The meaning of the word "forgiveness" is: to dismiss, to release, to leave or abandon. We hear of a judge that has "dismissed" the charges against a defendant. What that means is that person has been forgiven of any wrong doing. We hear of a person that is released from an obligation, such as a loan or debt. That person has been forgiven. They no longer bear any responsibility for their debt. It’s as though it never existed.
This is what God offers to all through faith in Christ - forgiveness of sin. A chance to have all charges against us dismissed. A chance to be released from any obligation to pay the debt for our sin against God. A chance for it to be as though our sin never existed in the first place.
Because of the forgiveness made possible through the cross, we can be reconciled to God. Forgiveness is key to our having a right relationship with God. It is also key to our having a right relationship with others.
Today we begin a series on "Finding Freedom In Forgiving Others." As we do, I want us to look to our passage for today in the effort to answer the question, "What does it mean to forgive others?"
1. It means forgiving them repeatedly.
Peter suggested, probably with pride, that it was a great thing to forgive someone 7 times. This was being very kind, because according to Jewish tradition, one is expected to forgive 3 times. Based upon a misunderstanding of a text in the prophet Amos, in which Amos repeatedly uses the formula - Amos 1:3 This is what the LORD says: "For three sins of Damascus, even for four, I will not turn back [my wrath]. Verse 6 - Gaza, verse 9 - Tyre, verse 11 - Edom and so on. God brings judgment upon such-and-such a city. Thus they taught that God himself never forgave more than three times.
Peter had gone the extra mile when he says "up to 7 times." But Jesus surprised him. He said, "not seven times, but seventy-seven times." In other words, Jesus told Peter, "Don’t assume that you can count how many times you offer forgiveness and then be done with it!"
We are expected to forgive, again and again - it’s a commitment that is to be sustained every day of our lives. It is not a single action, feeling or thought. Forgiveness is a way of life!
Peter asked how generous he should be, and talked about "limits." He was thinking about quantity, while Jesus was talking about quality.
We should all appreciate this idea of unlimited forgiveness, because that is what we constantly need from God. Jesus says that we are to be forgiving of others in the same way that we would want God to be forgiving toward us when we sin.
Jesus says, "Be merciful, just as your Father is merciful." (Luke 6:36). This having been said, this doesn’t mean that we should repeatedly allow ourselves to be taken advantage of by others. That is a scenario where I need to probably avoid the person so as to protect myself. However, there are still several people around me that I do not want to separate myself from, nor should I need to. Those folks, even those who I know love me very much, will have times when they cause me offense on various occasions. My forgiveness should be limitless.
After all, if I have truly forgiven from my heart, then when the next offense occurs, it will be as though they have never done anything to me at all in the past.
2. It means willingly suffering the injustice of their offense.
The king willingly chose to absorb the debt owed him by the servant. This is what Christ did for us at the cross when he forgave us - He willingly absorbed our debt. Likewise, when we forgive others, we do not demand revenge or payment. We leave that up to God. We choose to accept the fact that an injustice has been done to us without demanding that the person guilty of the offense pay for it. We simply choose to let it go.
"To this you were called, because Christ suffered for you, leaving you an example, that you should follow in his steps. ‘He committed no sin, and no deceit was found in his mouth.’ When they hurled their insults at him, he did not retaliate; when he suffered, he made no threats. Instead, he entrusted himself to him who judges justly."
- 1 Peter 2:21-23
A mother ran into the bedroom when she heard her seven-year-old son scream. She found his two-year-old sister pulling his hair. She gently released the little girl’s grip and said comfortingly to the boy, "There, there. She didn’t mean it. She doesn’t know that hurts." He nodded his acknowledgement, and she left the room. As she started down the hall the little girl screamed. Rushing back in, she asked, "What happened?" The little boy replied, "She knows now."
Few would dispute our right to get even. The rule of the world is "do unto others as they’ve done unto you." But when we choose to forgive, we choose to lay aside our right to extract our revenge. In the moment of making that decision, we are doing a couple of things:
A. We are leaving ultimate justice and vengeance to God.
B. We are deliberately choosing for ourselves the path of forgiveness.
3. It means extending to them what God has extended to you.
Unforgiveness is all about demanding revenge. It is all about demanding that the other person "pay" for what they have done to us. Unfortunately, what happens is that we "pay" instead, as a result of being in bondage to bitterness. We may get some small sense of satisfaction, believing that our bitterness or resentment is doing some good for us. But in reality, it is doing harm to us instead.
