Forgiveness (part 1)

Bethlehem Bible Church

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Biblical searches for forgiveness, you'll often see, you know, sermons or commentary on justification, on God's forgiveness for us.

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And while that is absolutely paramount, what I want to spend some time on this morning, although we'll touch on that, what

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I want to focus on this morning is how should we as Christians be forgiving people, forgiving others.

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If you didn't grab them, I do have handouts at each of the wings over there, so you can follow along.

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I did have an outline here, probably mostly for my brain, but I really wanted to encourage conversation.

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So you'll see the handouts are really all questions I pulled straight out of the

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Steve Cooley book and put some provocative questions there, probably poorly worded.

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But I'm told that's good because then it makes people want to correct me and we get conversation.

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So let's jump right in. If you look at number one, let's just try to begin with defining forgiveness.

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And this could also include God's forgiveness to men, not just forgiving others.

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So I have a really rough definition here. Tell me your thoughts. Forgiveness is pardoning someone else when they have wronged you.

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True or false, satisfactory? Your thoughts. So you would say this is partial, but we don't have the full.

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Okay, we're setting the table here, folks, right? We're getting some pieces on the table. So first note from Mark Arnold is, you know, what about reconciliation, if you would?

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This is one side of the equation. I would tend to agree with that. Anything else?

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Any other thoughts? Forgiveness is pardoning someone else when they have wronged you.

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Anyone think that is false or is the consensus incomplete?

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Incomplete. Okay, so what about when we're specifically talking about God's forgiveness?

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To us, does that change the definition at all? When we forgive others, there's that kind of expectation that there's reconciliation.

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When God forgives us, yes. Yes, thank you. So absolutely, and that's something that I think we're going to touch on a little more throughout the morning here.

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But we can't forgive perfectly as God forgives, right? He may not forget, but choosing not to remember, choosing not to recall, choosing not to hold against, his choosing, his resolve is perfect, whereas ours is not, right?

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Whoever has a child, a brain, a spouse, and says, I forgive you, you know, who can raise their hand and say,

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I've never brought it back up, not once, right? But the forgiveness of God truly, truly separates us fully and permanently from our sin.

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There's another thing, another element here I want to get on the table, and I'm not sure when the best time to bring this up is, but I think here is a good spot.

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I used the word pardon on purpose because there's an idea, there's a sense that there's a legal forgiveness that's happening when you use that word, just because it's familiar to our language.

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When we forgive a fellow human, are we legally, in the eyes of heaven, pardoning them in any way?

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I hear no. No, no, no, okay. So ultimately, the forgiveness that any sinner needs is only from God, right?

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Ultimate forgiveness. There's a relational forgiveness that Mark alluded to that we need to proceed and to live lives in harmony, in unity, but there's also an ultimate forgiveness namely justification that we only have from God.

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I do want to look at Exodus 34 here just to establish, you know, who this

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God is. So could you please turn to Exodus 34? And this is essentially

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Moses is receiving the second set of tablets and effectively

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God is introducing himself to Moses here. Could I get someone to read

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Exodus 34, 5 through 7? Okay, thank you. So in his very introduction to what is going to be the people of Israel, what is the people of Israel already, he calls himself the one who is forgiving, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin.

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Can you think of any other bad thing towards God? Like he covers all three bases right there, just in case you're wondering what the difference is.

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So that's how he introduces himself. You know, I mean, how many people have heard the phrase? I tried to look at the origin of this and I think it's just, you know, in the ether somewhere.

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But, you know, we're never closer to God than when we're forgiving. We've all heard this phrase?

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I mean, think about that phrase and this passage that we've just read. God thinks it's so important and so central to his being and his posture towards man that that is in his first sentence of introduction on who he is.

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So we've got some pieces on the table. Forgiveness, pardoning sin, but there's another piece.

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There's a reconciliation that should occur when it's from God to us. It's justification. And when one person forgives another person, that is not justification.

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That is not legal pardoning from any, you know, divine judgment. So we've got those pieces on the table.

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Let's move to number two here. Question being when

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God forgives us, or I guess I put this as a statement. When God forgives us, he is wiping our slate clean.

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Tabula rasa. True or false? What do you think? Which is, where's

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Mark? Imputed. Somebody corrected it. I'm on that.

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Despite knowing that he knows better. Absolutely, right? I mean, if we've got a clean slate, one, that's insinuating that the thing never happened.

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That there's, like, completely no memory of it. And two, what happens if we sin again?

