Forgiving Those Who Trespass Against You, Part 3

Posted on October 5, 2011 by Pastor Foley

Part XV of the Forgiving and Reconciling Series

We concluded our last post noting that when Jesus says, ” “If your brother or sister sins against you, rebuke them; and if they repent, forgive them” it sure sounds like repentance follows forgiveness.

But it’s important to remember a few things:

Jesus says, “If your brother or sister sins against you.” He is talking here about fellow believers—those who have received the forgiveness of God and been set free from their bondage to sin. The sin of Christians is a major concern in the Scripture and in church history. To modern Christians, that makes little sense. We just think, Christians sin, right?

But look how seriously the writer of Hebrews takes the sin of fellow believers, in Hebrews 6:4-8:

4 It is impossible for those who have once been enlightened, who have tasted the heavenly gift, who have shared in the Holy Spirit, 5 who have tasted the goodness of the word of God and the powers of the coming age 6 and who have fallen[c] away, to be brought back to repentance. To their loss they are crucifying the Son of God all over again and subjecting him to public disgrace. 7 Land that drinks in the rain often falling on it and that produces a crop useful to those for whom it is farmed receives the blessing of God. 8 But land that produces thorns and thistles is worthless and is in danger of being cursed. In the end it will be burned.

The writer of Hebrews is here referring to the sin of apostasy; spurning the truth of God in favor of one’s own ideas or desires.  While not every sin makes one apostate, every sin that is left to freely reign in the life of the believer sets her on a trajectory towards apostasy.  Such is the end goal of our enemy: to leave us so satisfied, or imprisoned, with our own sin that we turn our backs on God altogether.

So when a fellow believer falls back into sin, we ought to regard it as a four-alarm fire! It’s a big deal! It requires serious action! Having been set free from slavery to sin, they have returned to their former master and are willingly offering their service; even though they have been purchased by Christ with his blood and they rightfully belong to him.

That’s why, when this happens, Jesus says to rebuke the brother! Not for your sake, but for his! Rebuke doesn’t mean feel sorry for yourself and complain to your brother about how hurt you are. Rebuke means to convince, persuade, admonish—in short, wake the brother up! Say, “You’re going the wrong way! You’re crucifying the son of God all over again!”

This is going to happen more than once. In fact, Jesus says, it may even happen seven times a day. And it’s so serious that if it happens seven times a day, you need to rebuke your brother every time to keep him on track. You don’t want your brother to lose the ability to be brought back to repentance and be turned into a land that produces only thorns and thistles.

And, says Jesus, if your brother repents, forgive him—share God’s judgment (his setting things right) and mercy over and over with him every time.

But if you wait to forgive a non-Christian until they repent, you will be waiting a long time. Like forever. Because only a man freed from bondage can truly, meaningfully repent. And only Christ can break the bondage of sin.

But if Christ sets you free, as he promises in John 8:36, then you will be free indeed. Free to repent. Free to renounce your sin and receive his grace. Freed for new obedience, by the power of the Holy Spirit.

This is that lifelong salvation which we talked about last month: salvation that begins when we accept the judgment and mercy of God, salvation that continues through our whole lives as the Holy Spirit shapes us more and more in the image of Christ, and salvation that delivers us into his presence on the day of Jesus Christ.

Those three aspects of salvation—justification, sanctification, and glorification—remind us of how powerful and comprehensive God’s forgiveness truly is:

  • It sets us free from the punishment of sin: that’s justification.
  • It sets us free progressively from the power of sin: that’s sanctification.
  • It will ultimately set us free from even the presence of sin: that’s glorification.

Repentance is our response at every step of the way. It’s more than us just saying we’re sorry. It’s us drawing ever more deeply on Christ’s forgiveness so that we are ever more fully shaped in his image.

Human forgiveness can’t do any of that. It’s a cheap substitute that God calls us to repent from.

Have you been trying to forgive someone in your life using human forgiveness? Trying to change your feelings (or even asking God to change your feelings)? Trying to forget what happened? Trying to build up the willpower to move forward.

