Forgiveness is one of the greatest needs of our world whether in personal and family relationships or in society. Nelson Mandela said ‘resentment is like drinking poison and then hoping it will kill your enemies.’ In contrast he said; ‘forgiveness liberates the soul, it removes fear. That’s why it is such a powerful weapon.’
So many people are so poisoned by unforgiveness and carry around with them the effects of past experiences which have wounded them deeply: breakups, family trauma, or different forms of betrayal.
It can seem an unimaginably hard task to choose to let go of past hurts and pain. Yet forgiveness is something that everyone who prays the Lord’s prayer must practice every day. For immediately after praying for daily bread, Jesus teaches us next in Matthew 6:12 to pray ‘And forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors.’ Or as the old King James Version says: ‘And forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us.’
Jesus was insistent that we must both ask God for forgiveness and to pray that we will forgive those who have hurt us. Let’s look at this teaching with some simple points:
1. We all need to be forgiven (James 4:6; Romans 3:23; 1 John 1:8-10)
2. We can be forgiven (Psalm 103:10–12; Ephesians 1:7; 1 John 1:9; 1 Corinthians 6:9-11)
3. We all must forgive (Matthew 6:14-15; Colossians 3:13)
Apply
1. We all need to be forgiven: Implicit in this instruction from Jesus is the reality that we have things in our lives that we need to be forgiven for. In other words, recognising that we have done wrong. Today, more and more, we see that less and less people are willing to admit their faults, let alone confessing that in Biblical terms that they have sinned in any way. People, whether individually or in pressure groups and political parties, are happy to highlight and oppose what they define as the wrongdoing of others, whether real or imagined. But they are very reluctant to admit that they have done anything wrong. So often today people and organisations totally refuse to apologise for wrong behaviour, or if they do so, they issue a non-apology apology saying ‘I am sorry if you have been offended by anything I said or did’ but not ‘I am sorry for having been offensive or spoken offensively.’ This is of course stubbornness and pride. Pride is something that we are encouraged to promote today with the idea that you don’t have to be forgiven for anything. This is how many people rationalise their actions: ‘I have nothing whatsoever to be forgiven for. I have the right to what I decide what I am. I can do whatever I want to do. Since I decide what’s right, I am always right, and therefore I have nothing to apologise for. Certainly, I don’t need to be forgiven by God or anyone else.’ Well of course all this is a very self-serving and subjective approach to life and is the complete opposite to what the Bible teaches (James 4:6). God lays out in the Scripture what is right and what is wrong, what is bad and what is good (Romans 3:23). Everyone, all of us, needs to be forgiven for our sins and wrongdoing (1 John 1:8-10). We need to look into our hearts and face up to what we need to be forgiven for, whether it is pride, anger, bitterness, sexual sin or unforgiveness. Are you prepared to do that?
2. We can be forgiven: The bad news is that sin is bad. But the good news is that sin, even terrible sin, can be forgiven (Psalm 103:10–12; Ephesians 1:7; 1 John 1:9). The apostle Paul was very clear not only of the need for forgiveness for sins but also the possibilities of forgiveness and change, no matter what your previous sins, relationships or lifestyles (1 Corinthians 6:9-11). Now this is not hate language, as some would like to assert, but love language about how Jesus can make anyone clean and new from the inside out and have a new and secure identity as a citizen of the kingdom of God. Today you can be forgiven when you accept that Jesus paid the price of your sin at the cross.
3. We all must forgive: We each must forgive and not least because it is key to us also being forgiven. (Matthew 6:14-15; Colossians 3:13). Forgiveness may be a problem for you but the consequences of not forgiving are far worse.
In 1944 Simon Wiesenthal was a young Polish prisoner of the Nazis. He had looked on helpless, as Nazi soldiers killed his grandmother on the stairs of her home. In total 89 of his Jewish relatives would die at the hand of the Nazis. One day in prison a nurse approached him and asked if he were a Jew. She led him to a dark room where a terribly wounded lone soldier lay, an SS officer who wanted to make a deathbed confession. He told Wiesenthal how he and his men had rounded up three hundred Jews, herded them into a house and then fired grenades at it. They shot people as they ran burning from the house, including a mother and her small child. Three times Wiesenthal tried to leave the man as he told of further atrocities. Each time the German soldier begged him to stay. He said: ‘I am left here with my guilt. In the last hours of my life you are with me. I do not know who you are. I know only that you are a Jew and that is enough. I know that what I have told you is terrible…I have longed to talk about it to a Jew and beg forgiveness from him. Only I didn’t know if there were any Jews left. I know what I am asking is almost too much for you but without your answer I cannot die in peace.’
Wiesenthal stared at the helpless man. ‘At last I made up my mind,’ Wiesenthal wrote later, ‘and, without a word, I left the room.’ The SS officer soon died, unforgiven, and Wiesenthal lived on to be liberated from the death camp. But the scene in the hospital room haunted him like a ghost. He was trapped by his own unforgiveness. After the war Wiesenthal visited the mother of the officer, hoping to somehow exorcise his feelings. But the visit only made the officer more human as she spoke of his early childhood Christian faith which he lost in the Hitler youth corps. Wiesenthal could not bear to tell the mother how her son ended up. For decades Wiesenthal, who had himself had suffered such pain from his enemies, continued to be plagued by his refusal to forgive his enemy. In the end he wrote his story in The Sunflower and sent it to the brightest ethical minds he knew, including rabbis and priests and asked them this question: ‘what would you have done in my place?’3 Of all the people who replied to Wiesenthal, all but six agreed with what he had done. One respondent said: ‘you should have strangled him in his bed.’ What would you have done in my place? Asked the anguished Wiesenthal. And it is a question for everyone to consider.
Well what would you have done if you had lost 89 of your relatives? What would your reaction be when faced with a man who had slaughtered so many innocent people?
One Jew answered this question with a very different response to that of the anguished Simon Wiesenthal, as he hung dying on a Roman cross 2000 years ago. He Himself had suffered unbelievable and undeserved cruelty. He was battered beyond recognition and abused, betrayed and tortured. A crown of thorns was rammed on his head and his hands and feet were pieced by nails. Yet as he looked down at his enemies who gloated at the awfulness of his final moments, He did not snarl at them and curse at them. There was no anger or all-consuming bitterness. Instead God’s only Son prayed a prayer for them. ‘Father, forgive them for they do not know what they are doing.’ Jesus wanted the best for those who treated him the worst. His enemies wanted to harm Him but He wanted to help them. They wanted to destroy him; He wanted to rescue them. He wanted them to be forgiven. And He wants us to do the same for all who have hurt us or sinned against us. Only in this way can we too be liberated and receive the forgiveness that God extends to us.
