Why Should I Forgive?
Brennan Manning tells a story
in his book The Ragamuffin Gospel.
25 years ago, he had a drinking problem.
He voluntarily entered a 28-day treatment program.
Early on in the treatment program
they had to sit in a circle with a leader
and tell the other people in the group,
about the extent of their drinking.
So they went around the circle
and they all told their story,
except for one business guy named Max.
When it came time for him to talk about his drinking, he said,
"I never really drank that much."
They said, "Max,
you’re in an alcoholic treatment center for a month.
You weren’t sipping cokes.
Tell us the truth. Admit it."
He said, "I’m being honest with you.
I’ve never really had all that much to drink."
Well, upon coming into the program
they’d all signed affidavits
to be able to get information any way they wanted.
So they had a speaker phone in the center of the circle,
and the leader of the group said,
"I’m going to call the bar that’s close to your office
and we’ll just find out."
So they call and ask for the bartender
and the leader says to him,
"Do you know Max So-and-So?"
The bartender says,
"Oh, like a brother! He stops in every day after work and has a minimum of six martinis.
Man, this guy drinks like a fish! He’s the best customer we have."
The rest of the people in the group all looked at Max.
Max says, "Yes, I’ve had a lot to drink."
A little later on in the group, they asked everyone,
"Have you ever hurt anybody,
a friend or family member,
while you were drunk?"
Some people described their experiences.
They get around the circle to Max, who says,
"I would never, ever hurt anybody.
Not when I’m sober, not when I’m drunk.
I have four lovely children.
I’d never hurt my wife, I’d never hurt my kids."
The leader says,
"You know, Max, we don’t believe you.
We’re going to call your wife."
As soon as Max’s wife starts talking on the speaker phone,
Max starts breathing heavily.
He knows something’s coming
that he has been unwilling to face.
The leader says,
"Mrs. So-and-So,
has Max ever mistreated you or anyone in the family
when he was drunk?"
And she said,
"Well, yes he has. It happened just this last Christmas Eve.
He took our 9-year-old daughter shopping on Christmas Eve, bought her a new pair of shoes; he’s a generous man.
On the way home, our little girl was sitting in the front seat enjoying her new shoes, and Max passed the bar and saw the cars of some of his buddies.
"He pulled in. It was a cold, wintry day, 12 degrees, with a high wind chill.
He made sure all the windows were rolled up snugly.
He left the car running so that the heater was blowing, and he said to our 9-year-old daughter, ’I’ll be right back.
You just play with your shoes; I’ll be right back.’
"He went in the bar and started drinking with his buddies.
He didn’t come out of the bar until midnight.
In that time, the vehicle had shut off and the windows had become all frosted over and locked up tight so she couldn’t get herself out of the car.
When the authorities opened up the car and rushed her to the hospital, she was so badly frostbitten that her thumb and forefinger had to be amputated. And her ears were so damaged by the cold that she’ll be deaf for the rest of her life."
The wife describes this to the group,
and Max falls off his chair and starts convulsing on the ground.
He just couldn’t bear admitting what he had done.
He couldn’t face it.
He was going to live the rest of his life
in some fantasy world of denial
about what he had done.
Why did I tell that story?
Just to depress everybody here?
I’ll tell you why.
If I had the time,
I could pass a microphone down the aisle
and I’m willing to bet that every person here
would have something they could share,
some way they’ve hurt others deeply.
You probably didn’t put a kid in the hospital.
Maybe the only wounds the other person got
were emotional.
Maybe you did it on purpose,
or maybe you just didn’t realize what you were doing,
you just weren’t aware,
Maybe you had such huge needs yourself,
and were so hurting yourself,
that you didn’t realize
you were hurting someone else.
I have a little brother, named Phil.
He lives out in Portland Oregon now,
and of course he’s not little anymore,
he weighs about 50 pounds more than I do.
But when we were growing up,
I was a terrible brother,
I picked on him a lot,
and bullied him,
and made fun of him.
