What Is Forgiveness?

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If you do have a Bible, turn to Ephesians 4, and we're going to be reading Ephesians 4, 31 through 32.

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But then today, what we're going to be talking about is the topic of forgiveness in general. And we're going to be basically asking the question, what is forgiveness?

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So most of our attention is going to be put on verse 32 in the section that we're going to be reading.

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But then I'm going to go ahead and read 31 and 32 to remind you of where we were last week and try to connect the dots between what we were talking about last week and what we're going to be talking about this week.

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But then let's start by reading Ephesians 4, 31 through 32. Let all bitterness and wrath and anger and clamor and slander be put away from you, along with all malice.

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Be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, as God in Christ forgave you.

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Now, one of the most famous stories related to the topic of vengeance or what might be described as a lack of forgiveness is the

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Count of Monte Cristo. And when I say the name of that story, you may think of the movie, because I don't know if we read as much anymore.

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But then this actually was a book. And it is a book that's a story about a guy named Edmund Dantes.

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And essentially, he was a young sailor who was basically the happiest point of his life.

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So he was about to be married. He was about to get a promotion as his job. He was about to be made the captain of a ship.

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But then the problem is that he had a group of acquaintances that surrounded him who were essentially envious of him and jealous of him and were seeking their own personal gain.

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And so what they did was they falsely accused him of being a Bonapartist agent. And that led to his arrest on the night before his wedding, essentially.

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And while he was imprisoned in the solitary confines of Chateau d 'Eif, he met a prisoner there.

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It was a fellow prisoner whose name was Abbe Faria. And this guy basically taught him how to fight and taught him how to exact a plan of vengeance and basically helped him to escape this solitary confinement that was this prison that he was trapped in.

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But then on his deathbed, Faria basically tells him the location of a treasure that he had hidden on the

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Isle of Monte Cristo, essentially. So he helped him escape. And Edmund basically goes and he gets the treasure and basically reinvents himself.

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So the story's about him reinventing himself as this count, essentially, the Count of Monte Cristo.

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That's where the name of the story comes from. And he basically has an unfathomable amount of treasure.

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He has unlimited resources. And he uses these resources to basically calculate this plot of revenge on these individuals who had put him in the place that he was, essentially.

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Now, as the story unfolds, the Count's relentless quest for vengeance basically brings destruction upon himself, upon his relationships.

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So he brings destruction upon, the destruction even has effects upon his wife and their son,

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Mercedes, who he was gonna marry before he got put into prison. But then, essentially, towards the end of the novel, he realizes the destructive nature of his vendetta.

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He recognizes that he basically played God in the situation, meeting out judgments without grace.

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And while he does find some measure of redemption in the story, the damage that resulted from his quest for vengeance still had lasting effects to everyone involved in the story.

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And so the point is just to say that the Count of Monte Cristo serves as a stark reminder about the danger of harboring unforgiveness.

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While Edmund's thirst for revenge is initially framed as justice, right? So he needs to pursue justice because what was done to him was wrong.

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This quest ultimately harmed him and harmed everyone else, including in innocent bystanders and as believers were called to forgive, knowing that vengeance belongs to God alone and holding onto grudges in the way that Edmund did, basically imprisons not only our adversaries, but ourself as well.

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Now, when I read that and when I talked about that, I want you to pay attention to the way

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I framed that and the way that I said that, okay? So notice the lesson of the example.

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So I gave you an example of a story about an individual who is pursuing vengeance and filled with a lack of forgiveness.

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And then at the end of the story, what is the moral of the story, so to speak? Well, the moral of the story is that him doing that basically harmed himself, right?

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So there were psychological effects of unforgiveness. And certainly as you think about the stories of vengeance that you've seen, this is a predominant theme that's often brought up, right?

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Don't hold onto that anger, son, it'll burn you up, that kind of thing. So, but the point is

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I just, I left it there, right? So I just left it there. So the danger is that if you hold onto a lack of forgiveness, ultimately you're not gonna feel satisfied by that because justice belongs to God, right?

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So it's gonna eat you up inside. It's not gonna do for you what you thought it would do.

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And not only that, it's gonna harm everyone around you, but then the problem with all that is that that's a pretty man -centered view of the problem, isn't it?

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I mean, can you imagine like the story, like this story, the Count of Monte Cristo being told, more from a biblical perspective and less from just a humanistic, here are the consequences, the pragmatic consequences to a lack of unforgiveness or a lack of forgiveness, the pragmatic consequences of vengeance is that it's not gonna psychologically fix your problems and it's gonna harm people.