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Now we've got, you know, bird poop on our slate, right? Or whatever. So that is a kind of a,

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I mean, we've all had it, but it's kind of a poor statement of what's actually occurring when we're forgiven, particularly by God.

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But even when we forgive someone else, there's memories, as John mentioned already, and we need to wrestle with that.

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We need to deal with that in our fallen minds that cannot perfectly resolve to forgive someone.

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So when God forgives us, he is wiping our slate clean. I think the consensus is false, right?

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He is absolutely cleansing us, let's be clear, from all of our sin. When we are once justified, and we are never held accountable for those sins again.

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And it's a two -part thing, right? We get his righteousness, and he gets our sin.

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Our sin is pardoned, but go back to Exodus 34. God said he's forgiving and forgives transgressions and iniquity, but by no means will leave the guilty unpunished.

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He doesn't just go, forgiven, free grace, nothing had to happen.

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No, he says my justice demands a sacrifice, and my love provided it in my son.

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Absolutely, absolutely. I would say partially false, you know, by the

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Facebook fact checkers. In the sense that it's not the full story, right?

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Now, where my head was at, my focus was moving from God's forgiving of us, because we have to examine that first, to, you know, us forgiving other people.

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There's also a sense in which tabula rasa is not true, in the sense that there are still earthly, temporal consequences for some things that we may have done.

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I mean, we've seen, you know, I really didn't find an outstanding one, but just think about the most heinous crimes ever, you know, murders and rapes against, you know, people's children, and the parents forgiving them, and yet that person still goes to jail, right?

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And yet that person still gets the death penalty. So there are earthly consequences that are not undone.

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So there's, you know, again, true or false, who cares?

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Let's have the conversation, right? But that's an important reminder that we don't just get away with all of it, you know?

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Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Right, so incomplete. We have the discussion to complete it. Thank you, my brothers and sisters.

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Okay, so I think we've kind of already hit on verse number three there, rather. So I'll skip that.

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Number four, I almost said we should be forgiving others, true or false. Yeah, no, we're going to pick away at that.

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I love when Corey answers questions because I don't have to repeat his answer. Yeah, we're going to, you know,

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I mean, that's a question I think I wrote out verbatim later on, is how can that be? How can

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David say that? So absolutely. With that on the table, number four, why should we be forgiving others, right?

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It's clear that we should be, but why, right? Biblical references, is this a command?

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Is this just a good idea? Why is that so important? I think that's a pretty full answer, right?

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Good job. I have a few things here just to kind of get it all down.

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First and foremost, I think Andrew's answer, it's God's heart. If this is the heart of God and we are his children, then we should be like him in this area.

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We already looked at Exodus 34 in his introduction there, but also

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I'll read this one to you. Romans 5, 9 and 10 says, Since we have now been justified by his blood, how much more shall we be saved from God's wrath through him?

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For if while we were God's enemies, we were reconciled in him through the death of his son, how much more, having been reconciled, shall we be saved through his life?

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And this isn't so much a command as still commentary on his character. Not only did he forgive us, not only did he forgive us when we weren't necessarily repentant, but while we were his enemies.

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Steve? Absolutely. So that's definitely one of the command verses.

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Any other verses come to mind that command us to forgive? Yes. Yes.

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And the comments on it as well. Yeah.

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Be kind and compassionate to one another, forgiving each other just as God and Christ forgave you. Yeah. So, you know, command with no asterisks.

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Let it be noted. Just tells us to forgive. It does.

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It leaves no room for unforgiveness. None. Yeah. Wow. Great answer.

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So that, you know, that's going to be our guiding principle. One of the things that she said that was really key there.

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There were so many good things. I don't think I can even restate them all. But love, if we are loving, we will be forgiving.

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Right? We can't be unforgiving and loving. They don't go hand in hand, right?

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We, you know, hear Jesus' summary of the law in love your God and love your neighbor.

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There it is. Asserted positively. But nonetheless, there it is.

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So that's going to be our guiding principle, especially when we get into some more practical, hard to answer questions that we need to wrestle with.

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What's the loving thing to do? Ha, ha, ha.

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Nonetheless. Yes. Right? I think that's an important element to add is, you know, what fruit of the spirit isn't empowered by the spirit in us, right?

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This is love, forgiveness, being a piece of that is enabled by God.

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Yeah, that's perfect. And I love that you brought up the marriage thing there. I was looking at some definitions, worldly and biblical ones, and some of the etymology of the word, which was very interesting.

