Matthew 18: 21-35

Theme: Forgiveness

Series: Parables of the Kingdom

SHALL WE FORGIVE?

There has been much debate over the proposed memorial that commemorates the American fighting forces who served in WWII. While everyone agrees that a memorial should be built, this one has been controversial from the beginning. The arguments have ranged from the design of the memorial to the location. Some say the design resembles Nazi architecture while others feel that the proposed site on the Mall between The Washington Monument and the Lincoln Memorial is the wrong place to build it.

But, there is sort of an irony at work in the monument, some might call it an evil irony. Most would agree if there was ever a righteous war, it was WWII in response to Hitler’s Germany. The company that has been contracted to build the monument is Tompkins Builders of Washington, D.C. Tompkins is owned by J. A. Jones Construction, a subsidiary of J. A. Jones Inc. of Charlotte, NC. J. A. Jones was bought out in 1979 by Philipp Holzmann Co., of Frankfurt, Germany. Philipp Holzmann was one of the German construction firms which built the German war factories using slave labor from the concentration camps. Their workers were starved and worked to death. (See US News and World Report, June, 25, 2001, p 22)

What irony! Who would have ever dreamed that one of the companies of the Third Rich would build the war memorial and making big bucks doing so? Many people feel that there is something terribly wrong with these turn of events.

Life is full of these kinds of terrible ironies. Irony is incongruity between the actual result of an event and the normal, expected result. We are capable of all sorts of evil irony. One of the most obvious is our need, even our demand to be forgiven and yet we are so unwilling to forgive others.

Peter had thought about forgiveness. Maybe he had been dealing with it ever since that day on the mount when Jesus taught his disciples to pray. Jesus said, "And forgive us of our debts as we forgive our debtors." If you remember, Jesus made a comment on it. He said bluntly, "For if you do not forgive men, then your heavenly Father will not forgive your transgressions."

Peter asked the question, "Lord how often shall my brother sin against me and I forgive him?" What a question, the very notion that I should forgive some of the things that have happened to me is scandalous. Peter thought he was being generous when he said seven times. The rabbis of his day had said that you need only to forgive a person three times based upon the woe passages in the book of Amos. Peter must have been floored when Jesus answered 70 x 7= 490. The emphasis is not on the concrete number 490, but on the idea that one must continually forgive.

Jesus told a story, there was a certain king who wished to settle all of his accounts. There was one servant who owed him 10,000 talents. By some estimates, the servant’s debt was about $500,000,000. The poor man owed more money than was in circulation in the whole country at that time! Of course the man did not have the money so proceedings took place that would recover some of the debt. But it wasn't much. He and his family were to be sold into slavery. But a slave brought a top price of one talent and most brought only one tenth of that. The man begins to beg the king for mercy saying that he would repay everything. That’s a stupid suggestion, how could he repay that kind of debt? But the king had mercy, and forgave the man the debt! He forgave a debt of over $500,000,000!

This servant went out and found a friend who owed him about $1,000, one five-hundred thousandth of the debt he was forgiven. He grabbed him by the neck and choked him and demanded what was owed to him. You would think that a person who was forgiven so much would forgive others. But here is the incongruity, he did not and had the man thrown into prison until he paid the debt.

His fellow servants told the king and he called him in and demanded why did he not show mercy? Notice what came next, this is serious, he withdrew his mercy and turned him over to the torturer until he should repay the money, which was impossible.

We cheer for the king. We say the servant was terribly wrong and he got what he deserved. But, wait! Look what Jesus said next, it too is terrible, "So shall My heavenly Father also do to you, if each of you does not forgive his brother from his heart." Let that sink in for a moment, God will withdraw his forgiveness from us if we do not forgive.

We need to understand that God's forgiveness is not absolute. God is not a slot machine, we place a prayer into it and out comes a dose of forgiveness. Forgiveness is conditional. It is on the condition of a repentant heart. Our reception of forgiveness is determined by our willingness to repent. Repentance no only means to turn from our sin, it means to take up the right kind of character. Repentance is the renouncement of our sinful nature and the receiving and adoption of the character of Christ. If we are to be forgiven, then we must become like the One who forgave us.

It only makes sense that we must forgive others who have sinned against us. In fact, our forgiveness by God is contingent on our forgiving others. This is no easy matter. Some of you are well aware of how difficult it is to forgive terrible things. There are many complicated issues involved. For some transgressions, there must be a time of healing before one can forgive. For others, there must be an ugly confrontation and penalties paid before forgiveness is possible.

And matters get more complicated because some things seem like forgiveness but they are not. Forgiveness is not forgetting. We cannot just overlook a wrong. We do not just pretend that something never happened. We can forget only after we have forgiven, only then can the healing take place where we can forget.

Excusing is not forgiving. Forgiving is not making excuses for a wrong. We may be long suffering, but long suffering pertains to good character, it is not forgiveness. We only excuse people when we know that they are not to blame.

Forgiveness is not tolerance. You can forgive someone almost anything but you cannot tolerate everything. Some things just cannot be tolerated. If we are too tolerant, we become a coconspirator in someone else's sin.

These conditions tell us that forgiveness of a sin against us is a very serious thing. It is a deliberate act. Forgiveness is the restoring of a broken relationship. Words like healing, saved, reconcile, justify, and atonement are the result of forgiveness. But you cannot forgive someone of a sin until they are willing to admit their sin. Likewise we cannot expect others to forgive us until we confess our wrong. Forgiveness is the response to repentance. One should have a forgiving spirit and not carry grudges. In fact, the Bible tells us to seek out the one who has wronged us and offer forgiveness. But one cannot forgive someone who is not ready to receive forgiveness.

Then we discover the terrible cost of forgiveness; it is the offended party who must bear the shame, the pain and the price of forgiveness. Forgiveness does not come after revenge is sought nor is it just flippant words that roll off of one's tongue. It is the act of absorbing all of the wrong done to you and then say I pardon you, I will pay the price of our reconciliation. That is exactly what God has done. There was a price that had to be paid. It was on the cross that Jesus paid the price of our forgiveness. He suffered our wrongs and our penalties and our death so that we might be forgiven of our sin.

There are some here today who needs to forgive. You feel distant from God, your relationship to him is empty and you try to fill it with all sorts of self justifying ideas. But, nothing will heal your soul until you forgive the one who has hurt you. It is the irony of ironies, if you cannot forgive the one who sins against you, how can God forgive of your sins? If God has shown grace to you, how can you refuse grace to others, particularly to those whom God himself has forgiven? Yet the reason that there are so many broken homes and broken relationships and broken people is because we refusel to forgive.

We love to hate and hold grudges. It just doesn’t seem natural to forgive others of their transgressions against us. It is not natural. It is supernatural, the ability to forgive as Christ forgives is the supernatural result of a converted heart. So, we ask ourselves the question, shall we forgive? We already know the answer. We have no choice if we want to be forgiven.