If so, it’s time to repent. It’s time to remember that forgiveness isn’t something you do; it’s something Christ does through you, by the power of the Holy Spirit. When you cry out, “Lord, forgive them!”, you are not making a statement about your emotions or your memory or your willpower. You are invoking the presence of Christ. You are pledging yourself to him as a willing, humble vessel through whom he can pour out his judgment—his setting things right—and his mercy, and through whom he can claim the sin of the other as his own.

And if you are faithful to cry out to him to forgive those who have sinned against you, he’ll be faithful to forgive you, too.

And then, in the words of the writer of Hebrews, you will be a land that drinks in the rain often falling on it and that produces a crop useful to Christ Jesus, for whom you are farmed.

Tune into our next and final post on Forgiving and Reconciling to find out what it looks like to practice this Work of Mercy in real life.

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Forgiving Those Who Trespass Against You, Part 2

Posted on October 3, 2011 by Pastor Foley

Part XIV of the Forgiving and Reconciling Series

Let’s go back to Les Miserables. The part of the story I shared with you previously is probably the most famous part of the book that relates to forgiveness. But I want to share another part of the Les Miserables story with you now. It’s the part that takes place right before the section I shared.

Here’s what happens:

Even before Valjean reappears, Monsieur Bienvenu undertakes to forgive him. When he finds out that Valjean has stolen the silver, Bienvenu actually repents personally before God. He recognizes that he has sinned, too: he has withheld his own wealth from the poor. He realizes that God brought this to his attention through Valjean’s theft. So he repents—he receives Christ’s judgment on himself without protest, and he turns away from his sin and toward the mercy of Christ. And then he knows he must pass on to Valjean the forgiveness—the being-set-free, the setting-right, the delivery from bondage—that he himself received. Christ’s forgiveness of Bienvenu creates new space for Bienvenu himself to act toward Valjean.

But here’s the key point: Bienvenu doesn’t do this as a strategy to get Valjean to change. That’s God’s job. God’s job is to change the human heart. Bienvenu’s job—and our job—is simply to offer to others what God has given us, including (and especially) his forgiveness.

So Valjean may or may not be drawn to repent in the space Bienvenu creates; Bienvenue doesn’t know. But what’s interesting is how Bienvenu’s forgiveness of Valjean in Jesus’ name – which mirrors God’s own forgiveness – confronts Bienvenu’s maid, Madame Magloire, with the generosity of Monsieur Bienvenu’s God, who is revealed through the bishop to be a very generous God indeed.

Madame Magloire says:

“Monseigneur, the man has gone! The silver is stolen!”

While she was uttering this exclamation her eyes fell on an angle of the garden where she saw traces of an escalade. A capstone on the wall had been thrown down.

“See, there is where he got out; he jumped into Cochefilet lane. The abominable fellow! He has stolen our silver!”

The Bishop was silent for a moment, then raising his serious eyes, he said mildly to Madame Magloire:

“Now first, did this silver belong to us?”

Madame Magloire did not answer; after a moment the Bishop continued:

“Madame Magloire: I have for a long time wrongfully withheld this silver; it belonged to the poor. Who was this man? A poor man evidently.”

“Alas! Alas!” returned Madame Magloire. “It is not on my account or Mademoiselle’s; it is all the same to us. But it is on yours, Monseigneur. What is Monsieur going to eat from now?”

The Bishop looked at her with amazement:

“How so! Have we no tin plates?”

Madame Magloire shrugged her shoulders.

“Tin smells.”

“Well, then, iron plates.”

Madame Magloire made an expressive gesture.

“Iron tastes.”

“Well,” said the Bishop, “then, wooden plates.”

Monsieur Bienvenu willingly bears within himself the penalty of Valjean’s sin, for Christ’s sake: he is willing to eat on tin plates or wooden plates. He insists that he himself is also a thief, like Valjean, because he (Bienvenu) has withheld the money from the poor, against the commands of Christ. His acceptance of Christ’s judgment and mercy colors the way he looks at Valjean. He does not judge him by just rendering  a verdict—“You are a thief.” He judges him  with the judgment of Christ, which means he shares with him the same release from bondage that he himself received—“You are a sinner, as am I. Just as my master bore the penalty of my sin in himself, so also he bears the penalty of your sin through me.”

There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.