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Like imagine if like the story ended and at the end of the story, you find like a picture, like in the movie, if you're watching a movie or whatever else you're reading the book, imagine like there's a scene at the end of it where he just dies alone and miserable and everyone else is harmed in the process.

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He makes a wreck of everything. That's where you expect the story to end, something like that if it's even more pronounced than this.

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But then imagine like the movie were to end with him waking up in a dark place, being tortured forever, realizing the eternal consequences of what he's done.

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And the point here is just to say they're never gonna make that movie. They're never gonna make that kind of movie because we don't wanna think about those kind of things.

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But the point is to say that when you're talking about a lack of forgiveness, when you're talking about a quest for vengeance, you're not just talking about something that's destructive in the here and now.

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You're talking about something that has eternal consequences that are attached to it. So the Bible is very clear on this.

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God says that if you do not forgive others their trespasses, neither will your heavenly father forgive you your trespasses.

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And so when we're talking about something like this, we're not just talking about something that's gonna make you miserable if you embark on a quest for vengeance, although it probably will.

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We're not just talking about something that's gonna make people around you miserable and harm possibly innocent people who were caught up in the problem that you're talking about.

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What you're talking about is something that has eternal ramifications, quite possibly for you and for other people.

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So you're talking about something that's very serious. And when we think about the topic of forgiveness in general, I don't know that we treat it with that level of seriousness.

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We just talk about it as something that it would be beneficial for you if you tried to resolve this problem in your heart, not as something that if you don't resolve this problem, not only will it make your life here on earth poor, but it's gonna ultimately be something which is revealing the distance you have, the separation you have with the

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God who made you and the character of that God himself. And ultimately it's spitting in the face of the

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God who came to die on the cross to save us from our sins. So as I said, today we're gonna be talking about forgiveness and what is forgiveness.

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And the primary focus of our discussion today is gonna be on verse 32, which says, be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another as God in Christ forgave you.

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Now, we think about what forgiveness means, like we're gonna talk about what is it today. So what does forgiveness means?

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Well, the first thing I think we wanna point out from the passage itself is that forgiveness means replacing this quest for vengeance with kindness.

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The text says, be kind to one another. What is the opposite of anger? So we had a list of words last week that describe anger in about as comprehensive a way as you can think.

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What is the opposite of that? We're gonna put that list off. So let all bitterness and wrath and anger and clamor and slander be put away from you along with all malice.

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Put those things away from you, go to war against those things like idols, take them, throw them on the ground, smash them, get rid of them, do whatever it takes to make that not a part of your life.

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That's what we're told to do, but then we're told to replace all those angry character traits with kindness. So we're told to be kind to one another and tenderhearted.

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And that means, as I said, replacing that quest for vengeance with kindness. Now, one of the reasons why we like stories like the one

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I told is because there's this sense in which we all long in our heart for justice, right?

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So there's this sense in which if you have an individual who's living his life, I just told a story about someone who's on the eve of his wedding, minding his own business, trying to work hard about to be promoted.

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And then you have individuals who are plotting against him out of envy and jealousy, trying to harm him for no good reason.

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When you think about something like that, what should come to your mind is that that's unjust, right? That's not fair, that's wrong, that's evil.

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I know that we don't use that term anymore, evil. We try to describe everything that people do in the language of psychological disorders.

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And so by describing everything that people do in the language of psychological disorders, it helps to shelter us from the reality that people are actually wicked and people are actually sinful and that they do things that are actually wrong.

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And the reason why they're doing things that are wrong and evil is because they have a heart that is filled with evil.

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As I said, we try to shelter people from the reality of those things by just appealing to euphemisms and words that are polite, that shield us from the moral nature of what we're talking about.

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But if you think about a situation like the one I described, I mean, obviously that's wrong. Obviously that's evil.

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Obviously that's unfair. Obviously that's unjust. And then there's part of us that resonates very strongly with the quest for vengeance.

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So if an individual is trapped in prison for 14 years because some individuals were jealous of him and he's locked in solitary confinement away from the people he loves, missing the best years of his life,

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I think something wells up within you to say, hey, that's not fair. That needs to be punished. But then the thing is, as Christians, we know that we're not allowed to pursue vengeance, but then we like stories like this because we like to live essentially vicariously through other people, meaning we like to watch them do it because you know that you can't do it, but wouldn't it be nice if you could, right?

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And so then when you enjoy stories along these lines, the part of you that's enjoying it, and you should pay attention to that, the part of you that's enjoying that is the part of you that really is trying to live vicariously through someone else because you yourself perceive yourself to be the kind of individual who's also been wronged in a wide variety of ways.

