"Me–Forgive Who?"
"But. . . you don’t know what they did to me."
from Matthew 18:21-35
by Andrew F. Emerson
Have you ever browsed the correction section of a daily newspaper–where they try to correct something they previously reported wrong but make it worse. Consider these:
"In last week's issue a picture showed some very unusual oriental
dishes being enjoyed by a party of foreign exchange students. Mi
Thi Thin is a foreign exchange student who was standing at the
center of the picture. We incorrectly listed her name as one of the
items on the menu. We regret this error."
"In a recent article we referred to the chairman of Chrysler Corporation
as Lee Iacoco. This is incorrect. His name is Lee Iacaca."
Have you ever tried to right a wrong–and instead, made it worse? If you are like most people, you probably have messed up when you tried to make right a situation where someone has done you wrong, someone has hurt your feelings, someone has bruised your ego, or someone has wronged you in some manner. You’ve probably messed up when it comes to forgiving them, or even worse, not forgiving them. Have you ever been there?
The fact of life is this: You will be hurt.
You will be hurt by things people say about you, by things people do to you, even by things they think about you. Usually, it is the people closest to you that hurt you the most or from which it hurts the worst. Research shows that 90% of all bitterness and resentment occurs as a result of a member of one’s own family? That's where it starts–people we deal with and have contact with daily. A poet wrote:
"To dwell above with those we love, O that will be a glory.
To dwell below with those we know, Well, that's another story!"
The question is NOT whether or not people are going to hurt you or if they will do you wrong. The question is how are you going to respond when someone hurts you? You can’t control other people’s actions, but you can control your reaction. Consider some of the ways people respond when they are hurt or wronged by someone.
When It Comes To Being Hurt, There Are Four Types of People:
1. RETALIATORS:
Most people respond to hurt by retaliating. Their motto is, "Do unto others as they have done unto you. You hurt me so I’m going to hurt you back." A man named Narvess was a Spanish revolutionary. When he was on his death bed, his priest asked him if he had forgiven all of his enemies. Narvess looked astonished and said, "Father, I have no enemies. I shot them all."
When someone hurts you or says something about you, a natural instinct is to do something back, protect yourself, defend yourself, strike back, or get on the offensive. But doing so always causes MORE damage than good.
You must learn to resist your instinct for retaliation. Don’t allow yourself the option of seeking revenge. Romans 12:17 says, "Never pay back evil for evil to anyone… never avenge yourselves. Leave that to God. For it is written, I will take vengeance; I will repay those who deserve it, says the Lord."
A mother ran into the bedroom of her son Tommy when she heard him scream. When she got there she found Tommy's two-year-old sister pulling his hair. She gently released the little girl's grip and said comfortingly to Tommy, "She didn't mean it. She didn't know that it hurts." The mother was barely out of the room when the little girl screamed. She went rushing back in. Tommy smiled and proudly told his mother "She knows how it feels now!"
2. SCOREKEEPERS:
Another way people react is to keep score. They don’t do anything right away–they just tally how many times they’ve been hurt. They remember how many times they’ve looked the other way to let another person get away with hurting them. They keep score BUT never "forget" nor "forgive" a thing. They remember every single word that was said. They remember every action taken. They remember what people were wearing and where everyone was standing, and what was playing on the radio at the moment they were hurt. These people usually let the score run so high that eventually they cannot hold their anger inside. At some point, they explode.
There was a man who didn't get along very well with his wife. In fact, they simply "endured" each other daily. The only person he hated more than his wife was his mother-in-law. One day they were having a relatively civil discussion. His wife said to him, "I know you don't like me very much and I know the only person you dislike more than me is my mother." She continued, "Would you do me one favor? If I die before you do, at my funeral, will you promise me that you'll ride in the car with my mother, behind the hearse?" He said, "Let me get this straight. You want me to ride with your mother in the car behind the hearse at your funeral?" She said, "That's right." He said, "Okay, but it will sure take the joy out of the ride."
