I've been studying forgiveness for quite a long time, off and on, and felt like I was beginning to understand it fairly well, but there were still some things that confused me about it. So I asked the Lord to help me understand it and He really did! I was amazed because it seemed like things I'd read so often before, suddenly became quite clear to me! I realized that a lot of what we think about forgiveness is actually from the world and not God which is why we tend to get confused about it. So I'd like to share what I've been learning with you.
Like everything else, in order to learn about forgiveness, we need to look at how God forgives and what He says about it. One of the first things we will see is that forgiveness has absolutely nothing to do with our feelings. Forgiveness, like love, is a choice. It is not a feeling. In Ephesians 4:32 we're told that we're to forgive others the way Christ forgives us, so as I said, we need to see how God forgives to know what we need to do, when we need to do it, and how to do it. One of the first things we notice about what God does is that He tells us when He forgives us. He doesn't let us wonder about it, He comes straight out and tells us so and tells us that He won't hold our sins against us now or ever again. In fact, He promises he won't hold our sins against us.
Isaiah 43:25 —“I, even I, am he who blots out your transgressions, for my own sake, and remembers your sins no more. *
He actually says He won't "remember" them anymore, as in the verse above, but that's impossible since God knows everything, so what does He mean by that? What He's saying is that He promises that He won't bring them up to us or anyone else ever again; He won't beat us up about them or remind us of them. What does that remind you of? For me, it reminds me of how he loves us. He tells us that godly love, the way He loves, doesn't keep records of sins or wrongs, remember?. It's in 1 Cor 13:5. So when God says He won't remember them, He's saying that He won't bring them up to us or anyone else ever again. They're are as though they never happened.
This also reminds me of something else and I bet it does you too. There is someone who loves to beat us up about our sins, and who constantly 'reminds" God about our sins - Satan! The Bible tells us that Satan is our accuser and goes before the Lord continually accusing us of our sins.
Revelation 12:10 —Then I heard a loud voice in heaven say: “Now have come the salvation and the power and the kingdom of our God, and the authority of his Christ. For the accuser of our brothers, who accuses them before our God day and night, has been hurled down. *
But our Lord is there too and every time Satan accuses us, the Lord says, "Paid for! and clean by the Word I've spoken to them!" and the case is dismissed!
Now we can easily see how each side handles sin as far as forgiveness goes. God doesn't beat us up with our sins. He loves us and when we ask, He forgives our sins and never brings them up or uses them against us again.
Obviously now we're talking about people who are saved right? God is willing to forgive everyone, but there is only one way that can happen, and that's to accept His gift of salvation. The only way an unsaved person can be forgiven of something is if they first accept His gift of salvation. Then all their sins are forgiven, just as ours are. After that, if they sin, they know they are not going to be judged for their sins because their sins were paid for already just as ours were. Now if they sin, like us, they're looking to restore their relationship with the Lord.
Please make sure you understand the difference there. Before we are saved, we're God's enemy and are under judgment for our sins and will ultimately go to Hell for them. Once we accept His gift of salvation though, we are no longer His enemy. We become His children. Now, instead of treating us the way a judge would treat a criminal, He treats us as His beloved children. So now when we sin, we aren't looking at a sentence to Hell, we're looking at a relationship with our Father that needs to be restored. Sin causes us to lose the peace we have in our relationship with the Lord because we feel guilty. So when we ask for forgiveness, He cleanses our consciences and totally wipes the sin away, restoring our peace with Him.
Let me repeat this one more time. The only way an unsaved person can be "forgiven" of anything is if they first accept God's gift of salvation and come to Christ. We'll go into this more later, too but I did want to make that clear from the start.
Since we are to forgive others the way God forgives us, we too are to "not remember" their sins against us when we've forgiven someone. That means that we promise not to bring their sin up to them, or anyone else, which includes ourselves, ever again. Remember though, this has nothing to do with feelings. This is about making a decision, a choice, of not thinking or speaking about something again. Yep, there's that nasty word, "thinking" again too. And you're right, that means we're probably going to have to take our thoughts captive when we have to forgive someone of something that's really hurt us, in order to keep that promise. Keep in mind too that we're promising God that we will do this, so it's not something we can say lightly and then forget about.
When God says, "I forgive you", it means a LOT, and He expects it to mean a lot when we say it too.