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And there is a part of you that's not like a good part of you. I mean, there's a part of you that really wants to take that into your own hands and fix it in the here and now.

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And there may be many means in which you actively try to do that, okay? So like to the extent to which in the passage, like you're characterized by all the things that are described in verse 31, that's exactly what you're doing.

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So the text says, let all bitterness and wrath and anger and clamor and slander be pulled away from you along with all malice.

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Like to the extent to which you are experiencing any of those things at all is the same extent to which you are actively trying to mete out judgment in the here and now, right?

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So there's no reason to get angry. So it says, let all bitterness and wrath and anger and clamor and slander be put away from you along with all malice.

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There's no reason to have any of those words. So there's no reason to be angry in any of its forms at anyone else, unless in that moment with all the moral indignation you have, you're trying to take out that frustration on someone else and punish them for what they did to you, because you perceive that what they did to you is wrong and deserving of punishment.

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Now, the issue is when you take a step back, yes, obviously what they did is wrong. Yes, obviously what they did needs to be punished.

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Yes, obviously at some point God will come back and God is going to measure out all of these things, but then the issue is that belongs to God and it doesn't necessarily belong to you in the here and now, and it's not your job to fix it all right now.

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And so to the extent to which you as an individual are trying to take all of these things in your hand and fix all these things, you're gonna be characterized by the first list.

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You're gonna be characterized by the bitterness and wrath and the anger and slander and clamor along with all malice.

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So whether that takes a quiet form, whether that takes a loud form, whether it takes a passive form, like you're passively withholding parts of yourself from individuals in order to punish them, or you're actively taking your punishment out upon them.

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What we're talking about here is we're talking about a text telling us to learn to take those impulses that we have for vengeance and justice and to not live vicariously through other people and watch them do it because we secretly wish we could.

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The issue is that we're being told to learn to kill those things about ourself, to hate those things about ourself, to loathe those things about ourself, and to put on the opposite traits, which are in this text, be kind to one another, tenderhearted.

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Now the word kind here basically is a word that means benevolent. And a benevolent person is a person who is giving to other people what they don't deserve.

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And this word tenderhearted is a word, and they're both close synonyms in certain ways, but then tenderhearted is a person who has tender feelings for someone, compassionate feelings for one another.

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So you have two words here, be kind to one another, and then to be tenderhearted. And you're living in a world right now where these things are exceedingly rare.

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I mean, particularly when it comes to if you're in a relationship that's filled with conflict, if you're in a relationship that's filled with all the first list, it could be that the idea of experiencing kindness or tenderheartedness from the other person is one of those things which is basically non -existent, like impossible to imagine, impossible to comprehend.

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But then most relationships, whether you're talking about marriage relationships, whether you're talking about family relationships, or you're talking about church relationships, most relationships don't start out at the outset like an absolute train wreck, do they?

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I mean, you can think about most relationships that you enter in, there's some sort of draw to that relationship, there's something that's pulling you towards it.

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And often the thing that's pulling you towards a relationship of whatever kind, whatever we're talking about, is that you experience some sort of kindness, you experience some sort of tenderheartedness that is somewhat infectious.

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You know, I mean, just think about romantic relationships. Most people are on their best behavior at the very beginning, they're trying to put a good foot forward, they're trying to be the best version of themselves, they're trying to be thoughtful, they're trying to be sweet, they're trying to be kind, they're trying to be whatever else.

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And then over time, what happens is that all begins to change. And then what most people assume is that, oh, they really fooled you, right?

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Now, I mean, there may be some of that, that people put their best foot forward at the beginning stages and then with some kind of secret plot, like malicious plot to show you what they really are, you know, in a few years.

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There could be some of that, but I mean, for the most part, most people start out being motivated by being kind and most of that's pretty genuine.

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And most of that's real. And then a lot of that is when someone is kind to you, it's the easiest thing in the world to be kind to them back.

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But then when someone is filled with the other list, right? Let all bitterness, wrath, anger, and clamor, slander be put away from you along with all malice.

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When they're filled with that, it's one of the hardest things in the world to be kind to that kind of person.

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So it's very difficult to be kind to someone who's filled with bitterness. I mean, just think about what that would look like.

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I mean, think about what it would look like to try to be kind to someone who is so bitter at you because of like, you know, they have 10 misunderstandings in their mind in which they've thought about everything you've done and they put it in the worst possible light and they jumped to a bunch of conclusions and there's no ability that you have whatsoever to sit down with them and explain to them why everything that they think about you and believe about you is just based on a bunch of nonsense, right?

