Principles of Forgiveness Colossians 3:13

This morning we are looking at forgiveness from the human angle. We have considered the forgiveness that God shows to us and the importance of receiving it and now we are going to mediate together on the Christian duty of forgiving those who hurt us. It is a subject that is fraught with dangers. The preacher of course is at risk as always of preaching beyond what he has attained. But there is the additional risk of adding to the guilt and hurt of those who have been wounded by others so grievously that the calling to forgive seems to overwhelm them. I want this morning to look at exactly what is required of us in forgiving our enemies. I believe that Christ not only challenges us to something which is quite extraordinary but has not called us to a lifestyle which is not crushing to the most bruised and battered of the family of God. We can expect the Bibles' teaching on forgiveness to be both inspiring and liberating and certainly not crushing.

An Unnatural Act

It is certainly true that forgiveness is something that is for many people a most unnatural act. A number of years ago the BBC programme Kilroy was on the subject of revenge. Robert Kilroy Silk asked the question, 'Is it possible to love our enemies? Most of the participants thought it was neither possible not right to do so. To the question, 'Should we take revenge?' the following replies were received: 'Most certainly' I cannot allow him to get away with it.' You feel a lot better when you've done it. You get satisfaction in your heart if you hurt them as they hurt you. Revenge can do you good. If you don't take revenge, you lose your self respect.' Each time one of the participants described the actions they had taken to get revenge there was a round of applause and cheers from the others. Many of the people had suffered terrible things: sexual abuse, loss of a limb through medical error, a hand who had an affair with her sister and so on. In the face of the degree of wrong they had suffered it seemed quite right to call for revenge.

The Pharisees of Jesus day would have agreed also. The statement and eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth which was intended to limit the legal punitive justice so that it was limited by the severity of the crime. But the Pharisees had taken the statement and had made it a walk on all fours so that it meant that it was always right to get even with an enemy.

To forgive those who hurt us seems like naivety at best or outrageous injustice at worst. Why should someone who has done a terrible thing be let off the hook by a word of forgiveness? Sometimes we feel that our resentment and contempt for he person who has wronged us is our only weapon against a monster. If we are honest we can identify closely with Peter who felt overwhelmed by the demands of forgiveness and asked, 'How many times shall I forgive my brother when he sins against me.' Forgiveness is the easiest thing to speak about. In the confines of a Christina group at least it is recognised as a good thing. But how hard it is.

I believe that there is an important balance that we must keep in the area of forgiveness. On the one hand it is important that we do not tone down the challenge of forgiveness. The calling to forgive could not be higher, we are to forgive with a God like quality 'Bear with each other and forgive whatever grievances you have against one another. Forgive as the Lord forgave you.' It is very easy to domesticate forgiveness. We limit it in a host of ways showing it only to those who are nice and like ourselves or to those whom we feel have earned it. Or we limit the extent to which we would forgive drawing the line at cruelties done to us or injustices that were repeated. And that is to deny the extraordinary, indeed miraculous nature of forgiveness. Jesus said, 'Unless your righteousness exceeds that of the scribes and the Pharisees you shall in no wise enter the kingdom of heaven.'

On the other hand God does not burden us with impossible demands. Jesus tells us that his yoke is easy and his burden is light. But in contrast it is the Pharisees who love to load people with unrealistic burdens, "And you experts in the law, woe to you, because you load people down with burdens they can hardly carry and you yourselves will not lift one finger to help them.'

We are often guilty in the church of being like the experts of the law in the matte of forgiveness. We can place onerous demands on people who have suffered severe forms of abuse requiring them to feel a forgiveness that may take considerable time to feel or laying expectations of reconciliation on them that are simply unrealistic and unbiblical. Part of the problem lies in a failure to understand that there are two stages of forgiveness one to which all are called and a second stage to which it may be impossible to arrive.

The Necessity of Forgiveness

The Bible is very clear that forgiving others the wrongs they do to us is not something Christians may chose to ignore. In Matthew 18 Jesus parable of the unmerciful servant tells the story of a man who was summoned before the king to answer for debts that were outstanding. As he did not have the wherewithal to pay the king wrote off his debts- a he sum of ten thousand talents. On leaving he met a fellow servant who owed him a mere hundred denarii although the man begged for mercy the first servant was unrelenting and had him thrown into prison. When the king got to hear of this he summoned the man pointed out the double standards he was employing in receiving forgiveness for a great amount but refusing to show it for a much lesser amount and he then had him turned over to the jailers to be tortured until his debt be repaid. And then comes the chilling but inescapable explanation, "This is how my heavenly Father will treat each of you unless you forgive your brother from your heart.'