Now, I want to give you one other thing to think about today. When we talk about forgiveness, we're talking about forgiving sin that's been done against you personally. We're not talking about someone who has committed a sin against you, and has not repented of that sin. God does not forgive those who have not repented and neither do we. We're to forgive the way He does and He even tells us how to do that, and it involves some work on our part. For one thing, He tells us to go to that person and tell them that they've sinned against you! He doesn't say to wait till they come to you and say they're sorry, He says, go now and rebuke him!
I really love how one of my books explains this. They put it in such a way that it's easy to remember and understand and is kind of cute
. So I'm going to just quote that for you and let you chew on this today and we'll discuss it more tomorrow. here's the verses we're looking at now:
Luke 17:1–10 —Jesus said to his disciples: “Things that cause people to sin are bound to come, but woe to that person through whom they come. *It would be better for him to be thrown into the sea with a millstone tied around his neck than for him to cause one of these little ones to sin. *So watch yourselves. “If your brother sins, rebuke him, and if he repents, forgive him. *If he sins against you seven times in a day, and seven times comes back to you and says, ‘I repent,’ forgive him.” *The apostles said to the Lord, “Increase our faith!” *He replied, “If you have faith as small as a mustard seed, you can say to this mulberry tree, ‘Be uprooted and planted in the sea,’ and it will obey you. *“Suppose one of you had a servant plowing or looking after the sheep. Would he say to the servant when he comes in from the field, ‘Come along now and sit down to eat’? *Would he not rather say, ‘Prepare my supper, get yourself ready and wait on me while I eat and drink; after that you may eat and drink’? *Would he thank the servant because he did what he was told to do? *So you also, when you have done everything you were told to do, should say, ‘We are unworthy servants; we have only done our duty.’ ” *
A Warning
The words, “Be on your guard” (v. 3 ) may seem an unusual introduction to a discussion of forgiveness, yet that is how Jesus began. He must have had a reason. Think about it for a minute.
Renowned preacher Charles Spurgeon, who had a very serious case of gout, was once approached by a man who claimed that his rheumatism was more painful than Spurgeon’s gout. Now, you simply didn’t say things like that to Spurgeon and get away with it! Spurgeon replied: “I’ll tell you the difference between rheumatism and gout: Put your finger into a vise and turn it until you can’t stand the pain; that’s rheumatism. Now, give it three more turns; that’s gout!”
Jesus warns you because in verse 3, there is both rheumatism and gout. In verses 3–10 there is some of the most difficult teaching in the New Testament. It is not difficult to understand, just difficult to put into practice. Jesus warns you that what He is about to say will be hard to swallow. So Christian, get ready for it: “Be on your guard.”
The Rheumatism
“If your brother sins, rebuke him; if he repents, forgive him.” Those are difficult words. The first is hard, extremely hard, and the second even more so. But, let’s look first at the rheumatism: “ If your brother sins, rebuke him.”
As verse 4 makes clear, the sin about which Jesus is speaking is a sin against you. The question arises immediately; How do you handle sins against you? Think about that a bit. How do you?
Here you are, minding your own business, provoking no one to anger, just surveying the scene. All of a sudden, literally or figuratively (probably the latter) your brother (or sister) comes along, stomps all over your toes, and disappears over the hill. There you stand—through no fault of your own—with ten toes flattened out like ten silver dollar pancakes. They hurt! Now, what do you do next?
Well, some begin to whine and feel sorry for themselves. They look for the syrup and pour it all over their feet. They hold a pity party and invite others to join in. But that isn’t what Jesus said to do.
Others get furious. They storm about making their wrath known, and either go after the brother to tell him off or charge around their home kicking chairs or children instead. Neither is that which Jesus said to do.
A third group, more pious than the rest, go around the congregation displaying their flattened toes to as many as will view them, saying, “Now, you understand that I don’t mean to gossip in telling you what so-and-so did. I’m just warning you so that you can protect yourself from such injury in the future.” But Jesus didn’t tell you to do that either.
What did He say?
Jesus says, “Rebuke him.” That’s rheumatism!
What He tells you to do is go after the brother, take him (gently) by the collar, and say, “Brother, look at my toes!”
Notice, Jesus doesn’t allow you to go tell others about it, to sit in the corner and feel sorry for yourself, to take it out on others in your vicinity, or even to tell the elders. He says go to the one who tread on your toes, and talk to him about it.
Why You Should Go
“But why should I go?” you ask. “I didn’t start anything. I was an innocent bystander, just surveying the scene when he (or she) came along and flattened my toes. Shouldn’t he come to me?”
That is a reasonable question and one that many persons ask. The trouble is that most of them answer it the wrong way. Jesus is saying, in effect, that whenever your brother or sister wrongs you, that obligates you to take action. No matter how innocent you may have been, you are obligated to go to him.
