Forgiving and Forgetting
Ephesians 4:26-32
Rev. Brian Bill
11/20/05
How many of you got into a fight on your way home from church last Sunday as a result of the two-part assignment I gave to married couples? The first part was to assign your marriage a number grade from 1 to 10, with “1” standing for isolation and “10” representing intimacy. That proved to be the easy part of the assignment. The second part was more risky as you were encouraged to share this number with your spouse.
Since I gave the assignment, I knew I had to complete this homework so I waited until early evening when Beth and I were driving to our small group get-together. I thought this would be safer to discuss in the dark. By the way, I hope you’re in a small group where you can go deeper in your faith and in fellowship. Talk to Pastor Dick if you’d like to plug into one of these little platoons. I took a deep breath and told Beth that I thought our marriage was at an “8” because there’s still a lot more that I can do to be a better husband. She agreed with that and gave ourselves the same number.
When we arrived at our small group, most of the couples were reticent to share how their conversations had gone but one divulged their discussion with the rest of the group. It was so good that I asked the husband to write it out for me. This is how he remembered what happened. When they got in the car, his wife asked, “So what number do you think we are?” The husband responded in a way that I suspect many others did: “I don’t want to play that game. I don’t know why that preacher wants to meddle with us.” After about a minute went by, the husband finally said, “Okay, I think we are a number “10,” how about you?” The wife replied by saying she thought there were at “9.75.” This made the husband mad so by the time they reached home, they were done to a “4”!
This same person wondered why I didn’t exegete Genesis 2:25: “The man and his wife were both naked, and they felt no shame.” I think he thought I was afraid to talk about nakedness in church. I decided to ask him for his perspective. He had some tremendous insight: “If Adam and Eve were to give themselves a grade, they would have been at a perfect “10.” They were totally comfortable with each other and had nothing to hide. They had no shame in their nakedness because sin had not yet separated them from God and from each other. Shame came when they sinned. As a result of their disobedience they were no longer one with the Almighty or with each other.”
In the short ride from chapter two to chapter three, they came screeching to a number “1,” as they felt extremely isolated, hiding from God’s holiness and hiding their hearts from their mate. And God has been wooing His creation back to Himself, and husbands and wives back to each other, ever since. Don’t forget that sin entered the human race in the midst of the marriage relationship.
In Genesis 3:12, Adam blamed his bride for his own decision and men and women still play the blame game today. Let me share the first rule of marriage: sinners live there. Their marital mess was eventually passed on to their offspring as anger erupts in Genesis 4:5, when “Cain became very angry, and his face was downcast.” God gives Cain some grace, wrapped up in a warning in verse 7: “If you do what is right, will you not be accepted? But if you do not do what is right, sin is crouching at your door; it desires to have you, but you must master it.” Cain caved in to the sin crouching at his door when he killed his brother Abel, and ever since then, anger and wrath rises up between people, especially in the marriage relationship.
Leigh Sullan sent me an email recently in which she referred to a couple who were driving down the road for several miles, not saying a word. An earlier discussion had led to an argument and neither one of them wanted to concede their position. Maybe they had been arguing over the assignment last Sunday! As they passed a barnyard of mules, goats and pigs, the wife sarcastically asked, “Relatives of yours?” To which the husband replied, “Yep. In-laws.” I also heard about a husband who was relaxing next to his wife on the couch after their last child had left for college. He carefully removed his glasses and his wife said, “You know, honey, without your glasses you look like the same handsome young man I married.” The husband replied with a grin: “Without my glasses, you still look pretty good too!” Instead of digging each other, many husbands and wives just dig at each other, like the wife who said, “Sometimes I wake up grumpy…but mostly I let him sleep in.”
Are you grumpy or filled with grace toward each other? Do you and your spouse have a lot of sarcastic skirmishes or are you in an outright war? When you fight are you able to forgive or does it seem like things fester forever? As Ingrid Trobisch has said, “There is only one thing harder than living alone, and that is to live with another person.” Someone else has said, “Marriage is God’s way of keeping people from fighting with total strangers.” This morning we’re going to study Ephesians 4:26-32 as a way to help us move from isolation to intimacy. This section of Scripture gives us some things not to do and some things to do. There are a bunch of “don’ts” and a few “do’s.” We’ll go through the six prohibitions quickly so that we can spend more time on the three practices.
Prohibitions to Avoid
We see the prohibitions listed in verses 26-31.
1. Don’t sin in your anger (26a). It’s possible to be angry and not sin but it’s also easy to sin when you are angry: “In your anger do not sin.” Some anger is righteous but for most of us, our anger is anything but right as James 1:20 states: “For man’s anger does not bring about the righteous life that God desires.”
