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Colossians 3:13
! Introduction
I heard a story recently about a woman who was visiting a friend.
When she was on her way home again, she saw her husband driving by the other way towing their fifth wheel RV.
She did not remember that they had made plans of any kind and so she followed him until she caught up with him.
When she talked to him, she found out that he was leaving her.
It caught her completely by surprise and was devastating.
How do you respond when someone abandons you?
I knew about a lady who was having a lot of trouble with her relationship with her brother.
As I learned more about the story, I discovered that when they were still both at home, she had been sexually abused by her brother.
How do you respond when someone has violated your person?
I heard about a family in which the aging father was in a nursing home.
Some of the family members discovered that a large amount of the father’s money was missing.
Later they found out that one of the family members had persuaded the father to give them a large enough sum of money so that they could buy a car.
When confronted, the sibling who had gotten the money indicated that the father had wanted to do this.
The other members knew that the father no longer was aware enough of what was happening and they knew that the inheritance was significantly depleted because of this.
What do you do if someone does an injustice to you?
All of these stories involved people who were members of churches and claimed to be Christians.
Over the last several weeks, we have been talking about what it means to live as a community of God’s people.
We have explored the phrase “one another” in its various aspects.
We have been encouraged to love one another, to bear with one another and to submit to one another.
But there are situations in which these phrases are not adequate.
When we are wronged or someone sins against us, something more is needed.
It is no longer a matter of bearing with each other or submitting to each other.
A wrong has been done.
How do we respond in those situations?
Today is the last in the series and we will examine what is probably the most difficult thing to do in the “one another” relationship.
We will look at what it means to forgive each other.
!
I. Forgiveness Is The Only Option
The German philosopher Schopenhauer compared the human race to a bunch of porcupines huddling together on a cold winter's night.
He said, "The colder it gets outside, the more we huddle together for warmth; but the closer we get to one another, the more we hurt one another with our sharp quills.”
I think this is also an excellent picture of the church.
We have already established that as Christians, we are not perfect and we will hurt each other.
We all have quills that poke others, we all do things that wound others.
We will be wronged and sinned against.
!! A. How Do We Respond?
When we are wronged, what are our options?
One thought that quickly comes to mind is that the wrong must be made right.
If they have stolen from us, then they should repay what they have stolen.
Justice is a good thing and the fair thing to do.
Where restitution can be made, it should be made, but many times, that just does not work.
How do you repay a stolen reputation?
How do you repay hurting words that are spoken?
How do you repay adultery or abuse?
If the wrong can be accurately calculated mathematically, then restitution works, but most often you can’t do that and so restitution is not a complete option.
Since it is so hard to calculate restitution, it is natural for us to desire revenge.
If you have hurt me, I want to see you hurt just as much as you hurt me and maybe just a little bit extra.
It gives us satisfaction to see another hurt in retaliation for hurting us.
But revenge only makes things worse.
The obvious problem is that revenge usually involves a return retaliation and so spawns a cycle of violence that is already so destructive in the world.
Someone has said that if the rule is eye for eye and tooth for tooth, what you end up with is a world full of toothless, blind people.
Another person wrote that “The man who seeks revenge is like the man who shoots himself in order to hit his enemy with the kick of the gun’s recoil.”
Revenge puts you below your enemy and barely satisfies your anger.
Many people realize the futility of trying to seek restitution or revenge, but are still filled with great anger at the injustice of the wrong which has been done to them.
As a result, they seethe with hatred towards the person who has wronged them and refuse to let go of the hatred.
Hatred is a natural expression of our anger and sense of injustice, but we need to be very careful if we choose this as our response to a wrong.
Hatred eats you up from the inside.
As a root of bitterness grows up, it can consume you.
Every time you see the person, negative emotions overwhelm you.
Anger and bitterness have serious negative side effects, both psychological and physical.
Instead of getting back at the other person, our own anger destroys us.
In his book, Lee: The Last Years, Charles Bracelen Flood reports that after the Civil War, Robert E. Lee visited a Kentucky lady who took him to the remains of a grand old tree in front of her house.
There she bitterly cried that its limbs and trunk had been destroyed by Federal Artillery fire.
She looked to Lee for a word condemning the North or at least sympathizing with her loss.
After a brief silence, Lee said, "Cut it down, my dear Madam, and forget it."
It is better to forgive the injustices of the past than to allow them to remain, let bitterness take root and poison the rest of our life.”
!! B. Forgiveness: The Only Option
As we examine these options, we see that none of them satisfy or work.
Restitution is impossible and does not bring back what we have lost anyway, revenge puts us below our enemy and simply multiplies the pain and hatred leads to bitterness and destroys us from within.
The Bible gives us what I believe is the only option.
Twice in the letters of Paul, we are told to forgive.
In Ephesians 4:32, “Be kind and compassionate to one another, forgiving each other, just as in Christ God forgave you.”
In Colossians 3:13, “Bear with each other and forgive whatever grievances you may have against one another.
Forgive as the Lord forgave you.”
In the parable of the unforgiving servant, we have one of the most powerful lessons on forgiveness.
There we read about a man who had a huge debt.
The debt would be in the millions of dollars.
After begging his master for forgiveness of the debt because he could not pay it, this same servant went out and demanded payment of a tiny debt from one of his fellow servants.
The story is the most powerful example of the reason why we must forgive.
If we do not forgive, it is evident that we have not understood our own forgiveness.
If we have understood our own forgiveness, then we have no choice but to forgive.
In the lesson on prayer which Jesus gave to his disciples in Matthew 6, we have another reason why we must forgive.
There we read, “…if you do not forgive men their sins, your Father will not forgive your sins.”
That is a pretty serious warning which leaves us no choice but to forgive others.
Chris Carrier of Coral Gables, Florida, was abducted when he was 10 years old.
His kidnapper, angry with the boy's family, burned him with cigarettes, stabbed him numerous times with an ice pick, then shot him in the head and left him to die in the Everglades.
Remarkably, the boy survived, though he lost sight in one eye.
No one was ever arrested.
Recently, a man confessed to the crime.
Carrier, now a youth minister at Granada Presbyterian Church, went to see him.
He found David McAllister, a 77-year-old ex-convict, frail and blind, living in a North Miami Beach nursing home.
Carrier began visiting often, reading to McAllister from the Bible and praying with him.
His ministry opened the door for McAllister to make a profession of faith.
No arrest is forthcoming; after 22 years, the statute of limitations on the crime is long past.
In Christian Reader (Jan~/Feb 98), Carrier says, "While many people can't understand how I could forgive David McAllister, from my point of view I couldn't not forgive him.
If I'd chosen to hate him all these years, or spent my life looking for revenge, then I wouldn't be the man I am today, the man my wife and children love, the man God has helped me to be."
!
II.
What Is Forgiveness?
Forgiveness is the only real choice we have as Christians, but what does it mean to forgive?
There are a lot of wrong ideas about forgiveness out there and it is important to understand true forgiveness.
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