Unforgiveness
Do you really have to forgive in order to be forgiven?
“If I were your enemy, I’d use every opportunity to bring old wounds to mind, as well as the people, events, and circumstances that caused them. I’d try to ensure that your heart was hardened with anger and bitterness. Shackled through unforgiveness.”
Priscilla Shirer
I remember many years ago when I was still a very young minister something had happened between me and another person I worked with.
I say something had happened, it was more than one thing. It was a series of things and all that hurt was building up in my heart and eating me up from the inside out.
This other person on staff was much older than me and I remember how much that bothered me… I felt like he should have been the one to come to me and make things right. After all, he was older, he was more mature in the faith than I was, but week after week went by and nothing. And that frustrated me even more.
Why should I have to be the bigger person?
Why do I have to be the one to go to him to make things right between us?
How can we keep pretending that everything is ok when it clearly is not?
Have you ever been there?
Unresolved
I don’t know about you but whenever there is unresolved conflict hanging in the wind it’s like a sore that goes untreated that festers and gets worse over time. Whenever there is hurt that’s left untreated, unspoken, unforgiven… it doesn’t go away.
We think if we ignore it long enough it’ll either be ok, or maybe it won’t, but we’re too hurt to care so we just walk away. We think… we’ll just avoid that person, we’ll just move on, but we can’t. We can’t forgive. We’ll never forget what he did. What she did.
And what happens is that we get stuck.
It’s difficult to pray when you have a grudge against someone else. It’s hard to worship when you’re holding on to past hurt. It can even be difficult to sleep, to eat, to enjoy the good things in our lives when we don’t forgive.
What’s interesting is that this isn’t just true for Christians, this is true for everyone.
Even people who don’t believe that Jesus is the Son of the Living God promote forgiveness as a way to wellness and to living your best life. It’s a universal truth because this is the way God created us. We were created to live in harmony with one another.
Turning Hurt into Anger
So why is it so difficult to forgive?
The answer to that question is easy. It’s so difficult because we have an enemy, an adversary, and he wants us angry.
He can take the smallest offense and blow it out of proportion to create division between us. We see this in our homes, with our friends, in our world, and even in our churches.
There is nothing that gives our enemy, Satan himself, more joy than turning our hurt into bitterness and resentment. He knows that if he can do that, he can separate us from each other AND he can separate us from God.
And somehow, even though we may know this, he is still successful. Over and over and over and over again, he turns every hurt he can, no matter how big or how small, into bitterness, contempt, hatred, divorce, and division.
If, then…
When I was dealing with my own hurt and the anger I was feeling toward this older coworker, I felt convicted by God to make things right. At the time I was reading through the Sermon on the Mount every day and it’s in this sermon that we find the Lord’s Prayer.
So every day I was reading and rereading this part of this prayer that Jesus taught his disciples to pray..
and forgive us our sins,
as we have forgiven those who sin against us.
– Matthew 6.12
Now that’s convicting enough. But if you keep reading, Jesus adds his own personal commentary right after he finishes what we call the Lord’s Prayer. In verses 14-15 he says,
“If you forgive those who sin against you, your heavenly Father will forgive you. But if you refuse to forgive others, your Father will not forgive your sins.”
Have you ever read that before?
Correct me if I’m wrong, but it sounds like Jesus is saying that the ONLY way to experience the forgiveness of God is IF WE FORGIVE those who have sinned against us!
Jesus makes it abundantly clear that IF we want to be FORGIVEN by GOD THEN we have to FORGIVE OTHERS!
TIMEOUT
Are you telling me that God won’t forgive me if I don’t forgive others?
But you don’t know what they did to me. You don’t know how my friend hurt me, how my father, or my mother, mistreated me. You don’t know what they said about me. You don’t know what I went through.
And you’re right. I don’t. I’m using an example from my life of a relatively small hurt. I could have used other examples. But you’ve got stories that could trump anything I could share. You’ve suffered in ways I can’t imagine. You’ve got heartache and heartbreak unlike anything anyone should have to go through.