As though to reinforce this principle Jesus built it into the fabric of the prayer he taught his disciples. "Forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors.' Charles Williams has said of the Lord's prayer, 'No word in English carries a greater possibility of terror than the little word 'as' in that clause.' The reason of course is that Jesus plainly links our forgiven-ness by the Father with our forgiving ness of fellow human beings.

One minister confessed to me once that when he leads the congregation in the Lord's Prayer he covers his mouth at this point for he cannot pray this part. But why is forgiving so I important indeed so essential? Well it s common in discussions of forgiveness to focus on the benefits to the person who forgives. When someone does you a wrong you have a choice to make. You can either turn it over to God and forgive tht person or you can cling to the hurt nurse the bitterness and like radioactive waste stored in rotting containers underground the poison will come out eventually. Medical research indicates that unprocessed anger can produce all sorts of physical disorders. Physical problems range all the way from arthritis to asthma, from urinary disorders to the common cold. And we have known for a long time that anger can cause serious emotional disorders when it is not handled effectively. Revenge locks us into an escalating tit for tat in which relationships grow progressively more sour draining us of the energy and creativity that could enrich our lives in other ways.

But that is not the reason why we are to forgive. Jesus gives the rational e for forgiveness in the Sermon on the Mount (Matthew 5:44) But I tell you: Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you that you may be sons of your Father in heaven.' Jesus is telling us that a readiness to forgive marks us out as members of the family.

You see God is a God of forgiveness. In fact, in Exodus chapter 34 God identifies Himself in that way. Verse 6 says, "Then the Lord passed by in front of Him and proclaimed," this is the Lord speaking of Himself, "The Lord, the Lord God compassionate and gracious, slow to anger and abounding in loving kindness and truth who keeps loving kindness for thousands who forgives iniquity, transgression and sin." He says I am the God of forgiveness. That is who I am.

And so when we forgive we show that God the Holy Spirit is in our lives in such a way that we are taking on the family likeness. Showing forgiveness does not earn us God's forgiveness. Showing forgiveness is the evidence that we are forgiven people. And in reflecting God's character like this we give glory to God that is of course our great mission in life and the ultimate reason why we are on this earth.

The Practicalities of Forgiveness

Well to forgive as the Lord has forgiven us means to respond in a godly way to some hurt. God forgives our sin because it is a monumental affront to His goodness in creating us and His right to our wholehearted worship and loyalty. But when we speak of forgiving someone when they have never hurt us we simply cheapen the miracle of forgiveness. For me to speak of forgiving the Nazis would be humbug because I was never hurt by them. And not every hurt we receive needs to be forgiven.

There are some hurts that we are simply to put up with by acknowledging that we are fallen people living in a fallen world in which knocks and bumps are inevitable. The kind of things I mean are when we feel passed over when the boss doesn't invite us to his daughter's wedding, someone cuts in front of us at the supermarket till, people forget their appointment to meet us at a certain time, or our friend gets that promotion which we had coveted. These are hurts but we are not asked to formally forgive such things but to have the Christian grace to put up with them.

I think we find justification for that in our text in Colossians where there seems a deliberate distinction between trivial hurts and things that go deeper. 'bear with each other ( i.e. put up with the common irritations) and forgive whatever grievances you may have against one another.' Or in Proverbs we read 'He who covers over an offence promotes love but whoever repeats the matter separates close friends.' Proverbs 17:9

God forgives us for turning out as enemies even though we were created to be friends. He forgives us for a past in which we allied with rivals in opposing His rule of love. The hurts we must formally forgive are like that.

Professor Lewis Smedes who has written in depth on forgiveness claims that the hurts to which we must respond with forgiveness can mostly be grouped under two headings. Disloyalty and betrayal. There are firstly disloyal acts where people treat us as strangers even though they belong to us as friends. For example your father fails to turn up at your graduation choosing instead to attend a football match. Your friend fails to recommend you for promotion when he discovers you are out of favour with the boss. A husband has an affair with another woman.

Taken further disloyalty becomes betrayal. If disloyalty makes strangers out of friends then betrayal makes strangers into enemies. Someone who pretends to be a friend but whispers your shameful secret to a gossiper betrays you. A friend betrays you when she puts you down in front of a group before whom you have no defence. You are betrayed when a member of the family abuses you.

