The bumper car ride has always been a favorite at fairs and amusement parks. There we get to do things that we can only dream about on the open road—we get to go as fast as we can, and we get to drive aggressively. If someone gets in our way, we can just run into them! Of course, the whole rink quickly descends into chaos, and we spend most of the time just knocking each other silly.
Sometimes our relationships in life can be a bit like those bumper cars. As we bounce around through life, we inevitably run into each other—we get in fights with each other, we cheat each other, we lie to each other or speak hurtful words to each other. In life, this is no game. Our hearts don’t have protective bumpers around them, and so when we sin against each other, we wound each other and hurt each other, so that our hearts start to feel less like a bumper car and more like something that’s in the junkyard!
This is life in a fallen world; we commit sins against others, and they commit sins against us. These sins cut holes in our hearts and leave our relationships in tatters. Fortunately, God has laid out a path for our relationships to be repaired and the holes in our hearts to be healed. That path is called “forgiveness,” and it is the path that we should take whenever a sin is committed in one of our relationships. But it is obvious from the broken relationships that we see all around us that we rarely take this path. Perhaps we take a worldly path that looks very similar to forgiveness, but it leads to a different destination; or perhaps we see God’s path laid out for us very clearly, and we simply refuse to set foot on it.
It has been said that forgiveness is the oil that reduces friction and keeps the engine of our relationships running. And so, because forgiveness is such an important activity in our lives, we’re going to spend the next few weeks looking at what the Bible says about forgiving each other. We’ll define forgiveness, and we’ll talk about how to arrive at forgiveness from both sides of a sin—whether you have committed the sin, or whether you have been sinned against. We will also cut through some false ideas about forgiveness that often keep us from walking on God’s path to forgiveness. But this morning we’re going to start our study by answering this simple question:
Why is it so important for us to forgive each other?
There are at least four answers to this question in the Bible. It may be possible to name more, but this morning we’ll focus on four.
I. Forgiving others is the proper response to the forgiveness we have received from God—Matthew 18:21–35
Let’s read Matt. 18:21–35, and I’ll make a few comments along the way. Just before this, Jesus had been telling His disciples what to do when a Christian brother or sister sins against them. So in v. 21, Peter says [READ v. 21]. Now in the Jewish teaching of Peter’s day, the rabbis taught that you were obligated to forgive someone three times, and after that you didn’t have to forgive them anymore. It was like four strikes and you’re out, because on the fourth time you were no longer obligated to forgive. So Peter probably thought he was being very generous in suggesting seven times—he doubled the number and added one more for good measure!
But notice what Jesus said to him [READ v. 22]. That’s obviously a lot further than even Generous Peter was willing to go, but of course Jesus’ real point was that we shouldn’t put a limit on the number of times that we will forgive someone. And why is that? Because of how generously God has forgiven us, and that’s the point of the parable that starts in v. 23 [READ v. 23–24]
Now ten thousand talents is a ridiculous amount of money. ONE talent was the amount that an average laborer would earn in twenty years of work, so this man owed a debt that was worth 200,000 years of pay. If you multiply that by our year of 365 days, that’s 73 million days worth of pay!! Obviously, there would be no way that the man could pay off a debt like that, so let’s see what happens next [READ vv. 25–28].
A denarius was the amount that an average laborer would earn for one day of work, so the second servant owed the first servant an amount that was equal to 100 days worth of pay. That’s not an insignificant amount, but when compared to the debt that the first servant had just been released from, its like a drop of rain compared to the ocean! Let’s finish the parable [READ vv. 29–35].
Jesus’ point in this parable is very clear: we are like the first servant. We have been forgiven by God of an unimaginable debt of sin, so how could we refuse to forgive another person for the microscopic debt of sin that they have committed against us? Our gratitude to God should compel us to forgive each other time and time and time again, and if we refuse then we just show that we don’t comprehend how abundantly we have been forgiven by God.
Verse 35 of this parable alludes to the second answer to today’s question.
II. Refusing to forgive others hinders our fellowship with God—Matthew 6:14–15
Turn with me to Matthew 6:14–15. Just prior to these verses, we have the very familiar passage known as the Lord’s Prayer with its familiar request in v. 12—“forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors.” Verses 14–15 then go on to expand on that thought a bit [READ vv. 14–15].
Now we need to read these verses in the proper light. Jesus is not setting this up as a standard for getting into heaven. Think through this with me—who truly has the right to call God “heavenly Father?” Only those who have been born again, right? Paul says in Romans 8:15 that believers “have received the Spirit of adoption as sons, by whom we cry, ‘Abba! Father!’.” So it is only those who have been born again by the Holy Spirit who can rightfully call God their Father. So in these verses, Jesus is talking about people who have already been born again, and he says that if we don’t forgive others, then God won’t forgive us. There will be distance and a lack of intimacy in our relationship with our heavenly Father.
What might that look like in our lives? It could mean that our efforts to serve God will be powerless and ineffective. It could mean that our prayers will not be answered. It could mean that we won’t enjoy the fruits of the Spirit like joy and peace. It could mean that God will discipline us in some way. All of those things are unpleasant realities that we could face if we fail to forgive others.