3. SUPPRESSORS:
Other people suppress their hurt and do nothing about it. They don’t talk about it, they suppress it. They press it down into their heart and it just stews. Over time, their heart gets harder and harder, and they become more and more bitter. This is very common and people think proudly of themselves because they do this.
Sadly, you can go to any church in America regardless of denomination, size, location, or creed–one thing your would find among the congregation are bitter hearts. Wouldn’t it be great if churches could develop "bitterness detectors" to help people see they are harboring an unforgiving spirit? Bitterness is an infection of the heart and is destructive to everyone involved. Greater damage takes place suppressing it and leaving it to fester.
James Garfield was one of our early presidents. He was assassinated–actually only shot. He didn’t die right away. He was shot in the back but lived four months after being shot. In fact, he kept working and fulfilling his duties at the White House. The problem was they couldn’t find the bullet. They had doctors go in and probe around, but couldn’t find it. A team of experts went in a few weeks later, looked around, couldn’t find it. A month later they had Alexander Graham Bell go into the wound looking for the bullet, couldn’t find it. They went into that wound many times to find the bullet to no avail. Four months after being shot and after numerous probative surgeries to find the bullet, Garfield died. The interesting thing is that he didn’t die because of being shot or because of the lost bullet, he died due to all the infection caused by opening, closing, and reopening his wound. If they would have allowed the wound to heal, he probably would have been fine.
Many people are dying from the inside out.
Most of them will not even admit it.
They may not even know what they don’t know.
Many people are dying from the inside out. They are dying, not because of what has been done to them, but because they suppress all their feelings and emotions and go back and pick at the wound on a regular basis. They become full of the infection of bitterness. And bitterness kills in every way–physically, socially, emotionally, and spiritually.
4) FORGIVERS:
A final option for people to choose from is to be a forgiver. It’s much easier to be a retaliator than a forgiver. It’s easier to be a scorekeeper than a forgiver. It’s easier to be a suppressor than to be a forgiver. It’s hard to be a forgiver. Even the very word forgiveness tells us how difficult forgiveness is. The word literally means "to let go" or "to send away." Forgiveness is when you release to the Lord any bitterness that you might feel you have a right to have towards someone else and let God handle the matter in His own way. One great psychologist said, "Forgiveness is giving up my right to hurt you for hurting me."
You might be saying, "How can I practice forgiveness? You just don’t know what’s been done to me." You are right. But Jesus does, and He’s the greatest forgiver of all time. Which brings us back to the passage in Matthew 18. It’s a parable He taught that helps us understand the "why" and "how" of forgiveness.
Real forgiveness involves three promises. You. . .
1) promise the person you are forgiving to NOT hold their offense against them ever again.
2) promise never to talk about this situation in a condemning or negative way to another person.
3) promise never to meditate on this hurt again. You must refuse to let it go over and over in your mind.
Peter came to Jesus and asked about forgiveness, "Lord, how often shall my brother sin against me, and I forgive him? Up to seven times?" When Peter asked this, his question was really this, "how many times do I have to forgive a brother who sins against me, before I can beat the living daylights out of him?" He makes a generous suggestion to Jesus. He says, "How about seven times?"
The reason Peter was specific about seven times is this: The Jewish law stipulated that a wounded person was obligated to forgive someone three times. So Peter actually doubled it and added one for good measure. He was giving Jesus a K-Mart blue light special on forgiveness. Peter had one concern: He was not worried about forgiving someone too little. Rather, he was worried about forgiving someone too much. He was not worried about under-forgiving an offender. He was worried about over-forgiving an offender.
Well, as usual, the Lord Jesus gave an answer that was not only surprising, but absolutely stunning. In Matthew 18:22, He said, "I do not say to you, up to seven times, but up to seventy times seven." When Jesus said, "seventy times seven," he was not giving a math lesson. He wasn't saying keep a chart and when you get to four hundred and ninety one times then you can take somebody out.
