Forgiven As We Forgive

Matthew 6:9-12; Colossians 3:12-17

Did you know that there are websites where you can go and post online confessions and apologies anonymously?  Neither did I, until I did some research a few years ago.  I did a quick Google search and found a lot of places where people actually write their confessions – some in just a few words, others with long paragraphs.  These sites include JoeApology.com, Unburdened.net, The Confession Board, and True Confessions.  Some of the things I read were quite raw and even offensive; maybe they were designed for their shock value.  But others seemed quite sincere and were very poignant.

There was one person who wrote, “I’m sorry that I ran away.”  Another confessed, “I’ve slept with more prostitutes than I can remember.”  Still another read, “I’m sorry that I haven’t been the wife that you need.  Making our marriage work is the most important thing in the world to me.  I love you and I am sorry that I haven’t made this week any easier.”  One person admitted, “I’ve actually killed two people.”  A depressed woman wrote, “I sleep around because I have very bad self-esteem problems.”  And I was touched by the person who said, “I’m sorry, God, that I didn’t live up to what you wanted of me.  I’m sorry I quit listening.  I’m sorry I lied.  I’m so sorry.”

For those who are fortunate enough to have a smart phone, you can now download an app that has been approved by the Roman Catholic Church called iConfess.  The app isn’t intended to replace traditional confession; a priest is still required for absolution.  But the intent, according to one company spokesman, is “to invite Catholics to engage in their faith through digital technology.”  The app leads users through an examination of conscience to help them figure out what their sins are.  Father Edward L. Beck says, “In all seriousness, I think [it] may be a boon for the sacrament.  While confession … may be on the decline, I can attest that it remains a powerful venue for grace and healing … I’m all for whatever makes it easier for others to take that cleansing plunge.”

What all this says to me is that there are a lot of people out there who are searching for forgiveness.  Because we are human, we are bound to hurt other people, and other people are bound to hurt us.  We are also bound to hurt God by our wrong behaviors and attitudes.  People who have been hurt can carry bitterness, anger, and the desire for revenge in their hearts until it consumes them.  Others know that they have hurt someone else, but they have no clue about how to make things right between them.  Still others have felt guilty for so long that they don’t know what it would feel like to let it go.

So how do we begin to address the issue of forgiveness, the need to receive it and the need to offer it?

I think we have to begin with the notion of sin.  I realize that the word “sin” makes some people cringe and others to have flashbacks to painful memories of “fire-and-brimstone” sermons preached at the top of the lungs.  But we have to understand sin before we can understand forgiveness.

Put simply, sin means to miss the mark or to stray from the path.  We know that there is a certain way we ought to live.  We see the perfect model of that way in the example of Jesus.  We also read something about that way in the passage from Colossians 3.  We should be kind, compassionate, humble, meek, and patient.  We should learn to put up with each other, knowing that others have to put up with us.  We should love one another and live at peace with each other.  We should always be thankful and grateful.

This is just a brief description, but we know how we should be behaving.  We also know that sometimes we don’t behave that way.  Sometimes we do something wrong almost by accident; we hurt someone without meaning to.  Other times we make a conscious decision to do something wrong, maybe because it will benefit us in some way.  But whatever our reasons, when we do something wrong, it is sin.  And the way to deal with sin is to ask for forgiveness.

The good news is Christianity is all about forgiveness.  More than any other religion, according to Adam Hamilton in his book, Forgiveness: Finding Peace Through Letting Go, Christianity preaches and teaches forgiveness.  The central focus of our faith is not guilt, but grace.  It isn’t judgment, but redemption.  It’s not punishment, but mercy.  The entire life and ministry of Jesus was defined by forgiveness.  Before Jesus was even born, the angel told Joseph to give his son the name “Jesus,” which means “savior,” because he would save his people from their sins.  Jesus constantly reached out to those who were somehow estranged from God, associating with sinners and tax collectors and prostitutes.  According to John Killinger in his book, The God Named Hallowed, Jesus treated those people as if God had given them complete amnesty.  And even when he was dying on the cross, Jesus forgave those who had crucified him.

In his book, Where Do You Go to Give Up?, author C. Welton Geddy writes that the most dramatic and unforgettable insights about forgiveness come from Calvary.  While on the cross, as he was dying, Jesus prayed to God for the forgiveness of those who put him there.  He sought the gift of life for the very persons who were taking life from him.  Familiarity … must not be allowed to blunt the radicality of its meaning.  Everybody knows what to expect from a man hanging on a cross.  With whatever strength he has left, he screams words of rebuke, denunciation, and condemnation in the faces of those who placed him there.  If an innocent man was crucified as guilty, even more piercing cries were predictable – loud protests of injustice and harrowing harangues about unfairness.  Silence from a crucified sufferer was unthinkable.  But forgiveness?

