The following is Part 4, Dr. Beach's 2014 Spring Lectures, entitled Forgiving the Unrepentant. Welcome everyone to the fourth and final session for the Mid-America Evening Class treating this topic of forgiveness, particularly our practicing of forgiveness as God's forgiven people. Tonight I'd like to begin by reading a very familiar psalm, Psalm 103. We'll have a word of prayer and then we'll proceed. Psalm 103. Praise the Lord, my soul. All my inmost being, praise His holy name. Praise the Lord, my soul, and forget not all His benefits, who forgives all your sins and heals all your diseases, who redeems your life from the pit and crowns you with love and compassion, who satisfies your desires with good things so that your youth is renewed like the eagle's. The Lord works righteousness and justice for all the oppressed. He made known His ways to Moses, His deeds to the people of Israel. The Lord is compassionate and gracious, sore to anger, abounding in love. He will not always accuse nor will He harbor His anger forever. He does not treat us as our sins deserve or repair us according to our iniquities. For as high as the heavens are above the earth, so great is His love for those who fear Him. As far as the East is from the West, so far has He removed our transgressions from us. As a Father has compassion on His children, so the Lord has compassion on those who fear Him, for He knows how we're formed. He remembers that we're dust. The life of man is like grass. It flourishes like the flower of the field. The wind blows over it and it's gone and its place remembers it no more. That from everlasting to everlasting the Lord's love is with those who fear Him and His righteousness with their children's children. With those who keep His covenant and remember to obey His precepts. The Lord has established His throne in heaven, and His kingdom rules over all. Praise the Lord, you His angels, you mighty ones who do His bidding, who obey His word. Praise the Lord, all His heavenly hosts, you His servants who do His will. Praise the Lord, all His works, everywhere in His dominion. Praise the Lord, my soul. Shall we pray? Lord, we're thankful for the opportunity you've given us to contemplate the life of forgiveness you call us to, even as we've seen something of the steps and challenges of living that way, as we've contemplated the motivations that brought us on to it, as we've contemplated the model prayer of our Lord Jesus Christ, and that petition that you have taught us where we ask you to forgive our debts as we have also forgiven our debtors. And Lord, we know the obstacles that stand in the way, the obstacles of our own sense of justice, our own desire, our own pride that would stand in the way, and our own vulnerabilities and fears and inabilities. Truly, Lord, we need your help, your grace, and your mercy to walk with us every step of the way. We pray that you would bless this class this evening as we close out. this set of lessons on this topic. Bless the time we spend together and may we be fortified and blessed as we contemplate these things. Indeed, Lord, heal our lives where we are broken. Move us to live in a way that gives glory to you. Hear our prayer for Jesus' sake. Amen. I trust you all received the handout, so we're on session four. We're continuing to look at some obstacles to the practice of forgiveness, and we're going to finish tonight looking at benefits. I forewarn you our first session might take a little over the hour, then we'll have a break for ten minutes and come back. I'd like to begin this evening with another case, this one dealing with the difficulty of coming to repentance as that relates to obstacles to forgiveness. The difficulty of coming to repentance. This case I'm going to give you comes from Marisloff-Volf. who has written enormously useful books on the topic of forgiveness. And Volf explains that offenders, especially political figures who are guilty of horrific crimes, that sort of person, or persons who've terribly abused members of their family, anyone who's just done really ugly stuff, these are the sort of people that seldom overtly admit guilt, and they seldom take responsibility. for what they've done. Vaught observes that, as a rule, such offenders make no apologies until pressed hard and then only with their backs against the wall. Second, they are more likely to be sorry for getting caught than for actually being or feeling guilty for what they've done. Remorse is a farce. Third, guilt is regarded as too difficult to be clearly assigned. And so these offenders cannot take responsibility for matters of which they're not guilty. If cornered, the offenders are quick to assign greater blame to others. Grab that, and they point the finger. And fourth, these sorts of offenders will say, that they understand the feelings of resentment by their detractors, meaning their victims, but the past is the past and we need to get on to the present and to the future. We can't change the past. It says that it is difficult to repent genuinely. will not come as a surprise to those who've pondered the gravity and the power of human sin. One of sin's notable features is that it unfairly refuses to acknowledge itself as sin. There is a nice handy sin trait. Nope. It's not one. Sin denies itself as sin. So we usually not only refuse to admit wrongdoing and to accept guilt, but seem neither to detest sin committed nor feel sorry about it. There is that kind of sinner and that kind of sinning. And instead we hide behind, we hide our sin behind walls of denial, cover up, mitigating explanations, or claims of comparative innocence. Well, I'm guilty this part, but compared to, I'm not so guilty. It says that the accusations of others reinforce this propensity to hide sin. In other words, we're afraid. We're afraid we'll lose our good reputation. We're afraid of punishment. We're afraid of a bad name. We're afraid of losing face. We're afraid that we just can't even love or accept ourselves if we admit what we've done and what we are, and that's why we're often able to repent only when we're assured that our guilt will be lifted and charges will not be pressed. In other words, we're able to genuinely repent, I don't mean fake repent, genuinely repent only when forgiveness has first been extended to us. And that brings us to this story where I really want to begin tonight. It comes from a friend of his. He calls her Esker, so this is Esker's story. She was abandoned by her alcoholic mother when she was nine years old. The family never spoke about the mother, rarely heard from her. When she reached her mid-twenties, Esker decided she needed to see her mother again. Though she had been deeply hurt, most of all, Esker felt very guilty that she hadn't done more for her mother. That she hadn't even wanted to contact her mother over the years. Finally, in the little Iowa town where she had said goodbye to her mother 17 years earlier, Esker knocked on her mother's door. It was an emotional reunion. Esther could barely speak all afternoon as they walked around town meeting all the people who were important to Esther's mother. As they sat in the living room after dinner, Esther pulled herself together and took command of the conversation. She spoke briefly of the intervening years and then asked her mother to forgive her for not writing or calling. Esther confessed to her mother that she had broken the promise she'd made as a little girl never to love her. She told her mother how sorry she was and begged her mother's forgiveness for having neglected her for so long. Of course, of course I forgive you Esther. They were both crying and there was a long silence. Esther