2. Don’t let the sun go down on your anger. We see this in the second half of verse 26: “Do not let the sun go down while you are still angry.” The night before our wedding rehearsal, the pastor who married us challenged us with this verse, and I’m glad he did, though we’ve had some pretty late nights! One person put it this way: “Forgive your mate or stay up late!” The danger of anger is that it picks up steam if it’s not dealt with properly. It was anger that led Cain to kill Abel, that provoked Saul to lose the kingdom, and it was what made Moses whack the rock.
3. Don’t give the devil a foothold. Verse 27 tells us that Satan gets his foot in the door of marriages when anger is unresolved: “And do not give the devil a foothold.” Proverbs 29:22: “An angry man stirs up dissension, and a hot-tempered one commits many sins.” It’s quite possible that what you are experiencing right now in your marriage is a result of the devil’s work. He will do anything to torpedo marriages and he often does so by tempting you to go on a tirade. Don’t let him. That’s why prayer is so important for your marriage. You’ll have an opportunity again at the end of the service to come up for prayer.
4. Don’t use corrupt conversation. Look at verse 29: “Do not let any unwholesome talk come out of your mouths, but only what is helpful for building others up according to their needs, that it may benefit those who listen.” The word “unwholesome” means that which is bad, decayed, or rotten. About a week ago our dog ate a rotten apple while he was on a walk. The smell was terrible and it stayed with him, and us, for a long time. We tried to get him to gargle but it didn’t work. Are your words stinking up your marriage?
5. Don’t grieve the Holy Spirit. Verse 30 tells us that the Holy Spirit is saddened when our anger erupts and when we use our words as weapons: “And do not grieve the Holy Spirit of God, with whom you were sealed for the day of redemption.” Unresolved anger and continuous conflict can distance you from God. Remember that what we do or don’t do in our marriages affects our relationship with God. Likewise, if we want our marriages to get better, the first place to start is with our relationship with God. The vertical problem must be solved before the horizontal sludge can be cleaned out. Neil Anderson counsels people this way: “You’re struggling in your marriage because you’re struggling in your spiritual life.”
6. Don’t hold on to unholy things. Verse 31 makes clear that we have a responsibility to throw away the stuff that is making a mess of our marriages: “Get rid of all bitterness, rage and anger, brawling and slander, along with every form of malice.” Unfortunately this verse is a composite picture of many marriages today. Let’s look a little more closely at these words:
• Bitterness. This comes from a word that means “sharp” and has the idea of bearing a grudge. This is a big problem in marriage. According to Colossians 3:19, husbands are commanded to love their wives and to “not be embittered against them.” One person who still struggles over what was done in the past said this, “If you could lick my heart, it would poison you.”
• Rage. This is a blazing fire that explodes and consumes everything in its path. I blew up this week at home and left shrapnel all over the dinner table. I asked for, and received forgiveness, but my rage was not pretty. I’m thankful for a forgiving family.
• Anger. An internal resentment that bubbles below the surface as it looks for the opportunity to let someone have it. When we stew in anger we savor the satisfaction of making someone pay over a long time.
• Brawling. This refers to violent public outbursts or “quarrelsome shouting.”
• Slander. Speech that is injurious to someone else as it demeans their character.
• Malice. The desire to injure another and to make them suffer for hurting us.
Do you have some of these attitudes in your heart right now? Is your marriage made up of malice? Paul says “Get rid of them,” which means to throw them away. Let’s be honest about something. Some of us don’t want to let go of this garbage because we actually enjoy being vengeful and bitter. We like watching our spouse squirm. While we might find some pleasure in this, it’s dangerous to hold on to hatred. It’s time to repent, to change your mind, and to stop justifying your attitudes and actions by thinking you somehow have a “right” to feel this way because of what your spouse has done to you. This is really step one and is the responsibility of each one of us: we must make sure we are not doing these six things. Sure, we all want our spouses to change. But we must start with asking God to change us.
Practices to Embrace
We must take these prohibitions seriously and now let’s read verse 32 together to see the three practices that we’re to follow: “Be kind and compassionate to one another, forgiving each other, just as in Christ God forgave you.”