I would give anything
to be able to go back and change that.
But I can’t,
and with him living in Oregon,
I can’t even develop much of a relationship now.
Now on the other hand,
I’ve had people that hurt me deeply,
and rejected me,
and made fun of me
and criticized me.
It’s a fact of life that people hurt each other.
You can pretty much plan on the fact
that as long as you’re in this world,
you’re going to hurt people,
and they’re going to hurt you.
We started talking about this last week,
and I want to go a little further this week.
Because when you’re hurt,
how you handle that hurt will,
to a large degree,
determine your happiness in life.
If you don’t respond correctly to hurt
If you hold onto a hurt,
it turns into resentment.
And resentment is the great destroyer of relationships.
It destroys all kinds of relationships.
You hear people say,
"I don’t love my husband any more. ...
or, “I don’t have any feelings for my wife;
Its like my feelings are dead inside.
What’s wrong with me?"
What’s wrong is usually resentment.
Resentment eats up emotional energy
in such large quantities
that eventually you’re emotionally empty
and you have nothing left to give.
But the Good News is that
you can recover from resentment
and get over the hurts in life.
Lords Prayer:
Matt 6:9
Our Father which art in heaven, Hallowed be thy name.
Thy kingdom come. Thy will be done in earth, as it is in heaven.
Give us this day our daily bread.
And forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors.
And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil:
For thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory, for ever. Amen.
Notice it says,
12 "Forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors.
What is it talking about debts for?
I didn’t borrow any money from God,
did you?
Its not talking about money here, is it?
In fact, the New Living Translation puts it differently,
the same verse is translated,
and forgive us our sins,
just as we have forgiven those who have sinned against us.
So its talking here about
receiving forgiveness from God,
and offering forgiveness to others.
But there is a good reason
that the actual Bible words used,
are the financial terms
debt, and debtor.
What’s the reason?
Well, let me define forgiveness for you.
This is a very simple definition
based on what Jesus says in this verse.
This is how God and the Bible looks at forgiveness ---
Here’s the definition:
Forgiveness is canceling a debt.
(say that with me).
Its like
when someone hurts you,
they give you an IOU,
they owe you a debt
But then instead of collecting,
you cancel it,
and you say
you don’t owe me any more.
I forgive you.
I’m not going to ask you to pay me.
You see,
Sin is like a debt.
It needs to be paid for,
someone needs to be punished
for the wrongdoing,
Justice needs to be served.
And when we forgive,
we are cancelling the debt,
we’re cancelling that IOU
that someone owes you
because they hurt you.
Instead of saying to the person
“you hurt me and you have to pay,
you owe me an apology,
you owe me restitution,
instead you say,
I cancel the debt.
You don’t owe me anything.”
That seems like a lot to ask, doesn’t it?
But when God forgives us,
He does exactly that.
He drops all the charges against us
due to our sin,
and He actually pays the penalty for us.
We no longer owe anything,
once we’ve received His forgiveness
by accepting Christ.
Now the first verse we looked at
was from the Lords prayer,
The next verse
follows right after the Lords prayer,
so Jesus is still teaching on the same subject,
Matt 6:14-15
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.
It says
if you don’t forgive,
if you don’t cancel that debt,
if you don’t give up your right to get revenge,
then your Father will not forgive your sins.
Thats a scary thought,
that there’s something we can do
that will cause God not to forgive us.
So God treats forgiveness
as very serious business.
This is not something we can just ignore,
or that we have an option about.
This is not an area where you say,
Well, I really don’t feel like forgiving my husband,
so I don’t think I will.
or
I don’t think my wife is really sorry,
so I’m not going to forgive her.
No.
God says, you must forgive.
It is not an option.
This is an important issue to God.
Now some of us have real difficulties
dealing with this whole area of forgiveness,
just because we have some inaccurate beliefs
about what forgiveness really means.