was waiting for her mother to reciprocate. Surely she would ask forgiveness for abandoning her, for all of those alcoholic scenes, for the many broken promises. And Esther waited, but nothing came. Suddenly Esther got up from her chair and went to sit at her mother's feet. Taking her mother's hand, she said, Mommy, I was really hurt as a little girl, and I was really, really sad. But I want you to know that I forgive you. And I know that you didn't mean to hurt me. I know you loved me then and that you still love me now. And I love you. I'm okay, Mommy. My life has turned out okay. And I forgive you for everything. Oh, Esther, I'm so sorry, I'm so sorry, I'm so sorry, I'm so sorry. She kept repeating it over and over, rocking back and forth, tears streaming down her face. With sudden insight, Esther had realized that her mother's shame and guilt were so overwhelming, so, so, so deep, far too ugly and too painful for her to face and to bring into the open on her own. She could not even conceive of being loved and forgiven by the child she had abandoned. But hearing that indeed her daughter loved and forgave her for what she could never forgive herself, she was able to repent and finally she was able to receive forgiveness. This story shows us that repentance sometimes is not a lip easier than forgiveness. In fact, where there is enormous guilt, the wrongdoer may well be unable to express repentance. What am I supposed to repent of? Am I expecting to be forgiven? Why dare even say it? Such offenders need help from the victims of their crimes, of their outrageous sins. By forgiving, victims enact a divine kind of love toward their enemies, says Wolf. By forgiving, victims enact a divine kind of love toward their enemies and help overcome evil by the power of good. And this brings us back then to where we left off last time with the obstacles to forgiveness. Just as a little summary, one of those obstacles is the failure of those who have harmed us to acknowledge their guilt, to own up to their offense, to speak the truth about it, to admit the harm that we've caused. And then we noted last time that we looked at the obstacles of wanting justice instead of forgiveness, tit for tat. We also consider how pride gets in the way. Yes, pride in the forgivers who offer themselves as virtuous and magnanimous and big-hearted and generous and forgiving, but actually simmer in silent rage, which then pops out in all sorts of harmful ways. Pride also nests in the breasts of forgivers who say, why don't you come to me first and tell your parents she can stare at my wife to hell with her. Pride can operate the same in the forgivee, the offender, who did nothing wrong. Or, she can come to me first. I'm the one who's been wronged. She's just as guilty, more so. I'm not going to grovel before her. And we considered the obstacle of forgiving persons who are no longer around to forgive. far away, or they're deceased, or maybe they're non-enemies. I mean, you never knew who they were. Unnamed soldiers who raped and pillaged. Some drunk who ran your husband over, and they never found him. Vote death. A Croatian lost his brother in just such a way. And the former Yugoslavia underwent civil war and upheaval. enormous atrocities. How do you forgive invisible people? The obstacle, so we looked at those obstacles, and here in the above story, Esther's story, we face this other obstacle, forgiveness, the obstacle of guilt. I do not have any answers to to this burden for people in general. That is, I don't have a therapeutic answer, but I do have a Christian answer, a gospel answer to this burden of guilt. And certainly any therapeutic answer ultimately piggybacks on the gospel answer, and that answer is love. In Esther's story, her free grace, her love, freed her mother enough for her mother to express her guilt, to show her contrition, and to receive Esther's forgiveness. As believers, we need to be aware that some persons are so wracked with guilt, they're so pained by it, so shamed by it, to present themselves as candidates of forgiveness seems outrageous, impossible. Sometimes we have failed so miserably, have fallen into a pit of sin so deep, have cut across the grain of our values and beliefs and characters so purposefully, brazenly, that we regard ourselves as unforgivable. And only the offer of love and only the offer of grace can offer a hand out of this pit. We're saved by grace. We're saved by the gospel, not by the law. In the parable of the prodigal son, the younger son resolves upon coming to his senses, remember? He resolves to go back home, repent, count himself unworthy to be called a son, and offer himself up as a hired hand. But note this whoremongering spendthrift of a son would never come to such a resolution except he knew his father to be a loving, gracious man, a merciful father. And the same is true for you. There's not a person sitting in this room who's turned to the very Jesus Christ to be saved, who didn't turn to him because of the wrath of grace and love and a mercy available for you, the sinner. For you. We don't bother to repent if we're convinced no grace is there, no love is at hand, no pardon is possible. I mean, we don't bother to truly regret, repent, speak the truth about ourselves except it's to one who will embrace us. Esther's mother repents when she's convinced that forgiveness is there. Thus, Esther forgives her mother before her mother repents, in this case. With this gift, her mother repents to the bottom of her soul. We will often short-circuit forgiveness when we demand that the wrongdoer first jump the hurdle of repentance to our satisfaction in order to earn the right of getting some of our grace. This says rightly, I think, forgiveness is not a reaction to something else. It's the beginning of something new. So that one, Another obstacle to forgiveness concerns ourselves. How do we forgive ourselves? Another story. It's a fictional one, but a fictional one that can easily be a true story from some nameless broken life from the horrors of the Second World War. The story comes from a book that was later made into a film. is a concentration camp at Auschwitz. It's in Poland. Sophie, the main character, is a young, beautiful, Polish woman, blonde, blue-eyed, who now finds herself in this death camp. She's been sent to this place with her two small children, her son Jan, who's about eight years of age, and her little daughter, Eva, about six. We've just arrived in the middle of the night, carted out of the packed train cars, and all the prisoners are being sorted out. Two groups. Those who will be allowed to live as slave laborers, and those who will immediately go to death in the gas chambers. Standing on the platform, an SS officer notices the beautiful Sophie. And I've printed out the little dialogue for you there. You're so beautiful. Are you a Polack? You? Are you also one of those filthy communists? He walks away. I'm a Pole. I was born in Krakow. I'm not a Jew. Neither are my children. They're not Jews. We're racially pure. I'm a Christian. I'm a devout Christian. He comes back. You're not a communist. You are a believer? Yes, sir, I believe in Christ. You believe in Christ the Redeemer? Yes. Did he not say, Suffer the children, come unto me? You may keep one of your children. I beg your pardon? You may keep one of your children, the other must go. What do you mean I have to choose? You're Pollack, not a Yid. That gives you a privilege, a choice. I can't choose. I can't choose. Be quiet. I can't choose. Make a choice or I'll send both of them over there. Make a choice. Don't make me choose. I can't. Shut up enough. I'll send them both over