We learn through the cross about the possibility of being forgiven for our sins.  Traditional Christian theology teaches that by his death on the cross, Jesus paid the price for our sins so that we might have forgiveness and be able to live in right relationship with God.  In 2 Corinthians 5:21, Paul wrote, God made him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God. (TNIV)  W. Philip Keller writes in A Layman Looks at the Lord’s Prayer, The majesty and mystery of this transaction that took place on the cross is beyond our ability to fully grasp.  [But] anyone who pauses … in serious contemplation of Calvary must be overwhelmed by the generosity of our God.  Adam Hamilton writes, God has done everything necessary for your forgiveness, and he offers that forgiveness freely.  All you have to do to gain this grace … is to accept it.

Forgiveness is ours; but it is not only ours.  Forgiveness is meant to be given to those who have harmed us in any way.  We must forgive others as we have been forgiven by God.  I am reminded of one of my favorite C. S. Lewis quotes, from his book, Mere Christianity:  Everyone says forgiveness is a lovely idea, until they have something to forgive.  It can be so hard to forgive someone, because, as Killinger writes, Our lives bear the scars of others’ sins.  But we only ruin our own lives when we carry around bitterness, resentment, grudges, or the desire for revenge.  And in doing so, we cause a distance to grow, not only with the person who has wronged us, but with God.

What makes it so hard to forgive others, I think, is our pride.  We kind of take a perverse pleasure in having been wronged.  We can feel superior to the person who has done us harm.  But somehow we have to let go of that pride.  Frederick Buechner writes in his book, Wishful Thinking: A Theological ABC, To forgive somebody is to say one way or another, ‘You have done something unspeakable, and by all rights I should call it quits between us.  Both my pride and my principles demand no less.  However … I refuse to let it stand between us.  I still want you for my friend.

Here again, we can draw our example from Jesus as he was dying on the cross.  Keller writes, Nothing else can so completely shatter self and crush ego, leaving us undone, as a real look at our Lord at Calvary.  In the presence of the Prince of Peace dying upon the cross for me, my petty pride is pulverized … I see my sins and wrongs and misconduct for what they really are.  I am then able to see myself in proper perspective and, at that point, I am willing to forgive others … The degree to which I am able and willing to forgive others is a clear indication of the extent to which I have personally experienced [God’s] forgiveness of me.

Forgiveness is a powerful thing.  Hamilton writes, Our willingness to forgive has the power not only to change us, freeing us from bitterness and resentment, but to change those who receive mercy from us, just as we are changed when finally we see and comprehend the vast and wonderful mercy of God.  Just how powerful is forgive-ness?  Let me share a story told by John Killinger.

There was a twelve-year-old boy in California who witnessed the murder of his father and the rape and murder of his mother.  His life seemed to be ruined.  He was sent to a state school for boys, where he did poorly in his academic work.  He was withdrawn and didn’t seem to care about anything or anyone.  He was taken to several psychologists and went through countless therapy sessions, but nothing seemed to be able to break through the shield of defenses he had built around himself.

Shortly after the boy graduated from high school, he was invited to attend a Young Life meeting.  He listened as several of the young people in the group shared about the difference Jesus had made in their lives.  At the end of the meeting, an invitation was given, and the young man found himself going forward with tears in his eyes to accept Jesus Christ.  His whole life turned around after that.  He began to make new friends.  He applied to a local college and was admitted. After college, the young man went on to law school.  And while he was in law school, he did something that he had begun wanting to do ever since he had become a Christian.  He made arrangements to go the state penitentiary to visit the man who had killed his parents.

The first visit was not very good.  Both men were nervous and had a hard time talking.  But the young man was determined, and so he went back a second time.  During this second visit, he said to the prisoner, “If God can forgive me for the awful hatred I carried for you, he can forgive you for what you did.”  The prisoner was deeply moved by the man’s words.  And when the young man came back for a fourth time, the prisoner also committed his life to Christ.  The two men embraced in tears.  And years later, when the man was finally released from prison, the man, now an attorney in Modesto, helped him to get a job and start a new life.  That is the power of forgiveness.

Forgive us, as we forgive others.  It is a lovely idea.  And it really works.

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