If you don’t understand what forgiveness involves,
that can make it a lot harder to forgive someone.
So I want to spend a few minutes talking about
5 nice things that forgiveness is not.
This is actually from my book,
so if you’ve read that you’re going to get a quick review.
Forgiveness is not the same as forgetting.
You’ve heard the saying, forgive and forget.
Now you may be fortunate enough
that after you forgive,
you’re able to also forget.
But you can sincerely forgive someone,
even though you remember it
the rest of your life.
What forgiveness deals with
is not the memory,
but the pain and hurt associated
with the memory.
You see, we look at forgiveness all wrong.
We look at it as a duty or an obligation,
Oh I have to forgive that jerk,
because God said so.
And we feel like we’re giving them something,
because we forgave them.
The truth is,
forgiveness is actually
a miraculous gift from God, to us
so that we can get ourselves free of the pain
from all the times we’ve been hurt by others.
When we’re able to forgive,
its actually much more of a blessing to us
than it is to the other person,
because it allows us to get free
from the resentment that ruins our lives.
So we cancel the debt that’s owed to us,
but we can’t necessarily cancel that memory.
We put that memory into God’s hands,
and he heals the pain associated with that memory,
but doesn’t necessarily remove the memory.
So first Forgiveness is not the same as forgetting.
Forgiveness is not the same as excusing.
You don’t excuse what was done
when you forgive someone.
In fact, its almost the opposite.
The fact that you need to forgive them
is because you have not excused them,
You’ve held them accountable
for what they’ve done,
and refused to excuse them.
You see,
If you can excuse something,
it doesn’t need forgiveness.
To excuse something is to say that
there’s no blame,
it was an accident,
You didn’t mean to hurt me.
its not your fault,
I don’t hold you responsible.
If you excuse someone,
you don’t need to forgive them.
But when an excuse doesn’t cut it,
when you say …
you were at fault,
you did intend to hurt me,
You knew exactly what you were doing,
that’s when I need to forgive you.
Some hurts we do receive by accident,
and then there’s no need for forgiveness.
But hurts that were intentional,
should never be excused,
because to excuse it is to tell the person,
its not your fault,
you aren’t to blame,
you shouldn’t be accountable,
and that’s not helping them,
or helping your relationship,
if you excuse them
when they are to blame.
So never excuse them,
but instead, cancel the debt,
and forgive them.
Forgiveness is not the same as accepting people.
Whats the difference between forgiveness
and accepting people?
We accept people based on what they are.
People are God’s good creation,
who He loves and values highly.
So we accept all people
based on the good that they are.
But we have to forgive people
for the bad things that they do.
We accept them for who they are,
we forgive them for what they do.
I can accept someone
even though they’re different from me,
even though they dress differently,
or look different,
or use bad grammar,
or have a different background,
I need to accept all those things,
because they’re all part
of who you are.
But I cannot just accept wrong
that you’ve done to me,
or accept when you hurt me.
That doesn’t require acceptance,
it requires forgiveness.
Forgiveness is not the same as tolerance.
You do not have to tolerate
what people do
when you forgive them for doing it.
You may forgive people,
but that does not mean you have to tolerate
what they’ve done
or continue to do to you.
You can forgive someone for anything,
but there’s a lot of things
you cannot and should not tolerate.
he truth is,
we can tolerate a whole lot less
than we can forgive.
Let me give you an example.
Say you’re a schoolkid,
and there’s a bully who every day comes up to you
and grabs you around the neck
and says give me your lunch money.
You might be able to go home that night and forgive him.
But when you go back to school the next day
and the same bully is there
and he wants tomorrows lunch money as well,
do you just tolerate it again, and again,
and eventually by the time you get to the 5th grade
you’re suffering from malnutrition?
No, what you do is you forgive the bully,
and you tell on him.
You forgive him,
but you don’t tolerate the situation.
You get the assistant principle involved
to stop whats happening.