1. Be kind. The tense of this command means that we are to “keep on becoming kind.” It carries with it the idea of being gracious. In the context of marriage, it means to cut some slack to your spouse and to simply be nice to each other. Keep in mind that it’s not necessarily prompted by the good the other person has done, but by the good that God has done. On her golden anniversary, a grandmother revealed the secret of her long and happy marriage to one of her grandchildren: “On my wedding day, I decided to choose ten of my husband’s faults which, for the sake of our marriage, I would overlook.” When she was asked to name some of his faults she smiled and said, “To tell the truth, I never did get around to listing them. But whenever my husband did something that made me hopping mad, I would say to myself, ‘Lucky for him that’s one of the ten’” (Reader’s Digest, 12/92).
2. Be compassionate. We’re to put ourselves in our spouse’s slippers and begin to see life through their eyes and feel their pain in our own gut. When your wife weeps, weep with her. When your husband hurts, hurt with him. 1 Peter 3:8 sums up how we should treat our spouses: “Finally, all of you, live in harmony with one another; be sympathetic, love as brothers, be compassionate and humble.”
3. Be forgiving. After being kind and compassionate, we are to practice “forgiving each other, just as in Christ God forgave you.” Let’s notice a few things about this phrase. The word “forgiving” is in the present tense and implies a continuous action. It’s not just a one-time event but is actually ongoing. The phrase “each other” means that we are sinners in need of forgiveness and we are sinned against by sinners and therefore need to forgive them. Especially in a marriage relationship, both parties provoke and both spouses sin. And our model for forgiveness is Christ himself. Because we have been forgiven, and only because we’ve been forgiven, are we able to forgive others. When someone sins against us, we must remember how much we’ve sinned against God and how much we’ve been forgiven. As a forgiven sinner we extend forgiveness to another sinner. Actually, without the doctrine of forgiveness, what is Christianity? If we withhold that which we’ve received, Jesus says that there will be trouble for us in Matthew 18:35: “This is how my heavenly Father will treat each of you unless you forgive your brother from your heart.”
Since We’ve Been Forgiven…
Put plainly, we’re to forgive because we’ve been forgiven. I’m indebted to the insights of Ray Pritchard on this topic and heartily recommend his new book called, “The Healing Power of Forgiveness” (Harvest House Publishers). Forgiveness of sins is a major biblical doctrine. Here are just a few passages:
• “As far as the east is from the west, so far has he removed our transgressions from us” (Psalm 103:12).
• “If you, O Lord, kept a record of sins, O Lord, who could stand? But with you there is forgiveness” (Psalm 130:3-4).
• “You have put all my sins behind your back” (Isaiah 38:17).
• “I—yes, I alone—am the one who blots out your sins for my own sake and will never think of them again” (Isaiah 43:25 NLT).
• “You will trample our sins under your feet and throw them into the depths of the ocean!” (Micah 7:19 NLT).
The Bible uses a number of different words to convey the concept of forgiveness. One word means “to blot out,” in the sense that God erases the record of the sins we commit. Another common Hebrew word means “to lift and carry away,” speaking of the complete removal of our sins from us, as if a heavy load had been lifted from our shoulders. Still another word means “to release from debt,” indicating that the punishment for sin has been canceled. And one Greek word means “to show grace to one who has sinned greatly,” speaking of the undeserved nature of forgiveness.
John Piper points out that the pattern of God’s forgiveness toward us should enable us to forgive others (see www.soundofgrace.com). How does God forgive us?
• God’s forgiveness takes sin seriously and so should ours. Forgiveness is not flippancy toward sin. It sees it and names it…and then covers it.
• God’s forgiveness settles accounts and so should ours. Every sin that has ever been committed will be justly punished – either in hell or on the cross.
• God’s forgiveness was costly and so is ours. It cost the Father His Son. And it will cost us the sweet taste of revenge and the pleasure of our pride.
• God’s forgiveness is real and ours should be too. There’s no sham in it. When He forgives we are really restored. Nothing is held over our heads for later blackmail.
I would add one more…
• God’s forgiveness is not selective in terms of the sins we’ve committed. God, in Christ, forgave all our sins and we must do the same with the sins of others.
Excuses, Excuses, Excuses
Most of us know that we’re supposed to forgive and we understand what God says about forgiveness, but we still fight it. It could be because we think we have some valid reasons to not forgive. In an article from Christianity Today, Neil Anderson explains some common excuses he hears from couples when he’s counseling them:
• It’s not fair. Forgiveness is not fair; but that’s precisely the point of it.
• But you don’t know how bad he (or she) hurt me. That’s not the issue. Your spouse may still hurt you. But forgiveness is how you stop the pain.
• I have to heal first—then I’ll be able to forgive. Research shows that forgiveness brings healing, not the other way around.
