Understanding Forgiveness and Forgiving 6

Let's look at what to do if it's a believer who's sinned against you and it's something big enough that you feel you can't just cover it with love and forgive them in your heart. The Lord gave us specific instructions on what to do when this happens. He even tells us what to do if the person refuses to repent. Let's look at the scriptures:

Matt. 18:15–20 “If your brother sins against you, go and convict him of his sin privately, with just the two of you present. If he listens to you, you have won your brother. But if he won’t listen to you, take with you one or two others so that by the mouth of two or three witnesses every word may be confirmed. And if he refuses to listen to them, tell it to the church. And if he refuses to listen to the church, treat him like a Gentile and a tax collector. Let Me assure you that whatever you bind on earth shall have been bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth shall have been loosed in heaven. Again, I tell you that if two of you agree on earth about anything they ask, it will be done for them by My Father in the heavens. Where two or three meet together in My Name, I am there among them.”

Ask yourself this...if we were supposed to forgive people even if they didn't repent, then why would the Lord give us this process to follow, since this whole process is designed to bring the person to repentance? If it was acceptable for us to simply say, "I forgive you" and walk away, then this process wouldn't be needed, would it?

Did you notice too that each time the person doesn't repent, the Lord requires that more and more people become involved in the effort, and that the effort isn't just forgiveness but to bring about reconciliation? We can't just say "I forgive you" and walk away, if they don't repent, because if we do that, there would still be a problem between you that was unresolved and would cause friction and more problems as time went by. The Lord isn't just interested in forgiveness being given and received; He wants and even commands us to love each other, so what He's interested in here is reconciliation between you and the person who sinned against you. There's only one way reconciliation can happen and that's if the person who sinned against you truly repents.

Think about it. If someone has stomped on your toes over and over, you're not going to want to be around them and when you are around them you're going to be really careful not to let them anywhere near your toes again aren't you? You won't trust them. They may even try to do it again or may start another fight with you because you're avoiding them. Or maybe you'd start getting angry and want to stomp on their toes... You both start watching each other and every little thing the other person says and does is no longer seen through eyes of love, but is instead seen through eyes of suspicion and distrust. That's what happens when there is no repentance or when nothing is done about the matter. Friendships are destroyed. We can't allow that to happen with a brother or sister in Christ, because ours is more then friendship. Our relationship with them is as a family member that we will spend all eternity with. We can't allow that to happen too because our Lord commands us to love one another; and He commands us to go tell the brother/sister about their sin so this won't happen. He wants us reconciled - with Him and with each other!

I have a feeling that you noticed something else right away too, and that's that the last verses about binding and loosing and the one about people gathered together in His Name, are included in this. That's not a mistake. Those verses when read in context are concerning forgiveness and church discipline and take into account the OT law that two or three witnesses are needed to establish the truth of anything. Deuteronomy 19:15 —One witness is not enough to convict a man accused of any crime or offense he may have committed. A matter must be established by the testimony of two or three witnesses. *

Step 1: When a believer sins against you, you, the person sinned against (remember, the one with the sore toes goes) goes to them and confronts them lovingly about their sin. You speak the truth in love and with love. You have already spoken to the Lord about it and have asked Him to soften your heart and to remove any bitterness or anger from your heart and asked Him to give you the right words to speak to this person when you go to see them. Having dealt with this issue with the Lord already, you are no longer interested in being right, or getting revenge, or making a point. All you're interested in is helping this person so that they understand that what they did was a sin so they won't do it again, because you know that they love the Lord and they don't want to displease Him; and of course you also very much want to be reconciled with this person. Those are the only reasons you're going to see them.

I would assume that you called the person and told them that you needed to speak to them and asked if you could come over and they said "yes". You go over and tell them what's on your heart. If after listening to you, they repent of their sin, then you can forgive them, promising to never bring it up to them, yourself, or others again. Your relationship is restored and maybe you both hug and the visit ends with both of you praising the Lord and feeling joy at your reunion.

But what if they just don't see it? What if they still think they haven't sinned? Well, then you cannot forgive them. For one thing, as far as they're concerned, there's nothing to forgive since they don't think they've sinned. They may even say that you're the one sinning because your picking on them or something along those lines.

There's another reason you can't forgive them though. You can't forgive them because you cannot make the promise that you won't bring it up again. You can't make that promise because Jesus commands us to next go tell two or three other people about the matter and then bring them with you to see the person. So if you'd made such a promise, you'd have to break it immediately in order to obey the Lord. That's yet another reason we can know that we can't forgive someone that hasn't repented. Because the Lord is not going to tell us to make a promise that would prevent us from obeying His clear command to go tell others about it.

Step 2 if the person hasn't repented: You now need to find 2 or 3 other people that are aware of the sin and ask them to go with you to confront the person about it. I wish I could say that would be easy to do, but it may not be. Many churches today don't teach the truth anymore or at least not all of it. Therefore many Christians are unaware of how to forgive someone or what it means, as well as being unaware of taking others to speak to the person with us. They may think you're ganging up on the person and want no part of it due to their lack of understanding.

Don't lose heart if this is true. Instead, first use this as an opportunity to help them understand about forgiveness. Explain to them what's involved and why you want to go speak to the person; what your goals are. Once they realize it's not about revenge or being right, but that you truly love the person and want to help them, they may just change their mind and go with you, plus you will have helped them understand more of God's Word so that they too can grow in their faith. You may even wind up with some new friends or a bible study partner!

If it doesn't work that way though, you'll have to keep looking till you can find at least one other person to go with you. I'd strongly suggest that if you haven't already, that you pray and ask the Lord to guide you to the person(s) who He wants to have go with you, and then start calling people. If nothing else, perhaps your spouse can go with you.

