"Forgive us our sins, as we forgive..." (Matthew 18v15-35) by Stephen Coffin

A woman testified to the transformation in her life that had resulted through her experience in conversion. She declared, "I'm so glad I got religion. I have an uncle I used to hate so much I vowed I'd never go to his funeral. But now, why, I'd be happy to go to it any time." - (James S. Hewett, Illustrations Unlimited p. 223.)

Today’s gospel reading could hardly lay before us more clearly the importance of forgiveness in the Christian way of seeing life. I don’t need to underline to you that it is a clear command of Jesus’, in today’s gospel reading & many other places.

Jesus never attacked the sinner. He simply said, "I forgive you." Meanwhile, he attacked the self-righteous with a vengeance, because he knew that until they felt guilty, they couldn't be forgiven. - (Jerry Cook, Leadership, Vol. 5, no. 2.)

Forgiveness is something we all need. We need God’s forgiveness and that of other people, whom we often hurt.

"Only one petition in the Lord's Prayer has any condition attached to it. It is the petition for forgiveness." (Sir William Temple (1628-1699))

A man in conversation with John Wesley once made the comment, "I never forgive." Wesley wisely replied, "Then, sir, I hope that you never sin."

We need to forgive others.

On February 9, 1960, Adolph Coors III was kidnapped and held for ransom. Seven months later his body was found on a remote hillside. He had been shot to death. Adolph Coors IV, then fifteen years old, lost not only his father but his best friend. For years young Coors hated Joseph Corbett, the man who was sentenced to life for the slaying.

Then in 1975 Ad Coors became a Christian. While he divested himself of his interest in the family beer business, he could not divest himself of the hatred that consumed him. Resentment seethed within him and blighted his growth in faith. He prayed to God for help because he realised how his hatred for Corbett was alienating him from God and other persons. The day came, however, when claiming the Spirit's presence, Ad Coors visited the maximum security unit of Colorado's Canon City penitentiary and tried to talk with Corbett. Corbett refused to see him. Coors left a Bible inscribed with this message: I'm here to see you today and I'm sorry that we could not meet. As a Christian I am summoned by our Lord and Saviour, Jesus Christ, to forgive. I do forgive you, and I ask you to forgive me for the hatred I've held in my heart for you." Later Coors confessed, "I have a love for that man that only Jesus Christ could have put in my heart." - (James S. Hewett, Illustrations Unlimited)

The need for forgiveness in the family.

Ernest Hemingway wrote a story about a father and his teenage son. In the story, the relationship had become somewhat strained, and the teenage son ran away from home. His father began a journey in search of that rebellious son. Finally, in Madrid, Spain, in a last desperate attempt to find the boy, the father put an ad in the local newspaper. The ad read: "Dear Paco, Meet me in front of the newspaper office at noon. All is forgiven. I love you. Your father." The next day, in front of the newspaper office, eight hundred Pacos showed up. They were all seeking forgiveness. They were all seeking the love of their father.

One criterion of family health: Are you saying, "I'm sorry," "I forgive you," and "I love you" often? - (H.B. London, Leadership, Vol. 13, no. 4.)

The need to forgive ourselves.

If God forgives us, we must forgive ourselves. Otherwise it is almost like setting up ourselves as a higher tribunal than him. (C. S. Lewis (1898-1963))

The need for some "to forgive God".

Some time ago I worked with a family going through a divorce. After the settlement was made, the mother called to tell me her 8-year-old daughter was fighting with everyone: family, teachers, classmates, former friends. She was angry all the time. Could I talk with her? So I began to take her daughter on little outings. Once we were sitting in the swings at the playground, swinging back and forth, and talking. I said, "Honey, why are you so angry?" She said, "I don't know." "Who are you mad at?" She didn't answer. For a long time we just sat there. Finally she said, "You know, Marlin, I prayed to God every day about my mom and dad. I asked him to keep them together. I didn't want them to get a divorce. I asked God to keep them together, and God didn't answer my prayer." After a bit I said, "You know, darling, God prays too. Did you know that?" She said, "God prays?" "God prays, too. God prayed to your mommy and daddy that they would fight this thing out and stay with their vows. But your mommy and daddy chose not to answer God's prayer. You know what God did about that? God forgave your parents. He loves them, and he knew how hard it was for them to stay together. Can you forgive your mom and dad? Can you forgive God?" - (Marlin Vis, "The Blame Game," Preaching Today, Tape No. 114.)

So how do we forgive?

1. Hate the sin, forgive the sinner.

I remember Christian teachers telling me long ago that I must hate a bad man's actions, but not hate the bad man: or, as they would say, hate the sin but not the sinner. For a long time I used to think this a silly, straw-splitting distinction: how could you hate what a man did and not hate the man? But years later it occurred to me that there was one man to whom I had been doing this all my life - namely myself.

However much I might dislike my own cowardice or conceit or greed, I went on loving myself. There had never been the slightest difficulty about it. In fact the very reason why I hated the things was that I loved the man. Just because I loved myself, I was sorry to find that I was the sort of man who did those things.

