Matthew 18: Out of Bondage

The first half this chapter is filled with the warm fuzzies of little children and lost sheep.  The second half is scary.  Seems God is deadly serious about something we find very hard: forgiving one another.

Some of us struggle here because we misunderstand forgiveness as excusing or dismissing someone’s bad behavior.  It wasn’t all that bad.  No harm done.  But something in us rebels at this.  We don’t want to excuse bad behavior and we shouldn't.  But I tell you the guy lied to me.  She wounded me so deeply I’ll never recover. 

Exactly.  And that’s what we have to forgive.  When we forgive, we’re not making excuses, not saying it wasn’t wrong.  What’s to forgive if it wasn’t wrong?  Neither does forgiveness mean we forget.  And it certainly doesn’t mean we must trust the guy next time.  It means we must make every effort to lay aside every hint of resentment in our hearts, every wish to humiliate him or hurt her.  It means we no longer hold it against our offender.

We all make excuses for our behavior.  It’s a safe bet that my excuses for my sin are not as good as I think and my neighbor’s excuses are probably better than I think.   A good beginning place in forgiving others is finding everything that shows he or she is not as much to blame as I thought.   But even if she is to blame, I still have to forgive her.  To excuse what should be excused is not what Jesus is talking about here.  That’s simple fairness.  To follow Jesus means to forgive the inexcusable in others, because God has forgiven the inexcusable in me. 

At times this can seem completely beyond us.  Perhaps it’s not so hard to forgive a single great injury.  But to forgive the incessant provocations of daily life – to keep on forgiving the controlling parent, the critical spouse, the selfish daughter, the deceitful son.  How can we do it?  We learn to forgive by remembering again and again where we stand – side by side with our offender as sinners, under God who forgives us both.  In fallen world, forgiveness is the basis for relationship, the only basis. 

And we learn to forgive by meaning our words in our prayers each night, Forgive us our sins as we forgive those who sin against us.

– Paul Abbott