If you’re in an abusive relationship,
you can forgive the person,
but you don’t tolerate it,
you call the police.
Forgiveness is not the same as tolerance.
Forgiveness does not mean restoring.
You can forgive a person
who is not the least bit sorry for what they’ve done.
You can forgive them
even if you don’t trust them
and even if you think
that they’d hurt you again if they could.
You can still forgive them.
But that doesn’t mean
you put yourself right back in a place
where they can hurt you.
That doesn’t mean
you restore them to the place in your life
that they held before.
Sometimes restoring them might be harmful.
You can only restore them
if there’s a certain level of trust.
You see,
Forgiveness has no strings attached,
but restoration frequently requires strings attached.
because restoration could be harmful
if there’s been no repentance or restitution
on the part of the person who hurt you.
If a man physically abuses his wife,
and she has to move out to escape it,
she can forgive him,
but that doesn’t mean she moves right back in.
If your best friend hurts you deeply,
and isn’t the least bit sorry about it,
you can forgive her,
but that doesn’t require that
you continue to spend a lot of time with that friend.
The fact is:
Forgiving someone does not in itself
qualify them for anything
or entitle them to anything.
So forgiveness is not the same as
forgetting
excusing
accepting
tolerating,
or restoring.
Those are all nice things,
in certain situations,
but they should never be confused
with forgiveness.
Lets talk now about
how to make this whole thing work in my life.
How to I go about
becoming a forgiving person?
Lets look at 4 ways.
NEVER RETALIATE.
There’s a British shock-radio host named Tim Shaw
sort of the British equivalent of Howard Stern.
He was working his usual 10 p.m. to 1 a.m. shift,
and he was interviewing a pin-up girl
and he told her, on the air,
that he was willing to leave his wife and 2 kids for her.
Minutes later, his wife, Hayley,
created an eBay auction for her husband’s car,
a Lotus Esprit Turbo, valued at approximately $45,000
The auction page was almost completely blank
except for a picture of the car
and the following words:
“I need to get rid of this car immediately—
ideally in the next 2-3 hours before my cheating [jerk] husband gets home to find it gone and all his belongings in the street.
I am the registered owner and I have the [registration].
Please only buy if you can pick up tonight.”
The car——was listed with a “Buy-it-Now” price
of 50 pence ($.90),
and the auction lasted exactly 5 minutes and 3 seconds
before an anonymous buyer paid for it and drove away.
In a later interview with reporters,
Mrs. Shaw said that
she was “sick of her husband disrespecting his family
for the sake of his act.”
When asked about the price of the car, she said:
“I didn’t care about the money.
I just wanted to get him back.”
Four days after the car was sold,
the anonymous buyer left the following feedback
on Mrs. Shaw’s eBay account:
“Thank you, Hayley, the car is excellent.
Thank your hubby for me.”
Revenge is so tempting, isn’t it.
But part of cancelling another persons debt is
I give up the right to get even,
to get revenge.
We talked about this a little bit last week,
but I want to go a little deeper.
When I give up my right to get even,
who do I give it to?
I give that right to God.
The bible says,
“Vengeance is mine, I will repay, says the Lord.”
Vengeance is the Biblical word
for making wrongs right,
or bringing justice into a situation.
And God is not against vengeance.
He’s just against you and me getting revenge.
But He tells us,
Don’t you do it, its my job.
The Bible tells us that
what we need to do
is put justice into God’s hands,
and let Him repay the wrong done to us.
So you forgive,
you cancel the debt,
you give up the right to get even,
and put that right into God’s hands
for him to bring justice.
Proverbs 20:22 (Good News)
"Don’t take it on yourself to repay a wrong. Trust the Lord and he will make it right."
Let God settle the score.
Leave it in God’s hands.
You see, when you try to retaliate,
then you’re hurt
just as much as the other person.
So don’t take it upon yourself
to repay a wrong.
One day God is going to have the last word
So leave it to God.
