Matthew 18:21-22
Just over a
week ago, you probably head someone sing these words of a Robert Burns
poem:
“Should
auld acquaintance be forgot,
and never brought to mind ?
Should auld acquaintance be forgot,
and auld lang syne ?”
and never brought to mind ?
Should auld acquaintance be forgot,
and auld lang syne ?”
The phrase
that gives the song its name means “days gone by” or what we might call “the
old days.” It’s a call to not forget the
experiences that have meant something special to us, those things that have
made our friendships what they are.
The song
reminds us that our memories aren’t perfect.
We forget things. And you don’t
have to be a man or a woman of a certain age to experience memory lapses. But haven’t you noticed something? A man may forget an anniversary, a birthday,
his wife’s favorite perfume, but he won’t forget the wrong done to him by a
coworker or former friend. We never seem
to have memory lapses when it comes to the hurts and wounds we’ve
experienced. As long as that’s true, the
kind of forgiveness Jesus calls us to display will be impossible.
The
mathematics in this question is important.
Peter was trying to outdo the Pharisees.
They said we should forgive an enemy three times. He intended to show himself a better
man. At the same time, Peter hadn’t
backed himself into a corner; he placed a cap on forgiveness. He failed to see Jesus was trying to teach
unlimited forgiveness.
Of course
most of us are more like Peter than Jesus.
We want to place a limit on forgiving those who hurt us.
Dr. David
Allen, a psychiatrist with the Minirth-Meir New Life Clinic suggests several
reasons why we don’t forgive. Here are
some of them.
1. Refusing to forgive allows us to have power
and control.
2. Refusing
to forgive lets us blame others for our problems.
3. Refusing
to forgive allows us to play the victimized martyr role.
4. Refusing
to forgive protects us from the natural “hazards” of relationships. (As we say,
“Because I was hurt I’ll never get close to anyone again.”)
There are
probably more reasons but the primary reason for not forgiving other is that forgiving
others is tough. As C. S. Lewis said, “Forgiveness sounds like a good idea until
we have someone to forgive.”
We don’t
know if Peter had a particular “brother” in mind when he asked the
question. Andrew is the only brother of
Peter’s mentioned in the NT and “brother” can be used for those we would call
“cousins.” He may have even been using
the term metaphorically to refer to a spiritual brother. Whatever, Peter was asking about the cruelest
kind of hurt and the toughest kind of forgiveness. And remember, he asked that question as surrounded
by eleven spiritual “brothers.” The
hardest thing to forgive is the hurt we receive at the hand of one we should be
able to trust.
Some
nineteen hundred years before Peter asked his question another man, surrounded
by eleven brothers, faced the question of forgiveness.
Joseph was
the son of Jacob and Rachel. Jacob
showered Joseph with gifts and privileges.
The affection Joseph’s parents felt for him was obviously greater than
what they felt for his older brothers.
In time, he fell prey to his brothers’ jealousy.
In a
hastily concocted plot, they sold the seventeen-year-old Joseph to slave
traders who took him to Egypt.
A slave in
Egypt, Joseph was falsely accused of trying to assault his master’s wife and
thrown into prison.
While
imprisoned, Joseph, using a God-given ability, interpreted the dream of a
fellow-prisoner. When that prisoner was
released (as Joseph had said he would be) he promised to help Joseph get out of
prison. He didn’t.
Finally,
after years in prison, the man did remember Joseph who was able to interpret
one of the Pharoah’s dreams. The
Pharoah, realizing the wisdom of the man who
had interpreted his dream,
appointed Joseph Prime Minister over Egypt.
The dream
had foretold seven years of plenty followed by seven years of famine. Through Joseph’s wise administration Egypt
greeted the seven years of famine with a surplus of grain, enough for its own
people and enough to trade to other nations.
These
circumstances set the stage for Joseph’s encounter with his brothers, years
after they had sold him as a slave. His
own brothers would come to him for grain.
Surely if
any man could be excused for maintaining an unforgiving spirit, it would have
been Joseph.
We might
have expected Joseph to exact a severe revenge against those who had caused him
such grief. Instead, he forgave them.
A man who
could have declared it to be “pay-back” time, chose to forgive those who had
most wronged him.
That Joseph
could forgive his brothers is a source of inspiration to all of us who struggle
to forgive those who have wronged us.
What can
Joseph teach us about forgiving the hurts inflicted by those closest to us?
1.
We prepare ourselves to forgive by pursuing
a vision for a lifestyle beyond the ordinary.
Revenge is
the expected response to a hurt; forgiveness is the unexpected response.
Joseph’s
brothers obviously expected him to seek retribution for their actions. Even after he had graciously helped them
relocate in Egypt, they thought he was only waiting for his father to die so he
could freely seek revenge.
Joseph had
a surprise for them. His forgiveness was
sincere!
Jesus
envisioned a radical new way. He called
for his followers to make forgiveness a hallmark of their lives.
