Text: Colossian 3:12-14
Message for February 24, 2002
by Pastor Glenn Layne

Second Message in the Series:
THE FREEDOM OF THE CROSS

The Freedom to Forgive


The Case of Catherine

In his excellent little book, The Secret of the Vine, Bruce Wilkenson tells the story of Catherine, "a bright, sixtysomething professional" whom he met at a weekend retreat. At dinner Friday night, she admitted that she'd never been able to break through to a rewarding Christian life. "I just don't feel like my faith amounts to anything-except guilt. I always feel like God is unhappy with me. And why not? I don't make much difference for Him in the world."

She expressed sentiments like that all through dinner. About the time dessert was being served, Bruce had an idea. "Catherine, I think there's something that's keeping you spiritually stuck."

"Like what?"

After ruling out several possibilities, he suggested that unforgiveness might be the blockage in her walk with God-call it hardening of the attitudes.

On Saturday morning, she cornered him right after breakfast. She'd had a nearly sleepless night. Bruce's words the night before had opened an old wound. It was her bitterness toward her aged mother. She was bitter and unforgiving of her. He advised her to write out everything-all the injuries and accusations she associated with her mother.

On Sunday morning, Catherine found him. "This is it," she said. "This is what has controlled my life." It was five pages, handwritten, small script, of every hurt she'd held on to for all those years.

After an hour talking and weeping, Catherine was able to repent of her unforgiving spirit and release her mother. As Wilkinson writes, even amid her tears, she looked 20 years younger.

But that's not all.

Six months later, he got a note from Catherine. She'd reconciled with her mother. But there was more. Her note said in part, "I'm back on speaking terms with God. It feels like my soul is breathing again. Even my non-Christian friends have noticed. And I've started enjoying serving Him, too."

Call it THE FREEDOM OF FORGIVENESS.

As you look at the whole testimony of Scripture, it's clear that one of the basics of following Christ is the practice of forgiveness.

How Important is Forgiveness for the Jesus-Follower?
(Colossians 3:12-14)

12Therefore, as God's chosen people, holy and dearly loved, clothe yourselves with compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness and patience. 13Bear with each other and forgive whatever grievances you may have against one another. Forgive as the Lord forgave you. 14And over all these virtues put on love, which binds them all together in perfect unity.

 

Focus on 12-14:

"Clothe yourself": God supplies the wardrobe, but you have to do the dressing!

To "bear with" is to put up with each other's quirks and oddities; to forgive means to forgive one another of real wrongdoing-of sin-the way Catherine had to.

Love is the "overcoat" to all other Christian virtues!

What I find interesting is that forgiveness has such a central position. I suspect that it's because it's so basic, and because it's such a distinctly Christian virtue. Forgiving people who've hurt you is not high on the "to do" list of any society-either in Paul's day or our own. I think it's interesting that when Tony Campolo asks secular students on university campuses what saying of Jesus that they might know, "Forgive your enemies" is usually mentioned first.

Forgiveness is a fundamentally unnatural act. It runs counter to our drive to survive-a drive that is not aided by forgiveness. It is our third choice when it comes to the only three options we have when we are hurt.

When we hurt: Our three options

The first choice we have when we hurt is to…

1. Internalize: We do this when we blame ourselves for someone else's wrong doing. An extreme form of this is the abused wife who blames herself for getting her husband mad enough to hit her. Generally, when we internalize our hurts, we slowly poison our own souls, warping our perspective about life and the people around us. It's kind of like the story they tell about old John. Every morning John's wife would ask him what he wanted for breakfast, and every morning he'd say the same thing: "Two eggs, one boiled and one fried." And every morning he'd look at his plate and say, "You did it again. You boiled the wrong one!" Somehow old John got warped!

The second is…

2. Retaliate: "Don't get mad, get even." We all know what it is to retaliate-and it's the one course of action that is most natural to us. Get even. Make the other guy hurt. Sigmund Freud-remember I joked about Freudian psychoanalysis last week?-he understood this feeling well. He said, "One must forgive one's enemies-but not before they have been hanged."

And the third choice when hurt is the hardest, and the most unnatural:

3. Forgive.

What Unforgiveness Does

Let's start with what happens when we do not forgive. In broad terms, the Bible says that two bad things happen when we will not, do not, forgive.

1. It creates a breakdown of relations with God (Matthew 6:14-15)

Close on the heels of what Jesus says we should pray-"Forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors"-Jesus adds this comment:

14For if you forgive men when they sin against you, your heavenly Father will also forgive you. 15But if you do not forgive men their sins, your Father will not forgive your sins.

This is heavy stuff. If you cut off forgiveness from other people, God will cut off forgiveness from you. By this we should understand the forgiveness of our daily sins, not that God would cast a child of God out of His kingdom. In other words, when we live with unrepentant unforgiveness, we block the bridge of good relations with God.

Maybe-maybe-if you feel far from God, like Catherine in the story-this is the problem.

There's a second thing that happens when we live in a state of grudge and unforgiveness:

2. It leads to torment of the soul (that is, both mind and body) (Matthew 18:34-35)

In Matthew 18, Jesus tells a parable all about forgiveness and unforgiveness. Peter asks Jesus how often he should forgive someone. Seven times? No, says Jesus-70 times seven! (That is, not 490 times, but keep on forgiving!)

