How many of you have ever been hurt or wronged or badly treated or taken advantage of? I want to talk about one of the greatest challenges in life, forgiving others. Life will bring you many opportunities to forgive. The question is always, what will you do with that opportunity? The devil has a plan that takes us down the track of resentment, bitterness, and revenge. But God has a much better plan, even if it isn’t always easy to implement.
Forgive others, and your Heavenly Father will also forgive you. I recently saw a news story that was a follow-up on a shooting that had happened a year before. An innocent woman was shot in the crossfire between two men. She became paralyzed by that injury.
The story was about a huge change in her life since the shooting. What struck me most was her statement, I haven’t forgiven them yet, but I know I have to because if I don’t, God won’t forgive me. I could see the pain that she was in. I could see the life that she had lost, And I wanted to say, no, God loves you for who you are.
You’ve been greatly damaged. It’s all right. But she knew the truth. Beyond the emotion of seeing a terrible crime like this, the truth is that unless we forgive those who have harmed us, who have sinned against us, God will not forgive us.
She had two things true. First, we must forgive to be forgiven. Jesus says in Mark 11 verse 25, And when you stand praying, if you hold anything against anyone, forgive him so that your Father in heaven may forgive you your sins. The second truth that the woman knew was that forgiveness is hard.
This woman was an athletic, vibrant young woman before the bull had paralyzed her and changed her life forever. How could she forgive that? It’s not easy to give up our right to be hurt and to be angry and to get back and to hate the others for what they have done. You may have had terrible things done to you by someone that you loved and trusted, and they hurt you and broke your trust. You may have lost a great deal because of someone’s action.
It’s not easy to forgive, but God in his grace gives us the power to do it. We are able to forgive when God is in charge of our lives. There was a single word headlined in the news coming out of the Amish community of West Nichols Mines after a young husband and father shot five young girls dead in a one-room schoolhouse a few years back. The word was forgiveness.
That word got the attention of the media. But what does it mean, forgive? What did it mean for the people from the Amish community to go to the wife of the killer and say that they would forgive her and her family for this unbelievably traumatic incident? Did they mean that they forgave the murderer? Does this make any sense? How can we have justice and forgiveness at the same time? Forgiveness never means calling something that was very wrong, okay. How can people in the Amish community start to talk about forgiveness within a day or two of a murderer that cut down their children. Is it that they don’t care about their children? Hardly.
Is it that they don’t have in them to be indignant over an act of unspeakable cruelty? No. What happens to these people whose lives are deeply, deeply rooted in the grace and the truth of God is that when a tornado of evil rips through their lives, they are left standing. They don’t let evil turn them evil. The Amish have a deep faith, a knowledge that God is still there even when tragedy strikes.
They have seen evil before. Their European ancestors were sometime mercilessly persecuted for their faith, burned at the stake, and drowned in the rivers. They have seen evil raise its ugly face before. In today’s scripture, Peter asks, how many times must I forgive my brother when he sins against me? Up to seven times? And Jesus answers in the parable in which a man owned the king 10,000 talents.
That’s a lot of money. Today’s terms, millions. Then the king in this parable represents God. The man was on the brink of having to sell his wife and children into slavery to pay that debt.
But the pleas of the man to the king resulted in the canceling of the debt. The king just forgave him. That speaks of the immense forgiveness God has extended to us. But the same man turns on a man who owes him merely 100 dinero and for us $20.
When the king hears of it, he’s incensed saying, You wicked servant, I canceled all of that debt of yours. shouldn’t you have had mercy on your fellow servant? And the king rescinds his forgiveness. And Jesus’s closing words are, this is how my heavenly father will treat each of you. Unless you forgive your brother from your heart.
Forgiveness is not calling something that someone else did that was a moral or destructive okay. It’s not turning a blind eye toward injustice. Now, forgiveness calls sin, sin. And it holds the sinner accountable for their action.
That person will have to face the justice of God. Forgiveness says, you hurt me and what you did was wrong. But I will not hold it against you. I will not try to get back at you and I will not hate you for it.
Forgiveness is an act of faith. By forgiving others, I am trusting that God is a better judgment maker than I am. By forgiving, I release my own right to get even and leave all issues to the fairness of God to work out. If there is any punishment that is needed or any giving of mercy, God will look after it just fine.
In summary, forgiveness is the guttiest thing that a human being can do. because real people do real damage to each other all the time, but it can be solved. We must forgive those who have hurt us because God commands it, because our own forgiveness hinges on it, but also because it’s the best thing for us. When we refuse to forgive, the bitterness grows like a cancer within us and it eats away at us, causing stress and illness and a great lack of joy.
The only therapy for this cancer is the surgery of forgiveness. When we refuse to forgive, We allow that sin that was committed against us to hurt us twice. Once when we were first sinned against. And again, by keeping us from receiving God’s forgiveness.
We need to stop the pain and forgive. Is there someone who you need to forgive? Is there someone who you haven’t talked to in a long time because of what they did? Is there someone who you refuse to trust because of what they did? Is there someone whom you were waiting for a confession from before you offer forgiveness? So here are more marching orders. Forgive whatever grievances you may have against one another. Forgive as the Lord forgave you.
Amen.