You may be wondering how you're going to bring the subject up etc. It's sad, but today many of us don't know the other people at church. Oh sure, I knew many of their names or at least knew them by sight - I recognized them in other words. I even knew a little bit about some of them - like if they were married or had kids. But we weren't close. Yeah, we gave each other hugs every Sunday and I loved them as a sister or brother in Christ, but it wasn't an active love since I didn't really know them; hadn't been to their house and they'd never been to mine; never talked to them on the phone, etc. A good word to describe the relationships with other church members is "superficial". (Concerned with only what is apparent or obvious; shallow)

That's not how the Lord intended for the Church to be. It's supposed to be a family, close and loving and very involved with each. The members of our local church should be our very best friends. They should know all about us and we should know all about them. In a family atmosphere like that, it wouldn't be a surprise to have someone call you up and ask your help with another member that had sinned. They'd be immediately concerned and willing to help anyway they could. That's how it was when the church was first started, but it's deteriorated a great deal since then. But, with the Lord's help, we're bound to find at least one other person to go with us. Remember, He's not going to tell us to do something that's impossible. Not even in our day. He will make sure that there's someone to go with you. Your job is to find them with His help.

So you take the 1-3 people with you and after calling the person and setting up a time to see them, you all go to see them together. Together you again lovingly confront them about their sin and try to help them see that it was a sin. If after hearing from you all, the person agrees and repents of their sin, you can forgive them, promising not to bring it up to anyone ever again. Everyone leaves rejoicing.

Step 3: If the person still refuses to admit their sin and repent, then you still cannot forgive them as you still cannot make that promise, as the Lord has told us to try one more time. I'm sure you're realizing by now, that while you are not obligated to forgive someone when they don't repent, and in fact, can't forgive them if they don't repent, you ARE obligated to try and bring them to repentance. That's what this whole thing is really about. Plus the whole time this is going on, you're also obligated to have a genuine desire to forgive them and be reconciled with them.

Let's be real about this though. Each time the person refuses to repent, we're most likely to react by feeling angry and hurt. Notice that I said "react". whenever we "react" we're acting on our emotions and letting them control us instead of the other way around. The Lord tells us though that we're to be in control of our thoughts and emotions, which means of course that we need to take those thoughts about being angry and hurt captive and replace them with the Truth. At first though there may not even be a conscious thought - it might be just the feelings. In that case we need to dig the thought out that's behind the feelings with some self talk. We need to ask ourselves why we're feeling hurt and angry.

I can give you one big hint to get you started in the right direction of where the feelings are coming from: the thoughts causing them have to do with "self". Sometimes it's self pity or can deteriorate into self pity if it's dwelled on, but it's always self centered rather then other or God centered. We'll be discussing this more later, but I wanted to point out to you that when the person doesn't repent right away, it means that we're going to have to deal with our thoughts and emotions and keep them in line in order to obey the Lord. This will mean continuing to talk to the Lord about what's going on, how we feel about it etc and asking for His help to deal with it and His help in taking our thoughts and feelings captive. We'll need to ask Him to give us a clean heart and to create a right spirit within us about it, like David did.

We're also going to have to keep fresh in our minds that forgiveness is not about how we feel, it's a decision and a commitment. We can be upset and still forgive someone. At the same time however, we do want to be in the best frame of mind we can be in when we go see the person, so it's still important to take our thoughts captive and not let them run away from us. We want to "act" when we go see this person, not "react". After all, where would we be if the Lord hadn't forgiven us when we were still His enemies? What if He had "reacted" to us as anyone would toward an enemy, instead of purposely acting out His intention to forgive us?

Step 3 involves taking the matter up with the church, which actually involves more then one step on your part. Your first move would be to go to either the Pastor or elders of your church and tell them about the problem and ask their help. By this alone you can see that if the sin that's been committed is something minor, you're going to wind up very embarrassed, since it's something that should be covered by love. You'll have to explain to them what the problem is and what you've done to bring about reconciliation so far. At that point the elders would decide to go with you to tell the pastor about it as he will have to be the one handling the church discipline. The pastor would then need to call a meeting with the person that sinned against you. Generally, the elders and the 1-3 people that went with you before will also be present at the meeting along with anyone else the pastor feels should attend. Once again the person would be encouraged to repent of their sin. If they do, then you and the others would forgive them at that point, promising not to bring it up again. Here also, help would also be offered if appropriate, to help the person overcome the sin.

Actually this is true at each stage when the person does repent. We need to be ready to act on our desire to help the person and be reconciled. So if they ask for help, and it's something we can do, we need to be ready to give it. It might be being their accountability partner, or keeping them covered in prayer, or both. Or it might be helping them find a biblical counselor if the pastor himself doesn't do it. Or it could be something normal as helping them come up with a budget and work with their finances.

However, if the person still refuses to repent, then it will be time for the entire church to become involved. At this point the pastor will have to tell the whole church what has happened and that the person has refused to repent and is therefore in accordance with the Lord's commands, being put out of the congregation until he does. The pastor will most likely then explain to the congregation what that means as far as how they are to relate to this person, which of course includes you. We'll call this, step 4.

Step 4 when the person still hasn't repented. Now you and the whole congregation must treat this person as though they are not a brother in Christ. No more invites to dinner, or going out to play golf or whatever. The point is to treat the person more like an acquaintance. You obviously know them, but you're to treat them as though they were someone you're not emotionally close to. That doesn't mean you can't talk to them at all. You can let them know you'll be praying for them and that you care, but that's about it. The whole point is to cause them to feel the separation from the rest of the family and to cause them to want to return, which can only happen if they repent.