Peter wanted to say seven strikes then you are out. Jesus was not even saying four hundred and ninety strikes and you are out. Peter thought if someone sinned against you and he repented and you forgave him and then he did exactly the same thing and repented and you forgave him again, you could say "now that's two!" But, here is what Jesus basically was saying, you can't keep a scorecard. If somebody sins against you the first time and you forgive that brother then you promise not to ever hold it against him again. If he sins again, you cannot say "that's two," you've got to say "that is one!" Real forgiveness only forgives the first offense because every offense is the first one. The previous ones had already been let go.
The topic of forgiveness always has some misunderstanding attached to it. So before jumping to conclusions on what Jesus is asking us to do with forgiveness, please consider what forgiveness is not.
Four Things Forgiveness Is NOT:
1. Forgiving is not EXCUSING. No place in the Bible will you find people let off the hook for sin or inappropriate behavior. Most of us think we’re doing something good when we let people off the hook and search for excuses why they hurt us. "Maybe they’re insane. Maybe they were raised by wild dogs and just don’t know better." Sometimes we let another person off the hook by thinking, "you just need to know how to take them. Way down deep, they are a loving, easy going person." No. Sometimes there is no excuse for that person. They blew it and hurt you. Still, real forgiveness is given–even when there is no excuse.
2. Forgiving is not AVOIDING. Some people want to sweep things under the rug. They don’t want to deal with the hurt and confrontation of making it right, so they avoid it. They never bring the subject up. Just because you don’t deal with something doesn’t mean you have forgiven.
3. Forgiving is not TOLERATING. Sometimes we’re hesitant to forgive because it might be misconstrued as condoning or approving of a persons behavior. Just because you forgive someone doesn’t mean you’re putting a stamp of approval on their life or conduct nor does it mean you have to have warm fuzzy feelings about them again, either. Forgiving doesn’t mean your relationship will go back to what it was before. There are consequences to actions and when we hurt someone, sometimes we have to live with the consequences. Sin can be forgiven without being tolerated.
4. Forgiving is not EASY. Don’t get the impression that forgiveness is easy. It’s not. If it was easy everyone would be doing it. Real forgiveness is so tough that it can only be done with the power of God. Ultimately, if you try to forgive on your own power, you will never really let it go. You will keep that person in the prison of your unforgiveness, and neither of you will ever be set free. It is only by the omnipotent, irrepressible power of God that you can really forgive another person completely and totally.
Three Principles of TRUE Forgiveness
1. Forgiveness Should Be RECEIVED Thankfully.
Remember Matthew 18:23-25. Jesus tells about a man who has embezzled a great sum of money, in fact the amount is ten thousand talents. To give you an idea of how much that was, the entire tax on Galilee for one year was two hundred talents, so this man owed the equivalent of fifty years of taxes on the entire region of Galilee.
To put it another way, the average working man would have to work twenty years in order to earn one talent. This man would have to work five hundred years to have paid back all the money that he had stolen (and that would have been without considering interest). In today's currency this would amount to roughly ten million dollars.
The point is: This was an unpayable debt–an impossible situation. There was absolutely no way this man could ever pay back what he had stolen. In order to understand this parable, you must realize that the debt in this parable represents sin. Sin is an unpayable debt and no matter how hard you work, how good you try, nor how often you attend church–on your own, you can never pay off the sin debt that you owe to God.
Look at Matthew 18:26-27. The debtor owed a debt he could not pay and the king paid a debt he did not owe. That is exactly what Jesus Christ did on the cross. We owed a sin debt we could not pay and He paid our sin debt that He did not owe.
When the king forgave the servant 10,000 talents, what did it cost the king? 10,000 talents. There is no such thing as God overlooking sin. The king did not simply overlook the debt: He absorbed the debt. The king said, "I forgive you" to the man and at THAT moment, it cost him dearly. God does not overlook sin. God has paid for all sin. Therefore, He forgives. We all owe a debt we cannot pay and Jesus paid a debt He did not owe. It costs to forgive. There's no such thing as free forgiveness. There are no bargain pardons. When you forgive a person, whatever that person did, you absorb the cost into yourself.