But I think a question comes up at this point—how do these verses fit with a verse like 1 John 1:9, which says, “If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.” How could God choose not to forgive us if we confess our sins to Him? Well, it all revolves around the meaning of the word “confess.” The Greek word is homologeo; its made up of the prefix homo-, which means “the same,” and the verb logeo which means “to say or speak.” So the idea is that in confessing your sins, you have come to the place where you say the same thing about them that God does. You are acknowledging that His assessment of your actions is correct.
Now if you think about the idea of refusing to forgive someone in light of the parable that we just read in Matthew 18, if you refuse to forgive someone else, that means that you’re not assessing your own sins correctly. You are not looking at your own sins the way God does; otherwise you would remember how much you have been forgiven and you would then be willing to forgive others. So if refuse to forgive others, we are clinging to a distorted view of our own sins that prevents us from truly confessing them. That means that our sins are still hindering our fellowship with God because we haven’t come into agreement with Him about our actions.
III. Forgiving others prevents Satan from gaining a foothold in our lives—Ephesians 4:26–27
Why don’t you turn with me to Ephesians 4:26–27? Here we have this interesting statement: “Be angry and do not sin.” That really is a command, by the way—“be angry.” Paul is clearly talking about how we should respond when someone sins against us, and his words tell us that a certain measure of anger is an appropriate response when we have been legitimately wronged. But, in the same breath he says, “do not sin,” and then he instructs us to get rid of our anger quickly when he writes, “do not let the sun go down on your anger.”
Now this doesn’t mean that if someone sins against us in the morning, we can be angry at them all day as long as we patch things up before sunset. Paul is telling us to put away our anger quickly, and that would clearly come through forgiveness. Paul was probably drawing on the Old Testament with his reference to sundown. Under the Old Testament law, if a person was working for you, you were supposed to pay them their wages every day, so as each new day dawned, you would be squared away with others.
That’s really the goal for our relationships—as each new day dawns on our relationships, we don’t want to have conflicts from yesterday putting a strain on our relationships today. We want to deal quickly with problems that are caused by sin and then choose not to dwell on them as the days go by.
Then, in v. 27, Paul mentions an important result of forgiving others and putting away our anger. He writes, “and give no opportunity to the devil.” If we choose to hold on to anger, we are actually giving Satan an opportunity to launch attacks on our lives.
A few years ago, I had the opportunity to visit the Normandy region of France, where the D-Day invasion took place during World War II. That invasion was a major turning point in the war because prior to that the Allied forces had lost their foothold on the European continent. They had been driven back to England by Hitler’s army, and they launched the D-Day invasion because they needed to regain a place on the continent from which they launch attacks.
That kind of beachhead—or foothold, or place—is precisely what Paul says we are NOT to give to Satan! We are not to give him a place in our lives where he can do his dirty work. But if we fail to forgive other people, he has a whole arsenal of temptations that he can throw at us—bitterness, resentment, hatred, gossip, slander, revenge. And don’t forget—as we just learned, we will also be far from God if we refuse to forgive. So we will be right where Satan wants us if we refuse to forgive others.
IV. Refusing to forgive others hinders our witness for Christ—2 Corinthians 5:17–20
Turn with me to 2 Cor. 5:17–20, and listen for a repeated word as I read these verses [READ 2 Cor. 5:17–20]. Did you catch the word? It was “reconcile,” right? (Or “reconciliation”) Paul says that we have been reconciled to God, and He has called us to spread the message of reconciliation. The word “reconcile” means “to re-establish a friendly relationship between people.” That’s what the gospel is all about—re-establishing a friendly relationship between God and man. That’s what forgiveness is all about, too, when we choose to forgive each other.
But how can we convincingly preach a gospel of reconciliation if we refuse to be reconciled to each other after we sin against each other? Let’s say that I’m fighting with Billy Bob; some things were said 5 years ago, and now I’m holding a grudge against him and we haven’t spoken ever since. But let’s say that I talk to Billy Jean and say, “You need to come to know God, because God loves you and has a wonderful plan for your life. I just hope that plan doesn’t involve Billy Bob, because I really don’t get along with him. But honestly, if you accept Jesus, you can have peace and harmony in your life, just like I do—except when I’m around Billy Bob, because we just can’t get along.”
How ridiculous is that? How can we claim to offer other people peace with God if we can’t live at peace with each other? You see friends, we hinder our witness for Christ when we refuse to forgive each other. We tear down the very bridges that we are trying to build.
So for these four reasons—at the very least—it is so important that we forgive each other when we sin against each other. Perhaps at the very mention of the word “forgiveness,” you can think of someone whom you need to forgive. My friends, I urge you—don’t delay. Don’t let the sun go down on another day without making things right with whomever you might be separated because of sin. I urge you to do this as soon as possible, but if you’re not sure how to forgive someone or how to ask for forgiveness, we’re going to be talking about those things over the next few weeks. So today, at the very least, ask God to prepare your heart to learn over these next weeks and then to take the steps that you need to take as soon as they become clear to you.
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