“But isn’t he obligated to come to me? I don’t see why his sin against me obligates me to act; let him come to me.”
Yes, as a matter of fact, if he has sinned against you, he is obligated to come to you. But that is another passage, to which we are not currently referring (Matt. 5:23–24). The command in Luke is for you to go to him. Both commands are important; you should go and he should go. Ideally, you ought to meet each other on the way.
“Well, if he’s obligated to go, I don’t see why I must do so too.”
Let me try to explain. You haven’t seen your friend Jane for several months; she’s been away traveling. This morning you see her at church, seated on the opposite side of the building. You can’t wait till the service is over to talk to her. At the conclusion of the service, you rush around the pews and happily call to her, “Jane! Jane! It’s so good to see you!” But Jane sticks her nose into the air, turns on her heel, and sails out of the church as rapidly as possible, without so much as a “how do you do?”
You stand there hurt and perplexed. If you respond as many do, you’ll say, “Hurrruuummmph! If that’s the way she’s going to act, then so be it! I can wait till she comes down off her high horse and wants to talk. Then maybe I’ll be ready to do so and maybe I won’t!”
But, you see, Jesus won’t let you do that. He tells you to go after her and show her your toes. Suppose you do. Having recovered from the shock, you say to yourself, “Something’s wrong here. I’ve got to get to the bottom of it. I can’t have this happen to Jane and me.” So you hightail it out of the church after her. There she is over at her car. You go over and you say, “Jane! What’s wrong? I was so glad to see you home again that I rushed over to see you after church, but when I called to you, you stuck your nose in the air and left. What’s wrong?”
Perhaps Jane’s response will be something like this: “Oh no! Mary, I didn’t even hear or see you! you see, I caught a bad cold on my trip abroad, and the pastor preached forever today, and I left my tissues in the car, and I thought for sure I was going to drip all over my new dress and my Bible. That’s why I put my nose back and rushed out here to get those tissues. I was so preoccupied with all that I didn’t see or hear you.”
“Stupid illustration,”you say.
Yes, but I chose it because I have known case after case where friendships have been destroyed over misunderstandings just as stupid as that. Don’t you see? You are obligated to go because the brother or sister may not know that he (she) stepped on your toes. It may all be a misunderstanding. So, the rule is:
The one with the sore toes goes because he’s the one who always knows.
Adams, J. E. (1989). From forgiven to forgiving
Like everything else, in order to learn about forgiveness, we need to look at how God forgives and what He says about it. One of the first things we will see is that forgiveness has absolutely nothing to do with our feelings. Forgiveness, like love, is a choice. It is not a feeling. In Ephesians 4:32 we're told that we're to forgive others the way Christ forgives us, so as I said, we need to see how God forgives to know what we need to do, when we need to do it, and how to do it. One of the first things we notice about what God does is that He tells us when He forgives us. He doesn't let us wonder about it, He comes straight out and tells us so and tells us that He won't hold our sins against us now or ever again. In fact, He promises he won't hold our sins against us.
Isaiah 43:25 —“I, even I, am he who blots out your transgressions, for my own sake, and remembers your sins no more. *
He actually says He won't "remember" them anymore, as in the verse above, but that's impossible since God knows everything, so what does He mean by that? What He's saying is that He promises that He won't bring them up to us or anyone else ever again; He won't beat us up about them or remind us of them. What does that remind you of? For me, it reminds me of how he loves us. He tells us that godly love, the way He loves, doesn't keep records of sins or wrongs, remember?. It's in 1 Cor 13:5. So when God says He won't remember them, He's saying that He won't bring them up to us or anyone else ever again. They're are as though they never happened.
This also reminds me of something else and I bet it does you too. There is someone who loves to beat us up about our sins, and who constantly 'reminds" God about our sins - Satan! The Bible tells us that Satan is our accuser and goes before the Lord continually accusing us of our sins.
Revelation 12:10 —Then I heard a loud voice in heaven say: “Now have come the salvation and the power and the kingdom of our God, and the authority of his Christ. For the accuser of our brothers, who accuses them before our God day and night, has been hurled down. *
But our Lord is there too and every time Satan accuses us, the Lord says, "Paid for! and clean by the Word I've spoken to them!" and the case is dismissed!
Now we can easily see how each side handles sin as far as forgiveness goes. God doesn't beat us up with our sins. He loves us and when we ask, He forgives our sins and never brings them up or uses them against us again.
