Pardon Me!

God’s Ways: An Example

The premise of the Why Is Life So Hard? series is that we aren’t living life as God intended it to be lived. I don’t promise life without struggles, but right living has benefits both for minimizing their number, and navigating the rest. With the release this week of Volume 3: God’s Ways, I want to demonstrate one of those “ways.”

In his famous Sermon on the Mount—itself a series of teachings on how life works best— Jesus summed up God’s ways when he told people to treat others the way they want to be treated (Mt 7.12). “Whatever you want people to do to you,” he told them, “do that to them. That’s all the Old Testament is trying to say.”

Jesus didn’t only teach sermons. He also told stories to illustrate kingdom ways.

One day, hearing Jesus talk about the importance of being reconciled to someone who offends us (Mt 18.15-18), Peter asked the limit on how often we should forgive the same person. He didn’t use the word, but he was talking about what we moderns call “boundaries.” He threw out seven times as a broad and generous boundary. Imagine his surprise when Jesus multiplied it by seventy! Jesus’s idea was not to set no boundaries—he had just finished stating the consequence to someone who would not be reconciled—but to set them so far off as to be virtually invisible.

What does that mean? Relationships don’t work because everybody agrees on terms. They work when we pursue peace with each other. When we see ourselves and others rightly, we recognize the profound dignity of each person, and treat them accordingly. We do not intentionally offend, nor do we take offense. This view helps us respect and honor others. And this is the point of the story Jesus told.

The Story

He took as his two main characters a king and his servant. (Think of them as a CEO and his employee.) On reviewing accounts, this servant was found to owe a huge amount—over $3B. How he racked up that debt doesn’t matter; he couldn’t possibly pay it all back, even though he asked to be allowed to, and would no doubt have tried. To recoup what he could, the king’s initial response was to take legal action. Instead he listened to the man’s plea and released him. More, he forgave the entire debt.

Apparently this servant wasn’t much good at business, for at the same time he owed money, others owed him. His brush with prison sent him looking to settle his own accounts. When he found someone who owed him about 4 months’ wages, the same scene unfolded. He threatened legal action while the debtor begged for time to pay it back. But whereas the king forgive him, he threw his debtor into prison. Which, by the way, he had legal right to do—that’s the boundary right there.

This bothered the rest of the servants, and word got back to the king. Livid, he confronted the man for not extending the same compassion as he had received. People mattered more to the king than money, and the fellow servant was more than an unpaid invoice. The king rescinded the forgiven debt and turned him over to the jailer-torturers.

Jesus closed the story with a moral: Forgiving others matters to God. He will not forgive you if you do not forgive others.

Forgiveness Is Better

Like a fetter in the torture chamber, unforgiveness keeps us connected to the very things that hurt us. The pain won’t go away until we let go. The result is a bitter and miserable life.

Better to forgive, yes, but not always easy. Here are some thoughts to help you get there.

1. Forgiving doesn’t mean that what happened didn’t hurt or doesn’t count.

Give yourself permission to feel and to heal. Get help if you need it. But don’t nurse a grudge.

2. Forgiving is a choice we can all make.

Our pain is real, so we don’t want to excuse the offense. It’s not right to let it go unpunished. Friends, God has made it clear that he WILL avenge wrongdoing. Jesus already paid with his life to turn away the wrath of God that is coming against ALL ungodliness. If we are not hidden from it, we will be destroyed by it, and the way to hide is to forgive.

3. There is a peace that comes with forgiveness, first within ourselves, and then between us and our offenders. I do not say that it will come easily, but it will come.

4. Forgiveness is a mindset and a lifestyle.

As long as there is God, while we live in this world we are going to offend him. As long as there are people, we are going to offend and be offended by them. This is what it means to be a personal being with a self that must be expressed. It won’t always be intentional or egregious, but it is inevitable. We must maintain the expectation that forgiveness is not only necessary, but possible. Plan on it. Practice it.

5. To forgive others, we draw on what we have received from God (and others). Think about it. Everything the man no longer owed the king became wealth to himself. He didn’t need to be paid back by others. Look at the word itself. For + give = give + for. What do we give? Mercy and grace….

6. Which surely lands us at the cross, the apex of pardon.There the mercy of God forgave the debt we owe him—for our existence, let alone our offenses. There the peace of grace was purchased. Isaiah prophesied it centuries before Jesus lived (Is 53.5). Jesus explicitly asked for it: “Father, forgive them” (Lk 23.34). The 10,000-talent debt each of us owes.

Nothing anyone does to us comes close.

Take a deep breath, and let it go.