Perhaps nothing better points out the fact that this is a model for prayer than the two verses which the Lord adds immediately after His “amen.” “And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil: For thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory, for ever. Amen. For if ye forgive men their trespasses, your heavenly Father will also forgive you: But if ye forgive not men their trespasses, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses.” Now just think about this – if we believe that this is the perfect model prayer, and this is an addendum to that prayer, then this too must be very important.
As Christians we have a rudimentary understanding of how important the Lord’s forgiveness is towards us. But have you thought much about the importance of your forgiveness of others? The Lord Jesus appears to be unequivocal about this point. As the followers of Christ, we are required to forgive those who have sinned against us. Yes, I know that all sin is against God, but here I’m talking about people’s sins against the Lord which hurt us in the process. What if we choose not to forgive those who have trespassed against us? Then we have no business asking the Lord to consider forgiving us for our latest transgressions. In fact, that kind of attitude eliminates all our rights to prayer – period – and that is serious.
Thankfully, the Holy Spirit does enable His saints to forgive. It may look to be impossible to us as the victims of the other person’s sin, but that is only in the flesh. The Holy Spirit is the key to our service and obedience to the Lord – including our forgiveness of others. On the other hand, we are not robots or drones in living our lives as automatons for the Lord’s glory. We do play a personal part in this drama. But sometimes the saints can’t be sure that they really have done is what the Lord requires. Forgiving and knowing that we’ve truly forgiven become easier when we understand the principles of forgiveness.
Forgiveness is only one of our possible responses toward those who have wronged us.
If someone wounded you, physically or otherwise, you could take several steps in response. For example, you could ignore the pain and go on as if nothing had happened. But sometimes that does more harm than good to both you and the one who harmed you. Another option – You could go home and kick the dog, taking your pain out on a totally innocent third party. Or perhaps you could punish that person’s parents and teachers, who should have raised him better. Or you could forgive the person.
Obviously, if you hurt someone, your spouse can’t effectively undo what you have done. Someone else might apologize on your behalf, but that is not the same thing as you doing it. And it is not the same thing for a third party to forgive or absolve a wrong either. If I hurt you, it would be pointless for my wife to apologize to you – You need to hear it from me. And I need your forgiveness, not your mate’s.
And flipping that over, you can only forgive someone who is responsible for wronging you. Forgiving my wife for something that I did to you, is not forgiveness at all. We only forgive those whom we blame.
It would be a worthwhile exercise to examine whether or not there are people whom you need to forgive.
Second, remember that in forgiveness you relinquish your so-called “RIGHT” TO GET EVEN.
“The wages of sin (wronging God) is death,” but for the Christian, the payment was made at Calvary. The blood of Christ covers all of our sins. God the Father can no longer require our spiritual death, because we have been forgiven in Christ. And in respect to that forgiveness, the true saint, ought to give himself to the Lord out of gratitude. Now, as a bond-slave of Jehovah, your life is not your own. This means that whom you love, is no longer your decision alone, and whom you hate isn’t either. As a servant of God, you must come to realize that revenge no longer belongs to you. Now that you have been forgiven you are expected to forgive those who’ve hurt you, leaving in God’s hands any punishment of those who have hurt you.
When we forgive, we place the outcome of the intersecting of our lives – the collisions – in the Lord’s control. “Vengeance is mine, saith the Lord, I will repay” – revenge is something that doesn’t belong to the saint. It might appear to us that the balance of justice is tipped in the wrong way, but if judgment is due, the Lord will take care of it at the proper time.
I read of a woman who was trying to learn the precepts of forgiveness, but I’m not sure that she got it. She had been carrying the burden of hatred towards her uncle for many, many years. At one point she said that she hated him so much she’d not even go to his funeral. But later she testified that she gotten over that. “Today if he died, I’d be happy to go to his funeral.” As I say, I’m not sure that she had learned to forgive.
True forgiveness eliminates the desire for revenge.
Third, when we forgive a wrongdoer, we REMEMBER WHO WE ARE ourselves.
When we have been hurt and wronged, we often make a caricature in our mind of the person who did it to us. We begin to define him in the light of what he did. He betrayed us, so he’s a liar and a traitor, rather than a friend or a child of God. He dropped a box on our toe, so he is a clumsy oaf who shouldn’t be given heavy boxes. He once broke his promise, so he’ll never be worthy of my trust again.
When we properly forgive a person, we re-establish in our mind the fact that he is just another human being. Sure he was a hurtful fool, but aren’t we all? Lay that aside. You can forgive him – you should forgive him – because he is just like you. He is a weak, confused, fragile person, just like you. Given the same set of circumstances, even you might have done the same thing. Forgiveness on our part reminds us of who we are – as much as does, who he is.
What do you feel like when you’ve sinned against the Lord? You should feel like scum. But when you’ve confessed that sin and repented, there should be a sense of relief. I remember a situation like that when I was just a kid. I had done something at school, and finally confessed my guilt. After that confession and the subsequent forgiveness, a song filled my heart – “Oh what beautiful morning, O what a beautiful day;. O what a beautiful feelin’; Everything’s goin’ my way.” That sense of forgiveness, turns on a light. That person doing the forgiving is the one throwing the switch and receiving the blessing of illumination. And he may feel as much, or more, joy and liberty as the man whom he has just forgiven.
Another principle of forgiveness is in WISHING THE MAN WELL.