Obviously now we're talking about people who are saved right? God is willing to forgive everyone, but there is only one way that can happen, and that's to accept His gift of salvation. The only way an unsaved person can be forgiven of something is if they first accept His gift of salvation. Then all their sins are forgiven, just as ours are. After that, if they sin, they know they are not going to be judged for their sins because their sins were paid for already just as ours were. Now if they sin, like us, they're looking to restore their relationship with the Lord.
Please make sure you understand the difference there. Before we are saved, we're God's enemy and are under judgment for our sins and will ultimately go to Hell for them. Once we accept His gift of salvation though, we are no longer His enemy. We become His children. Now, instead of treating us the way a judge would treat a criminal, He treats us as His beloved children. So now when we sin, we aren't looking at a sentence to Hell, we're looking at a relationship with our Father that needs to be restored. Sin causes us to lose the peace we have in our relationship with the Lord because we feel guilty. So when we ask for forgiveness, He cleanses our consciences and totally wipes the sin away, restoring our peace with Him.
Let me repeat this one more time. The only way an unsaved person can be "forgiven" of anything is if they first accept God's gift of salvation and come to Christ. We'll go into this more later, too but I did want to make that clear from the start.
Since we are to forgive others the way God forgives us, we too are to "not remember" their sins against us when we've forgiven someone. That means that we promise not to bring their sin up to them, or anyone else, which includes ourselves, ever again. Remember though, this has nothing to do with feelings. This is about making a decision, a choice, of not thinking or speaking about something again. Yep, there's that nasty word, "thinking" again too. And you're right, that means we're probably going to have to take our thoughts captive when we have to forgive someone of something that's really hurt us, in order to keep that promise. Keep in mind too that we're promising God that we will do this, so it's not something we can say lightly and then forget about.
When God says, "I forgive you", it means a LOT, and He expects it to mean a lot when we say it too.
Now, I want to give you one other thing to think about today. When we talk about forgiveness, we're talking about forgiving sin that's been done against you personally. We're not talking about someone who has committed a sin against you, and has not repented of that sin. God does not forgive those who have not repented and neither do we. We're to forgive the way He does and He even tells us how to do that, and it involves some work on our part. For one thing, He tells us to go to that person and tell them that they've sinned against you! He doesn't say to wait till they come to you and say they're sorry, He says, go now and rebuke him!
I really love how one of my books explains this. They put it in such a way that it's easy to remember and understand and is kind of cute
. So I'm going to just quote that for you and let you chew on this today and we'll discuss it more tomorrow. here's the verses we're looking at now: Luke 17:1–10 —Jesus said to his disciples: “Things that cause people to sin are bound to come, but woe to that person through whom they come. *It would be better for him to be thrown into the sea with a millstone tied around his neck than for him to cause one of these little ones to sin. *So watch yourselves. “If your brother sins, rebuke him, and if he repents, forgive him. *If he sins against you seven times in a day, and seven times comes back to you and says, ‘I repent,’ forgive him.” *The apostles said to the Lord, “Increase our faith!” *He replied, “If you have faith as small as a mustard seed, you can say to this mulberry tree, ‘Be uprooted and planted in the sea,’ and it will obey you. *“Suppose one of you had a servant plowing or looking after the sheep. Would he say to the servant when he comes in from the field, ‘Come along now and sit down to eat’? *Would he not rather say, ‘Prepare my supper, get yourself ready and wait on me while I eat and drink; after that you may eat and drink’? *Would he thank the servant because he did what he was told to do? *So you also, when you have done everything you were told to do, should say, ‘We are unworthy servants; we have only done our duty.’ ” *
A Warning
The words, “Be on your guard” (v. 3 ) may seem an unusual introduction to a discussion of forgiveness, yet that is how Jesus began. He must have had a reason. Think about it for a minute.
Renowned preacher Charles Spurgeon, who had a very serious case of gout, was once approached by a man who claimed that his rheumatism was more painful than Spurgeon’s gout. Now, you simply didn’t say things like that to Spurgeon and get away with it! Spurgeon replied: “I’ll tell you the difference between rheumatism and gout: Put your finger into a vise and turn it until you can’t stand the pain; that’s rheumatism. Now, give it three more turns; that’s gout!”
Jesus warns you because in verse 3, there is both rheumatism and gout. In verses 3–10 there is some of the most difficult teaching in the New Testament. It is not difficult to understand, just difficult to put into practice. Jesus warns you that what He is about to say will be hard to swallow. So Christian, get ready for it: “Be on your guard.”