In l880, James Garfield was elected president of the United States, but after only six months in office, he was shot in the back with a revolver. He never lost consciousness. At the hospital, the doctor probed the wound with his little finger to seek the bullet. He couldn’t find it, so he tried a silver-tipped probe. Still he couldn’t locate the bullet.
They took Garfield back to Washington, D.C. Despite the summer heat, they tried to keep him comfortable. He was growing very weak. Teams of doctors tried to locate the bullet, probing the wound over and over. In desperation they asked Alexander Graham Bell, who was working on a little device called the telephone, to see if he could locate the metal inside the president’s body. He came, he sought, and he too failed. The president hung on through July, through August, but in September he finally died-not from the wound, but from infection. The repeated probing, which the physicians thought would help the man, eventually killed him.
So it is with people who dwell too long on their wound and refuse to release it to God.
Consider the wisdom of the following proverbs:
"Whoever opts for revenge should dig two graves." (Chinese proverb)
"Not forgiving someone is like drinking rat poison and then waiting for the rat to die."
Forgiveness is risky, but it is the only road to freedom. The other road always leads to self-destruction.
The fact is, the nature of the forgiveness we have received has excused us from being punished for our sin. That’s the way we are call upon to forgive others.
4. It means choosing to obey the command of Christ.
Forgiveness is intentional, it is not just a matter of emotions, just as it is with love. We cannot just love when we feel like it. We can’t just love people who we feel love for. We have to choose to love. If people relied on feelings of romantic love to keep their marriage alive then no couple would be married longer than a year. There comes a time when you have to choose to love, even when those emotions are not there in order to keep you going until those feelings return.
Think about mothers with their babies. They probably don’t feel very loving when their child is covered with all sorts of bodily fluids and is crying uncontrollably; but in those times the mother chooses to love their child anyway.
Likewise, forgiveness is a choice we make in response to the command of Christ. Peter asked Jesus, "Lord, how many times shall I forgive my brother when he sins against me? Up to seven times?"
Jesus made it clear that you forgive even when you don’t feel like it in verse 22, "Jesus answered, "I tell you, not seven times, but seventy-seven times." How do you forgive the same person seventy-seven times? Not by feelings, I assure you. You do so out of the conviction that God has forgiven you by choice and because you are responding to his love and forgiveness. It’s a matter of deciding to obey God.
Clara Barton, founder of the American Red Cross, was reminded one day of a vicious deed that someone had done to her years before. But she acted as if she had never even heard of the incident. "Don’t you remember it?" her friend asked. "No," came Barton’s reply, "I distinctly remember forgetting it."
5. It means forgiving them "from the heart."
An article on forgiving others that appeared in a January 2000 edition of Christianity Today, entitled "The Forgiveness Factor," speaks of three categories of forgiveness.
A. Detached forgiveness - Where there is a reduction in negative feelings toward the offender, but you do not associate with them again.
B. Limited forgiveness - Where there is a reduction in negative feelings toward the offender, but you associate with them on as limited a basis as possible.
C. Full forgiveness - Where there is a total cessation of negative feelings toward the offender and you have no reoccurrence of fear, anxiety, or ill feeling no matter how often you are around them. Being around them does not cause me to "rehearse" the offense in my mind any more.
The latter of these is what Jesus was referring to when He spoke of forgiving "from the heart."
Of course, there are times when it is a legitimate thing for you to not have any further association with a person, even though you have forgiven them from the heart. If associating with them will cause you harm, or cause harm to your loved ones, you should not associate with them. But your not associating with this person has nothing to do with the fact that you have not forgiven them.
Conclusion: To forgive "from the heart" means that you no longer want them to get "caught" or "found out." That you can live with the fact that nobody might ever find out what they did. And that even though they may prosper and be blessed as though they never did anything wrong, you can move forward and not be obsessed by it.
Such forgiveness isn’t easy. But it is possible. Or Jesus wouldn’t have commanded us to forgive others "from the heart."
