What is forgiveness?
Matthew 18:21-35
As I’m sure most of you have noticed, in our worship here we recite the Lord’s prayer twice during our worship. In the history of Christian worship this is a fairly low number of times to use the Lord’s prayer. When Thomas Cranmer revised the Sarum Mass in order to give us the first English Prayer Book, the worship service he started with had the Lord’s Prayer scattered throughout it at least seven times. We say it twice, because our worship service is a combination of two Prayer Book services – Morning or Evening Prayer, which is the section of the service we’re in right now, and then the Holy Eucharist, which begins with the offering.
Today, I want to direct your attention to a line in the Lord’s Prayer which contains an idea which our Lord expounded in today’s gospel lesson. I’m referring to the line in the Lord’s Prayer which says “Forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us.” In other versions of the Lord’s prayer, this line reads “for give us our debts, as we forgive our debtors.” Both versions of this prayer point to valid and accurate notions about forgiveness. Forgiving a trespass or a sin is very much the same as forgiving a debt that is owed. One person has acted in a wrong way, and another person is damaged by it. The one suffering the damage is like a creditor – he rightly has something coming to him, and the one who did the wrong is the one who owes something to the one whom he has wronged.
You recall last week we looked at Jesus teaching on how to deal with a brother who has sinned against us. What Jesus says we are to do is to go to the brother who has wronged us, go to him privately, alone, and seek a reconciliation. If the one who has wronged us will not be reconciled to us, then Jesus instructs that an ever widening circle of admonition be invoked, so as to increase the likelihood that the errant brother will repent.
In today’s gospel lesson, Jesus continues to deal with how these ruptures in Christian fellowship are to be handled by Christians, and the pretext of his instruction is a question by the Apostle Peter:
21 Then Peter came to Him and said, “Lord, how often shall my brother sin against me, and I forgive him? Up to seven times?”
Many students of this passage suggest that Peter’s question contained more than a little self-congratulation. It would suggest that Peter was willing to forgive his brother seven times, and he is asking the Lord if this is satisfactory. In the context of first century Jewish spirituality, Peter’s suggestion here is extravagantly generous. The Rabbis, taking their cue from the Prophet Amos in chapter 1 and verse 6, taught that one should forgive up to three times, but not on the fourth. So, when Peter inquires about forgiving up to seven times, he is really pushing the limits of what anyone would consider reasonable.
Jesus’ answer, of course, is wildly extravagant: not seven times, but seventy times seven times. The point of this is not to set up some sort of spiritual accounting practice, where we carefully count the number of times we forgive a brother, waiting for the moment when we have forgiven him exactly 490 times. Jesus is simply using the common rabbinical teaching method of exaggeration. His point is that you keep on forgiving, and never stop. And then he gives one of the more chilling parables to come from his lips.
This parable, as I’m sure you have noted, puts into story form what we pray twice in our worship services. “Forgive us as we forgive others.” Jesus’ parable explains why we should forgive others – because we ourselves have first been forgiven. And Jesus also explains what are the consequences of not forgiving others – our own sins will not be forgiven.
And, so this parable explains that tiny word “as” in the Lord’s Prayer: forgive us as we forgive others, forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us, forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors. That word “as” does not mean “because.” We are NOT praying, “Lord, forgive us BECAUSE we forgive others.” The Lord’s forgiveness of our sins does not originate as a response to us: He does NOT look down from heaven and say, “My, my, look at how they’re forgiving one another. I’ll reward them by forgiving them their debt to me.” That is EXACTLY what is NOT going on in the courts of heaven.
INSTEAD, the parable shows us what goes on in the courts of heaven. God the Father freely and graciously forgives those who own him a debt wildly beyond their ability to pay. As a consequence of this, he expects that the grace he extends to debtors will be further extended by those forgiven debtors to those who are indebted to the ones whose debts are forgiven. Consider it a variation on the Golden Rule: God wants us to do to others as He has done to us.
And, Jesus puts that very principle in our own mouths when he teaches us to pray “forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us.” The point of the prayer, as Jesus’ parable makes clear, is to ask God to show himself forgiving to us in the same measure as we ourselves are forgiving.
And, there is the rub: not that we earn God’s forgiveness by forgiving others, but rather that we will forfeit that forgiveness if we show ourselves to be unforgiving.
This is no secret: it is written large over Jesus teaching and the teaching of the New Testament. In Matthew 6:14-15 Jesus says, “For if you forgive men when they sin against you, your heavenly Father will also forgive you. But if you do not forgive men their sins, your Father will not forgive your sins.” Mark 11:25 records that Jesus says “And when you stand praying, if you hold anything against anyone, forgive him, so that your Father in heaven may forgive you your sins." Paul, in Colossians 3:13, writes, “Bear with each other and forgive whatever grievances you may have against one another. Forgive as the Lord forgave you.” Again, in Ephesians 4:32, Paul writes,
“Be kind and compassionate to one another, forgiving each other, just as in Christ God forgave you.”