So when you read the words of Jesus here, you’ve got questions. And I understand.
I don’t want to minimize your story, your pain, or what you went through. But I do want you to know that what Jesus wants for you is for you to be FREE. Free from that pain, that hurt, that past, those feelings, and all that comes with it.
Part of our problem, part of my problem at least, is that I have this idea that if I forgive someone for what they did to hurt me, I’m letting them off the hook.
But that’s not what forgiveness is all about.
To forgive those who sin against us takes incredible faith. It releases that person from our hands and places them squarely in God’s hands. It means we trust God to take care of them. We are letting them go. Not so that they will be set free, but so that WE WILL.
When we forgive we allow God to be God. It also opens up God’s abundant grace to be poured over our hearts and lives and… theirs!
Still Got Questions?
If you’re anything like Jesus’ first disciples, you’ve still got questions. If you fast forward to Matthew 18, you find this story…
Matthew 18.21-35
Then Peter came to [Jesus] and asked, “Lord, how often should I forgive someone who sins against me? Seven times?”
What a great question!
“No, not seven times,” Jesus replied, “but seventy times seven!
In other words… we’re talking about unlimited forgiveness! And at this point, you’re probably just as confused as Peter was.
So Jesus tells this story…
“Therefore, the Kingdom of Heaven can be compared to a king who decided to bring his accounts up to date with servants who had borrowed money from him. In the process, one of his debtors was brought in who owed him millions of dollars. He couldn’t pay, so his master ordered that he be sold—along with his wife, his children, and everything he owned—to pay the debt.
“But the man fell down before his master and begged him, ‘Please, be patient with me, and I will pay it all.’ Then his master was filled with pity for him, and he released him and forgave his debt.
“But when the man left the king, he went to a fellow servant who owed him a few thousand dollars. He grabbed him by the throat and demanded instant payment.
What Jesus wants to reveal in this story is this truth:
We all want to RECEIVE forgiveness, but we’re often unwilling to EXTEND forgiveness.
And Jesus wanted his disciples to understand… Forgiveness is freely given to those who freely forgive.
Father, Forgive Them
Jesus didn’t just teach this, he didn’t just preach this, he demonstrated this truth.
Before he takes his last breath on the cross he cries out these words that have echoed throughout human history…
“Father, forgive them.” – Luke 23.34
We tell this story.
We believe this story.
We have staked our eternity on the truth of this story.
But are we willing to LIVE this story?
What hurt are you holding onto? What grudge have you not let go? Who can you not stand to be around?
Who do you avoid? Who’s name, when you hear it, your stomach turns? Or you roll your eyes?
I finally worked up the courage one day to walk into the man’s office and talk about what had happened. It sounds silly, but it was one of the hardest things I had ever done at that point in my life. I was nervous. Scared. I was mad that I had to be the one to initiate the conversation.
But we had the conversation and I forgave him. And I asked him to forgive me.
I think Jesus wanted his disciples to be the most forgiving people on the planet because he knew that this is what it means to be known for our love.
Forgiveness: Not Normal
You see, forgiveness isn’t normal. It’s not natural. It’s supernatural.
When you forgive you are tapping into supernatural power that can heal a broken person, mend a fractured relationship, and restore person’s soul.
And more often than not, when you forgive, you’re the broken person who is healed. Your fractured relationships are the ones that are made whole. And your soul is the one that is restored.
Loving those who love you… anyone can do that. Loving those who don’t love you… Jesus said that’s the perfect love of our Father in Heaven abiding in you. – Matthew 5.43-48
So we pray, forgive us our sins,
as we have forgiven those who sin against us.
When we forgive we are forgiven.
It is only in forgiving that we are forgiven and set free.
Chances are, we all have someone we need to forgive. But we can’t do that in our own strength, we need God’s strength to help us forgive.
Who do you need to forgive who remains unforgiven in your heart?
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