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So, but then imagine that person is so bitter towards you, they don't really want to look at you, they don't want to be nice to you, right?

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You try to hug them, it's like you're hugging a board or something like that. Every time you talk to them, every time you say anything to them, what comes out is their mouth is full of bitterness and curses.

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It's just accusations that come out against you, names that come out against you that are all just distortions of actually who you are.

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So like the issue is, it's very hard as a human being without having the spirit of God at work in you to return that kind of thing with kindness.

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So that's bitterness. I mean, but think about like the wrath and the anger, right? So like you're living in a world right now to where we have zero tolerance whatsoever for anything that could possibly be put under a label of abusive, right?

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So we're so sensitive to the word abuse right now that we have a whole category of emotional abuse that we've invented in order to expand the semantic domain of that word that we're supposed to treat as if it's the same thing as physical abuse, whatever that is, because that could mean a lot of different things too.

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But my point is to say that we're so sensitive towards this kind of topic in general that the vast majority of people, they believe that a person is morally justified in leaving a relationship if they're verbally abused, despite the fact that you can read the

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Bible and there's no like exception clause for verbal abuse given in there. And then when I say that right now, you may be mad at me.

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Like you may be mad at me right now or tempted to be mad at me right now because I'm justifying abuse, because I'm just saying that whatever verbal abuse is, it's not a valid reason to leave a marriage.

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But then when you actually think about what verbal abuse is, what is it? It's like wrath, anger, clamor, slander.

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I mean, the Bible has words for these kinds of things. And can you imagine like if you ever have a moment of wrath and anger and persistent clamor in your life, you're living in a world right now that thinks, well, you need to divorce someone because no one deserves to be treated that way because that's mean, right?

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And that's wrong and that's psychologically damaging. And basically you're just like, we're treated as if we're all just basically have the emotional fortitude of a bunch of five -year -olds and you can't deal with anything that's mean or you can't deal with anything that's unpleasant in your life.

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And if you think that way, the problem is to say, I don't know what Bible you're reading because look at what's actually happening.

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And this passage is saying, be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another as God and Christ has given to you.

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And it doesn't say be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another as God and Christ forgave you so long as they're kind to you and tenderhearted and forgiving to you.

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It says, get rid of all the bitterness and wrath and clamor and slander and you be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another.

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And the idea, if you're going to actually be forgiving to one another, the only way you're going to be forgiving to them is if you have something actually to forgive, right?

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Like meaning they have to do you wrong. They have to mistreat you in order for you to be kind, tenderhearted, forgiving to them, right?

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Now you can be kind to them without them sinning against you but then the whole tenderhearted, forgiving them assumes that they've done something wrong.

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And we're reading a book that tells you to be like Jesus. And what does it mean to be like Jesus? To be like Jesus means that Jesus came to earth and he was abused in every single way imaginable, died on a cross to forgive us of our sins.

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And he didn't just say, hey, I don't deserve to be treated like that. If you're going to treat me like that, I'm going to want nothing to do with you.

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He came to earth and says, and he was silent, like a sheep silent before his shears, put to death on the cross.

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And he modeled all of these things to us. But here's what I'm saying, like being kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another as God has

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Christ has forgave you. Like that's an essential component of for what forgiveness even looks like.

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Essential component of what forgiveness looks like is to figure out how to put to death your desire for vengeance.

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Trying to figure out what it means to put to death the wrath and the anger, the injustice of it all.

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And to learn to not just treat people with kindness and be tenderhearted towards them when they do everything the way you want them to do, but to learn how to show them unmerited favor and compassion is undeserved.

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And as I said, so like most people, when we start out relationships, you enter into relationships because people are on the best footing, right?

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They're putting their best foot forward. And what happens over time is that what you realize in the course of relationships, whether you're talking about church relationships, like you go to a new church, you think, hey, everyone is nice and everyone is happy and it's all gonna be wonderful.

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It's all gonna be great. But then the problem is that we're all sinners. We're all gonna sin against each other. And if you don't know how to deal with it, right?

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If you don't know what to do with that when people sin against you, what ends up happening is you might channel it in different directions.

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You might channel it in the bitterness direction. So they sin against me, that's morally wrong. I need to punish it. I'm gonna be bitter towards them.

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I'm gonna take a step back, put up my gargoyles, put up my boundaries, because I don't need to be hurt.

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You may go the bitter route. You may go to angry route where you're just yelling and screaming. And you may go to verbal, like slander route where you're leveling accusations.