He then tells a story about a servant who is forgiven a huge debt by the king. He then goes out and tries to squeeze the money out of an another guy who owes him like a 20-dollar bill. He refuses to forgive him, and has the guy locked up. When the king finds out, he's ticked. This is how the story ends, in verses 34-35:

34"In anger his master turned him over to the jailers to be tortured, until he should pay back all he owed. 35"This is how my heavenly Father will treat each of you unless you forgive your brother from your heart."

Jesus says-here's the application to us-that if we who have been forgiven so much get so stingy about forgiving other people, God hands us over to the "jailers" to be "tortured." Jesus says that the God-appointed outcome of unforgiveness is torment-torment of mind, body and soul.

I am convinced that unrepentant unforgiveness is the root cause behind all sorts of illnesses of body and soul we suffer. It is well established that emotional distress-even that which we are not consciously aware of-can be behind high blood pressure, headaches, ulcers, and depression-to name a few.

In his classic book None of These Diseases, S.I. McMillen writes,

The moment I start hating a man, I become his slave. I can't enjoy my work anymore because he controls my thoughts. My resentments produce too many stress hormones in my body and I become fatigued after only a few hours work. The work I formerly enjoyed is now drudgery…

The man I hate hounds me wherever I go. I can't escape his tyrannical grasp on my mind…the man I hate may be miles from my bedroom, but more cruel than any slave driver, he whips my thoughts into such a frenzy that my innerspring mattress becomes a rack of torture. The lowest of serfs can sleep, but not I. I must really acknowledge the fact that I am a slave to every man on whom I pour the viles of my wrath.

Call it hate or unforgiveness, to the degree I refuse to let go, that unforgiveness digs its claws into me. Is it worth it? No way.

The power of forgiveness

I could just tell you to forgive because Jesus commands it and because of His cross. That is enough, but there's more. Let me give you three specifics.

1. It breaks the cycle of blame and pain.

Hindus believe in something called "Karma"-that is, that enough doing of good must happen to balance out the evil we do. (One Hindu scholar says the average person needs 6.8 billion reincarnations to get it right! Good grief!)

Christians don't believe in karma, but we do believe that people can get caught up in cycles of blame and pain-like a married couple who engage in a cold war of quiet but determined acts of retaliation over slights real and imagined.

Forgiveness breaks the cycle. It says, "Enough. I cut the cord. I forgive you. Let's start over."

Let me urge you to realize that even if the person you hold a grudge against is dead, the God-pleasing, soul-satisfying thing to do is to forgive them-for your sake. That ball of unforgiveness stays in your soul, poisoning you even if that person is off the planet. Even if you can't restore the relationship, you can restore your peace of mind-by forgiving.

2. It loosens the power of guilt

Sometimes forgiveness gives the other person a fresh start by loosening the power of guilt. The classic is the story of the Bishop's candlesticks that Victor Hugo includes in his novel Les Miserables. Maybe you know the story. Jean Valjean has just been released from prison after serving 19 years for the grave offense of stealing a loaf of bread. A bishop allows him to stay overnight with him, and Valjean, toughened by his years in prison, steals the bishop's silverware and goes off into the night.

The next morning, three policemen knock on the bishop's door. They have Jean Valjean and are ready to put him away for life. They were about to ask the bishop if indeed the silverware in Valjean's sack is his.

This bishop says to Valjean, "So here you are! I'm delighted to see you. Have you forgotten I gave you the candlesticks as well? They're silver like the rest and work a good 200 francs. Did you forget to take them?"

Valjean is no thief, he assures the gendarmes. "The silver was my gift to him," he says. As he hands the candlesticks to Jean Valjean, he says, "Do not forget, do not ever forget that you have promised me to use the money to make yourself an honest man."

In Les Miserables, this act of grace and forgiveness changes Jean Valjean. He does go on to become an honest man-because of the forgiveness of God extended through a man of God. And as well, forgiveness can indeed have that power in the lives we touch.

3. It put me on the side of the forgiven (Colossians 3:13b)

What I mean by that is brought out by Paul at the end of Colossians 3:13: Forgive as the Lord forgave you.

God deals gently with us; He forgave us at the cost of the cross. As well, we are called to deal gently with those who hurt us. We are called to be absolutely anxious to forgive the repentant, and to even forgive the undeserving if that act of forgiveness would be to the glory of God.

It may seem that people have hurt you in wicked and unreasonable ways. It may seem that letting them off the hook, an unreasonable lot is being asked of you. But in you act of forgiveness, you recognize that you yourself are a sinner in need of being forgiven, and that God has extended you an unreasonable amount of forgiveness-and that it's perfectly reasonable to pass that forgiveness on.

Decision Time…

I said last week that this series is all about getting the freedom God wants us to have-freedom that Jesus won for us on the cross.

You have a decision to make. Many of you here have people you need to forgive. Some of them might be in this room. Some of them might be sitting next to you. Someone you need to forgive may have died years ago, but still you harbor a grudge against them.

You may need to walk up to someone after this service and ask for their forgiveness-and to offer them your forgiveness. You may have a call to make this afternoon or a letter or an email to write. You may need to do what Catherine did-write all the hurts down first to really identify the invisible chains that bind you.

But if you have that person to forgive, I promise you that if you do not, the chains will remain. Your sense of distance from God will remain and compound. Your own health of body and soul will suffer.

It comes back to the cross. On the cross, Jesus died to set you free. Yes, even from the need to get even. Even from the need for personal justice. He said, "Father, forgive them." And now He calls you to follow in His example: "Father, forgive them!"

© Copyright 2002, Pastor Glenn Layne, www.templecitybaptist.org