Jesus honestly
recognized that forgiveness sometimes has to be repeated. The rest of the world may place limits on
forgiveness, but Christ’s followers are to completely abandon the notion of
limited forgiveness.
No
Christian could rub his hands together and mutter, “Oh, Boy, I’ve forgiven him seven times, if he messes up one more time,
I can squash him like a roach.”
2. We prepare ourselves to forgive by disciplining
ourselves against acting vengefully.
In an age
which glorifies being assertive we believe we can’t allow anyone to do us wrong
without retaliation. The bumper sticker
message—I Don’t Get Mad, I Get Even—motivates
many people, including some with bumper stickers urging us to Visualize World Peace.
As Prime
Minister Joseph had the authority to arrest his brothers, to imprison them, to
torture them, to execute them. He
resisted.
3. We
prepare ourselves to forgive by being ready to honestly acknowledge the depth
of our pain.
We often
practice a kind of polite prevarication.
We lie to make others feel better.
English lends itself to this kind of behavior. Someone gives you a piece of cake with the
consistency of sawdust, then asks, “Is it good?” You respond, “’Good’ is not the word for that
cake.”
In the same
way, someone hurts us and asks, “Did I hurt your feelings?” We respond, “My feelings? Think nothing of it.”
There is a
place for honesty in acknowledging our hurts, in assessing the depth of the
pain caused by the actions of another.
In Genesis
50:20 Joseph went before his brothers and made a dramatic statement about their
actions: “You meant evil against me, but
God meant it for good….”
That’s an
amazing statement about God’s power to bring good from evil, but we shouldn’t
miss Joseph’s honest assessment of what his brothers had done. Miroslav Volf insists that when we forgive
someone we must confront them with their wrong.
The word
translated as “evil” or “harm” is used almost 300 times in the OT and refers to
the worst kind of behavior. In Genesis
alone it is used for the violent wickedness which prompted God to send the
flood and it is used to describe a disaster.
Joseph
didn’t kid himself. He understood what
had prompted his brothers’ actions, understood they intended their actions to
have disastrous results. We no more have
the right to brush off the hurt another has done to us than we have to tell a
co-worker that an act of embezzlement is nothing to worry about.
How to you
approach this moment in which you disclose your pain to the one who hurt you?
Let me
offer you five “R’s” as a pattern for you.
(All of this assumes you approach the moment in a spirit of prayer.)
---- Reflection: Think about how what was done hurt you and
continues to hurt you. This can be a
difficult moment because it may open old wounds and resurrect old feelings.
---- Release: Someone has said that forgiveness is letting
go of your anger and your right to retaliate.
Unless you can do this it is too dangerous for you to proceed with your
plans to confront.
---- Rehearsal: Plan how you will say what you need to say. Write it down—destroy what you’ve
written. Make sure you’re neither
overstating the case nor understating it.
---- Pursue
Resolution: Ideally the best
resolution would be recognition and reconciliation. Frankly, that isn’t always the outcome.
---- Rest: After the confrontation, which is at best an
emotionally charged moment, try to accept the fact that you have done what you
could. By the way, as I’ve read the
accounts of people forgiving those who hurt them, I’ve discovered that many of
these people report experiencing a great sense of relief after forgiving the
wrongdoer. They say it’s like having a
great weight lifted off their shoulders.
4. We prepare ourselves to forgive by evaluating the
painful moment in light of our total experience of God’s grace.
After
Joseph became Prime Minister, he got married.
His wife’s name was Asenath.
Despite the fact it was an arranged marriage Joseph seemed to be happy
with her. Genesis 41:50-51 records the
birth of their first child, a son named Manasseh.
Now, biblical
people didn’t pull their children’s names out of a hat. They chose them carefully. Manasseh means “one who causes to
forget.” Joseph explains why he chose
that name:
“God has made me forget all
my trouble
and all my father’s household.”
James Montgomery Boice comments on Joseph’s
choice for his firstborn’s name:
“…God had made him forget his trouble and his father’s household. The subject here…is the sorrows and troubles
of the past. Joseph was saying God had
enabled him to forget these as well. …Joseph
did not mean that he literally forgot he ever had a father and eleven
brothers…. He meant rather that God had
healed his wounds, suffered as the result of past abuses and disappointments,
and had made his life fruitful.”[1]
Joseph
named his second-born Ephraim which means “doubly fruitful.” That name suggests his feeling that God’s
blessings just kept on coming.
So much
would happen if we could only allow the blessings God heaps upon us to create a
blessed amnesia, an amnesia that allows us to be so focused on the good of the
present that we can’t be obsessed with the bad things of the past.
This is not
the notion of “forgiving and forgetting” we hear so much about. That notion has the potential to do damage,
especially if we think it means ignoring the hurt others have done to us.
Only a few
years later, while Manasseh was still a child, Joseph would “remember” his
brothers’ crime as they stood before him.
He remembered but refused to retaliate.