there. I told you to shut up. Make a choice. I can't choose. Please, I can't choose. Take my children away. And Sophie clinging to her son while they grab her screaming, crying daughter, and she says, take my little girl, take my baby. And Sophie's little girl wails in sorrow and fear. She's carried away, her thin but soaring cry piercing down the concrete platform of commotion. And Sophie has that image indelibly branded on her brain. She stands paralyzed. like a statue, her heart torn in half, wearing a face that screeches but is no sound, her soul etched with horror at her agony and guilt. Guilt, guilt, guilt. Plagued by guilt for giving her little girl away to her death, and plagued also by guilt for inability to rescue her little boy from his eventual death from the children's camp. She later learned that as the Russian army approached, the SS wanted all the children dead. Those who were left were Polish children, and they thought of burning them alive in a pit, shooting them, but they decided to do something that wouldn't show too many marks or evidence. So in the freezing cold, they marched the children down to the river, made them take off their clothes and soak them in the water, as if they were washing them, and then they made them put on their wet clothes again. Then they marched them back to the front of the barracks where they had been living and had a roll call, standing in their wet clothes. The roll call lasted for many, many hours while the children stood wet and freezing, and night came. All of the children died of being exposed that day. They died of exposure and pneumonia very fast. Jan, Sophie's little boy, likely died that way. They say that's a story, yeah, but it's a very believable story, and those kind of things happened. Those were stories. How can Sophie forgive herself? She ended up in a cab because her lover worked for the resistance in Poland, was caught, executed by the Gestapo. Well, she's associated with him. She's arrested with her children, sent to Auschwitz. She survives, but her children don't. And as you look at that story, she can't live now. She's in New York, trying to put her life together, but she can't forgive herself. She can't forgive God. She can't forgive the monster who forced this choice upon her, Sophie's choice, the name of the book. And years later, haunted by the guilt of having chosen between her children, And even though she's offered a life and a future with a man who promises to love her, she can't forgive herself and give herself that future and commit suicide. To forgive ourselves is often the biggest obstacle in the forgiveness paradigm. Do we dare forgive ourselves? It isn't this just cheap grace that you let yourself off the hook, move on, Let's forgive yourself. Not so fast. Too easy. We think to ourselves that we need to pay for our sins. You don't deserve forgiveness. You don't deserve it. You don't deserve it. You don't deserve it. You don't deserve mercy, grace, forgiveness. Well, what's the answer to that? The answer for yourself is your toss between guilt and grace. is the same answer that you would give to anyone else. Forgiveness of self isn't different than forgiveness for another. Love must cover the multitude of sins. Grace must endure the wrong committed. Guilt must be acknowledged truthfully and fully. And so you must walk a path of love to have the courage and the kindness to forgive yourself. It isn't cheap, Grace, because there's truth in this. Truth in this is requisite. Without honesty, without honesty, self-forgiveness is just psychological hocus-pocus. The real is we can't really forgive unless, you can't forgive yourself unless you look at the failure of your past and call it by its right name. Esker's mother did not dare forgive herself. Sophie, likewise, did not dare forgive herself for making her choice. When we refuse to forgive ourselves, we in fact hate ourselves. I want you to think about this. When you refuse to forgive yourself, you hate yourself. In harming others, the pain and guilt we have turns in on ourselves, and we hate ourselves. We judge, we convict, we sentence ourselves, mostly in secret. We can hate ourselves passively, or we can hate ourselves aggressively. Esther's mother hated herself passively. What does that look like? It looks like this. She looks at herself in the mirror in the morning, and she sees a miserable sight. She's not glad to be alive. She's not happy with her life or herself. She passively, quietly hates herself. Sophie aggressively hates herself. She rages at her failure. She lets herself be abused by a new lover in a new land. She turns alcoholic and promiscuous. She punishes herself with a miserable life. And finally, her self-hatred, like I said, even though an offer of love and a future's there, she can't give herself that. And her self-hatred, she acts out in self-destruction. So again, what's the answer? Well, admit to yourself that you're a mighty mean, harsh judge. You're a graceless, loveless, harsh, proud judge to yourself. In other words, you're unreasonable to think that you can atone for your sins, and you're proud. You need to plead for mercy to God, of course, and therefore also to yourself. In other words, you need to exorcise that mean, inner, judgmental judge, that flaw finder, who's graceless and loveless, who's telling you to make atonement when the Bible tells you you can't. So why are you trying to do it? Look elsewhere. You need to find love. The Apostle John says we love because Christ first loved us. He first loved us. We weren't rendered all atoned up and then lovable. We weren't all washed and cleaned up and then lovable. He first loved us while yet sinners and unlovable. He dies for us. You know, there's a healthy love of self grounded in God's love. There's a healthy grace to oneself grounded in God's grace. And it's not easy, but it is possible for Christians, certainly, because you're not your own. We don't belong to ourselves. Why are you treating yourself? You're someone else's property. You belong to Christ. Now you need to be treated on those terms. His terms. Not yours. Your distorted terms. The power of love is your only rescue from the self-imposed exile of misery you suffer day after day in refusing to forgive yourself. Even though God has. Even though, you know, it often happens you've repented to the person you've damaged. They forgive you. But you keep nursing the wound and re-inflicting it on yourself into your misery. So as you reject and hate yourself, come back honestly. Come back to honesty. Yes, I'm guilty. That was me. I did it. No hiding. But second, step two, in love view yourself from a wider lens. It's so critical we do this. You're not solely that. You're not defined by that wretched act, that meanness you committed. And it didn't disqualify you from God's love and His grace. Love is the only way we're going to drive out the fear and gain the courage. Because, you know, it's easier to walk under the black umbrella of shame than to bask and begin a life in the sunshine of love. You'll always have your accusers. There'll always be those who object to forgiveness. There'll always be naysayers to mercy. And as you try to forgive others and you have a naysayer saying no, as you try to forgive yourself, you'll be the naysayer saying no. Remember the words of Jesus to the sinful woman in Luke 7. Therefore I tell you, her sins which are many, the truth, here's the facts, her sins, here's the power of you guys. This is an electric dirty woman. Do we all oil on the same page now? Her sins are many, okay. I forgive her. where she loved much. But he who is forgiven little loves little. And he said to her, your