Clearly, the personal stakes involved in failing to forgive others are very high. What master in the parable say?
‘You wicked servant! I forgave you all that debt because you begged me. 33 Should you not also have had compassion on your fellow servant, just as I had pity on you?’ 34 And his master was angry, and delivered him to the torturers until he should pay all that was due to him.
You see, the wicked servant had been forgiven a debt of 10,000 talents. In modern terms, this would be a debt of approximately 10 million dollars. The other servant’s debt of 100 denarii is equivalent to about $25. How do you suppose a man owing ten million dollars is going to pay that debt when he is thrown into prison and given over to the hands of torturers? If one were to use only this parable as a reference point, you could make a case that one can forfeit one’s eternal salvation by failing to forgive others.
Consequently, it is critical that we understand what – in minimal terms – it means to forgive someone who has sinned against us.
The parable is helpful here too.
The first step of forgiveness is to be honest with ourselves that we have been seriously hurt because of actual sin. There are two mistakes Christians commonly make here. On one hand, they may blow off very serious offenses as if they were nothing. It’s as if they are trying to go Peter one better – not only to forgive seven times, but to go ever further, by saying to ourselves, “It is nothing.” when the harm done to us is anything but nothing.
Or Christians can make the opposite error – showing themselves to be forgiving with respect to things which are nothing more than trivial irritants. I do not and should not forgive my children all the damage they have done to me and my household when they were growing up in my house. Parents, you know how many odious, demeaning, unpleasant, and disgusting things attend the rearing of children. We bear those things in love for our children, but that does not make them pleasant. And, because these kinds of things are not blameworthy – because there is no commandment which says “Thou shalt not barf on your mother’s blouse.” – none of these things are forgivable. And, there is much that is difficult, unpleasant, and tedious that we encounter in day to day living with other Christians.
Don’t kid yourself. Don’t pretend that grievous offenses are nothing; and also do not raise trivial unpleasantness into the category of monstrous moral evil. Both mistakes will put you in the ditch.
So, after you are sure that you have suffered serious hurt because of a brothers actual sin against you, you’re ready for the second step. And, quite frankly, this one is difficult. The second step is to surrender every claim you have to recompense.
That, in a nutshell, is what Jesus’ parable shows us forgiveness amounts to. The master’s forgiveness comes down to this: you don’t owe me. The debt is cancelled. And when you forgive, that’s what it comes down to. You who have harmed me by your sin, you owe me nothing. I make no claim on your for recompense. I will not do, nor will I desire, to get even.
In preparing this message, I ran across a story which illustrates this in a back-handed way. A mother heard her son screaming and ran into a bedroom, to find that her four year old daughter was yanking on her six year old son’s hair. She separated them and told her son, “Don’t be mad at your baby sister. She doesn’t know that pulling hair hurts.” The mother wasn’t ten feet out the door before she heard the four year old girl screeching. So she whirled around and re-entered the bedroom. Her six year old son looked up at her and said, “Now she knows.”
Well, you see, he hadn’t forgiven her. He wanted a hand full of her hair to match the handful of his hair which she had yanked. When we forgive someone, we don’t look to get even. We don’t look to get paid. Whatever it is that we are owed – rightfully owed – we give it up. We make no further claim on it.
The last thing we do to forgive someone is to bless them in their need. Please note that I am not saying that we reward their unrighteousness. Instead, I am telling you that we should follow the counsel of Solomon in Proverbs 25:
21 If your enemy is hungry, give him bread to eat;
And if he is thirsty, give him water to drink;
22 For so you will heap coals of fire on his head,
And the LORD will reward you.
Following Solomon’s advice provides you with a guaranteed way to test if you have forgiven someone. If you can contemplate actually meeting the need of someone who has sinned against you WITHOUT thinking “But, he owes me!” then and only then can you really be sure you’ve wiped away his debt to you. This doesn’t mean you like him; it doesn’t mean you want your son or daughter to marry him. It doesn’t mean that you think he’s the greatest thing since sliced bread. But, if you can bless him in his need with no hesitancy, then you’re succeeded in forgiving him.
General Oglethorpe is supposed to have said to John Wesley, "I never forgive and I never forget." To which Wesley replied, "Then, Sir, I hope you never sin." [hat tip Jeffery Anselmi]
Clara Barton, founder of the American Red Cross, on the other hand, 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." [ ‘nuther hat tip Jeffery Anselmi]
Let us never forget the wildly extravagant debt which we owed our heavenly Father, which debt was cancelled by him because it was paid by his Son Jesus Christ. And, in that light, let us further esteem all genuine sins against ourselves as Jesus parable suggests – true debts which are comically small in comparison to the debt which we ourselves owed.
And, finally, God grant us grace to forgive others as we have been forgiven, and show ourselves sons of our Father in heaven.
In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost. Amen.
