A Lesson on Forgiveness

For me, life seems to be one long lesson in overcoming pride, quenching anger, fleeing lust, clinging to hope, growing in faith, nurturing love, extending mercy, and practicing forgiveness.  There are so many large and small epiphanies along the road.  If I were to list them all, I believe they would fill page after page, volume after volume.  All the same, I have a few minutes this evening to record one lesson that I gleaned today on forgiveness.


I've been reading George MacDonald's Unspoken Sermons each evening, and tonight came to his sermon entitled, "The Last Farthing".  The title of the sermon comes from the Gospel of Matthew, chapter 5, verse 26, where Christ talked about the importance of reconciliation.  (For those unfamiliar with British coinage, a farthing was the smallest coin in circulation - a quarter of a penny.)

MacDonald's sermon prompted me to begin thumbing through the Gospels (Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John) to see how often Christ spoke about forgiveness.  If you have a Bible with a concordance or word-index, take a moment to see if you can count the number of times forgiveness, debts, reconciliation, and mercy are mentioned in the four Gospels. 

Jesus' words to Peter in Matthew 18 are particularly difficult:

     Peter: "Lord, how oft shall my brother sin against me, and I forgive him? till seven times?"

     Jesus: "I say not unto thee, Until seven times: but, Until seventy times seven."

For those of you who are reading from a more modern translation of the Greek New Testament, your Bible may say "77 times".  Logically, you may be thinking what I was thinking the first time I discovered this alternative translation, namely, that forgiving someone 77 times is much easier than forgiving them 70 x 7 times (490 times).  However, a little bit of study led me to the startling truth that the number Jesus is using is figurative; it represents infinity.  

How many of us can be wronged by the same person over and over again and still forgive them?  It's pretty difficult from my perspective.  

I started thinking a little more about this verse and realized that it isn't just talking about the person who has wronged us repeatedly.  It is also about forgiving the person who has injured us deeply, causing us tremendous pain.  Thinking back over my life, there are some people who hurt me so badly that I had to forgive them over and over again.  I forgave them yesterday, but the sun rose and I awoke with the same stabbing memories and heartache that I felt before.  I would pray for God to forgive my unmerciful heart, then forgive that person once more, and then repeat the same process all over again the following day.  Day after day, week after week, I would have to re-forgive.

Some hurts take a few minutes, some take hours, some days, weeks, months, while other hurts have taken years to subside, but Jesus commands me to keep forgiving...infinitely. 

Lest I misunderstand his point, Jesus went on to tell Peter a story about a king whose servant owed him an enormous sum of money.  The servant begged for mercy, and the king forgave him.  However, the servant had a fellow-servant who owed him a comparatively paltry sum.  The fellow-servant begged for mercy, but the servant put his fellow-servant in prison.

When the king got wind of what had happened, he was naturally furious.  The servant whom the king had originally extended mercy was arrested and sentenced to life imprisonment until he paid back every "last farthing."

I guess that explains "The Lord's Prayer" in Matthew 6 where Jesus prays, "Forgive us our debts/trespasses as we forgive our debtors/those who trespass against us."  Jesus explains that, "If ye forgive men their trespasses, your heavenly Father will also forgive you.  But if ye forgive not men their trespasses, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses."

That's where George MacDonald's sermon was so instructive, for it made me take a closer look at what all of this means for a poor sinner like me.  MacDonald says:

It is a very small matter to you whether the man give you your rights or not [meaning that it doesn't matter how someone treats us]; it is life or death to you whether or not you give him his.  Whether he pay you what you count his debt or no, you will be compelled to pay him all you owe him.  If you owe him a pound and he [owes] you a million, you must pay him the pound whether he pay you the million or not; there is no business-parallel here.  If, owing you love, he gives you hate, you, owing him love, have yet to pay it.  A love unpaid you, a justice undone you, a praise withheld from you, a judgment passed on you without judgment, will not absolve you of the debt of a love unpaid, a justice not done, a praise withheld, a false judgment passed: these uttermost farthings [...] you must pay him, whether he pay you or not.  We have a good while given us to pay, but a crisis will come--come soon after all [...] a crisis when the demand unyielded will be followed by prison.  

If I wake again tomorrow with anger or resentment, I know that God will help me to forgive all over again.  I can't forget or block out the past, but I trust that God will give me the love, compassion, tenderness, and mercy that I need to forgive again and again...to forgive infinitely if need be.  After all, I owe Him a debt far greater than any debt owed to me.