sins are forgiven. This woman loves much precisely because she's been forgiven much. Stop judging. Start loving. Spread some mercy from God's abundant table and give yourself some. You need it. And believe me, so do I. Esker needed it. Esker's mother needed it. And so did our fictional Sophie. The next obstacle I want you to consider is how to forgive monsters. Monsters present huge obstacles to forgiveness. Could Sophie ever forgive that monster, that SS officer who made her choose? She couldn't. She didn't. But Esther's daughter forgave the monster that was her alcoholic mother. Who's the monster who's afflicted and mauled your life? An alcoholic parent? A business partner who embezzled and drove you into bankruptcy. A church member who so abused your child that he or she was driven away from the family of God into the arms of unbelief. The person in middle school or high school who left your self-esteem and self-worth in shreds and you're still trying to rebuild your sense of value. Who are your monsters, and how can you forgive them? Well, here I'm going to be brief and so that only the victims of monsters have the answer how to forgive them. And as I've said before, we may not forgive people for other people. We can forgive people to the degree their sins spill over onto us, We can forgive to the degree they forgive and want our forgiveness, certainly, to the degree their sins are spilt over onto us, but we can't forgive them for that person whom they harmed. God can forgive them, but we can't forgive in God's place or in the victim's place. Church makes huge mistakes when it tries to do this. We may not do that. We may not re-victimize victims. So what does a victim do who meets the unrepentant monster? Well, he meets the repentant monster. Both scenarios present hard feelings to negotiate. Well, this seems true to me. Love makes forgiving a creative violation of all the rules for scorekeeping. All the rules for scorekeeping, all the rules of scorekeeping, justice, tit for tat. You did this, I'm keeping score, I know. Forgiveness never comes because we've gotten our quota of retaliation in. Now I forgive you. Love in the path of forgiveness endures the wrong. There's one more little thing about forgiving monsters. They're not really monsters. That's letting them off the hook. You know, to call the Nazi, the SS men monsters, to call Jeffrey Dahmer a monster, to call these people who are going shooting spring monsters, to call people who molest children, sell them into prostitution, monsters. I get the sentiment. Monsters aren't morally culpable. They're like a human being that we hold accountable. And that's the only sort of person you can forgive. You don't really forgive the vicious police dog that bit your face off your child. Oh doggie, I forgive you. In fact, you likely hold the owner of the dog, who wasn't keeping control of this dog, responsible. And that's the person you struggle to forgive, not the monster dog. So don't do evil people the favor of getting them off the moral hook, of reducing them to that. The image bearers of God gone astray, whom even God holds accountable. What about dealing with being mad at God? I'm just going to put this one in there. Nope, I've been this honest this far, so far, and I've been mad at God, so I'm going to put it in here. And if you've never had your life damaged enough to be mad at God, well, blessing, brother and sister. Truly, blessing to you. I hope your life continues that path. But many of us have suffered stuff that makes us mad at God. And before you think this is a sinful topic, then go back and read the book of Job. He was mad at God. He was wrong. I'm not saying it's right. But he was. First, we can't forgive God. Let's be clear about that. We can't forgive him. For God isn't guilty. God isn't a wrongdoer. God isn't the author of sin. And we may not venture that path. It's a dead end. It's a non-negotiable. It's a non-starter. God is holy, righteous, and good. First that. While that's all true, as sinners we love to assign blame, and even as believers we blame God. We get mad at God. We feel that God betrays us, or that His plans make no sense. We feel that God punishes us for our sins, because we have plenty of them. Or that He fails to protect us as He should. That's how the fictional Sophie felt. God let her down. I'm a devout Christian. Because I was a Christian, I was given this horrible scenario. If I just kept my mouth shut, I would have never faced this. God let me down. Many abused children have felt like God has let them down. Many mauled lives have felt or expressed The accentuation of this loudly, audibly, God, you're unfair. That's Job, through the whole book. That's what Job's saying. You're unfair. It isn't fair. And don't forget what Job suffered. All cruel in kind, where they all tumbled out like dominoes. Every cruel blow, one after another. Third, we make a mistake in trying to help such souls when we offer counsel like that of Job's friends, when we try to defend God by grinding these broken hearts and broken lives who are angry at God, when we try to ground them down to size to ground them down some more. I haven't suffered enough, so here's my, let me get my licks in you. You fool, you idiot, you self-righteous snob, you prig, you spiritual dragon. Remember, God was displeased with Job for all his accusations against his mercy and justice, but he was more displeased. The foolish theologizing of Job's friends, who offered up a theology which said this, Job, what's happened to you is, well, you deserved it. Bad things happen to bad people. Every dumbbell knows that. You're a big fat sinner, confess your big fat sins and ask for forgiveness. It's as simple as that. That was not wise counsel at all, as if the measures that come into our lives are a divine tip for tax. It's totally wrong. The opening of the book of Job tells us it's totally wrong. It tells us that he's tested because he's blameless and faithful. There's no one else like him. Not because he's guilty and deserving. Fourth, believers who are mad at God need what we all need from the Christian community. We all need it all the time, don't we? Love. Friendship. weeping with encouragement, presence. They may be gently led in just this way to a better perspective, but not if we refuse to suffer with the broken soul. You can't administer mercy from a distance. You have to crawl into the bed of sorrow with the sorrowing. Compassion, the word literally means to suffer with. That's a compassionate person. He suffers or she suffers with you. You must suffer with the person who's angry at God. In order to show them that God has not abandoned them, and He still does love them, you're the living proof that God is for them and will bless them. They need your love, not your high-flutin theology, which is pretty stupid most of the time. Last, we heal and change, we even repent in being mad at God when we trust Him afresh, when we accept that He knows what He's doing. In my life, He knows what He's doing, His purpose isn't sinister, but it's holy, it's good, it's righteous, and thus, when believers are mad at God because He allowed, say, their little child to be run over by a car, Or because he hasn't given them a person to marry. Or maybe a couple struggles to have children. God hasn't blessed them with children. Or because he allowed them to be sexually abused by a father, a stepfather, a family friend, an uncle. Or God allows me to live in my 80s while he took my son with cancer in his 40s, leaving behind a broken family. Or God allowed their teen to get addicted to drugs and their life is unraveled. Or maybe we're mad at God that he