Consequently, Christianity does not want us to reduce by one atom the hatred we feel for cruelty and treachery. We ought to hate them. Not one word of what we have said about them needs to be unsaid. But it does want us to hate them in the same way in which we hate things in ourselves: being sorry that the man should have done such things, and hoping, if it is anyway possible, that somehow, sometime, somewhere, he can be cured and made human again. - (C. S. Lewis, Mere Christianity.)

There are, of course, some people who do get to the point of hating themselves, and they need to be rescued from that by the understanding that God loves them deeply, and if he loves them, then they can learn to love themselves also, but that’s perhaps another talk....

2. Forgiveness is an act of the will, rather than something dependent on feelings - the emotions may come afterwards.

Clara Barton was never known to hold resentment against anyone. One time a friend recalled to her a cruel thing that had happened to her some years previously, but Clara seemed not to remember the incident. "Don't you remember the wrong that was done you?" the friend asked Clara. She answered calmly, "No, I distinctly remember forgetting that." - (James S. Hewett, Illustrations Unlimited)

Years after her concentration camp experiences in Nazi Germany, Corrie ten Boom met face to face one of the most cruel and heartless German guards that she had ever contacted. He had humiliated and degraded her and her sister. He had jeered and visually raped them as they stood in the delousing shower. Now he stood before her with hand outstretched and said, "Will you forgive me?" She writes: "I stood there with coldness clutching at my heart, but I know that the will can function regardless of the temperature of the heart. I prayed, Jesus, help me! Woodenly, mechanically I thrust my hand into the one stretched out to me and I experienced an incredible thing. The current started in my shoulder, raced down into my arms and sprang into our clutched hands. Then this warm reconciliation seemed to flood my whole being, bringing tears to my eyes. 'I forgive you, brother,' I cried with my whole heart. For a long moment we grasped each other's hands, the former guard, the former prisoner. I have never known the love of God so intensely as I did in that moment!" To forgive is to set a prisoner free and discover the prisoner was you.

3. Forgiveness is about putting the past behind us.

Corrie ten Boom, in her book Tramp for the Lord had these words to say regarding forgiveness: "It was 1947. I had come from Holland to defeated Germany with the message that God forgives. It was the truth they needed most to hear in that bitter, bombed-out land, and I gave them my favourite mental picture. Maybe because the sea is never far from a Hollander's mind, I like to think that that's where forgiven sins are thrown. "When we confess our sins," I said, "God casts them into the deepest ocean, gone forever. Then God places a sign out there that says "No Fishing Allowed!" "

A guy complained to his buddy that whenever he argued with his wife, she got historical. His friend said, "You mean hysterical." He said, "No, historical. She dredges up the past and reminds me of every time I've failed her in the past." We do that with our kids sometimes, don't we? Our kids do something wrong, and we remind them of the previous forty-three times that they did the same thing. (Jim Nicodem, "The Father Heart of God," Preaching Today, Tape No. 152.)

4. Begin where you are and allow God to lead you on in forgiveness.

You may not feel able to pray yet for forgiveness for someone who has hurt you or to go to them to offer them forgiveness or to ask it from them for your grudge bearing. But you can tell God you want to forgive and ask him to help you do so.

Forgiving can be like peeling an onion - you keep discovering new layers and have to deal with them one after another.

Remember that God wants you to forgive, so he will help you to do so.

5. Learn to ask forgiveness of others. When we don’t know how to go about expressing forgiveness to others, one of the ways to do so is to ask their forgiveness for something, especially for your not putting behind you the thing you need to forgive them.

6. Remind yourself often of how much God has forgiven you. This is a great encouragement to be forgiving ourselves. "He that demands mercy, and shows none, ruins the bridge over which he himself is to pass." (Thomas Adams (1612-1653))

Forgiveness liberates ourselves and others.

Many Americans were moved by the Vietnam-era Pulitzer Prize-winning photo of 9-year-old Phan Thi Kim Phuc (pronounced fuke), naked and horribly burned, running from a napalm attack. But for John Plummer, minister of Bethany United Methodist church in Purcellville, Virginia, that picture had special significance. In 1972 he was responsible for setting up the air strike on the village of Trang Bang--a strike approved after he was twice assured there were no civilians in the area. ...

In June of 1996 he saw a network news story about Kim Phuc and learned she was not only alive but living in Toronto. Plummer found out she was speaking at the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington, D.C. He invited members of a Vietnam helicopter flight crew to attend the speech with him. As Kim Phuc addressed the crowd, she said that if she ever met the pilot of the plane she would tell him she forgives him and that they cannot change the past but she hoped they could work together in the future. Plummer was able to get word to Kim Phuc that the man she wanted to meet was there.

"She saw my grief, my pain, my sorrow," Plummer wrote in an article in the Virginia Advocate. "She held out her arms to me and embraced me. All I could say was, 'I'm sorry; I'm so sorry,' over and over again. At the same time she was saying, 'It's all right; it's all right; I forgive; I forgive.'" Plummer learned that Kim Phuc became a Christian in 1982. - (Evangelical Press News cited in Beacon (4/97). Leadership, Vol. 17, no. 4.)