Forgiven to Forgive
Matt 6:14-15
Last Sunday, when we looked at the Lord’s Prayer, I brought us to that portion we
prayed this morning
Forgive us our sins
As we forgive those who sin against us
And then I pointed out that Jesus comments on this prayer this way
14 For if you forgive others for their transgressions, your heavenly Father will
also forgive you. 15 But if you do not forgive others, then your Father will not
forgive your transgressions.
How does this idea relate to the truth that we are, as we often stress, already a
forgiven people?
I did not leave last Sunday's message satisfied with my explanation of the tension
between this passage and the truth of our settled forgiveness in Christ.
So, today I want to try to do a little better
First, I want to remind you what Scripture teaches clearly about forgiveness...
1. “We HAVE the forgiveness of our sins...”
Col 2:13
“13 When you were dead in your transgressions and the uncircumcision of your
flesh, He made you alive together with Him, having forgiven us all our
transgressions, 14 having canceled out the certificate of debt consisting of
decrees against us, which was hostile to us; and He has taken it out of the way,
having nailed it to the cross.
Listen to Eph 1
4 just as He chose us in Him before the foundation of the world, that we would
be holy and blameless before Him. In love 5 He predestined us to adoption as
sons through Jesus Christ to Himself, according to the kind intention of His
will, 6 to the praise of the glory of His grace, which He freely bestowed on us
in the Beloved. 7 In Him we have redemption through His blood, the forgiveness
of our trespasses, according to the riches of His grace 8 which He lavished
on us. In all wisdom and insight. ...Eph 1
1 John 2:12
I am writing to you, little children, because your sins are forgiven for his name’s
sake.
Hebrews 10 Hebrews 10
11 And every priest stands daily at his service, offering repeatedly the same
sacrifices, which can never take away sins. 12 But when Christ had offered
for all time a single sacrifice for sins, he sat down at the right hand of
God, 13 waiting from that time until his enemies should be made a footstool
for his feet. 14 For by a single offering he has perfected for all time those
who are being sanctified.
1 Peter
He Himself bore our sins in His body on the cross
All these words were written to Christians about whom the writers knew were not
perfect!
2. Justification includes forgiveness:
You know, for many, many months in Romans, we’ve looked at the doctrine of
justification.
The doctrine of Justification is a foundational - if not THE foundational doctrine of the
Christian faith;
It proclaims that those who come to Christ by faith are once and for all declared
righteous before God based solely on the righteousness and blood of Jesus Christ.
Because God can only be at peace with righteous beings, and since we are not
righteous in ourselves, justification credits us - gifts us - with the eternal status of
RIGHTEOUS before God.
When we trust God for our salvation as a gift, we are justified - declared righteous in
God’s sight once and for all. This happens because, as the Hebrews author says, by
the single offering of Jesus Christ for sins, all time, our sins are cancelled.
Jesus' offering for our sins is an offering that is effective for all sins for ALL TIME.
This is why we can still struggle with sin and still have a status of RIGHTEOUS before
God.
This is the doctrine of justification.
And at the core of justification is forgiveness of sins.
Follow Paul’s logic in Romans 4:
4 Now to the one who works, his wage is not credited as a favor, but as what is
due. 5 But to the one who does not work, but believes in Him who justifies the
ungodly, his faith is credited as righteousness, 6 just as David also speaks of
the blessing on the man to whom God credits righteousness apart from works:
7
“Blessed are those whose lawless deeds have been forgiven,
And whose sins have been covered.
8
“Blessed is the man whose sin the Lord will not take into account.”
Justification includes forgiveness.
If we are justified forever, that means we stand forgiven forever.
That is why Paul - even as He writes to the Corinthian church - a church still battling
with sins of pride and immorality, and even drunkenness - tells that because of Jesus
they are not still considered IN THEIR SINS before God (1 Cor3. 15).
3. THEN WHY THE PRAYER “forgive us our sins as we forgive those who sin
against us”
As I alluded to last week, I think there is a difference between a judge who cancels
your criminal record once and for all - and changes your legal status from convicted
felon to innocent citizen.
On the one hand -
And a Father who forgives you when you hurt him - within a family relationship that
never changes.
Do you remember in John 13 when Jesus approaches Peter to wash his feet and
Peter refuses? He doesn’t want someone as exalted as the Son of the Living God to
put his holy hands all over the sweat and grime and trash and probably animal waste
or worse that his feet have mingled with.