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But, you know, we've got a basic definition, pardon, refusal to retaliate, committing to not hold it against them, to let go of the matter.

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I liked the phrase committing to not hold it against them, which acknowledges that we're going to have a memory of some of those really egregious wrongs.

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But when you go into the etymology, I won't even give you the words that I can't pronounce anyways, but there really wasn't a word.

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We have one word, forgive. But, like, the origin of that was the smashing together of two words that totally have nothing to do with forgiveness, but amount to granting or giving or allowing or remitting a debt.

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And then an idea of giving up. And one of the words that was used there was when you give up your daughter in marriage.

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Right? Like you're resolving, like, this is of my house, and this is no longer of my house.

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That's somebody else's house. They are betrothed. They are not mine. Right? You're letting her go.

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You're letting it go permanently is the idea, right?

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We are taking that thing that we're holding against someone, and we are letting it go.

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We're saying, it's not mine anymore. How do we let that go?

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As Bev said, that's not necessarily easy to do. Okay. Thoughts on, so we're on number four.

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Why should we be forgiving others? Ultimately, because it's the character of God. We're his children.

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We are commanded first and foremost to love God, so we should obey his commands.

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And we're also commanded to love others, which if we're not forgiving, we've already established we're not loving.

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A couple places where it's commanded, because we'll use these elsewhere in the

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Lord's Prayer, right? It's assumed. Forgive us as we forgive others. It's kind of almost like a backhanded command, right?

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It's assumed that we're doing it, because if we're Christians, we are going to have, at some level, we're going to have

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God's character. In Mark 11 .25, whenever you stand praying, forgive, if you have anything, against anyone, so that your

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Father also, who's in heaven, may forgive you your trespasses. And the corollary, the other side of that,

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Matthew 5 .23, to the person that's offering the gift at the altar, and they remember that your brother has something against you.

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So you've got both the offender and the offended here. Leave your gift there before the altar.

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Go. First be reconciled to your brother. Then come and present your gift. And then finally, Luke 17 .3

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-4, pay attention to yourselves. If your brother sins, rebuke him.

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And if he repents, forgive him. And if he sins against you seven times in the day, and turns to you seven times saying,

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I repent, you must forgive him. We've established.

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It's commanded. Okay. We touched on number five.

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We're never more like God than when we forgive. It's in the character of God. So let's look at number six.

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We should only forgive when someone apologizes or repents.

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Thoughts? I've got one no.

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I've got one false. Two falses. False? Okay. So this one is a nuanced answer.

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I've even seen Sproul in a two -minute table talk read. So we're not getting the whole context of his thoughts on it.

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I've even seen him say, probably narrowly focused on something, that if someone repents, we need to forgive them.

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And only if they repent, we need to forgive them. To which I think most of us just said we would disagree.

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So I'm going to give him the benefit of the doubt there. I forget the heading of that article, but it was probably narrowly focused on something.

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I think as we answer this question, it's really important to zero in on something

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Mark brought up right at the very beginning. What is forgiveness? Because he said the definition was lacking because there wasn't this reconciliation.

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But does forgiveness necessarily involve reconciliation?

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I'm getting a no back there. No. No. Okay. So let's talk about that for a second.

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I had to carefully order these questions because some of these are prerequisite to others.

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So what do you have? Yeah, we can't. We cannot. So in case you didn't hear, she said, what about the verse that says, so long as it depends on you, be at peace with all men.

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That would imply or plainly state, I would say, that reconciliation doesn't always occur despite attempts to do so.

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Maybe forgiving, loving attempts to do so. I forgive you.

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Excuse me. So that's great. So a couple more pieces on the table, right?

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Okay, let's get a little deeper. Forgiveness and reconciliation are two separate things.

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The goal of forgiveness is reconciliation, but they are different and they don't always both occur.

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And then everything Andrew said that I wanted to summarize, and I'm losing my train of thought.

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So hear carefully what Corey said there, right? That other person is out of the picture, whether they're dead, out of touch, whatever.

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And now you're driving a wedge between yourself and God via your unforgiveness.

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Dealing with that, understanding that, is also going to help us answer the question, how can

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David say against you when you only have I sinned, right? And going back to what Andrew said, he said, in your heart you need to forgive this person, right?

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There's plenty of things we don't necessarily have to have a reconciliation for, right?