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But then what happens over the course of relationships is at the very beginning, you have two people who are kind and tenderhearted to each other because there's nothing to forgive.

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But then once you start discovering things that need forgiveness, then what do you do? Like you're gonna camp out in this desire for vengeance.

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And then when both of you camp out in this posture of vengeance, what ends up happening is you have people who are feeding off of each other, right?

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So if you're gonna be cold and distant to me, I'm gonna be cold and distant to you, or I'm gonna be loud and mad at you because you're cold and distant towards me.

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So the end result is, I mean, you may be like 10 years into that. After 10 years into that, all that's happening conceptually is you have a lot of people who've never learned how to be kind and tenderhearted to a person that's done wrong to them.

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And so then you have the original offense with one person responds with vengeance. And then when this person sees them responding with vengeance, they respond to them with vengeance, right?

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And then this person responds to that response with more vengeance, and then they're responding to them with more vengeance.

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And pretty soon you're in a downward spiral of you got like 100 things that you're mad about that you don't know how to deal with because you never learned how to deal with one of them in the right way.

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Does that make sense? And so what we're talking about today is well, what is forgiveness? And we're gonna talk about, well, what does it mean?

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Well, how do you fix it all? Well, you're not gonna fix 100 things at once, but you don't have to fix 100 problems at once.

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You just have to figure out how to fix one of them. Do you understand what I'm saying? Because if you can figure out how to respond to someone else's sin by being kind and tenderhearted, if you can do it once, you could do it 100 times.

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Do you understand? Like the issue is you don't have to resolve every problem. You have to figure out how to respond to one of them once.

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And once you learn that and internalize that, then you can deal with the rest of them. So what is forgiveness?

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Well, forgiveness means replacing vengeance with kindness. Secondly, forgiveness means choosing to actively forgive.

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Now, when people think about what it means to forgive, they often in their mind immediately, they think of forgiveness as forgetfulness, meaning like if I'm gonna forgive someone, what it means to forgive you is to try to get to a point where it's just like put out of my mind, like as if I'm some sort of computer programmer or something like that.

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And you can just delete the file in my brain and it's gone and it's never gonna come back. And that's kind of what people are expecting.

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And then to the extent to which it's not like that for them in their experience, they don't quite know what to do because what happens is when someone sins against you, we're taught to treat that in like the most monstrous terms and all of us really need to take a step back and gain some sort of sense of reality here and quit watching so many movies.

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And probably, I mean, the primary theme of every romantic comedy is essentially along these lines is that the two people meet each other and then one person did something wrong and it's like, oh, how could you treat me that way?

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I don't even know who you are anymore. And then it's just, the resolution of the story is everyone realizes it was all a big misunderstanding and goes about their day.

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But the problem is if you actually read the Bible and you think about what the Bible says, the Bible says that human beings are sinners.

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The heart's deceitful and desperately wicked. Who could know it? God destroyed the earth at the time of the flood because he looked at the earth and he said, every single thought and intention of their heart was only evil continually.

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Sin comes natural to us. I mean, it's the air we breathe. There's not probably a few moments you could go without some part of you, whether or not your motive's slightly off, your desires are slightly off, your intentions are slightly off.

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I mean, sin is just an active part of who we are. And it happens. We're gonna sin over and over and over again.

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And the issue is a lot of people are shocked when other people sin against them when they should be thinking, hey, why wouldn't you sin against me in the way that you are?

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Because you're a fellow sinner just like me and we need Jesus to forgive us because if he doesn't forgive us, we're in trouble.

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But then the issue is, because we blow this way out of proportion and we don't have a right perspective of the nature of sin and the difficulties that we experience, then when people sin against us, we think, well, if I'm gonna forgive them,

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I just have to kind of delete it from my brain because it's just so monstrous, it's so evil, it's so wicked and I don't know that I could get over it and how can

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I ever trust this person again and everything else? But then the problem is to say that, biblically speaking, forgiveness isn't like that.

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I mean, it's not something that just passively happens. If you're to forgive someone, you're not just praying in your mind, hey

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God, take the memories away because they're too hard and they're too painful, I don't know how to deal with them. Forgiveness is actually a choice that you're making.

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You're making a choice to forgive this person. It's not something that you're passively doing that you're just gonna fall into, it's just gonna happen.

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Forgiveness is not forgetfulness, okay? So Micah 7, 19 says that God will, again, have compassion on us.

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He will tread our iniquities underfoot. You will cast all of our sins into the depths of the sea.

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So our forgiveness is modeled after God's forgiveness and the way that God forgives is he takes our iniquities and he casts them into the sea, right?