But we may feel tempted to say, “Yes, but the one who sinned against me sinned in a way I have not. He is a much worse sinner than me.” Is that so? Well then, remember that to the one whom much is given, much is expected. If you are not a worse sinner, are you an especially profitable servant? If you don’t forgive in Jesus’ name those who sin against you, you most certainly are not.

And this brings us all the way back around to the question about Jesus’ words in Luke 17:3, where Jesus says, “If your brother or sister sins against you, rebuke them; and if they repent, forgive them.” That sure sounds like repentance follows forgiveness.

In our next post, you’ll find out why that’s not the case.

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Forgiving Those Who Trespass Against You, Part 1

Posted on September 30, 2011 by Pastor Foley

Part XIII of the Forgiving and Reconciling Series

Let’s be honest: forgiveness sounds good as it relates to God forgiving us. But what about us, and our forgiveness of those who sin against us? And what about Jesus’ words in Luke 17:3, ‘If your brother or sister sins against you, rebuke them; and if they repent, forgive them?”

Let’s start with the obvious: You only need to recite the Lord’s Prayer to be reminded that God calls us to forgive others in the same way he forgives us. That’s the vocation of human beings: mirror into the world God’s Works of Mercy. That’s what we messed up right around Genesis 3, when we started mirroring into the world Satan’s works.

Now, here’s the key thing to understand when it comes to forgiveness:

A person can only be forgiven and set free from bondage by Christ’s bearing of their sin.

So to effectively bear sin away from our relationships, our forgiveness of others must be an extension of Christ’s forgiveness, not an imitation of it.

That is, we literally forgive others by passing on to them the forgiveness we receive from Christ. When we say, “I forgive you in Jesus’ name,” we are saying with Paul in 2 Corinthians  5:20, “Therefore, we are ambassadors for Christ, God making his appeal through us. We implore you on behalf of Christ, be reconciled to God” (emphasis mine).

Human forgiveness, unlike God’s forgiveness, has no neutralizing effect on sin. It can only move sin around or slow its progress. Sooner or later, though, like acid, sin burns through even the best of us.  Our forgiveness is incapable of setting the world right…only Christ’s forgiveness can do that.

Which is exactly why he breathed his Holy Spirit on the disciples when he appeared to them in the Upper Room after his resurrection from the dead. Check out John 20:19-23:

19 On the evening of that first day of the week, when the disciples were together, with the doors locked for fear of the Jewish leaders, Jesus came and stood among them and said, “Peace be with you!” 20 After he said this, he showed them his hands and side. The disciples were overjoyed when they saw the Lord.

21 Again Jesus said, “Peace be with you! As the Father has sent me, I am sending you.” 22 And with that he breathed on them and said, “Receive the Holy Spirit. 23 If you forgive anyone’s sins, their sins are forgiven; if you do not forgive them, they are not forgiven.”

So not only are we to forgive sins; we are to forgive sins by the agency of the Holy Spirit—that is, with Christ’s own forgiveness, the only forgiveness capable of bearing sin not only out of our relationships but out of creation altogether. As far as the east is from the west.

And when we forgive the sins of others in his name, that’s what opens up the power for them to change. That’s when they come face to face with God. That’s the good news of the gospel: “While we were yet sinners…” Christ came to us, his enemies—he burst into our lives with his forgiving grace and power and set us free. He didn’t send a postcard and offer to come if we would first repent. Until his light shines, we don’t even know the darkness we should repent of!

Sadly, many Christians don’t understand this. They think it’s our repentance that has the power to move God’s heart, rather than God’s forgiveness that has the power to move ours.

One of the best descriptions I’ve ever read of the power of forgiveness to promote repentance comes from a non-Christian, Hannah Arendt. In a book called The Human Condition she wrote:

Without being forgiven, released from the consequences of what we have done, our capacity to act would, as it were, be confined to one single deed from which we could never recover.

