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"THE GIFT OF
FORGIVENESS"
"Forgiveness: The Power to Change the
Past"
I.
Anxiety and relief.
A. Two anxieties face us.
1) Our unchangeable past
2) Our unpredictable futures.
B. God's two answers.
1) God forgives our past.
2) God controls our future by
keeping his promises.
C. We can share in this divine power
by forgiving and promising.
1) Jewish philosopher Hannah
Arendt concludes there is only
one
remedy for the inevitability of history:forgiveness.
2) We are stuck with our past and
its effects on us.
History cannot be escaped
from, undone or changed.
II. What do we
do when we forgive?
A. There are three stages in every
act of forgiving.
1) Suffering.
a) Hurts that don't need to
be forgiven:
1> Annoyances,
defeats, and slights.
b) Hurts that do need
forgiveness:
1> Acts of disloyalty.
A> Treats you as a
stranger when you are a friend.
1: This assaults
our identity.
B> Examples are
adultery, reneging on promises, etc.
2> Acts of betrayal.
A> Treats you as
an enemy when you are a friend.
B> Comparison of Peter and
Judas.
2) Spiritual surgery.
a) When you forgive someone,
you slice away the wrong from
the
person who did it.
1> He is remade in
your memory.
2> You think of him not as the
person who hurt you,
but
as the person who needs you.
3> He himself is not
changed, but you are.
b) This stage may be our
limit.
1> Some we need to
forgive are dead and gone.
2> Others do not want
our forgiveness.
3) Starting over.
a) Reconciliation is the
final act of forgiveness.
b) What is not forgiveness:
1> Forgiving is not
forgetting.
2> Forgiving is not
excusing.
3> Forgiving is not
smoothing things over
B. Only forgiveness can undo the hurt
of history.
1) The grace to do it is from
God.
2) The decision to do it is our
own.
III. Why forgive?
A. Simon Wiesenthal's story of unforgiveness.
1) "Let the SS trooper go to
hell," said one respondent.
2) Getting even, having contempt, seems like our only weapon.
B. Forgiveness is superhuman.
1) Forgiveness is a better way to
fairness.
a) It creates a new possiblity of fairness by releasing us
from
the unfair past.
b) It brings fairness to the
forgiver.
1> Refusing to forgive
only condemns us to more unfairness.
2) Vengeance is having a
videotape planted in yoru soul that
cannot
be turned off.
a) Forgiveness is the ONLY
way back to fairness.
IV. How do we
forgive?
A. We forgive slowly.
1) C.S. Lewis took years to
forgive a cruel teacher.
B. We forgive communally.
1) Fellowship with those of
similar pain can help.
C. We forgive as we are forgiven.
1) Anyone who forgives can hardly
tell the difference between
feeling
forgiven and doing the forgiving.
2) Example of Corrie
ten Boom.
She was stuck for the war
years in a concentration camp,
humiliated
and degraded.
This was especially true in
the delousing shower where the
women
were ogled by the leering guards.
But she made it through that
hell.
And eventually she felt she
had, by grace, forgiven even
those
fiends who guarded the shower stalls.
So she preached forgiveness,
for individuals, for all of
Europe.
She preached it in Bloemendaal, in the United States, and,
one
Sunday, in Munich.
After the sermon, greeting
people, she saw a man come
toward her, hand
outstretched:
"Ja,
Fraulein, it is wonderful that Jesus forgives all our
sins, just
as you say."
She remembered his face; it
was the leering, lecherous,
mocking
face of an SS guard of the shower stall.
Her hand froze at her side.
She could not forgive.
She thought she had forgiven
all.
But she could not forgive
when she met a guard, standing
in
the solid flesh in front of her.
Ashamed, horrified at
herself, she prayed:
"Lord, forgive me, I
cannot forgive."
And as she prayed she felt
forgiven, accepted, in spite
of
her shabby performance as a famous forgiver.
Her hand was suddenly
unfrozen.
The ice of hate melted.
Her hand went out.
She forgave as she felt
forgiven.
And she was probably not able
to sort out the difference.
D. Our only escape from history's
cruel unfairness, our only
passage to the future's
creative possibilities, is the
miracle
of forgiving.