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If I wasn't just passively deleted, he takes our sins, he casts them into the sea. Psalm 103, 12 says, as far as the east is from the west, so far does he remove our transgressions from us.

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The picture of God's forgiveness is God taking our sin and tossing it away actively as something that he's doing, right?

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None of this is passive. So you talk about what forgiveness is, it's an intentional, volitional act of the will where we're taking the sins of another people and we're physically distancing ourself from them.

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Forgiveness fundamentally, essentially, if you wanna know what forgiveness is, forgiveness means choosing to actively forgive someone, okay?

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So forgiveness is a promise that we're making to remember sins no more. Isaiah 43, 25,

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I am he who blocks out your transgressions for my own sake and I will not remember your sins.

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So notice how he didn't say, I will forget your sins. He says, I will not remember your sins. Jeremiah 31, 34, and no longer shall each one teach his neighbor and each his brother saying, know the

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Lord for they shall all know me from the least of them to the greatest declares the Lord for I will forgive their iniquities and I will remember their sins no more.

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So forgiveness is a promise to remember sins no more. So what does that mean, to not remember sins anymore?

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It doesn't mean to forget them, it means to actively put them out of your mind, right? To actively choose to not dwell on them, to actively choose to not rehearse them to other people, right, to actively choose to not rehearse them to the person who has offended you.

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So when you think about forgiveness, you're thinking about a threefold commitment that we're making, we're making a threefold commitment.

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When you're saying, I forgive you, you're making a threefold promise. You're promising one,

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I'm not gonna bring the matter up again to you in a non -edifying way, right? So I'm not gonna bring it up to you in a non -edifying way.

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That means I'm not gonna keep a record of wrongdoings, I'm not gonna have a list of all the ways in which you've wronged me that I'm gonna keep on bashing you over the head with.

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I'm not gonna bring it up to you anymore. That doesn't necessarily mean forgetting, that means I'm not gonna bring it up to you.

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If I have a thought in my brain that I need to bring this up to you in order to punish you, that would be bitterness, right?

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That'd be a definition of bitterness. I'm not going to express that. I'm gonna shut my mouth and keep it to myself because you know what?

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You don't actually have to say everything that you think in your brain, right? So forgiveness is a promise. I'm not gonna bring it up to you in a non -edifying way.

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Now, when I said in a non -edifying way, what I mean by that is to say there's a way to talk about what just happened with a plan to fix it.

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So I mean, often guys are like this, where they're like, hey, I asked you to forgive me, so we don't need to talk about it anymore.

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And then the wife is just looking at them saying, yeah, okay, I forgive you, but can we figure out how to not have this same thing happen over and over again, please?

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So yes, I forgive you, but we need to resolve it because it keeps on happening and that's part of dealing with it.

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So when I'm talking about not bringing up in a non -edifying way, I'm not talking about saying, hey, we need to discuss a plan to not make this happen anymore, right?

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So I mean, you can imagine the husband comes home drunk, yelling and screaming at everyone, taking his temper out on everyone.

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And then when he sobers up in the morning saying, hey baby, I'm sorry, will you forgive me? Hey kids, I'm sorry, will you forgive me?

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Which would be a good step. A lot of times people just like pretend it didn't happen and then do nice things for other people instead of actually asking forgiveness.

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As a Christian, everyone should forgive him, but then there's a really real conversation to say, hey, yeah, we forgive, we forgive, but this happens every

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Friday after payday. So can we figure out how to not have this happen again? Can we talk to someone? Can we do something to figure out the plan?

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What are the steps to where we're not just rehearsing the same thing over and over again? But beyond that, yes, no, forgiveness is a threefold commitment to say,

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I'm not going to bring this up in a non -edifying way, meaning like there's a vast difference between saying, hey, it's done, it's over with,

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I forgive you. We need to get some help maybe and figure out what to do with this. And then to say, hey, I forgive you, but you're in a doghouse now and you're gonna have to buy me some food or something and let me go on a shopping spree in order to make up for this and make me feel better about it.

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And then, hey, remember what you did? You still owe me. And like trying to use it and work it to get what you want out of someone or whatever else.

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But anyways, I will not bring the matter up again in a non -edifying way. I'll not bring up the matter to others like in a non -edifying way, that's gossip.

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All right, so you're choosing to remember this no more. If you chose to remember this no more, you know you don't have to vent about it to other people.

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You don't have to tell other people. You don't have to gossip about other people. You don't have to fill their mind with all this stuff that this person is doing against you in order to make them look like an evil villain and you to look like a paragon of righteousness, of virtue.