The Rheumatism
“If your brother sins, rebuke him; if he repents, forgive him.” Those are difficult words. The first is hard, extremely hard, and the second even more so. But, let’s look first at the rheumatism: “ If your brother sins, rebuke him.”
As verse 4 makes clear, the sin about which Jesus is speaking is a sin against you. The question arises immediately; How do you handle sins against you? Think about that a bit. How do you?
Here you are, minding your own business, provoking no one to anger, just surveying the scene. All of a sudden, literally or figuratively (probably the latter) your brother (or sister) comes along, stomps all over your toes, and disappears over the hill. There you stand—through no fault of your own—with ten toes flattened out like ten silver dollar pancakes. They hurt! Now, what do you do next?
Well, some begin to whine and feel sorry for themselves. They look for the syrup and pour it all over their feet. They hold a pity party and invite others to join in. But that isn’t what Jesus said to do.
Others get furious. They storm about making their wrath known, and either go after the brother to tell him off or charge around their home kicking chairs or children instead. Neither is that which Jesus said to do.
A third group, more pious than the rest, go around the congregation displaying their flattened toes to as many as will view them, saying, “Now, you understand that I don’t mean to gossip in telling you what so-and-so did. I’m just warning you so that you can protect yourself from such injury in the future.” But Jesus didn’t tell you to do that either.
What did He say?
Jesus says, “Rebuke him.” That’s rheumatism!
What He tells you to do is go after the brother, take him (gently) by the collar, and say, “Brother, look at my toes!”
Notice, Jesus doesn’t allow you to go tell others about it, to sit in the corner and feel sorry for yourself, to take it out on others in your vicinity, or even to tell the elders. He says go to the one who tread on your toes, and talk to him about it.
Why You Should Go
“But why should I go?” you ask. “I didn’t start anything. I was an innocent bystander, just surveying the scene when he (or she) came along and flattened my toes. Shouldn’t he come to me?”
That is a reasonable question and one that many persons ask. The trouble is that most of them answer it the wrong way. Jesus is saying, in effect, that whenever your brother or sister wrongs you, that obligates you to take action. No matter how innocent you may have been, you are obligated to go to him.
“But isn’t he obligated to come to me? I don’t see why his sin against me obligates me to act; let him come to me.”
Yes, as a matter of fact, if he has sinned against you, he is obligated to come to you. But that is another passage, to which we are not currently referring (Matt. 5:23–24). The command in Luke is for you to go to him. Both commands are important; you should go and he should go. Ideally, you ought to meet each other on the way.
“Well, if he’s obligated to go, I don’t see why I must do so too.”
Let me try to explain. You haven’t seen your friend Jane for several months; she’s been away traveling. This morning you see her at church, seated on the opposite side of the building. You can’t wait till the service is over to talk to her. At the conclusion of the service, you rush around the pews and happily call to her, “Jane! Jane! It’s so good to see you!” But Jane sticks her nose into the air, turns on her heel, and sails out of the church as rapidly as possible, without so much as a “how do you do?”
You stand there hurt and perplexed. If you respond as many do, you’ll say, “Hurrruuummmph! If that’s the way she’s going to act, then so be it! I can wait till she comes down off her high horse and wants to talk. Then maybe I’ll be ready to do so and maybe I won’t!”
But, you see, Jesus won’t let you do that. He tells you to go after her and show her your toes. Suppose you do. Having recovered from the shock, you say to yourself, “Something’s wrong here. I’ve got to get to the bottom of it. I can’t have this happen to Jane and me.” So you hightail it out of the church after her. There she is over at her car. You go over and you say, “Jane! What’s wrong? I was so glad to see you home again that I rushed over to see you after church, but when I called to you, you stuck your nose in the air and left. What’s wrong?”
Perhaps Jane’s response will be something like this: “Oh no! Mary, I didn’t even hear or see you! you see, I caught a bad cold on my trip abroad, and the pastor preached forever today, and I left my tissues in the car, and I thought for sure I was going to drip all over my new dress and my Bible. That’s why I put my nose back and rushed out here to get those tissues. I was so preoccupied with all that I didn’t see or hear you.”
“Stupid illustration,”you say.
Yes, but I chose it because I have known case after case where friendships have been destroyed over misunderstandings just as stupid as that. Don’t you see? You are obligated to go because the brother or sister may not know that he (she) stepped on your toes. It may all be a misunderstanding. So, the rule is:
The one with the sore toes goes because he’s the one who always knows.
Adams, J. E. (1989). From forgiven to forgiving
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