Kingdom Forgiveness
Today’s message is called Kingdom Forgiveness. Life is full of chances to learn to forgive others. My dad had to forgive my brother and I for putting many holes in the wall during wrestling matches. We even decided one day to play kickball indoors in the living room… genius. And we broke a lamp. Of course, forgiven. I suppose they were happy it was just a lamp… It is easy to receive forgiveness isn’t it?!
But it isn’t as easy to give it. In the same stream of stories, my brother and I used to play war with BB guns. The ones you pump 10 times. We would only pump it 2-3 times… well he decided to pump his 10 times for a while… It felt like more than 10. I am just glad I still have both eyes.
Here is the bottom line: forgiveness is hard. But nothing worth doing is often easy. When Jesus came to forgive us, it was a hard thing. And because of that hard thing, we have the best thing: a Father who loves and forgives us. As a result of that hard thing, we are challenged to also do this hard thing for others. But remember, forgiveness is God’s thing. If he is the author, he is the only one we can do it well through. But if we ask, he will help us.
“Ask and you shall receive, seek you and you will find, knock and the door will be opened.” Are we asking for forgiveness without asking for power to forgive? Are we seeking grace, but not to give it to others? Are we knocking with expectation of a graceful answer, but responding to others differently? The path of the kingdom is forgiveness. And it is a path we must walk.
Forgiveness begins with humility
Just like this sermon series and this chapter began with humility, so does forgiveness.
In those days, it was common among rabbis to encourage people to forgive a brother for repeated sin up to three times, after that, there would be no more forgiveness. So Peter, thinking he had a really big heart, asked Jesus how often he should forgive his brother. He believed he was being gracious in saying 7. Jesus, ups the ante.
“70 times seven” verse 22 tells us. Then, in what can only be labeled an extreme illustration, Jesus tells the story of a man who owed a wild amount of money. Clearly, an amount of money that this servant could never repay to the king. And yet the king, out of sheer compassion for the servant, forgave the entire debt.
So I did some math… ha! I know. According to some research I did on coinage then versus money now. 1 talent was worth 6,000 Denarii. Now a Denarii, was typically a day’s wages. One commentary said one talent, so 6,000 days of work (approximately 16.5 years of wages) equals $247,200. So, one talent, to make it easier for us, is worth about $250,000. 10,000 of those… Our resident math teacher, Sara Logue told me that the number comes out to 2 billion and 500 million.
This is how extreme the debt is! This example is more of a debt than you and I can ever imagine. And that is entirely the point… this is the debt of our sin to God, unthinkable. And yet… we are forgiven. But when someone crosses us… a hundred denarii… essentially a couple hundred bucks, we can’t forgive.
Humility reminds us that we have been forgiven of much, and we ought to forgive much. Matthew 6:14-15, “For if you forgive others their trespasses, your heavenly Father will also forgive you, but if you do not forgive others their trespasses, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses.”
The stakes of forgiveness are incredibly high. We only see the stakes of our unforgiveness when we embrace humility. Pride keeps us from seeing the tremendous debt that we owe to Jesus. Every time we do not forgive, we spit on Christ who hangs on the cross with our sin draped all over him.
We cannot forgive unless we are humble, we cannot understand the gospel unless the pride within us is broken. Forgiveness is impossible without humility. Write this simple idea down: when you don’t forgive, it reveals a root of pride. Pride that we are better, pride that we are justified on our own, pride that we don’t need the forgiveness of our savior.
Forgiveness is the foundation of God’s kingdom
It is bad enough to be called a hypocrite for unforgiveness. This verse does far worse: it claims you as an unbeliever. You are not saved. You are outside of the kingdom. We must read this verse with great caution.
Everything that we have in this kingdom, the very fact that we are invited into the kingdom of God and that that kingdom even exists… is all because of forgiveness. The forgiveness that God has extended to you through the life, death, and resurrection of his son. Without Christ, there is no forgiveness of sin (2 Peter 1).
In Christ, we have received extravagant grace. To use the analogy of the debt this servant owed, there is no price-tag that you or I could ever put on our sinfulness before an infinitely holy God. When you and I think, “Well, I haven’t sinned as much as this person or that person,” we show that we have no clue of the extent of our own sin.
Our debt is deep… infinitely deep. But Christ has paid it. Out of sheer compassion, the Father sent His Son to endure the wrath you and I deserve, and now we are free from sin’s penalty. Free not only as a servant, but as a son or as a daughter!
Because we have received extravagant grace in Christ, as Christians, we now ought to extend extravagant grace. This servant completely forgets what the gracious king has done for him. He makes a mockery of it in his actions! Forgiven 2 billion bucks… but beating someone over a few dollars.
For a Christian not to forgive is to do the exact same thing. The Bible is not saying that it’s easy to forgive or that it’s natural to forgive… It is saying that it is Christian to forgive. In fact, the Christian has no other option. We forgive not because we have to, but because in love we are compelled to.
1 John 2:9, “anyone who claims to be in the light but hates his brother is still in the darkness.”
Forgiveness is possible because of the gospel
We can forgive the impossible because of the gospel. Some of us have had tremendously horrible things done to us. Unimaginable things. Things that we might have never even told others about. But the power of the gospel of Jesus empowers us to forgive in impossible circumstances.
To be clear, forgiveness is not permission to allow the person to continue to hurt you. Forgiveness is not counting that sin against that person anymore. It is giving them to God, and releasing them to him, the true and just judge.
Forgiveness is the redemption of brokenness through which God can work in his mighty power. Forgiveness allows the Spirit of God to work in and through you in profound ways.
Only Jesus can enable the kind of forgiving heart this passage calls for. Gratefully, He reminds us of the extravagant compassion He has shown to us as the least deserving sinners, and by His grace, He enables us to extend that same extravagant compassion to those whom we would label as the least deserving. This kind of forgiveness should characterize the church, because the church was founded on that very principle.
Conclusion
Forgiveness starts with humility. You can’t forgive unless you are humble. Humility is a gift from God, and it gives us the power to be the people he calls us to be.
Forgiveness is the foundation of God’s kingdom. This whole thing, this thing we do, this God we serve, these places we build and worship in, this community that grows, this gospel we preach, this book in our hands, these lives that are changed, are all a result of forgiveness.
And last, forgiveness is possible because of the gospel. Paul says follow me as I follow Christ. Christ says pick up your cross, die to yourself. We need to die. Unforgiveness is living in sinfulness. Unforgiveness is anti-gospel. Unforgiveness is holding you back from your destiny.
Let me ask you this: Who is the person that God put on your heart the minute that you heard we would be talking about forgiveness today? It’s time. We often think that we are the ones holding the person who wronged us hostage when we withhold forgiveness, but we are instead holding ourselves hostage. When we release the people we need to forgive, we actually end up releasing ourselves.