Not only does forgiveness mean that we can no longer exact revenge, but genuine forgiveness means that we would like to see good things shower upon him. We are supposed to pray for him and bless him. Is this normal? Is this what the world does? Is it too much to ask? Is this not how the Lord forgives? Isn’t this what His forgiveness means to us?
During the Korean War, a South Korean Christian was arrested by the Communists and was ordered to be shot. When the young Communist officer heard that the man was in charge of a large orphanage, he decided to spare the man and to kill the man’s son instead. So the man’s 19-year-old son was shot and killed right in front of his Christian Father. Later as the tides of war changed the young Communist was captured and ordered to be executed. When the man who ran the orphanage heard of the arrest, he hurried to the prison and pleaded for the life of the murderer. He declared that the man was young and that he was only acting under orders. He said, “Give him to me and I will teach him.” Because of the man’s position and his relationship to the prisoner through his son, the South Korean commander ordered that the prisoner to be released to the father. Perhaps they thought that the man would work his tormenter to death. But he took him home and treated him like a son. And today that former Communist is a child of God, pastoring a church near the North Korean border. In this case forgiveness meant evangelism, and discipleship, and love.
And speaking of “love:” After 18 months in the ministry, a young pastor went to his file cabinet looking for his file on “Love.” He discovered that he didn’t have one. “Impossible. It must be misfiled.” He searched the files on “faith” and “fasting,” and between “healing” and “Heaven.” He thought that it might be sandwiched between “Christology” and “Christian Education.” He looked at just about every file tab in the whole cabinet. When he stopped to think about it, the Holy Spirit told him where to find love. It was scattered throughout his file cabinet. Parts of it were found under “patience,” “kindness,” “trust,” “hope,” “loyalty” and “service.” But the biggest collection of articles on Love had been put in the file entitled “forgiveness.”
Another principle is that FORGIVING TAKES TIME.
Of course the Lord doesn’t need time to forgive – He is not bound by time. God forgives in a single breath. But we are not God, and we often need a lot of time.
Have you ever thought that you had forgiven someone, and then later had to do it again, and then again? I’m not talking about repeated offenses, but one offense requiring renewed forgiveness on your part. This may be a corollary to what the Lord was telling Peter about forgiveness. Seven times, Lord? No, seventy times seven, Peter.
Does forgiving require FORGETTING?
Yes, the Lord somehow forgets the sins that we’ve committed. But does He forget that we are sinners? If He did, then we’d really be in trouble. He deals with our transgressions while still dealing with us as needy sinners. Do you
remember the circumstances when Peter denied the Lord? He denied, and then denied again, and then denied that he knew Christ a third time. What happened next? The Lord looked down into the court-yard and broke Peter’s heart. I believe that in those tears, Peter truly repented. Should I assume that he was forgiven at the time of his repentance, or was it prior to that? I suppose that is a different and more difficult study. But my question is this – did the Lord forget that Peter had denied Him? No, the subject came up when they met later and the Lord commanded Peter to feed His sheep. In one sense the offence had been forgotten when forgiven, but then in another it was not forgotten. Perhaps we should say that the poison was sucked out of the sin.
On a human level have you ever deliberately tried to forget something? How often have you been really successful? Maybe it was some embarrassing thing that you did years ago. I have half a dozen of those events stored away in my “to forget file.” But the more that I try to forget those events, the more firmly they are planted in my memory.
Okay, so-and-so “done you wrong,” but you have forgiven him – or at least you think that you have. And the preacher told you to forget it, but……… you can’t completely get it out of your mind. Maybe it is true – you can’t forget the event, but you can purge the poison. Clara Barton, founder of the Red Cross, was talking to a friend who brought up a very cruel deed which had been done against them both. But Mrs. Barton didn’t seem to care. “Don’t you remember what she did to us and how we cried so hard after it happened?” Clara slowly replied, “No, I distinctly remember forgetting that.” Robert E. Lee visited a Kentucky woman who took him to the remains of old tree in front her home. She cried bitterly that the Union soldiers had destroyed her beautiful tree. Nothing was left but a dead, beaten up shell of what was once a grand old tree. She waited for Lee to condemn the North, or at least to sympathize with her for her loss. But General Lee only paused, and then said, “Cut it down, my dear madam, and forget it.” There are a lot of people poisoning themselves with memories over something as simple as dead tree. “Cut it down, my dear madam, and forget it.”
Forgiveness leads to RECONCILIATION.
Sometimes the forgiven person will not want to be reconciled to you. And sometimes, he may be just as dangerous as he ever was before. But if you truly forgive there should at least be the attempt at reconciliation. Isn’t that a vital part of the forgiveness which we have received from the Lord?
Forgiveness is a matter of the heart. There can be no reunion without forgiving. Sadly, forgiving is no guarantee of reunion, because that is a two party event.
And last, forgiving SHOULD COME EASILY to those who have been forgiven.
This is probably why the Lord Jesus taught us as He did in this prayer. He shows us that it is unthinkable for a forgiven person to refuse to forgive. In another place the Lord gives us a parable of a servant who owed his master a great deal money. When his master forgave the debt, the man went out and found a fellow servant who owed him just a few pennies. He was about to severely punish his debtor when his Lord found out about it. He was furious with that forgiven man who refused to forgive. Forgiveness should produce an heart that yearns to forgive others. It should come naturally to us.
The Lord doesn’t expect us to forgive perfectly, because he knows our every weakness. But He does expect us to work at it.