In some
instances it might even be dangerous to “forget” someone’s misdeeds. In 2 Timothy 4:14-15 Paul writes, “Alexander the coppersmith did me much
harm. The Lord will repay him according
to his works. You must also beware of
him, for he has greatly resisted our words.” Paul probably forgave Alexander, leaving any
vengeance to the Lord; this, even though Alexander may have impeded Paul’s
work, corrupted his message, and urged others to join him in resisting the
gospel. Though Paul forgave, he still
warned Timothy about this potentially dangerous individual.[2]
Of course,
barring some kind of illness, we don’t ever really ‘forget’ anything. Let me perform an experiment.
Who said,
“Give me liberty or give me death?”
Right, Patrick Henry. Some of you
may not have thought of that since your last American History class. Still, you didn’t forget it.
But, unless
you’re writing a biography of this fiery patriot I would worry about you if you
said to me, “Jim, night and day I just can’t get Patrick Henry off my mind.”
If you
can’t get the hurt someone has done you off your mind, you are in spiritual and
emotional peril; and, you almost certainly haven’t been considering the
positive things God has been doing in your life.
5. We prepare ourselves to forgive by admitting we must open
ourselves to God’s work in our lives.
Let’s be
honest, giving up retaliation “just ain’t natural.” Jesus helps us break that cycle in two
ways: He provide an example and he
becomes a resource.
The Roman
soldiers who drove nails into the hands of those they crucified were used to
being cursed for what they were doing.
Imagine how shocked they were when one day a man responded with,
“Father, forgive them…”
The parable
Jesus told was an invitation to see the depth of God’s forgiveness. Without going into all the details, let’s
focus on only one element. The first
servant owed 10,000 talents. One
commentary says that’s about 60,000 days wages—it is a sum impossible to
pay. It reflects the spiritual debt we
owe God, a debt we can’t pay. In the
story, the master forgives his servant.
That generosity ought to have inspired the first servant to become a
forgiver. It didn’t. He promptly refused to forgive a fellow
servant who owed a small sum. Jesus
seems to be implying that the wrongs done to us are small when compared to our
sins against God. When we grasp that we
ought to become forgivers.
Jesus’
forgiveness inspires us to forgive. He
enables us to do the shocking thing, to forgive our enemies. But it’s more profound than following a good
example.
Our
understanding begins when we remember that “sins” against us are almost always
sins against God. The Bible tells us
that through Christ, God has forgiven all our sins. God offers that forgiveness whether we accept
it or not. This seems to answer the
question so many ask: Am I supposed to
forgive the person who doesn’t ask for it.
In Christ, God forgave us before we asked. God’s side of forgiving is a reality whether
we ask for it or not. If we don’t ask
for that forgiveness, we will never experience it; never know the joy of renewed
fellowship with God. But God is still
the Forgiver. We are to follow God’s
lead. We are to be forgivers whether the
one who wounds us asks or not.
When we
forgive those who wounded us, we tap into the forgiveness God has already
provided for them. Amazingly, we have
the privilege of doing what God does:
Forgive. Volf says, “…we have both the right to forgive and, in
principle, the power to forgive. In a
word, we have the authority to lift the burden and wash away the stain of
guilt. It’s a derivative authority,
dependent completely on God’s.
Nevertheless, it is genuine.
Without such authority Scripture could not urge us to forgive.”
When we
open ourselves to let God work in and though us, that work will give birth to
our forgiving those who have wronged us.
The Great
Danger In Failing to Forgive
Jesus told
his disciples that there was great danger in forgetting to forgive, in
remembering those wounds. The
unforgiving servant in Jesus’ story faced a terrible fate. Then Jesus warned, “So also my heavenly
Father will do to every one of you, if you do not forgive your brother from
your heart.”[3]
I don’t
think Jesus is saying we must forgive before we can be forgiven. If so, my forgiveness is dependent upon my
something I do. This seems to undermine
the notion of grace and invite insincerity.
Instead, I think Jesus is warning of the natural consequences of failing
to forgive. Ray Steadman offers a
comment on the warning.
This is a mysteriously expressive
phrase to describe what happens to us when we do not forgive another. It is an accurate description of gnawing
resentment and bitterness, the awful gall of hate or envy. It is a terrible feeling. We cannot get away from it. We feel strongly this separation from another
and every time we think of them we feel within the acid of resentment and hate
eating away at our peace and calmness.
This is the torturing our Lord says will take place.
The sad
truth is. Many of those who hurt us move
on with no visible consequences of their actions. Yet, if we keep our resentment alive, our
hurt only continues.
The memory
problem that keeps us from forgiving robs us of so much.
[1] James Montgomery Boice, Genesis: An Expositional Commentary,
Grand Rapids: Zondervan Publishing,
1987, 3:110.
[2] This passage and others are discussed under
“Forgiveness,” in The Complete Family
Life Encyclopedia by Frank Minirth, et al.
[3] The
Holy Bible : English Standard Version. Wheaton : Standard Bible Society,
2001, S. Mt 18:35
