Forgiving One Another (Part One)

And forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors.
Matthew 6:12

If I owed you a dollar, would you insist that I pay it back? What if I owed you twenty dollars? What if I owed you 500 dollars? What if it was much, much more than that?

Sometimes we are asked by the ladies at the jail about forgiving others.
Many of these women have been through serious abuse. I’ve never had to forgive anything close to the things some of them might be trying to get past. But we’re there as Bible teachers so we try to teach as simply and as compassionately as we can what the Bible says on any given topic.

First of all, forgiving is not the same as excusing. When God forgives us, He isn’t saying that we did not sin or that it doesn’t matter. Rather, when we acknowledge our sin and God forgives us, He is simply saying He won’t hold that sin against us any longer. When we forgive someone, we are not saying it was not really a problem in the first place. That’s why the I’m-sorry-It’s-okay conversation doesn’t really cut it. Even children can learn to ask for forgiveness rather than just to say they’re sorry. And the child on the other end can be taught to say, “I forgive you, but please don’t do that again.”

Furthermore, forgiveness doesn’t take away all the consequences of the wrong. If I’ve sinned against you and you forgive me, that alone does not mean I’m forgiven by God. If I don’t humble myself before Him, I may still face His judgment for that sin.

Also, I can be forgiven by God if I rob a bank, but I may still go to prison for it. I may forgive someone for lying to me, even to seventy times seven (Matthew 18:22), but I don’t see how I could trust that person to the same degree as before. Sometimes with people, boundaries are the natural consequence to a sin even though forgiveness has taken place. Luckily for us, God does not do this; He has no need to protect Himself.

But in our concern with protecting ourselves we often put up walls instead of boundaries. We reserve a little space in our hearts where we store away our anger and hurt, ready to retrieve it the next time that person crosses our line. The fact is we want to be forgiven much more than we want to forgive. But Jesus says we can’t have it that way. There is no getting around his simple teaching:

If you forgive men their trespasses, your heavenly Father will also forgive you. But if you do not forgive men their trespasses, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses. — Matthew 6:14-15

The fact is, if we have been forgiven by God, in His eyes we have no right to withhold forgiveness from others. When we do, we are completely out of touch with the gravity of our sin and the terrible expense that God incurred in order to remove our debt. This is powerfully illustrated in the parable of the unforgiving servant as told by Jesus in Matthew 18 after Peter asked in verse 21: “Lord, how often shall my brother sin against me, and I forgive him?” At the end of the chapter Jesus says of the one who was forgiven much but wouldn’t forgive a smaller debt:

.. his master was angry, and delivered him to the torturers until he should pay all that was due to him. So My heavenly Father also will do to you if each of you, from his heart, does not forgive his brother his trespasses.

Someone may owe me the sin-equivalent of five dollars. Someone may owe you the equivalent of five thousand! But for all our sins against God we owed a staggering debt and he cancelled it. No, rather, He paid it Himself.

The subject of forgiving others prods at our most hurt places. But if our own salvation is riding on it, we need to deal with it no matter how painful.

I’ll have more to say on the subject of forgiveness next week.

Dear God, when I struggle to forgive the hurts inflicted upon me, I pray your Holy Spirit will make me keenly aware of the seriousness of the offense I have caused You with my sin. As I contemplate how much You sacrificed to make forgiveness possible for me, may my pride and my heart soften toward those who seek my forgiveness. Help me to forgive in the same way I want to be forgiven. In Jesus’s name, Amen.

by Christie Cole Atkins

Bonus: for a sweet re-telling of the parable of the unforgiving servant, I highly recommend this: