What we read in Matthew tonight is
a pretty common theme in Jesus’ teaching.
We all hope to God will forgive us, we all want God to forgive us, we
all need God to forgive us, but Jesus says God will only do that under one
condition. If we want to have God
forgive us, then we need to forgive people on earth. Jesus even says that in the Lord’s Prayer: forgive us our sins as we forgive those
who sin against us
So, we need to learn to forgive
people. But how can we do that. Obviously, it’s more than just saying the
words. That’s what we do when we’re
little kids, right? At least it’s what
I did when I was a little kid. I’d get
into a fight with brother, and Mom would break it up, and then she’d say, “now
tell him your sorry.” And, of course, I
would, but the truth is that I was not sorry at all. If I was sorry about anything, it was that I had not hit him
harder when I had the chance.
What Jesus says in this parable is
that we will have to pay the full penalty for all the things we’ve done wrong
unless we forgive people from our hearts.
That’s kind of a tough standard, you know? Forgive people from our hearts.
We cannot just make an intellectual decision to forgive someone. We cannot offer forgiveness to someone just
because we know we should. We need to
really mean it. We need to really feel
it. Nothing can be held back. Forgiving someone from our hearts requires a
total, emotional commitment to forgive.
That’s hard. It’s hard because sometimes the wrongs that
other people do to us are pretty serious.
Sometimes they’re done by people who we thought we could trust. Sometimes they’re done by people who are
really close to us. Sometimes we put
complete faith in someone, only to be betrayed by them.
I suspect most of here can think of
a time when that’s happened to us. If
it has not happened to you yet, it probably will. It happens to most of us at some point in our lives.
When that happens, it can be really
hard to forgive someone. In fact, it
can be darn near impossible. Even when
we know we should forgive, it’s hard.
Even when we really want to forgive, it’s hard. There are times when we wish we could
forgive, when we know it’s the right thing to do. There are times when we know the anger and resentment and
bitterness we’re holding on to are bad for us, much less for the person we feel
them toward. We know forgiving would
not only be the right thing to do, it would be the best thing we could do for
ourselves. Still, sometimes it just
seems like we cannot do it. We cannot
forgive, no matter how hard we try.
So what do we do? How do we make ourselves feel something we
don’t feel? And how do we make
ourselves stop feeling something we do feel?
I think our parable gives us some
clues. Let’s look at it.
First, look at the way the question
comes up. Peter asks how many times he
needs to forgive someone. If Peter has
a specific situation in mind when he asks this question, we’re not told about
it. He seems to just be asking about
how we’re supposed to live our lives.
It seems to me that just asking the
question that way, “How many times shall I forgive someone”, starts us off on
the wrong foot. Asking the question
that way says we want forgiveness to be limited. It says we don’t want to always offer forgiveness to people, we
just want to forgive certain people at certain times for certain things.
That’s the first thing about
ourselves that we that we need to change.
If, before anything even happens, we start out with the idea that we’re
only going to forgive certain people for certain things, we’re lost before we
start. We need to begin with the goal
of forgiving everyone, no matter what.
We may not be able to actually do it, but that should be our goal. Otherwise, we’ll never be able to forgive
the way Jesus wants us to.
Then, Jesus tells Peter a
story. He tells him about a king who
wants to settle his accounts. The way
Jesus tells it, it sounds like these are just business transactions. The king does not seem to have any
particular emotional investment in any of this. He’s just collecting money.
A guy comes with a big debt, he can’t pay it, so the king says
everything the guy has should be sold to pay the debt. That’s what the law said was supposed to
happen at that time. It was nothing
personal. It was just business.
Then, though, the debtor makes it
more than just business. He begs and
pleads with the king, promising that he’ll get the debt paid if only the king
gives him more time. That gets the king
interested. Now, he does get
emotional. He’s touched by what the
plea of this debtor. He not only agrees
to give the guy more time, he cancels the debt entirely. This guy will never have to pay the money
back. He’s off scot-free.
Now, you’d think the debtor would
be happy about this. What happens,
though, is the debtor runs into another guy.
This guy owes the debtor some money.
What does he do? He does not
forgive the debt. He does not even
calmly ask for his money, the way the king did. He immediately grabs this guy and starts choking him, demanding
his money. He refuses to listen to any
please for mercy and has him thrown into prison.
Look at the difference in
attitude. The king may not have been
looking to let people off, but at least he was open to it. He did have any bad feelings toward the
people who owed him money. When the
debtor found the guy who owed him money, however, he was spoiling for a
fight. He does not even give the guy a
chance to pay him. He immediately grabs
him and chokes him, all the time demanding his money. It never occurred to him to just forgive this guy. Forgiveness was not on his radar. He wanted vengeance, not forgiveness. There was no way he could give forgiveness,
because of his attitude.
That’s where it needs to
start. That’s why Jesus says we need to
offer forgiveness from our hearts. We
need to have an attitude of forgiveness long before anyone wrongs us. At the very least, we need to be open to the
idea of forgiveness. If we don’t have
our hearts right to begin with, we’ll never be able to offer forgiveness when
the time comes.
Now, remember, I said
that where it starts. That’s not where
it ends. Because, again, there are some
wrongs that are really hard to forgive.
Even if we start with an attitude of forgiveness, how do we forgive
someone who’s betrayed us? How do we
forgive someone who does not deserve our forgiveness and may not even be
interested it?
What we need to remember
is that we don’t offer people forgiveness for their sake. It may help them, or it may not, but that’s
not the purpose of it. We offer people
forgiveness for our sake. Not because
we want God to forgive our sins, either.
I mean, we do want God to forgive our sins, but if we’re just offering
forgiveness for that reason, the forgiveness will probably not come from our
heart.
When I say we offer
people forgiveness for our sake, I’m talking about the effect offering
forgiveness has on us. Have you ever
held a grudge for a while? What’s that
do to us? It eats us up inside. It poisons us. It keeps us from moving forward.
We spend so much time living in the past, thinking about the hurts and
betrayals of the past, that we cannot enjoy the present or the future.
But, have you ever held a
grudge for a while, and then finally let it go? How’d that feel? It feels
great, right? It feels like a weight
has come off of us. It feels like we’ve
gotten rid of something that was weighing us down, like we’ve finally taken our
foot of the brakes and now we can finally move forward with our lives.
The only way we can move
forward is to let go. The only way we
can let go is forgive. And the only way
we can forgive is to begin with an attitude of forgiveness and then to turn
things over to God.
It still won’t be easy,
but it can be done. It can done with
God’s help, because all forgiveness, like all love, comes from God. It can be done by feeling God’s Holy Spirit
in our hearts. When we have the Holy
Spirit in our hearts, then we can forgive from our hearts.
No comments:
Post a Comment