"Forgive
God?"
I. Does God need to be forgiven?
A. Forgiveness presupposes
wrongdoing, which God is incapable of.
1) Bible teaches that God is
sinless.
B. Yet we often find God guilty of
"lapsing" when we face tragedies.
II. Forgiveness is totally against human
nature.
A. We seek revenge.
B. God encourages, indeed requires,
us to forgive. Eph 4:32
1) He also calls on us to
forget. Jer 31:34
2) Required for full forgiveness.
III. Our
forgiveness can be like God's.
A. It's evidence that we're made in
his image.
B. Our forgiveness is not God's.
1) God not only forgives, he
cleanses.
2) We cannot.
C. Forgiving cleanses us.
1) It erases memories that eat at
us.
2) Perceived wrongs against us
are as pernicious at the
real
thing.
IV. Forgiving
God.
A. We sometimes perceive wrongs done by
God to us.
1) "Why?"
B. We can forgive God for these
"perceived" wrongs.
C. It is for our benefit, not God's.
"Unnatural
Act".
I.
Forgiveness is difficult.
A. Memories linger.
B. Forgiveness is UNNATURAL.
1) It is blantantly
unfair.
C. Story of Joseph and his
brothers. Genesis 42-45
1) Joseph swings from harshness
to blubbering sorrow.
2) He finally forgives them.
a) The sounds of his grief and love
mingle together.
II.
Forgiveness is against all instincts.
A. Animals don't forgive
predators.(sharks and dolphins)
1) Dogs eat dogs.
2) Nations and economies operate
on this principle.
3) Freud:"One
must forgive one's enemies, but not before
they've
been hanged."
B. Christianity is suffused with
forgiveness.
1) Lord's prayer.
2) Best-known saying of Jesus:"Forgive your enemies."
a)
Seems suicidal.
b)
Hard enough to forgive rotten brothers.
III.
Why forgiveness is so central to our faith.
A. It is the only way to break the
cycle of blame - and pain -
in
relationships.
1) "Karma" provides a
more satisfying sense of fairness.
a) (6,800,000 incarnations
are required.)
b) Example of marriage ruined
by a bar of soap.
2) Forgiveness doesn't settle all
questions of blame.
a) It often evades those
questions.
b) But it allows
relationships to start over.
c) Only humans can forgive,
and develop relationships that
transcend
the law of nature.
3) Forgiveness is tit-for-tat.
a) Blame is this way, and so
is forgiveness.
b) We would not want to get
caught up in such a cycle with
God.
B. Loosening the stranglehold of
guilt.
1) First official act of free parliament
in East Germany was
to
ask for forgiveness of Jews.
a) It did not bring any Jews
back to life.
b) But it helped to loosen
the stranglehold of guilt.
2) "Les Miserables."
a) Double-edged - Valjean learns forgiveness, detective
does
not.
3) Forgiveness transforms
individuals, both forgivers and
forgiven.
a) Joseph's tears were a sign
of liberation.
b) Jesus led Peter through a
ritual of forgiveness.Jn 21:15f
C. Bridging the gap.
1) Forgiveness puts both parties
on the same side.
a) Through it we realize we
are not that much different.
2) In Incarnation, God put
himself on our side. Heb 4:15; 2 Cor 5:21
a) Forgiveness is not easy
for God, either.
b) Words from the cross:
"They know not what they do."
IV.
Resolving the unfairness.
A. At its core, forgiveness remains
unfair.
1) It is unjust to let dastardly
deeds go unpunished.
B. In the final analysis, forgiveness
is an act of faith.Rom 12:19
1) We trust that God is a better
justice maker than us.
2) We defer to him.
C. Wrong does not disappear when we
forgive.
1) But it loses its grip on us,
and is taken over by God.
2) He knows what to do.
"Holocaust & Ethnic
Cleansing"
I. "The Sunflower" by Simon
Wiesenthal.
A. SS soldier Karl asks for forgiveness.
B. 30 troops had been killed by booby
traps in Dnyepropetrovsk,
Ukraine, and so 300 Jews where herded into a three-story
building
and set ablaze.