didn't give us gifts of looks or brains or athletic talent or something else and consequently life is just so difficult, such a constant uphill battle. It's so easy for other people and so hard for me. Whatever the situation, Whether it's like Job's losing everything all at once, like Esther's who had an unloving alcoholic mother, was an unwanted child, a fictional Sophie with her horrific choice, whatever it is, something's worse than I've mentioned. When we're mad at God, holding him to blame, we're in a misery in which God, who is the remedy, is the perceived foe. That's the tragedy. The one who loves us most and best is the one we doubt to the hilt. We heal from this slowly, and it usually is slowly, when we begin to see his goodness again. When we begin to trust him again. And in trusting him we begin to see that he does indeed love us and has a good purpose for us. When we trust God, even if we do not have the answers, Job never got all the answers. He got asked a lot of questions. He didn't get all the answers. He did get this answer, because it's in the book. It happened to you, Job, because I was testing your faith. That's the answer he got. But he didn't get much beyond that. Well, aren't we giving the same answer? Isn't it certainly true that if God's children, as we face trials, we're being tested that way? Not because God's against us, but he's for us. You know, unless you had these sort of broken hearts, you wouldn't have anyone there to crawl into bed of suffering and sorrow with those broken hearts. Sometimes we have to go through terrible things to actually have eyes to see and ears to hear, and a heart that bleeds with love and compassion. It's an awfully hard lesson to get there. But God and His love gets us there. So when we trust God, we're able to accept that He meant all for our good. and he will turn for my good whatever sorrows I must face in this life. Those are the obstacles that I wanted to address and get to tonight. I'll pause here as we've contemplated not only in summary, but we've looked at Esther's story and Sophie's story, and we particularly looked at the obstacle of guilt, of forgiving ourselves and its challenges, and of course dealing with monsters, we weren't really that, and dealing with our anger with God. I hope you're ready to go. You're relaxed. The last little push we have here. It's a very sobering subject, this business of forgiveness. It's a difficult subject to talk about because you have to talk in generalities. I try to offer a lot of little vignettes and illustrations but usually it's the case nothing quite captures my story or my issue or what I had to go through or what I did to somebody. I'm aware of that and so I'm not presuming to have all the magic answers. But I am trying to present materials I think you can slot into your life and hopefully be blessed and go forward. The last topic here is the benefits of practicing forgiveness. And the first of these is that forgiveness is the better alternative. It's an alternative to self-imposed misery or vengeance. The benefits or blessings of practicing forgiveness can be examined from a variety of points of view. So, for example, all the things that motivate the practice of forgiveness can also be explained as benefits of practicing forgiveness. So, for example, when we looked at that, we saw that we can be motivated to practice forgiveness because of God's love for us, because of the call to love our neighbors, ourselves, even to love our enemies. the command of Jesus to practice the golden rule, that petition of the Lord's Prayer, to forgive as God has forgiven us. And also we saw that we could be motivated to practice forgiveness in order to remove hate from our hearts, which poisons our nature. and our lives. And so all of these you could take, expound upon, and from a different angle say, now look at the benefits, look at the benefits, and so forth. I could do that, but I'm not going to do that. Instead, I'm just going to make that kind of a given, kind of a background, a set of presuppositions, that's all true, we all agree with that. But instead, I'm going to look at it from a different angle. And that is, I'm going to look more at the practical payoff for yourself and for others by practicing forgiveness. So yes, the theological biblical is presupposed and there, but in the interest of time, I'm moving more directly to the practical applicatory. And thus, the first benefit of practicing forgiveness is it's a better alternative for you personally. Because you do face an option, and we basically started here. in our whole class. The other option is self-imposed misery of bitterness and resentment and hate, and perhaps that's coupled with a stewing desire for revenge. Vengeance is mine, saith the hating heart. As we saw in session one, though, you're the suffering one. When you're angry, full of hate and bitterness, resentment, You're the one suffering, and you're miserable. I know it, because I've done it. I know how much, how miserable it is. Forgiveness, on the other hand, here's the alternative, blesses your life, sets you free from a getting even life, a keeping score endlessly life, from your pound of flesh like Sherlock and Shakespeare's Merchants of Venice. To get even, to live that way is a loser's game. You never win. You're never even. And you're never happy. It's stupid to play it. Meanwhile, you're the first beneficiary if you practice forgiveness. Because you're giving the others what you most need from them, love. And you're the first beneficiary because you're imaging God and His mercy to us. And isn't that a wonderful way to live? This better alternative then plays out practically in a thousand ways. With forgiveness, family reunions become genuine reunions, not family feuds. Marital snags and mishaps, careless cutting words, with forgiveness, Give way to reconciliation and healing versus a contest concerning who can get the next good lick in. Take that. With forgiveness, you regard co-workers and fellow church members as broken, needing grace, terribly flawed human beings. versus fantasizing how to get even without getting harmed in retaliation yourself. There's always that danger, right? You start retaliating. Well, watch out who you retaliate on, because they might be lining you up in their sights, and you've got more misery in your life. Forgiveness, just from a practical point of view, even for an unbeliever, is a better alternative. Now, we take that with all its Christian content, with all that theological input behind it that we noticed earlier. The alternative to forgiveness traps you into a bad, gloomy life, and you're the miserable one. You're left frozen in the core memory of your past suffering, and you continue to suffer the fresh. Because what happens? You remember the wound, you roll it around in your head, you relive it, and you ache all over again. What a glum, despondent, angry, melancholic present you shackle yourself to from your past. It's just a no-win game. Meanwhile, God has redeemed you, set you free, bought you, set you free from bondage. He calls you to a better future. He calls you to a 1 Corinthians 13 life. Love keeps no record of wrongs life. This is the benefit of forgiveness. Forgiveness brings redemptive remembering versus nursing a festering wound. By redemptive Remembering, another benefit here, we recognize that we do not have the ability to impose upon ourselves a kind of amnesia. You know, we've all heard forgive and forget. But when we forgive, we don't literally forget. How can we? The wrong done to us is etched into our memory cells. We might bear the permanent marks of a wrong done to us. It's marked on our