The 2nd way to become a forgiving person,
and get over a hurt is:
DEAL WITH IT IMMEDIATELY
Ephesians 4:26
"Don’t sin by nursing your grudge. Don’t let the sun go down with you still angry. Get over it quickly."
If you hold on to anger
it turns into resentment.
If you hold on to hurt,
it turns into hate.
and that’s much worse to deal with.
So this verse says,
you don’t go to bed at night
if you’re still angry.
If you’re having a fight with your husband/wife,
stay up until you resolve it.
You may have to stay up all night.
But you resolve it.
Do it quickly.
get it out of your life.
Author Philip Yancey writes about a friend named George,
that had a marriage that was going through rough times.
One evening George just emotionally exploded.
He pounded the table and floor.
And he screamed at his wife.
"I hate you! I won’t take it anymore!
I’ve had enough! I won’t go on!
I won’t let it happen!
No! No! No!"
Several months later
George woke up in the middle of the night
and heard strange sounds coming from the room
where his 2-year-old son slept.
He went down the hall, stood outside his son’s door,
and listened.
The 2-year-old was repeating word for word
that argument between his mother and father.
"I hate you. ... I won’t take it anymore. ... No! No! No!"
Do you really want to pass on your
pain and anger and unforgiveness
to the people you love most?
No.
That’s why the bible says,
Don’t let the sun go down with you still angry. Get over it quickly."
Get it over with,
get it out of your life,
don’t hold onto it.
The next verse says,
"Go at once to make peace with your brother."
Some of you need to go at once,
and write a letter,
make a phone call,
call a family conference.
and humble yourself,
and make peace.
Do it now!
People have a million excuses not to:
We say,
"I want them to learn a lesson."
"If I forgive them they’ll just do it again!"
"They aren’t really sorry."
But those are all just excuses.
The Bible says, go make peace!
and do it immediately.
The 3rd step to get over a hurt, is:
FORGIVE THEM WHETHER THEY ASK OR NOT
Ephesians 4:32
Forgive one another as quickly and thoroughly as God in Christ forgave you.
Notice the word "quickly".
How quickly did Christ forgive you?
On the cross Jesus cried out
"Father, forgive them for they know not what they do!"
When Jesus said that,
who had asked him for forgiveness?
Nobody.
Nobody had asked yet.
He took the initiative.
He forgave us in advance.
That’s pretty quick.
He wasn’t holding onto resentment,
not even for the men who put him on the cross.
God says,
You forgive people whether they ask or not,
whether they accept it or not.
It’s your job to do your part
and then you get rid of the resentment.
If they want to hold onto a grudge,
that’s their problem.
But you forgive them,
and then you can get on with your life
and get over the hurt.
The 4th way to get over a hurt
DO GOOD TO THEM.
U.S. News & World Report, ran an article last year
about a non-profit charity
that’s doing great work in South Africa.
In 1993, Amy Biehl was a 26-year-old
white Stanford student and Fulbright scholar,
when she went to South Africa
to help register black voters for South Africa’s first free election.
While there she was dragged out of her car
and stabbed and beaten to death
by a mob of black Africans
intent on the violent overthrow of the apartheid government.
Later, Amy’s parents, Linda and Peter Biehl,
quit their jobs and moved from California to South Africa,
where they established a foundation in Amy’s name
to help the poor of South Africa.
Today, two of her killers work for the foundation.
They call Linda Biehl "Makhulu," or grandmother,
and she treats them as her sons.
Linda Biehl said,
"Forgiving means looking at ourselves and saying, ’I don’t want to go through life feeling hateful and revengeful, because that’s not going to do me any good.’ "Instead, we took Amy’s lead. We did what we felt she would want."
Luke 6:27, 28, 35 Jesus says,
"Love your enemies. Do good to those who hate you. Bless those who curse you. Pray for those who mistreat you and you’ll have a great reward."
This verse lists 4 positive actions
to take when you’re hurt.
Love,
do good,
bless,
and pray for.
