someone sins against you.
When I counsel couples before marriage, we look at what the Bible teaches about mankind, that we are sinful. Mankind is selfish, rebellious and manipulative. And the sooner the couple accepts this truth about each other, the clearer they can understand and accept one another.
Early on as the pastor of this church, the Elders had a saying, “We’ve been married longer than you’ve been alive.” Now they didn’t say this to put me in my place. They love me more than I could understand. Anyway, all three of our Elders have been married about 40 years or more.
So in preparing for this message series, I interviewed the Elders about their marriage. In response to a question, one Elder wrote, “After the honeymoon period, [you will] know about your spouse’s weaknesses, faults, etc. Let go of high expectations.”
Steve Brown has written on the back cover of one of his Bibles, “I wouldn’t be so shocked at my own sins if I didn’t have such a high opinion of myself.”
We’re all sinners, Christians and non-Christians. If self-help books, seminars, philosophies or religion could fix us, God wouldn’t have sent His Son, Jesus Christ, to die on the cross to pay for our sins. We all need forgiveness, because we all have sinned.
The sooner we accept this truth, the better we understand and accept one another. And when we sin against someone or when someone sins against us, we don’t need to be so shocked. We can ask for forgiveness rather than blame, ignore or deny. And we can forgive rather than withdraw, hold a grudge or take revenge.
Before I move to the second step, I want to alert us to hurts and fractures in the marriage relationship that need coping and grieving skills more than forgiveness. For instance, the death of a baby can create a great deal of blame and anger between the husband and wife. The unemployment or illness of a spouse can create a great deal of anxiety and strain in the marriage. And when couples do not know how to cope in these situations, hurts can grow, and the marriage relationship can be fractured.
The hurt, bitterness and withdrawal of love that results in these marriage relationships require the husband and wife to learn healthy coping strategies to deal with unemployment, illness and grieving the loss of a child. So steps two, three and four of forgiveness may or may not apply when sin is not the direct cause of the fractured or broken relationship. And if forgiveness is needed in these situations, forgiveness alone will not resolve the relational stress and strain.
Second, forgiveness is proved by “carefrontation.” “… rebuke him….” When you confront the person who hurt you, because you care, you are on your way to forgiving him.
Augsburger coined the term, “carefrontation” in his book, Caring Enough to Confront. To rebuke someone is not putting someone in his or her place or to take revenge. Biblical rebuke or confrontation is an effort to bring out the best in the offender. The alternative to “carefrontation” is false forgiveness, which passively ignores sin or blames each other without realizing that rarely is only one spouse at fault.
For instance, I know husbands who tolerate their wives’ constant critical spirit. They hold their tongue, because they don’t want to make the effort, don’t believe it makes a difference or don’t want to join in the critical spirit. As a result, the husbands withdraw from their wives, and the wives continue to have a critical spirit.
If Susan were such a wife, and she’s not, I would “carefront” her with a written note. I would write, “Dear, I’m sorry that I and the kids haven’t given you much to be proud of. It seems that much of what we do is wrong in your eyes, and you let us know that regularly. It’s hard to feel good about ourselves or improve when all we hear are what we’ve done wrong. I thought you might want to know.”
Sometimes people don’t know or don’t believe they are doing something wrong, because that’s the way they were brought up. People drink, gamble, use pornography, overspend, criticize or verbally abuse another, because they were raised in that kind of environment. When you “carefront,” you are helping the person know he or she is doing something wrong, but with an attitude that says, “I want to bring out the best in you,” and “I’m ready to forgive when you ask.”
Third, forgiveness is prepared by repentance. “… if he repents, forgive him.” Repentance in the offender is the evidence that he or she is ready to be forgiven.
Repentance means a change of mind. But because no one can look inside your mind, repentance involves verbally or written admission of your wrong and gives evidence of a change of mind. Repentance is the beginning of change, not perfection. Paul J. Meyer noted, “Anything that is physically, emotionally, behaviorally or relationally accomplished, is first accomplished in the mind.”
Unconditional forgiveness is false forgiveness, without “carefrontation” and without repentance. Forgiveness is more than releasing yourself from bitterness and from the one who has hurt you. Forgiveness is about helping the offender repent.
The Bible tells us to forgive as God forgives, and God forgives only those who repent. He doesn’t forgive us in order to get rid of His bitterness or His memory of our sins against Him. True forgiveness is conditional, and repentance is the condition. When we require repentance before we forgive, the offender has the potential to grow in character.
Whenever I counsel couples, I help them see the situation in the other person’s place. I also pray continually, because God’s Spirit softens people’s hearts better than persuasive words. Once the person agrees he or she has done wrong and is willing to make the necessary correction, then the offended has the responsibility to forgive.
God commands us to love all people, but to forgive only people who repent. Forgiveness is the process of helping the offender own up to the offense and then putting the offense behind you, not to use the offense against the offender in the future. In other words, if you lie to me, I will not hold it against you only if you admit lying is wrong and give evidence that you will be honest from now on. Otherwise, your words will have little meaning in my life.
Fourth, forgiveness is powered by faith. Verses 5 and 6
Those who have been hurt in relationships know that forgiveness is easier to understand than to practice. Forgiveness is hard. When we’re hurt, we don’t want to forgive. We want to get even. When we’ve done the hurting, we don’t want to admit it. We want to blame. A great deal of faith is needed to do what Jesus calls us to do regarding forgiveness.
We read in Luke 22:42-44 about Jesus’ struggle with the decision to die on the cross to provide forgiveness to mankind, “[He]” knelt down and prayed, ‘Father, if you are willing, take this cup [of suffering] from me; yet not my will, but yours be done.’ An angel from heaven appeared to him and strengthened him. And being in anguish, he prayed more earnestly, and his sweat was like drops of blood falling to the ground.”
When we face the choice of doing things our way or doing things God’s way, we need faith to trust God knows best. We can hold a grudge against the offender, or we can “carefront” and pray that the offender will repent. We can justify our sin against a person, or we can admit we have sinned, ask for forgiveness and make restitution. With just a little bit of faith, trusting that God knows best, we can cooperate with God to restore another human being or ourselves to right and healthy relationship.
Paul J. Meyer tells about Leonardo De Vinci, as he worked on his famous painting, The Last Supper. De Vinci painted the face of his enemy as the face for Judas, the disciple who betrayed Jesus. He wanted to immortalize his enemy in his art, but as he did that, something strange happened. He couldn’t finish the face of Christ. The night De Vinci erased his enemy’s face from the painting was the same night he finished the face of Christ.
Jesus said in Matthew 5:23, “Therefore, if you are offering your gift at the altar [to God] and there remember that your brother has something against you, leave your gift there in front of the altar. First go and be reconciled to your brother; then come and offer your gift [to God].”