body. The scars are there. Or a family photograph is perched on the mantle of our fireplace. And every time we see it, we remember, you know, that person damaged that life or took that life from me. Or maybe I did it myself. Forgiveness isn't literally forgetting. Rather, It's assigning blame, and enduring the wrong, and releasing the guilty from the just penalty that's their due. It's to give them maybe love anyway. People think forgiving means people are getting off the hook. They're getting off the hook of the penalty that was due, but they're not getting off the hook of you did it, you're guilty. but I'm going to treat you out of love and mercy and hopefully even under reconciliation, I'm not going to give you justice. But also, this benefit, this redemptive love, it not only releases the guilty, it brings for you a redemptive remembering. Now what is that? It's to remember in a way that heals us instead of reinjuring us. When we don't have that, every time we go back to the episode, or the set of things, or the whole collection of memories, it's a package deal. Every time we go back, we're hurt afresh, maybe we're angry afresh, we're vulnerable, afraid afresh. That redemptive remembering heals us instead of reinjuring us. It remembers, yes, but sees progress and hope for the future. So redemptive remembering doesn't erase the past, but neither does it distort or overburrow that portrait of wrong from the past. Instead, it adds a new setting and perspective. When I thought about this, I thought of a tube of wrapping paper. I like to play that game even as an adult. You get an empty tube of wrapping paper and you put it to your eyeball and you see what you can see. But you have a very narrow field of vision, don't you? When you put that tube there, you can only see a little bit at a time. But when you remove the tube, suddenly the whole vista opens, right? The whole room is there. You put the tube there. When we remember a wrong, and it re-injures us, we're looking through the tube. Nothing else is there. It's the only thing. Only that is at the focus. That alone defines us. We are damaged permanently and forever. Everything in our life is driven by that. But when we remember redemptively, we take the tube away. We can still see that. that we see a much wider field of God's care and presence and blessing. And we see even a passage of time of how He's brought me along, how He's forgiven and loved me. And now the remembering becomes redemptive. We see blessing, healing, and progress. There's two biblical examples of redemptive remembering, by the way. the Passover, at least these are the biggest ones, the Passover commemorating Israel's deliverance from their Egyptian bondage, and the Lord's Supper commemorating Christ's death on the cross for us. And remembering the Passover, God's people remembered, to be sure, bondage, oppression, misery, sorrow, suffering, even had the eating of the bitter herbs, the bitterness of it all. But more and better than that, the remembered release, liberation, redemption, new life, new beginnings, God's love, God's power, a better future, an exodus, redemptive remembering. Similarly, the Lord's Supper recalls Christ's death. but his death until he comes again, a future. Yes, we recall our sins at the Lord's Supper, but more we recall his love for us. Or we ought to. Maybe sometimes in our tradition we get a bit too morbidly only think about our sins. But yes, we think about our sins, but there's something greater than our sins. That's the whole point of the Lord's Supper. We recall his love, we remember his suffering, yes, but we remember his saving sacrifice. We don't remember the Sanhedrin. I've never taken the Lord's Supper and going, oh, I was doing that, the Sanhedrin. I've never taken the Lord's Supper and said, oh, that Pilate, that cowardly, washing his hands Pilate, oh, that guy gets me. I've never taken the Lord's Supper and thought of those cruel, brutish Roman soldiers spitting and cussing and laughing as the girl stokes through his hands and feet. Never thought of them. But I have thought of God's love for me, for my fellow believers here. Thought of that a lot. Redemptive remembering. You know, that's why we call it Good Friday. Not bad, Friday. We can nurse the wound to be sure. We can, instead of forgiveness, practice punching the numbers of fairness on our moral calculators. Yes, there's always a risk in loving someone, and there's always risk in forgiving someone, for they may hurt us again. They may throw our forgiveness in our face. They may take our forgiveness and tell us where to put it. They may package it, accept it nicely, and think, oh, now I can set them up for another round. I mean, we're not so naïve to know that there's abusive husbands or abusive wives who are also very, very sorry for their abuse only to get, whittle their way back in and see round four, round five. I had neighbors across the street where, you know, the cops are back. Here they are again. I don't like those on the house, but I caught a little episode the other day. You know, she comes out and she has the cell phone ablaze and I'm calling the cops, you know. Oh, you're driving me crazy. And it's just like, oh man, I don't want to get shot. I'd like to help. I don't want to get shot. It's when people are really upset, you know. That's why cops usually come because there's like eight of them at a time with guns. Yeah, you bleed for those people. So yes, there's a vulnerability, there's a risk, a genuine risk in forgiving. But love and grace take the risk, and love casts out fear. This gain of forgiveness produces life and fellowship and peace and happiness. It's the benefit of forgiveness. The other game, vengeance, nursing the wound, punching the numbers, well, I thought, it's sort of like playing Russian roulette with six bullets loaded in all six available chambers. Deadly. Forgiveness, and the further benefit, displays the strength of God's love and grace. I would think as Christians, we'd be for that. I'm into showing the strength of God's love and grace. First, it has the strength of facing the truth. We often feel empowered when we hate. I know I do. Hate makes me feel strong. For Skylar's fans, the lines of the evil emperor to a young Darth Vader are memorable. Your hate has made you powerful. But does it? It does have the fearless power to it, for a person can be energized by hate. Forgiveness, by contrast, is flaccid and weak. Hate seems to boil and brothel as forgiveness seems placid and calm. Hate kick-starts our imaginations. We plot revenge. Our minds are in overdrive. Forgiveness seems to be a surrendering. It even maybe can look like a groveling. It is a bath that soon grows cold. And more than that, it has energy, but it draws its energy from you. It draws it from you, and it draws it out of you, and it runs on your batteries and gives nothing back. Love and forgiveness, as Christians know, comes from God, and His battery supply is endless. His Spirit is the born and giver of life. Hate masquerades as an angel of strength. In fact, it's just the mask we wear for how terribly vulnerable and hurt we are. I mean, parse it out. Anger, like hate, looks strong. But behind anger is pain. And where there's pain and injury, we usually find weakness. Love, however, does not need to wear masks. Love faces the truth. Love admits that we're weak and vulnerable. Love also, in that way, is extremely strong. Think about it. Christ didn't go to the cross because he hated his enemies. He went to the cross in all that strength and courage of love. You know, this is why a mother, a vulnerable little mother, in her love, can take on armies, you