The Goal of Forgiveness
Matthew 18.21-35
21 Then Peter came to Him and said, “Lord, how often shall my brother sin against me, and I forgive him? Up to seven times?” 22 Jesus said to him, “I do not say to you, up to seven times, but up to seventy times seven. 23 Therefore the kingdom of heaven is like a certain king who wanted to settle accounts with his servants. 24 And when he had begun to settle accounts, one was brought to him who owed him ten thousand talents. 25 But as he was not able to pay, his master commanded that he be sold, with his wife and children and all that he had, and that payment be made. 26 The servant therefore fell down before him, saying, ‘Master, have patience with me, and I will pay you all.’ 27 Then the master of that servant was moved with compassion, released him, and forgave him the debt. 28 “But that servant went out and found one of his fellow servants who owed him a hundred denarii; and he laid hands on him and took him by the throat, saying, ‘Pay me what you owe!’ 29 So his fellow servant fell down at his feet[d] and begged him, saying, ‘Have patience with me, and I will pay you all.’[e] 30 And he would not, but went and threw him into prison till he should pay the debt. 31 So when his fellow servants saw what had been done, they were very grieved, and came and told their master all that had been done. 32 Then his master, after he had called him, said to him, ‘You wicked servant! I forgave you all that debt because you begged me. 33 Should you not also have had compassion on your fellow servant, just as I had pity on you?’ 34 And his master was angry, and delivered him to the torturers until he should pay all that was due to him. 35 “So My heavenly Father also will do to you if each of you, from his heart, does not forgive his brother his trespasses.”
Introduction
Because of the twenty-four hour news cycle and the internet we are constantly exposed to the evil things that people are doing in the world and in our own neighbordhoods. This constant exposure can make us cynical and suspicious. It can harden us in our attitude toward others. The worst thing that it can do is to stop us from looking for the evil that exists in our own hearts and dealing with it according to God’s will with repentance, forgiveness, and new obedience. When evil constantly surrounds us we can be tempted to think that we aren’t so bad ourselves, and we can lose sight of the grace of God in our lives.
Why Does God Forgive Us of Our Sins?
Many do not believe in sin. But everyone recognizes bad human behavior. The question is: What is the cause? If we know the cause or causes, we might be able to cure it or restrain it. Those who don’t believe in God or the devil or good or evil often blame bad behavior on animalistic traits still remaining in the evolutional process, poor education, poverty, and racism. I spoke of this last Sunday, and pointed out that this popular view of evil has only led to a five-fold increase in crime in the past hundred years, and I would add to that today: a great increase the breakdown of marriage, family, civil discourse and civility in general. If we continue in this direction, the world will become more and more savage and unloving. This is its natural state of the world apart from the kingdom of God.
God tells us a much different story. Bad behavior arises from the problem of sin. Sin is not biological, it is spiritual. It is not something we can understand. It is rebellion against God. When you catch a child taking a cookie that they were told not to eat and ask: Why did you do this? What is the most common answer: “I don’t know?” Jeremiah 17.9 said: “The heart is deceitful above all things and desperate wicked, who can understand it?” Paul calls sin lawlessness and a mystery in 2 Thessalonians 2.7. In the Book of Revelation John describes the world in opposition to God as a harlot who has the word “mystery” written on her forehead (17.5).
Human solutions to the mystery of sin have never worked and never will. The problems just get worse. But God counters the mystery of sin with another mystery: The mystery of love. Paul describes that mystery in 1 Corinthians 13. “If I speak in the tongues of men and angels… If I have the gift of prophecy and understand all mysteries… If I have faith to move mountains, but have not love, I am nothing… Faith, hope and love abide, these three, but the greatest of these is love.” If you really want to understand that chapter, then reread it again, and in each place that Paul uses the word “love,” read “Jesus.” This is what John was saying in his first letter: “In this is love, not that we loved God, but that He loved us and sent His Son to be the propitiation for our sins” (1 John 4.10). Why does God forgive sins? Because He wants to deliver us from the slavery of sin and the consequences of eternal death.