First, Love.
One definition of love is
giving a person what he needs,
not what he deserves.
God loves you.
and gives you what you need,
not what you deserve.
If you got what you deserved
you wouldn’t even be here,
neither would I.
And we can choose to give that person who hurt us
what he needs, not what he deserves.
Do good.
Rather than for returning evil for evil,
return good for evil.
One of the quickest ways
to change your attitude toward somebody
is to give them a gift.
Buy them a book,
or some candy, or flowers,
do something nice for them.
If you do,
it’ll change your attitude toward them.
You might say,
Ken, that’s crazy.
Nobody buys a gift
for someone who hates them.
That’s the whole point!
The world doesn’t act that way!
but we’re not supposed to be like the world.
We’re Christians.
We should act different.
And Jesus says,
Do good to those who hate you.
Bless.
It says, Bless those who curse you.
When people put you down.
You build them up.
Don’t let them bring you down to their level,
by responding -- negative for negative.
When somebody criticizes you,
don’t criticize them back.
You bless them.
You say something positive, and affirm them.
Now, I know,
This is hard to do when you’re criticized,
but you have to remember,
hurt people, hurt people.
The reason they’re hurting you
is because they’re hurting inside.
Finally,
Pray for those who mistreat you.
Did you know,
You cannot pray for somebody
and hate them at the same time.
If you don’t believe me,
I challenge you to try it.
Pray for those who mistreat you.
In all four of these ways,
Jesus is really just saying,
Practice the Golden Rule.
Do to other people
what you’d like to have done to you.
Why? Why should I treat that person with goodness
when they’ve done so much harm to me?
As long as you hate somebody,
they control you
because you’re focusing on them,
and letting your resentment burn you up.
Some of you are allowing people
who hurt you 5, 10, 15, 20 years ago
to still hurt you
because of memories.
As long as you hate somebody
they control you.
How do you take control back again?
You choose to respond
a different way,
in a way that is totally unlike them.
I want you to think for a moment ---
Who are you still holding a hurtful memory about?
Who are you still bitter against?
A parent?
A husband/wife?
A former spouse?
An old boyfriend?
A boss?
A teacher who embarrassed you?
A friend who betrayed you?
Let it go!
For your own sake, let it go!
whether you feel like it or not.
And do the right thing.
Don’t retaliate,
deal with it immediately,
forgive them whether they ask or not
and do good to them.
We’re going to close in a minute,
but maybe you’re sitting here thinking,
"That all sounds good,
but I just can’t! I cannot forgive that person."
That’s why you need Jesus Christ.
Philippians 4:13
"I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me."
All things,
includes even
forgiving that person who doesn’t deserve it.
You need Christ’s strength in your life.
Maybe the reason
you’re having such a hard time forgiving
is because you’ve never really experienced
God’s forgiveness in your life.
You don’t know what it means
to live with a clear conscience
and know that all the garbage in your life
that you’re so ashamed of,
God has forgiven
and wiped the slate clean.
When you feel that,
you will be more forgiving of others.
A forgiven person, is a forgiving person.
A graced person, is a gracious person.
If you haven’t experienced Gods forgiveness,
I’d like to give you the opportunity right now.
Prayer:
Would you ask Jesus Christ to come into your life and help you in this area? Maybe for the very first time today you would pray this prayer,
"Jesus, I don’t understand it all, but I know somehow You’ve forgiven me for all that I’ve done wrong and I want to thank You for it. Thank You for dying on the cross for me. Help me to understand what that means. Help me to feel forgiven. Help me to forgive myself so I can offer it to others.
Jesus, would You replace the pain in my life with Your peace. Lord, I’m tired of hurting. Jesus Christ, would You replace the hurt in my heart with Your healing? Would You drain the bitterness out of my life and fill me with Your love. Help me to walk in forgiveness this week. Please give me the power to do what I know is right regardless of how I feel.
In Jesus’ name. Amen.