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You don't have to do that, right? So if you forgive someone, you're making a commitment, say, I'm not gonna bring it up to you in a non -edifying way.

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I'm not gonna keep on talking about it to other people. The only reason why you wanna talk about it to other people is because this is your way of making yourself look good and this other person look bad and tearing them down and expressing the bitterness in your heart towards them.

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Now, there's obviously a time and a place to get counsel, right? But then you know that you're trying to get counsel when you actually want advice or help about how to deal with what you're talking about, right?

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Like meaning, you know, often when people come to me and they're sharing certain things to me about what other people are doing in a certain context,

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I mean, for the most part, I try to say, hey, let's get the other person here and talk about it. But then if they shelter it, like here's the thing, if they kind of make it vague and say, hey, what do you do in this situation?

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Like the issue is I feel a lot better about giving answers if I know that they actually want help.

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But then if I'm in a situation where someone just seems to be wanting to get things off their chest and then any attempt

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I might make to offer suggestions or alternative ways of thinking is met with frustration and irritation, then

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I know that the purpose of this was not to get advice or not to be edifying in any way.

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This is just an exercise of expressing bitterness. So I will not bring the matter up again to you in a non -edifying way.

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I'm not going to bring the matter up again to others in a non -edifying way, gossip. I'm not going to bring the matter up to myself in a non -edifying way, meaning like this is the promise you're making to remember sins no more.

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And that's different than saying I'm going to forget. What that's saying is that every time you think about this, you're going to put it out of your mind.

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Meaning what that looks like is to say, I said I was going to forgive him, so I don't need to dwell on this in my brain anymore.

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And what you actually need to do in that moment is to say, Lord, forgive me for continuing to dwell on this in my brain.

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What you don't need to be saying is, Lord, it was so bad. It was so hard.

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I don't deserve to be treated that way. Like, I mean, if you're praying like that to God, like you need to snap some sense into yourself.

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Like you need to get your brain to like give your, you know, the whiny other part of your brain like a verbal backhand or something like that and say, like snap out of it.

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Like God doesn't, you don't sit there and whine and fuss to God about like all the things that people have done wrong to you.

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Every time I have those thoughts of moments of self -pity in my brain, the next thought is to say, man, you are, this is ridiculous.

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Like, do you have no sense of self -awareness about all the ways in which you sin against God every single day over and over again?

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And you know what the most beneficial thing for you to do right now would be? The most beneficial thing for you to do right now would be not to rehearse the, you know, the awful sins of other people against you, but to wake up and see that your own desperate need of forgiveness, because God wants you to work on that much more than He wants you to, you know, sit there and whine and fuss about all the pain that you're feeling with everyone else.

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But like the issue is like in your mind, you can develop the discipline in your mind to say, I'm gonna remember this no more.

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And every time it comes back, that's another moment to say, hey, Lord, will you forgive me? Because my heart wants to keep on dwelling on this and I need you to help me put it out of my brain.

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And I'm wrong, like I'm actually wrong for keeping on remembering it. I need you to help me push it out of there and fight it.

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And the way that you fight it is that every time you remember again, you don't do the woe is me

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Eeyore thing. You say, Lord, will you forgive me because I'm still holding on to it. And you know what? If you keep on saying,

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Lord, forgive me because I keep on holding on to this and you do it over and over and over again, pretty soon it'll be gone.

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You understand? Like that's the way you fight it. So you do that as often as it takes until it goes away, until you're not dwelling on it anymore.

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And then when it does come back, what you're thinking is not, oh, I don't deserve to be treated that way.

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It's like, Lord, please help them to repent for their own sake, not just for my sake, for their own sake about this kind of thing.

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So forgiveness is threefold commitment. I'm not bringing the matter up again to you in a non -edifying way.

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I'm not gonna bring it up to others in a non -edifying way. I'm not bringing up the matter again to myself in a non -edifying way.

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And then finally, forgiveness is based on the work of God in Christ. And so why do we do this?

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Why do we forgive other people? The reason why we forgive other people, as I said, I mean, it's not just because it'll make your life better, right?

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I mean, you could pull up lack of forgiveness on the internet right now, and you're gonna get internet article after internet article after internet article in your search, and you may not wanna do it now, but I mean, just do it after church.

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You'll see what I'm talking about. There's gonna be article after article and the main theme of every single one of those articles is gonna be the psychological ramifications personally for not forgiving other people.

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And they're gonna be trying to tell you over and over again why it would be beneficial for you and beneficial to other people to forgive.