How Does God Forgive Us of Our Sins?
God forgives sins by paying the impossible debt. The first man had debt of ten thousand talents. A “talent” was a weight of silver or gold. One talent was the equivalent of 6,000 denarii. A denarii was the average wage for one day of work. Therefore a talent was worth 20 years of work. Multiply that by 10,000 and he owed 200,000 years of work. This was an impossible debt. Jesus used the word “debt” in the Lord’s Prayer to refer to this massive debt of sin that all people owe to God. One of the most common ways that the Bible describes this forgiveness is with the word “redeem.” God redeems us from our debt of sin by paying it for us with the innocent blood of Jesus. Peter teaches us this when he wrote: “…you were not redeemed with corruptible things like silver or gold, from your aimless conduct received by tradition from your fathers, but with the precious blood of Christ, as of a lamb without blemish and without spot” (1.18-19). Jesus said, “The Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give His life as a ransom for many” (Matthew 20.28).
What Is the Goal of Forgiveness?
Forgiveness brings us to the goal that God has for us – the goal of holiness and perfect fellowship with Him and with one another. In Jesus’ day the preaching of forgiveness was absurd both among the Jews and the Gentiles. Many of the Jews in Jesus’ day thought of themselves as holy by virtue of their own self-righteousness and their outward obedience to the Law of Moses. To say they needed repentance and forgiveness was an offense to them. Among the Gentiles, forgiveness was seen as weakness. You don’t love your enemies or forgive them, you crush them. Both problems still are alive and well in our world today. But we now have third problem when it comes to the teaching of repentance and forgiveness.
Today we live in a post-Christian world. What I mean by that is that Christianity is not a new teaching as it was in the first centuries after Christ. From the devil’s perspective, if you cannot defeat this teaching with self-righteousness or vengeance, then he raises up a third perspective. This is the perspective of “acceptance.” Many people today reinterpret forgiveness to be acceptance. They say that Jesus accepted everyone regardless of their behavior. This is hardly the case if you would just read the Bible. Jesus went to everyone and sent His disciples out to everyone to preach repentance and the forgiveness of sin. But when people refuse to repent and insist on continuing in what the Bible calls sin, Jesus told His disciples to “shake off the dust from your feet” and warn those who reject repentance and forgiveness that they will be worse off than the people of Sodom and Gomorrah (Matthew 10.14-15).
The goal of forgiveness is a changed life – a life so changed and so filled with the love of God that a person could forgive his brother seventy times seven times for sinning against him. Only a person who has realized how God has paid his impossible debt through the death and resurrection of His own Son could do that. The goal of forgiveness is to be so filled with the love of God that you begin to look at everyone around you in the same way God does. The goal of forgiveness is to go to people not to cancel them or hold grudges that last for years.
Conclusion
Dave was coming to the end of his life. He had grown up on a farm not far from here and had led a long and colorful life. He was our snowplow man for many years at our church. As I visited him to help him look to God in his last days, I could see that he was ready. One day Dave pulled out a yellow sheet of paper. On it he had written a list of the seven or eight times that God had clearly saved his life. The first was when his ship was blown to bits in the Pacific Ocean in World War Two. He was thrown into the sea and miraculously rescued. But it didn’t stop there. As a heavy equipment operator there were a number of other close calls with death in his life. Yet God had saved him. People who relized how God has saved them are the most peaceful people I’ve ever met.
Joseph was one of these men. This afternoon I encouarge you to read the story of his life in Genesis thirty-seven to fifty. He was sold by his jealous brothers into slavery. He was unjustly thrown into prison. If there was ever a man who had an excuse to become angry with God and angry with his brothers, it was Joseph. But Joseph had the gift of being able to see the hand of God in his life. “How could he sin against God who had saved him so many times,” he once said. At one point Joseph the opportunity to put his own brothers into chains and to pay them back for all they had done to them. Instead, he led them to repentance and forgiveness and salvation. This is the story of God, and I hope that everyone who hears me today will find themselves in that story. Amen.
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