• But I want revenge! We have to trust God to even the score as Hebrews 10:30 says: “For we know him who said, ‘It is mine to avenge; I will repay…’”
• Why should I let him (or her) off the hook? If you don’t forgive, you’re still on the hook. Your spouse doesn’t “deserve” forgiveness but no one does, including you.
• Where’s the justice? It’s on the cross. Jesus released you from the debt of your sins, and the sins of your spouse.
That leads to a question. Are you more interested in being “right” than in being reconciled?
But I Can’t Forget!
You may be thinking, “OK, I’ll work on forgiving my spouse, but I can never forget what he or she did to me!” Sometimes when we say, “I can forgive…but I’ll never forget” we really mean, “I don’t want to forget and I’m not going to put this out of my mind.” While it’s probably impossible to wipe wrongs completely out of our mind, we can choose to not remember them. It’s really a matter of the will. That’s how God deals with our sins in Hebrews 10:17: “Their sins and lawless acts I will remember no more.” When God forgives, He chooses not to remember our sins. In his excellent book called “Total Forgiveness,” R.T. Kendall refers to a song that sums up the importance of forgiving and forgetting: “Let the past be past at last.”
Forgiveness does not mean we somehow wipe out of our mind the record of what happened. Forgiveness means we choose to not remember it. If you’re having a hard time forgiving and forgetting maybe it’s because you’re still dwelling on the deeds that have been done to you. In short, it’s time to stop getting “historical” by bringing up the past. Clara Barton, the founder of the Red Cross, was talking with a friend one day when the name of a person they both knew came up. This person had done some very mean things to Clara years ago. The friend asked her this question: “Don’t you remember when she did that to you?” To which Clara Barton replied, “No. I distinctly remember forgetting that.” I’m told that when missionaries first came to Labrador, they found no word for forgiveness in the Eskimo language so they had to create a brand new word which means, “Not being able to think about it anymore.”
Corrie Ten Boom received some helpful advice from a pastor when she was bitter over what some Christian friends had done to her. After two sleepless weeks, her pastor told her, “Up in the church tower is a bell which is rung by pulling on a rope. When the rope is pulled the bell sounds out ‘ding-dong, ding-dong, ding-dong.’ But if the rope is not pulled the sound slowly fades away. Forgiveness is like that. When we forgive someone, we take our hand off the rope. But if we’ve been tugging at our grievances a long time, we mustn’t be surprised if the old angry thoughts keep coming for awhile. They are just the ding-dongs of the old bell slowing down.” Friend, are you still yanking on the rope? Or have you truly let it go?
Joseph is a great biblical example of forgetting. He could have wasted his life nursing a grudge against his brothers for what they had done to him by selling him into slavery in a foreign land. He was separated from his father and even spent time in prison. We know that he was able to forgive and forget because he named his first son Manasseh, which means “forgetting.” We see this in Genesis 41:51: “It is because God has made me forget all my trouble…” Later, when he was reunited with his brothers, he made sure they knew that they were also reconciled when he declared in Genesis 50:19-21: “But Joseph said to them, ‘Don’t be afraid. Am I in the place of God? You intended to harm me, but God intended it for good to accomplish what is now being done, the saving of many lives. So then, don’t be afraid. I will provide for you and your children.’ And he reassured them and spoke kindly to them.” Here we see the importance of kindness once again.
Putting Forgiveness into Practice
Here are some ideas that may help you give the gift of forgiveness, or to ask for release from the wrongs you have committed against your mate. Remember this: Forgiveness is not optional in the Christian life. Its part and parcel of what it means to be a Christian.
1. Stop playing the “gotcha game.” Love, according to 1 Corinthians 13:5: “keeps no record of wrongs.” I wanted to show a video clip this morning but it was too long to use. It depicted a husband and wife literally walking around the house with ledger books in which they recorded every wrong that the other person did. It wasn’t until they threw these accounts out that they were able to move toward intimacy.
2. Instead of saying, “I’m sorry” say, “I was wrong. Please forgive me.” There’s a world of difference between the two. When you wrong your spouse ask him or her for forgiveness; don’t just feel bad about what you did or offer an easy “I’m sorry.”
3. If your spouse has sinned against you, release him or her from ever having to pay you back. C.S. Lewis made this telling remark: “Everyone says forgiveness is a lovely idea until they have something to forgive.” Maybe you have been listing all the offenses done to you. If you have, write the word “forgiven” over them and offer the list to God. And then tear it up and throw it away. Release the offense and then you’ll both be free. When a deep injury is done to us, we will never reconcile until we forgive. Question: Have you ever forgiven your spouse for his or her faults and sins? It’s time to do so now. Forgiveness is not a feeling; it’s a choice. General Ogelthorpe once said to John Wesley, “I never forgive and I never forget.” To which Wesley replied, “Then, Sir, I hope you never sin.”