know, for her children. The truth is always stronger than the lie. Love knows that human beings, sin-bitten human beings, sin-bitten sinners, are always part strength, part weakness. Life is messy, and let messiness, love, and forgiveness give us the strength to face wrongdoing and wrongdoers for what it is. Forgiveness doesn't camouflage wrong, and that's why we were saying earlier, forgiveness is an excuse. Forgiveness isn't just glossing it over. Forgiveness isn't a shrug of the shoulders, oh whatever, what else? Okay. Forgiveness isn't brain shifting. Forgiveness is facing the person who did it. and naming it what it is. Because forgiveness isn't just confrontation. You know why it's dangerous just to confront somebody with their sin? I'm mad and I'm going to confront them and what do you want them to do? I want them to repent and then what? You ready to forgive them? If they do, See, if you confront a person in anger and hate, and even if you move them to genuine sorrow and repentance, but you're not, you don't already have a heart of love and compassion, there's no forgiveness to be given. There's grovelling to be accepted. There's penance to be evaluated. But there is not forgiveness to be bestowed. That takes love. And often the reason we're afraid to confront, brothers and sisters, and it's true for me, because I'm angry and bitter and mad and mean, not loving. Because when I'm filled with love, I have courage. But when I'm not, I'm a bit cowardly. coward, and I should be. I don't know what I'm going to say. What I'm going to do might not be very pretty or very Christian, very godly. Forgiveness displays the strength of God's love. What a wonderful benefit it is to live in that strength. It also then has that strength of confrontation. Let me give you an illustration. Think of a person looking for a promotion. Well, make it you. You're looking for a promotion. A junior supervisor promises to put in a good word for you. You trust him to do it. And you're certain he did, but he didn't. He demoted you to his seniors. He betrayed you. You discover the treachery. You have been bitten from behind by a company jackal. You likely hate that person. Yet this is the person who can write you a recommendation for another job because you want to quit and move somewhere else after this. But you need that very person to write the recommendation. You need this soul. So you play a game of pretending you don't know, acting nice and all is fine. You smile sweetly while he tells you how sorry he is that you didn't get the promotion and you go home and vomit. Your hate is weakness, not strength. Stop lying to yourself. Stop the duplicity. You likely need to confront your betrayer even if you next must suffer not getting a recommendation from him. You need to say, and this is a path unto forgiveness, Reggie, I just thought that was a good name to try, Reggie, I know what you did. You stabbed me in the back, twisted the knife and threw me in a ditch. And I think that was a wretched thing to do. And you seem something of a scoundrel. Reggie will probably, or should we call him Reggie, Reggie will probably deny it and walk away. But forgiveness walks a road of confrontation when it can. Forgiveness does when there's love in back of it, not just hate. When it's just hate, it's just room for another ugly, mean scene with no good outcome. Love alone has this kind of strength and this kind of courage. Further, there's the strength of freedom. Forgiveness walks a road of freedom, and I mean that in two senses. First, it walks a road of freedom in the sense that you alone can make the choice to forgive someone, even a Reggie, though you need not trust him again. And without his amends, reunion is never likely. And secondly, forgiveness walks the road of freedom in that in doing it, in forgiving, you are set free from your demons and from a vice of hatred you can't righteously maintain or live with. So freedom to exercise love and freedom to be delivered from hate. And this gets back to forgiveness is undeserved. God forgiving you is undeserved. Christ dying on the cross for you is undeserved. Christ bearing God's wrath and justice against your sins is undeserved. Christ letting that count to be the atonement for your sins is undeserved. Undeserved. Undeserved. Undeserved. And He gives you the Holy Spirit so you have faith in Christ is undeserved. Undeserved. Undeserved. Undeserved. Forgiveness is a gift from first to last. It's an act of love and freedom, or it's not forgiveness. Coerced forgiveness is always a sham. Hate locks you into handcuffs of revenge and resentment, but love is your choice by God's grace that sets you free. It's the benefit of forgiveness. Love is the power behind forgiveness. And love is strong because it has the double ingredients of respect for self and others and a commitment to back it up. Now, respect for self is important because if you don't respect yourself, have a biblical love for self, you'll never stand up for yourself and you'll just be literally pulp on a doormat. I've known people who feel like I'm just pulp. So yeah, they run in and out of abusive relationships. What do abusers do? You're pulp. You're good for nothing. A sack of hammers has more value than you. That's how they like to make such people feel. And then they own it. And all they can do is... Well, you know the pattern. But self-love, a proper biblical self-love and self-respect drives you to a decision. Will you glue yourself to the painful memory of the hurt you didn't deserve from this person? Will you roll it around in your memories, savor its bitter taste, squeeze the last ounce of crazy-making pleasure you can out of your pain? Or, will you in self-respect forgive and set yourself free from that misery, that evil, that lie of the devil, because you're going to follow Christ's way instead. Only love has the strength to forgive. And you need to love, have love for yourself and for the wrongdoer. Yes, you need to have love, respect for the wrongdoer, because in doing that, you're calling him to take responsibility. Goes wrong. Love doesn't forever cover up for people, make excuses to protect them. It's not love to protect your children from the consequences of their actions. Love needs to respect them so they take responsibility. And that brings me back to what I was saying earlier. Love and respect doesn't allow a sinful monster who commits monstrous crimes to be actually a monster. We don't hold Godzilla morally accountable for pulverizing Tokyo. So why do we want to make monsters out of people? That's kind of in a way doing them a favor they don't deserve. No wicked humans, rather wicked humans are still morally responsible and as such they're forgivable. Jesus talked about an unforgivable sin, but what we hear in the news isn't one. Meanwhile, love has the strength to commit to one who's wronged us. That is, to recommit to such a person. Love has the strength to be vulnerable. Now, we're back to something we said earlier. We have to be wise as serpents and innocent as doves. And if I didn't talk about it earlier, then let me just say this. We ought to be wise as serpents, which is a way we need to be verbally wise. We need to know how the world thinks, what the devil does. We need his tricks, tactics, strategies, stratagems. We need to be aware. We're not to go through life as dumbbells ready to get slaughtered and put our children in slaughter's way. No, no, no. Wise as serpents. But we're not going to stick to worldly means and worldly ways and worldly tactics and worldly behaviors and devil's schemes. We're going to be innocent as devs. Because we're going to practice love. And