Forgiveness

We all want to be forgiven our failings, but have difficulty forgiving others. Yet forgiveness is central to the identity and ministry of Jesus. From His dramatic teaching on our continuous call to forgive and the personal forgiveness He extended to individual supplicants in His path, to His atoning sacrifice on the cross, the Gospels attest clearly and often to the importance of this ministry. As such, it also represents a most important human expression of God’s identity: agape Love. Therefore, it is also central to the Christian identity and Christian life. But, as in the case of love, the way of forgiveness can be a difficult, challenging path to walk, even in the company of the Spirit of our Lord. And yet it only grows more essential as we move from individual relationships in community to deeper identity and relationship with God.

Jesus’ teaching on the subject of forgiveness appears simple, direct and clear: if you don’t forgive others, God will not forgive you. I know that sounds too unqualified and harsh for most of us. It doesn’t seem to reflect the unqualified love of our Lord and our God. Ironically, the sound of it does not seem to resonate with the notion of forgiveness at all, does it? But there are many tough-love teachings of Jesus in the Gospels—and this appears to be one of them. But let’s consider a broader theological context of the teaching, and what else is taught and promised about forgiveness, ours and God's.

The first and most stunning teaching is prominently placed within and directly after Jesus’ teaching on how to pray in Matthew 6:12. Within the Lord’s Prayer we are instructed to pray: “...and forgive us our debts [or trespasses, or sins] as we also forgive our debtors [or, those who trespass or sin against us].” And if you have glossed over it too quickly or cavalierly in rote recitation, or have doubts about its interpretation, then all you have to do is read the unambiguous statements that follow the prayer in verses 14-15:

For if you forgive men for their transgressions, your heavenly Father will also forgive you. But if you do not forgive men, then your Father will not forgive your transgressions.

Later in Matthew in chapter 18: 23-35, as if to drive home the point, Jesus teaches again the same lesson using the story of the “wicked slave.” Since he showed no forgiveness or mercy to his fellow slave and debtor, his master wouldn’t forgive his debt and handed him over to the torturers. Jesus draws the lesson from the story saying,

So shall My heavenly father also do to you, if each of you does not forgive his brother from his heart.

And if some of us should think that there must still be implied, reasonable limits to the exercise of our patience and our forgiveness, that at some point every debtor, trespasser or agent of harm has no claim on our forgiveness or mercy, perhaps we should think again. At Matthew 18: 21-22, the disciple Peter presents to Jesus the question that set the occasion for the last teaching: “Lord, how often shall my brother sin against me and I forgive him? Up to seven times?” And Jesus famously responds,

I do not say to you up to seven times, but up to seventy times seven.

Whatever we may think of the seeming unqualified rigidity of this teaching, however we may construct practical ways or rationalizations to deal with it, there can be little question of the high priority Jesus places on a forgiving spirit.

But before we despair too much about the impossibility of our situation, we must recognize the similarity in the style and standards of this teaching and Jesus’ earlier teaching in the Sermon on the Mount—for example, the teaching on loving even our enemies, of having no lust in our hearts, or being perfect as our heavenly Father is perfect. In the same way, He reaches past the standard of the humanly challenging and difficult to the impossible standard of God’s righteousness—not to condemn us, but to remind us of our human limitations, and reveal God’s path of love, humility and redemption through Jesus. And so, we must continually remind ourselves that while we surely fail against that standard of perfection, we are yet covered by His protection and leadership—forgiven, made clean, and renewed—through our faith, hope and love in our Lord Jesus. As Paul assures us in Rom. 8,

There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.

And 1Jn.1 makes clear that if we earnestly confess our errors or sins, God is faithful to forgive us and cleanse us from all unrighteousness. Earlier in Matt.12, Jesus also makes clear that any sin or blasphemy shall be forgiven except blasphemy against the Holy Spirit, likely ascribing the good work of the Holy Spirit to Satan.

The closer we hold to Jesus, the more ardently we seek God, the more we will find identity in God through Him. And, as a result, the more often, the more completely, our inclinations and responses will conform to God’s and move us toward a spirit of forgiveneness. But only as we accept His invitations, can the love of our Lord and His abiding-in Spirit take us there. For only when we can forgive others, the world, ourselves, even God—and from our hearts—can we be unburdened enough, prepared enough, to allow God’s Spirit to work in the deeper places of our soul to conform us more to identity in Him.

First written: July 2008
© Gregory E. Hudson 2008