4. Memorize Ephesians 4:31-32 and tell your spouse that you’re going to put this passage into practice. Maybe you could even work on this assignment together. Someone has said that marriage involves the union of two sinners. I’d like to add that a good marriage involves the union of two forgivers.
5. Confess your anger against God. Perhaps you’re struggling to forgive your spouse because you’re really angry at the Almighty. The reality is that your mate is not perfect and neither are you. You married a sinner and sinners will sin. God did not make a mistake in allowing you to get married. It’s time to let Him off the hook.
6. Begin praying for your spouse everyday. I recommend that you pick up Stormie Omartian’s books called, “The Power of a Praying Husband” and “The Power of a Praying Wife.” These books are filled with principles and prayers that will help you forgive and help you choose to forget your spouse’s failures.
7. Make sure that you’ve experienced forgiveness from God. Listen to what I’m about to say very carefully: We will forgive to the extent that we appreciate how much we’ve been forgiven. Jesus said it this way in Luke 7:47: “He who has been forgiven little loves little.”
I read an article this week from Marriage Partnership in which a wife describes what she learned when she did an inventory of her spouse’s shortcomings (Becky Zerbe, www.christianitytoday.com).
The day had come. I’d lasted as long as I could in my marriage…with a tear-stained face; I walked into mom’s kitchen. She held the baby while I sobbed my declaration of independence… “Before you leave Bill,” she said, “I have one task for you to complete.” Her mom then took a sheet of paper and drew a vertical line down the middle of the page and asked her to list in the left column all the things Bill did that made it impossible for her to live with.
This is going to be easy, I thought. My pen started immediately to scribble down the left column…the list went on and on until I’d filled the page. I certainly had more than enough evidence to prove that no woman would be able to live with this man. Smugly I said, “Now I guess you’re going to ask me to list all Bill’s good qualities on the right side.” Her mother told her instead to write out her response and reaction to each of the things that Bill did.
I’d pout, cry, and get angry. I’d be embarrassed to be with him. I’d act like a martyr. I’d wish I’d married someone else. I’d give him the silent treatment. I’d feel I was too good for him. The list seemed endless. When I reached the bottom of the page, Mom picked up the paper and with a pair of scissors cut the paper down the vertical line. Taking the left column, she wadded it in her hand and tossed it in the trash. Then she handed me the right column and said, “Becky, take this back to your house. Spend today reflecting on these things and pray about them.”
Leaving my luggage and my son, I drove back to my house. When I sat on the couch with the piece of paper, I couldn’t believe what I was facing. Without the balancing catalogue of Bill’s annoying habits, the list looked horrifying. I saw a record of petty behaviors, shameful practices, and destructive responses. I spent the next several hours asking God for forgiveness…I could barely remember the transgressions I’d written for Bill…by the time Bill returned from work, I was unpacked and waiting.
I’d love to say that Bill changed. He didn’t. He still did all those things that embarrassed and annoyed me, and made me want to explode. The difference came in me. From that day forward, I had to be responsible not only for my actions in our marriage, but also for my reactions.
Friend, as long as you focus on what your spouse has done to you, forgiveness will be impossible. The only hope of lasting forgiveness is to shift your focus to your own sins against God, to see in horrific clarity the depths of your own depravity and the full extent of your own need for forgiveness.
Until you have a saving relationship with God so that your own sins can be forgiven, you won’t have a marriage that matters. Receive the gift of forgiveness right now through faith in Christ. Have you ever been forgiven by God or are you still carrying the heavy burden of your own sin? Jesus has taken your side of the ledger, crumpled up all your sins, and thrown them away. If you’d like to be assured of that forgiveness right now, you can pray this prayer with me.
“Lord Jesus, for too long I’ve kept you out of my life. I admit that I am a sinner and that I cannot save myself. I repent of my sins by changing my mind about the way I’ve been living. I desperately need to be forgiven. By faith I gratefully receive your gift of salvation. Thank you, Lord Jesus, for coming to earth. With all my heart I believe you are the Son of God who died on the cross for my sins and rose from the dead on the third day. Thank you for bearing my sins and giving me the gift of eternal life. I believe your words are true. I accept you into my heart. Be my Savior and Lord. I surrender to your leadership in my life. Make me into the person you want me to be. Amen.”