we're going to walk that path. If we don't love, we're doomed to lies. We keep everybody at bay, stay away, stay away, and we're exiled into loneliness. Love does commit to forgive and to love again, and that's a benefit of forgiveness. And here's the last one. Forgiveness fits faulty sinners like ourselves. Forgiveness fits. I didn't say deserves. Don't misunderstand what I'm saying here. It fits. It's what we need. As we noted at the beginning of this whole class, there's a good guy and a bad guy in every forgiving crisis. Someone has hurt someone else wrongly, deeply. One person needs to forgive and the other person needs to be forgiven. But when we look at the whole picture, we always discover that those who get hurt probably need to be forgiven too. by somebody. And if they need forgiveness, they have extra reason to forgive those who hurt them. There's not a person sitting in this room who hasn't been hurt and needs to probably forgive someone or would like to be able to forgive someone. But by the same token, you've probably hurt your share of people. You need to be seeking forgiveness. We always feel like innocent lambs when somebody hurts us unfairly, but we are never as pure as we feel. I may have been betrayed or cheated or maligned and in several ways badly abused and feel as if I'm as benign as a shorn sheep. But being abused does not make me a good person. And people make that mistake too. Look at all the hell I've been through. As if that sanctified you. No, it could just leave you mean and vicious. It doesn't mean you're pure. Besides, the Bible makes it clear to us that we're sinful and deceptive. Moreover, we are seldom merely sinned against. We often contribute to our vulnerability. We set ourselves up for hurt. We invite pain, sometimes simply because we're lazy or stupid. Maybe, you know, we're too lazy to check out that deal before we leap into it. Or maybe we contribute to our spouse's infidelity, which doesn't excuse it, but we contribute to it by our unfeeling ignorance of their needs or desires. Or maybe we contribute to our children's rebellion by our cold judgments or hot tempers. Surely, we know at least this much, that even if we are the hurt party, we're seldom completely, completely the innocent party. Our virtues compromised. We're never as innocent as we feel. Our own faults, therefore, reduce the gap between us and them. And so we don't offer forgiveness from a holy mountaintop of sanctity where we're condescending. No, we offer forgiveness down in the valley, wallowing around in the muck with them. That's a much more likely scenario. And all of this shows that we need to give what we need to get. Forgiveness keeps life among human beings going. In fact, it's impossible for human beings to coexist unless It comes in sufficient supplies, and the same holds true in the church. Forgiveness is the stuff of a holy catholic apostolic church. It's the stuff of community, fellowship, brotherhood, sisterhood of saints. How will we ever be one church, one universal catholic church, one church guided by apostolic teaching, a holy church, unless we live by and put into practice the forgiveness of sin. This is the life we enjoy and are called to on our way to the resurrection of the body and the life everlasting. Amen. Because we all need such rich supplies of forgiveness from God and from each other. Forgiveness is the stuff that makes life possible. Our bodies need food and water and air and we need forgiveness in ourselves. We really need it. We're all sinners. We're all guilty. We all hurt others. We've all been hurt. Just as we cannot afford to have a God who's one ounce less merciful than he is. One ounce, one smidgen less loving than he is. So we cannot afford not to practice forgiveness for one another. Forgiveness owes the cogs and gears. Think of sinners as a bunch of cogs and gears grinding up next to each other. And forgiveness is the rail that keeps us from just running ourselves to death. Forgiveness, even better, makes life blessed. And now, what did Jesus say as he taught us about our new kingdom citizenship and our being a new Exodus people? What did he teach us? How did he redefine the new regime, the new apocryphal under head of the glory? Blessed are the peacemakers. Blessed are the poor in spirit. Blessed are the meek. Blessed, blessed, blessed, and you can slide forgiveness in and around every crack of those beatitudes. Blessed are the forgiving people who live under my healing reign of the kingdom of God. This is to be a forgiveness of sins, people. You know, Jesus was tough on only one sort of sinner, the unforgiving kind. It was very sobering. Matthew 18, remember that's the passage we started with. The parable of the unforgiving servant reminds us that there is a master and a servant. If we act like the unforgiving servant, God will act like the master who will demand justice. You don't want forgiveness. You want justice instead. Forgiveness, in my view, is the hardest and the most blessed part of a Christian life. And I'll say that again. The goodness is the hardest and the most blessed part of the Christian life. You say, well, no, the hardest part of Christian life is controlling my temper, dealing with my pride, you know, go down the list of the seven deadly sins, sloth, avarice, you know, take your last. Forgiveness is the hardest part. Yeah, because of pride, envy, and all those things, yeah. Forgiveness is the hardest, but it's also the most blessed. It's most blessed because it's the very heart and soul of the Christian life. That's what a Christian is. A Christian is a forgiven person. filled and loved by God, filled with His love, driven by His Spirit to be and follow Christ and now to love and to forgive and to spread the good news to the glory of God as His people. Well, it's the hardest and it's not, there's no magic wand class, brothers and sisters, that can just, well, took the class. That's done. Got that bit right, that puzzle solved. Where's the new puzzle? That's what we do with puzzles, right? We put all the pieces together, we look at it for two or three days on the table. Oh, I'm sick of that. Put it back in the box. Now give me a new box! Well, forgiveness is going to be a puzzle for your Christian life. You feel like, it seems like I've got that piece in place and now my wife came along and took it out. Why is there peace on the floor? No wonder I couldn't solve this. The kids got... they knocked their chunk off. We're going to continue to battle and struggle and re-forgive and hate and stop hating and pray anew and look afresh and re-appropriate God's forgiveness. Look, if we're taught in the prayer to continue to pray, forgive us our sins as we have also forgiven our debtors. Now what does that mean? That's the game. That's the task we're in the rest of the way until glory. Just as we continue to pray for daily bread. I pray it once, I'm done. I had bread today, don't need it ever again now. No, friends. I'll need it tomorrow too. And the next day. And the next day. And the same with forgiveness. It will be a daily struggle, but struggle forward, because God loves us. God forgives us. And think about this. Jesus said, by the way, it's not your strength, but Jesus said this, I'm divine, you are the branches. Apart from me, you can do nothing. Well, believe him then. Apart from Him, you can't do this. But in Him, you can. And you'll practice forgiveness and love by receiving His. He inhales, brings into you the breath of life and love and grace. And you exhale and breathe out His love and forgiveness and grace to others. It's forgiving you to be a forgiver. And that is an amazing grace way to live.