On the cross, Jesus was paying the debt that we each owed, that I owed, that you owed. God did not just simply cancel the debt. He could not until He first of all paid it. Because He's a righteous and a Holy God, He paid that price.
2. Forgiveness must be RENDERED Humbly.
After getting the blessing of his life, you would think that forgiveness would come easy to this guy, right? Look at what happens in verses Matthew 18:28-33. This man, who had just recently been released of his debt, comes upon one of his debtors. Rather than reciprocating with forgiveness, he ruthlessly demands full payment. In fact, he wasn't really looking for payment, he wanted punishment.
Because we don’t know the money of that time very well, it’s easy to glance over an important part. While this guy had just a few minutes earlier been forgiven of 10 million dollars, he was putting the other guy in the prison of his unforgiveness over 15 bucks. That’s roughly what 100 denarii would be in today’s money. What Jesus is trying to show us is this guy was forgiven of a debt he could not pay, and would not forgive a debt that could be paid.
What is even more bizarre, he demands that his debtor be put in jail until he can repay the debt. Not only is this man ungrateful, he's unreasonable. How does he expect the man to earn money while he is in prison? If the man has no money outside of jail, how will he have money in jail?
The decision makes no sense, but that is the point. Bitterness and the refusal to forgive never makes any sense. We do stupid things, and make stupid decisions when we get bitter because of the infection of unforgiveness.
To put it in perspective, the man who owed the equivalent of over ten million dollars was not willing to forgive the man that owed fifteen dollars. Here is the point: When you compare our sin debt to God with that to someone else's sin debt to us, it is like comparing a mountain to a mole hill.
3. Forgiveness Will be REFUSED Regretfully.
The final axiom of forgiveness is this: If you refuse to forgive someone, God will make sure that you regret it. It will cost you not to forgive. Again, in Matthew 18: 34-35, when the king hears about the hatefulness of this man, he immediately has him thrown back into prison and the man is back in debt. You know why the parable turns this way? Unforgiving servants always end up in prison. Bitter people live in prisons of anger, guilt, and depression. The only difference is God doesn't have to put us in a jail.
We build our own jails and create our own prisons.
Don't miss the fact that though this man was thrown back into prison it was by his own fault. We build prisons around ourselves with the bars of bitterness and unforgiveness. We need to admit it and assume the responsibility for it. If you forget the forgiveness you have received and you refuse to forgive others who hurt you, God will cause you to endure "tortures" such as stress, hardship, troubled conscience, bitter spirits, and poor health until you deal with the sin of unforgiveness. That is why James 2:13 says, "For judgment is without mercy to the one who has shown no mercy…"
If you expect to have God show mercy to you, you MUST show mercy to others.
The fact of life is this: You WILL be hurt!
When it comes to being hurt, four types of people:
1. Retaliators
2. Scorekeepers
3. Suppressors
4. Forgivers
Four things forgiveness is NOT:
1. excusing
2. avoiding
3. tolerating
4. easy
Three principles of TRUE forgiveness:
1. Must be Received Thankfully,
2. Must be Rendered Humbly, or
3. It will be Refused Regretfully
If you expect to have God show mercy to you, you MUST show mercy to others.
Next steps to take:
1. Examine your own heart.
2. Is there someone you desire to forgive?
3. Ask God for strength to forgive them.
4. Thank God for what He has done for you.
"He has showed you, O man, what is good and what does the Lord require of you? To act justly and to love mercy and to walk humbly with your God." Micah 6:8
© Andrew F. Emerson, 2002 All rights reserved.
Permission to duplicate granted if distributed FREE of charge.
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Robert Vickers
Artful Askers
P.O. Box 1225
Warrensburg, MO 64093
(660) 747-6390
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or e-mail bob@artfulaskers.com