Jesus says, - hinting at the deeper meaning of His death for Peter’s forgiveness, says,
“If I don’t wash you, you have no part in me”
Peter says, then Lord, not only my feet but my hands and head as well.
And Jesus stops Him, “He who has bathed needs only to wash his feet, but is
completely clean; and you are clean”
We have had the “bath” of justification. We have had the “bath” of redemption - the
forgiveness of our sins. We can rightly and joyfully and freeingly say “I AM CLEAN!!!!”.
And yet - even though we’ve bathed - we walk through life every day getting our feet
dirty again and again wth the entanglements in indwelling sin.
And so, every day our Father is ready again to wash us of the muck and grime and
worse of the previous days' dirt we’ve taken our souls in.
Asking for forgiveness doesn’t mean we’re in a state of condemnation before God, but
it means we’re aware that we’re still living with hearts affected by the disease of sin,
and we want to take that seriously.
And as we do, we’re called to consider others just as we want to be considered: with
mercy.
We have received mercy, so how could we not see the rightness in being mercy
givers?
4. But .... What happens if we do not forgive others?
I think- there are two major possibilities.
One possibility is that we experience the reality that....
——God’s children get disciplined:
One is that through unforgiveness, we are basically asking our heavenly Father for his
painful but needed discipline.
Jesus tells a sobering story in Matthew 18 about a servant who owes billions of dollars
to His king. He and his family are about to be sold into slavery for their debt when he
begs for mercy. The King forgives him totally. But next thing you know, this forgiven
man turns around and refuses this much smaller debt owed him and sends the beggar
to prison. When the King learns of it he says to the unforgiving servant,
“‘You wicked slave, I forgave you all that debt because you pleaded with
me. 33 Should you not also have had mercy on your fellow slave, in the same
way that I had mercy on you?’ 34 And his lord, moved with anger, handed him
over to the torturers until he should repay all that was owed him.” Jesus tells us
this is how God will treat those who will not forgive others.
His discipline will vary according to the need and the severity of the bitterness,
but our Heavenly Father will not spare his children the discipline they need.
The “torturers”.
Unforgiveness - if we’re fortunate - increasingly feels like a prison. It is like “drinking
poison, thinking our enemy will die”.
God in His Fatherly love, may use many different means - many trials and many
pains, and even in the midst of those, loving appeals to get us to see our hypocrisy
and our need to have mercy on others because we too are those who want and need
mercy
If we’re unfortunate, we just get harder and harder.
And if we never find our way to being mercy givers we need to consider the other
frightful option....
——People show themselves not to be His children.
1 John 3:9 tells us
9 No one born of God makes a practice of sinning, for God's seed abides in
him; and he cannot keep on sinning, because he has been born of God.
We all struggle with sin. We all struggle with unforgiveness at times, especially
towards those who have deeply hurt us time after time.
But we also have to face the reality that a person who does not hate their
unforgiveness, who does not fight it, but who lives at peace with it and feeds on it. who
has no desire to really seek God for His help to forgive - such a person is either deeply
deeply underdeveloped in Christ or - fearfully - they are simply deceived into thinking
they are a Christian when they are not. They know Christ by name but not by heart.
Their unforgiveness and their settled contentment to stay there and condemn their
enemy reveal that they have never truly realized anything of the great debt they owe
God or experienced that debt being taken away in their heart.
Otherwise, - s 1John 3:9 attests - the Holy Spirit living in them would not let them stay
there; they could not make peace with rejecting God’s command to forgive any more
than making peace with any of rejecting any of His commands.
CLOSE:
We are not - even as God’s children - perfect, by we are not what we were before we
became His children. But now, having become His children, we long to look more and
more like our true Heavenly Father.
So let’s show our Father’s children by pursuing forgiveness like our Father did with us.
Remembering Paul’s words in Col 3:
“12 So, as those who have been chosen of God, holy and beloved, put on a heart
of compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness and patience; 13 bearing with one
another, and forgiving each other, whoever has a complaint against anyone; just
as the Lord forgave you, so also should you.”
Do you see what Paul did there at the end?
Whereas Jesus, before He went to the Cross, says “forgive and you will be forgiven”,
Paul, looking at reality AFTER the Cross, says - forgive BECAUSE you ARE forgiven”
We are a people under God’s eternal mercy, so let us strive to be a people quick to
give mercy.
Let’s take some time before we close and ask Him to bring to mind anyone who we still
may harbor anger or bitterness and resentment towards - and let’s forgive them afresh
as we have been forgiven.