The Cleanness of Forgiveness

On Monday mornings, we feature a devotional written by DBC men and women who want to encourage and challenge you in your understanding of God’s Word. Our prayer is that you will sense God’s nearness as you encounter Jesus afresh this year.

 

The Cleanness of Forgiveness

-Written by Pete Berner, Barnabas Adult Bible Fellowship Teacher

In Matthew 18:21, Peter asks Jesus a question that is so telling of humanity. ‘Then Peter came up and said to him, “Lord, how often will my brother sin against me, and I forgive him? As many as seven times?”’ In other words, Peter was asking if there was a daily quota for forgiveness. The problem with quotas is that we will strive to meet the quota and then stop. We will do just enough to get by. I remember in my childhood that my father would give me chores to do every Saturday morning. My father didn’t realize that Saturdays were meant for storming hills, conquering unseen enemies, and building magnificent forts in the woods. He would never give me a definitive number of chores. I would ask that if I did five chores, could I go get to the serious business of protecting the neighborhood from the unseen forces of the weekend. I never got a number.

Jesus responds to Peter’s question by saying “I do not say to you seven times, but seventy-seven times” (18:22). Now did Peter then turn to the other eleven disciples and say, “There you have it guys. The answer is 490 times. Matthew, you’ve got experience in keeping records of taxes, you keep a tally so that we know when we have reached 490.” John pipes up and says, “Uh, Peter, I don’t think that’s what he was saying.” Exactly. The well of forgiveness never goes dry for believers. We can ladle from it over and over again and pour it over those who have sinned against us.

But Jesus doesn’t stop there. He then tells them a parable in the form of a three-act play. He introduces the play as a parable about the kingdom of heaven. In Act 1 (18:23-27), a king desires to settle financial accounts with his servants. These “servants” were probably provincial governors who collected taxes on behalf of the king. A servant who owed the king ten thousand talents, an enormous amount of money, was brought before the king. The actual amount of money owed is not important. What is important to the parable is that the amount owed was so staggering, so unimaginably large, that it would not have been possible to repay it. Apparently, the punishment for non-payment was for the man, his wife, his children, and all possessions to be sold, probably into slavery. However, the amount owed was so large that any money gained from this sentence would not come close to satisfying the debt. What follows is a heart-wrenching scene. The servant falls on his knees and pleads to the king, “Have patience with me, and I will pay you everything.” The agony of the pleading, the sobbing, the open hands, and the sorrow for his debt to the king moved the king to pity. And in that moment, the king completely forgives the servant his entire debt and release him. Can you imagine the reaction in that king’s court? You can almost picture the king stepping down from his throne, taking the servant by the hand and raising him to his feet. Can you see the servant’s face when the king pronounces forgiveness upon him? What kind of king would do such a thing?

Unfortunately, the play moves into Act 2 (18:28-30). The forgiven servant left the throne room of the king to immediately seek out one of his fellow servants who owed him an embarrassingly small amount in comparison to the amount just forgiven. It’s a violent encounter. The forgiven servant seizes the man and begins to choke him while demanding that he pay him the amount owed. Similar to the scene played out in Act 1, the man falls to his knees and makes the exact same request just asked of the king. “Have patience with me, and I will pay you.” The forgiven servant refuses to offer forgiveness. Instead, he “went and put him in prison until he should pay the debt.”

The climax of the parable now appears in Act 3. The violent, merciless act was seen by a cloud of witnesses who “were distressed”. The Greek word used for distressed depicts one who is so saddened, so grieved that they experience great sorrow, anguish, and pain. These witnesses know that something very wrong just occurred. They witnessed something that was simply unclean. So, in their anguish, they report it to the king. The servant that the king had just forgiven was hauled back before the king who said to him, “You wicked servant! I forgave you all that debt because you pleaded with me. And should not you have had mercy on your fellow servant, as I had mercy on you?” There was nothing this wicked servant could do now. He was thrown into jail until he could pay off all that was owed.