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There is a time and a place to let go, to overlook an offense. There's a principle there. There's also a place to, as it says, and maybe this is where Sproul was focused in answering a quick question from a congregation member.

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But it says in Luke 17, if you read it like a formula, if your brother sins, rebuke him, and if he repents, forgive him.

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If we read that and only that, then the answer to the question, do we have to forgive when someone doesn't repent, would be no, right?

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But we have the rest of the counsel of the Word of God. So there's all this nuance, but the new idea here, right, the next level we're going is we need to forgive in our hearts, right?

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So there is a posture, a loving attitude towards someone else who may have wronged us in some way.

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What we do next, do we choose to overlook, do we choose to rebuke and seek reconciliation or not?

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That's a question yet to be answered, but the posture of our hearts needs to be loving that person, forgiving them, right?

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If we look at the prodigal son, what happened when the son is still far off in the fields approaching the father's house?

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The father saw him as if he was looking for him, didn't know where he was, and while he was still far off, it says, ran to meet him.

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So here's a question. At what point was, this is a two -parter, okay?

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I'll say both and then you can answer. At what point was the prodigal son forgiven and at what point did the prodigal's father forgive him?

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The father clearly had already forgiven him in his heart, right? His posture towards his son was, where are you, my son,

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I love you, I forgive you. Anthony makes a good point. The son, if we look at where the forgiveness occurred between him and God, also occurred at some point when he, if we're to believe this, to go along with it, when he understood, like,

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I've sinned against my father, I am wrong, like, I am literally turning around, I am literally repenting of this, and I won't even ask for what

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I was once entitled to. Did you have something else, Anthony? Here, this one's for you.

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Yeah, I would say so. Again, it's acknowledging that we can't forget.

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You know, there's, you know, it's almost like in the business world, right? There's an opportunity cost of what could have been and then what actually occurred.

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You know, if we want the best for someone, don't we want them to make right choices? Don't we want them to have victory over sin?

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Now, there's a very subtle difference, right? That's a knife's edge. That's a

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Bible cover's edge. Are we disappointed that it happened in a loving way?

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Or are we disappointed, you know, because there's still some hurt that needs to be dealt with?

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Oh, we're going there. We're going there. I don't know if it's going to be this Sunday, but we're going there.

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I like that, too, because, you know, it's the resolve not to hold it against them is almost too ambiguous.

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What is holding it against them? Does not keep a record of wrongs, right? I remember that, but I'm not even going to factor that in to this decision.

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Now, there's prudence, right? Don't mistake me. We'll get to that, too.

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But, you know, not holding a record of wrongs. Andrew and then Beth. Yeah, right?

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Well, it all comes back to love, right? What's the appropriate thing to do? How should

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I forgive this person? And then how should I act, behave towards them thereafter? The second part, right?

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How should I forgive them? You should forgive them. But what happens after can vary depending on the relationship, right?

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If I'm a parent, that's going to look very different. If I'm an actual judge in the district court, that's going to look very different.

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Absolutely, those are factors. Yes, right? That's God's posture towards us.

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You know, he's always going to one -up us, right? So one is infinitely too small a number.

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But that's part of that. Like, we need to be like him where we're never more like him than we are.

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And when we are forgiving despite the apathy of the other.

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But at the same time, I mean, repentance is bound up in everything we believe, right?

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So should there be repentance? Absolutely. We'll talk a little more next week about, all right, what is the responsibility of the offended and the responsibility of the offender?

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And hopefully we can kind of tie this up with a bow.

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But love is really at the core of all of this. How we act towards others should be, as we see in the parable of the unforgiving servant, commensurate with how

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God has acted towards us. So if you remember nothing else this week, think about how much you have been forgiven and who was your judge.

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And then how you should, of course, respond appropriately in kind towards your fellow man.

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So with that, let's pray. And we'll look forward to the sermon. Heavenly Father, Lord, we thank you so much for you bearing with us, your unbelievable patience with us.

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You truly are slow to anger. You truly love to forgive your enemies and make them your children.

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We thank you for that. We thank you that we can call you Father. Would you help us to be more like you in how we treat others, how we react when there is an offense?

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Would you help us not to react to so many offenses? Would you help us to overlook wrongs?

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And would you help us to also be discerning and know when it is appropriate to rebuke or correct a brother or sister?

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Help us to do all of that and act just in love towards one another that the world may see us and know that we love you because we love one another.

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Pray that you would bless the time of worship together. And just thank you so much for bringing us together in this fellowship at BBC.