Victor Hugo was the author who wrote the book, Les Miserables. Perhaps better than any writer outside of the Scripture he understands the space forgiveness creates for repentance. In Les Miserables, Jean Valjean is sent to prison for nineteen years for stealing a loaf of bread to feed his sister’s children. When he is released from prison, no one will hire him because he always has to show his parole card, which shows that he is a thief. A church bishop, Monsieur Bienvenu (interesting name, by the way—it means “welcome”) opens the rectory to Valjean. Gives him a place to stay and food to eat. But Valjean ends up turning on him out of greed—he sees an opportunity to secure his future by stealing the silverware after the bishop goes to bed. He escapes—literally a thief in the night. He gets caught by the police, who drag him back to Monsieur Bienvenu.

But then something interesting happens.

In the words of Hannah Arendt, Valjean has been confined to a single deed from which he can never recover—stealing the bread. But then Monsier Bienvenu releases him from the consequences of what he has done. In Jesus’ name he bears the penalty in himself as Christ’s servant. He transfers Valjean’s sin to Christ and sets Valjean free for something new. Here’s how Victor Hugo wrote it in the book, starting with the visit of the police to his house so that he can be a witness against Valjean. It says:

In the meantime Monsieur Bienvenu had approached as quickly as his great age permitted:

“Ah, there you are!” said he, looking towards Jean Valjean, “I am glad to see you. But! I gave you the candlesticks also, which are silver like the rest, and would bring two hundred francs. Why did you not take them along with your plates?”

Jean Valjean opened his eyes and looked at the Bishop with an expression which no human tongue could describe.

“Monseigneur,” said the Brigadier, “then what this man said was true? We met him. He was going like a man who was running away, and we arrested him in order to see. He had this silver.”

“And he told you,” interrupted the Bishop with a smile, “that it had been given him by a good old priest with whom he had passed the night. I see it all. And you brought him back here? It is all a mistake.”

“If that is so,” said the Brigadier, “we can let him go.”

“Certainly,” replied the Bishop.

The gendarmes released Jean Valjean, who shrank back—

“Is it true that they let me go?” he said in a voice almost inarticulate, as if he were speaking in his sleep.

“Yes! You can go. Do you not understand?” said a gendarme.

‘My friend,” said the Bishop, “before you go away, here are your candlesticks; take them.”

He went to the mantelpiece, took the two candlesticks, and brought them to Jean Valjean. The two women beheld the action without a word, or gesture, or look, that might disturb the Bishop.

Jean Valjean was trembling in every limb. He took the two candlesticks mechanically, and with a wild appearance.

“Now,” said the Bishop, “go in peace. By the way, my friend, when you come again, you need not come through the garden. You can always come in and go out by the front door. It is closed only with a latch, day or night.”

Then turning to the gendarmes, he said:

“Messieurs, you can retire.” The gendarmes withdrew.

Jean Valjean felt like a man who is just about to faint.

The Bishop approached him, and said, in a low voice:

“Forget not, never forget that you have promised me to use this silver to become an honest man.”

Jean Valjean, who had no recollection of this promise, stood confounded. The Bishop had laid much stress upon these words as he uttered them. He continued, solemnly:

“Jean Valjean, my brother: you belong no longer to evil, but to good. It is your soul that I am buying for you. I withdraw it from dark thoughts and from the spirit of perdition, and I give it to God!”

This is an amazing story. But is it anything more than just a story? In real life, if forgiveness precedes repentance, isn’t it likely that our enemies will just take advantage of us?

Absolutely!

But here we must remember that the work of the Christian is to mirror the character of God, not to change the character of others.

W. H. Auden was one of the great poets of the 20th Century. He makes a fascinating point about the difference between the law and forgiveness. He says:

The law cannot forgive, for the law has not been wronged, only broken; only persons can be wronged… The decision to grant or refuse pardon must be governed by prudent calculation… But charity is forbidden to calculate in this way: I am required to forgive my enemy whatever the effect on him may be.

Auden is exactly right. He shares exactly what the Scripture shows: forgiveness is calculated not in relation to the range of possible responses on the part of the offender but in relation to the range of possible responses on the part of the offended. In other words, if someone sins against you, you can respond in many different ways. You can become bitter. You can try to forget. You can even try to revenge yourself.

But if you are a Christian, God calls you—whenever you encounter sin—to transfer it to Christ. To apply Christ’s forgiveness to it. Because Christ is setting right the world, and only Christ can remove sin from the world.

The rest of us can just transfer it around.

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