Verse 35 is the epilogue to the three-act parable. So also my heavenly Father will do to every one of you, if you do not forgive your brother from your heart. Forgiveness is not some lip service we give off-the-cuff. Forgiveness means nothing from the lips if it does not come forth from our heart. “Christians should be deeply grieved when a fellow believer is unforgiving, because his hardness of heart not only tends to drive the offender deeper into sin but also causes dissension and division within the church, tarnishes its testimony before the world, and deeply grieves the Lord Himself” (John MacArthur). Just as the witnesses of the unmerciful act of the wicked servant were grieved, so should we be grieved at our own acts of unforgiveness.

So….what is it about forgiveness that makes us behave so badly? Forgiveness is not natural to us. When we are wronged, our natural reaction is to rise up with enmity, anger, jealousy, bitterness, and hatred. These are the natural reactions of our flesh. Even as believers, we are subject to the flesh. Sin still contaminates our wretched bodies. As a child of God, we don’t approve of the sin that still resides in us, but it frustrates us. Paul described this in Romans 7: For I do not understand my own actions…For I know that nothing good dwells in me, that is, in my flesh…For I have the desire to do what is right, but not the ability to carry it out…Now if I do what I do not want, it is no longer I who do it, but sin that dwells within me…Who will deliver me from this body of death? Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord! So then, I myself serve the law of God with my mind, but with my flesh I serve the law of sin.

I grew up in a home of violence. From before elementary school through high school, I was witness to unspeakable acts of violence and bloodshed that no child should endure. The producer of all this was an alcoholic, bipolar mother. For the majority of my life, my heart had a vise-like grip on intense anger and hatred towards her. I came to faith in Christ at age eighteen. So, for most of my life as a believer I harbored this unforgiveness towards her in my forgiven heart. In 2004, I had to return to upstate New York to place her in a nursing home. My last night before returning to Dallas, I was in her room. I got up from my chair, walked to the door, and said, “Bye, Mom.” I knew that was the last time I would be with her. But…I stopped at the door. I turned and saw her weeping. I returned to her bed and sat down. I reached around her frail body, lifted her up to me and whispered in her ear. “Mom, I love you and I forgive you.” She just sobbed. Those were the last words I said to my mother.

What stopped me at that door? Was this some sort of inner strength that I found? Absolutely not! It was not about me. It was not some self-righteous act of mercy.

For we ourselves were once foolish, disobedient, led astray, slaves to various passions and pleasures, passing our days in malice and envy, hated by others and hating one another. But when the goodness and loving kindness of God our Savior appeared, he saved us, not because of works done by us in righteousness, but according to his great mercy, by the washing of regeneration and renewal of the Holy Spirit, whom he poured out on us richly through Jesus Christ our Savior, so that being justified by his grace we might become heirs according to the hope of eternal life. (Titus 3:3-7)

It all begins at the Cross. The Cross which held the savagely beaten, spit on, bleeding body of our Savior. At that moment, Jesus stunned all his creation when he uttered, “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do”. As the servant with the enormous debt knelt before the king and pleaded for mercy, so must we kneel before the King at the foot of the Cross acknowledging our sinfulness and plead for forgiveness. So, we must confess with our mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in our heart that God raised him from the dead. At that moment, we will be saved. At that moment, through his blood of the covenant which he poured out for many for the forgiveness of sins, we will be cleansed from all unrighteousness and experience the cleanness of forgiveness.

But what are we as believers to do following the washing of regeneration, the renewal of the Holy Spirit, total forgiveness, and cleansing from all unrighteousness? Do we leave the foot of the Cross only to turn around and not offer forgiveness to a fellow brother or sister in Christ? If we do, we deeply grieve the Holy Spirit, we tarnish the testimony of the Body of Christ before the world, and we bring dissension and division within the Body of Christ. In Colossians 3:13, Paul issued the imperative as the Lord has forgiven you, so you also must forgive. In his letter to the church in Ephesus Paul writes: And do not grieve the Holy Spirit of God, by whom you were sealed for the day of redemption. Let all bitterness and wrath and anger and clamor and slander be put away from you, along with all malice. Be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, as God in Christ forgave you.

Is there a brother or sister in Christ that you are withholding forgiveness? Is your heart, which has experienced the cleanness of forgiveness, harboring any spite, enmity, or malice towards a fellow believer? Is there a fellow believer that you have offered lip-service forgiveness but need to offer it from within your heart?