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But then the issue is that the foundational reason as Christians we forgive other people is not first and foremost because it's a miserable way of living life to walk in bitterness, even though that's true.

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And you know people like this. You know people who are walking in bitterness and their lives are a train wreck. They look miserable.

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They're miserable to be around and everyone suffers from walking into the cloud of darkness that is their life, right?

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So you know people just like that. You know that that's not a fun way to live, but the issue is forgiveness is based on the work of God and Christ.

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Like, why do we forgive? We forgive because God in Christ forgave you. That's why we forgive. Because the creator of the universe came to earth to take on flesh and dwell among us and to live a perfect life that we could never live and to take the sin that we deserve on himself and release that from us, okay?

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So we forgive based on what Jesus did. Like, that's the only reason we have. That's the only motivation we have.

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I mean, if all we are is just matter in motion, if all you are is just like an amoeba that somehow randomly over the course of time got a little more complex despite the fact that there's no scientific evidence whatsoever of macro evolution, that simple life forms can evolve into more complex life forms despite the fact that there's no observable science that ever demonstrates that, if that were true, like if it were true that you're just a product of random time and chance, that's all you are, you have no motivation to forgive.

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Why do you have any reason to forgive? It's might makes right. It's live and let live, right? It's eat, drink, be merry for tomorrow you die.

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It's survival of the fittest, isn't it? I mean, that's the way animals work. When young lions come into the pride and take out the old guy, they don't care too much about the fact that that old guy has feelings too, right?

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They don't care about that. They see, hey, we gotta get, there's a bunch of lady lions here. This is an obstacle in the way, so we need to take them out.

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But if that's all you are, then there's no reason to even care, like why do you care about lack of forgiveness?

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If you wanna take vengeance, take vengeance. Who cares? Like that's the way it works. But then the issue is we believe that God became man.

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If you're a Christian, you believe that God became man and he died on the cross to forgive you. And that has ramifications for how you live your life.

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Matthew 18, 21, Peter came up to the Lord. He said, Lord, how often will my brother sin against me and I forgive him?

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He says, as many as seven times. So Peter thought he was being generous, right? He says, many as seven times should I forgive?

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Jesus said to him, I do not say to you seven times, but 77 times, like 70 times seven.

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And Jesus' point is not 490 times a day. Do you forgive your brother of the same sin?

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His point is to say there's no limit, right? Therefore, the kingdom of heaven may be compared to a king who wished to settle accounts with his servants.

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When he began to settle, one of them was brought to him, which owed him 10 ,000 talents. I don't know if you looked into the math on that, but 10 ,000 talents is basically an incomprehensible amount.

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You're talking about tens of billions of dollars, like more money that you'll ever see in your life, like more money than you'll ever be able to work off ever, right, in multiple lifetimes, probably.

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You're talking about a sum that you're never gonna be able to repay. It's meant to be a ridiculous sum. And since he could not pay, his master ordered him to be sold with his wife and children and all he had in payment to be made.

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So the servant fell on his knees, imploring him, have patience with me and I'll pay you everything. And out of pity, the master of that servant released him and forgave him the debt.

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He forgave him that incomprehensible amount. But when the same servant went out and found his fellow servants who owed him 100 denarii, 100 denarii is a day's wage.

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So you're talking about an incomprehensible sum that you're never gonna be able to make in multiple lifetimes versus 100 days worth of labor, which is not insignificant, right?

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It's a third of a year's worth of work. It's not insignificant. Maybe that would be something like, I mean, depending on a person's salary, anywhere from like 15, possibly to $20 ,000 or whatever it is.

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The issue is that's a third of a year's worth of work. When the same servant went out, he found one of his fellow servants who owed him that and seizing him, he began to choke him, saying, pay me what you owe.

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So his fellow servant fell down and pleaded with him. And this ought to have been, in his mind, an indication that he was in a similar moment than what he was just at, right?

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He began to choke him. The fellow servant said, have patience with me and I'll pay you. When he refused, he went and he put him in prison and told him he should pay the debt.

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When his fellow servants saw what had taken place, they were greatly distressed and they went and reported to their master all that had taken place.

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And his master summoned him and said to him, you wicked servant, I forgave you all that debt because you pleaded with me.

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And should you not have had mercy on your fellow servant as I have mercy on you. So in anger, his master delivered him to the jailers until he should pay all his debt.

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And here's the issue, why do we forgive? So also will my heavenly father do to every one of you if you do not forgive your brother from the heart.

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This has been another episode of Bible Bashed. We hope you have been encouraged and blessed through our discussion.

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