Now in responding to such hurts forgiveness takes two forms. One of these is laid upon all of us. That is the letting go of a hurt, the act we must do of separating a person from the hurt they have caused. This is the act that makes a restoration possible. This may or may not lead to the second step- the restoration of the relationship.

Let's look at the first step. What does the Lord do when he forgives us? He separates us from our sins. The Greek to forgive as we saw on Communion Sunday means to dismiss or to loose. God disconnects us from our guilty past, no longer binds us to it. He is said to take our sin and cast it into the depth of the sea. He lays sins on the back of a goat and sends it scampering into the wilderness.

That is the challenge we face in forgiveness too. Your challenge is to separate that terrible wrong the person did you from the person himself or herself. Right now you identify him or her as the person who did you wrong. When you see him or her you se the wrong that was done against you. Forgiveness means seeing the person not as someone who hurt you but as someone who needs you , who belongs to you someone who needs the Jesus that you too need.

Once you saw that person as powerful and strong in their evil deeds. Now God's grace enables you to see him or her as weak in their needs. When you have done this then you have created the conditions for reconciliation to be possible should that person repent and desire reconciliation.

Now this stage may be as far as you can go. Sometimes the other person does not want to be forgiven, does not want to be reconciled. Sometimes we need to forgive people who are dead and gone. But something miraculous has happened. The door of the prison has been opened. Light shines in your soul where there was only deepening darkness. It is a miracle of grace. But the miracle may take time and you need not burden yourself with guilt if a deep hurt takes a long time to separate from the one who committed it.

The Second Step is Reconciliation

God offers to bring us into a new relationship with himself. But notice that His forgiveness in this full-blooded sense is not unconditional. God's love is unconditional. But His forgiveness that brings reconciliation is conditioned by our repentance. Look for example at the OT' ' If my people who are called by my name will humble themselves and pray and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven and will forgive their sins and heal their land,' 2 Chronicles 2:14. NT ' repent of this wickedness and pray to the Lord. Perhaps he will forgive you for having such a thought in your heart . For I see that you are full of bitterness and captive to sin.' (Acts 8:22,23)

It may be that you are in church this morning and you have been deeply hurt by someone. You know that your Christian duty is to forgive as the Lord forgave you. Well first remember that it was while we were still sinners Christ died for us. Deep down in your soul there must be a change that would make reconciliation possible . You must allow the Holy Spirit to take a scalpel and slice off the wrong from the person who did it.

But things may not become normal between you and that person for a long time or even ever. That is because reconciliation is conditional. It needs repentance. It is possible to be working towards a forgiving spirit and to release a person from their guilt without being in a normalised relationship with the one towards whom you now have a transformed attitude. Just as repentance is required in us being forgiven by God so repentance is vital in the offending party before things can be fully right.

What is important is that you have inwardly separated them from their wrong, that by God's Spirit you are imaging them as someone quite different from the uniformly wicked person they once seemed. What is important is that when God completes the circle and grants the miracle of reconciliation that you accept their repentance. That is what God does. The waiting Father holds out His hand to the returning prodigal and says I want to be your Father again. So with us the woman holds out her hand and says 'I want to be your wife again,' Or I want to be your friend again. That part may be the hardest of all. And it is not possible without the enabling grace of God. But it is the greatest miracle of all.

Corrie Ten Boom was imprisoned for years in a concentration camp humiliated and degraded. She made it through it and eventually she felt that she had, by grace, forgiven even those guards who were most cruel to the women. So she spoke everywhere about forgiveness. One Sunday in Munich after speaking in a church about her experience she saw a man come towards her with his hand outstretched, 'Ja Fraulein it is wonderful that Jesus forgives us all our sins just as you say.'

She remembered his face. It was the leering mocking face of on of the SS guards. Her hand froze at her side. She could not forgive. She thought she had forgiven all. But she could not forgive when she met a guard, standing in the solid flesh in front of her. Ashamed, horrified at herself she prayed: 'Lord forgive me, I cannot forgive.' And as she prayed she felt forgiven, accepted in spite of her shabby performance as a famous forgiver. Her hand was suddenly unfrozen,. The ice of hate melted. Here hand went out. She forgave, as she felt forgiven.

God says to us, 'Bear with each other and forgive whatever grievances you have against one another. Forgive as the Lord forgave you.'