"I am left here with my
guilt," Karl concluded at last."
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. In the long
nights while I have
been waiting for death, time and
time again I have longed to talk
about it to
a Jew and beg forgiveness from him.
Only I didn't know
whether
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." Simon Wiesenthal, an architect in his
early twenties, now
a prisoner dressed in a shabby
uniform marked with the yellow Star
of David,
felt the entire weight of his race bearing down on him.
He stared out the window at the
sunlit courtyard. He looked at
the eyeless
heap of bandages lying in the bed."
At last I made up
my
mind," he writes, "and without a word I left the room."
A. Haunted by the hospital scene, he
asked 32 people of various
faiths
and backgrounds to comment.
"What would you have done in
my place?" he asked.
"Did I do right?"
1) Out of 32 writers, only 6 said
he had done wrong.
2) He had no authority to forgive
on behalf of others.
3) The crimes were too enormous
to be forgiven.
a) "Let the SS man die unshriven. Let
him go to hell."
4) The whole concept of
forgiveness is wrong.
a) It is merely an act of
sensual pleasure.
II. Unforgiveness has a terrible, crystalline logic.
A. In a world of unspeakable
atrocity, forgiveness seems
unjust,
unfair, irrational.
1) Philosopher Herbert Marcuse
said, "One cannot, and should
not, go around happily killing and
torturing and then,
when the moment has come,
simply ask, and receive,
forgiveness."
B. There is conflict between justice
and forgiveness in Christianity.
1) Some, like Luther, assign
justice to Caesar and forgiveness
to
the church (and individuals).
2) Is it too much to expect high
ethical ideas to be transferred
to
the brutal world of politics and diplomacy?
III. Comparisons with Bosnia.
A. Forgiveness has one thing going
for it - it is the alternative.
1) Where unforgiveness
reigns, essayist Lance Morrow has pointed
out, a Newtonian law comes
into play:For every atrocity
there
must be an equal and opposite atrocity.
2) Serbs are following the
terrible logic of unforgiveness.
a) The Nazis tried to
"cleanse" the Serbs in WWII.
b) Serbs kill tens of
thousands; Croats killed hundreds of
thousands.
3) One major flaw in the
inexorable law of revenge: it never
settles
the score.
a) The Turks got revenge in
1389, at the Battle of Kesovo;
the Croats got it in the
1940s, now it's our turn, say
the
Serbs.
b) If everyone were to follow
the "eye for an eye" principle
of justice, said
Gandhi, the whole world would go
blind.
c) "As long as you cling
to 'justice' you will never be
guiltless
of injustice... In reality, insistence on
justice
is servitude. Only forgiveness frees
us from
the
injustice of others."
Theologian Romano Guardini
B. Examples of law of unforgiveness in history:
1) "Godfather" trilogy.
2) IRA bombings because of
atrocities committed by Cromwell.
3) Republics of Soviet
Union.(Chechnya)
4) Iran's plea for apology from
President Carter.
V.
Forgiveness in the arena of nations.
A. Germany and reparations to
Israel. East Germany followed.
B. 1983 mass by Pope John Paul II in
Warsaw, with throngs of
worshippers passing the Communist
party's Central Committee
Building and chanting in unison,
"We forgive you! We forgive
you!"
C. Civil War in America. Tecumseh Sherman and "scorched
earth."
D. Racism in America shows that
forgiveness in itself does not
undo injustice.Yet blacks voted for George Wallace.
VI.
Forgiveness focuses on individual, personal
acts.
A. The cure, like a vaccine, must be
applied one person at a time.
1) Martin Luther King, Jr., in
Birmingham jail.
2) Corrie Ten
Boom.
3) John Paul II went into the
bowels of Rome's Rebibbia prison
to visit Mehmet Ali Agca, a hired assassin who had tried
to
kill him and nearly succeeded."I forgive
you," said
the
Pope, as video cameras whirred.
4) There will be no escape until
our hearts are changed.
B. The Pope is an image of one who
did not survive an
assassination
- Jesus.
1) Pilate, soldiers, etc, were "just doing their job,"
similar
to excuse of Nazis.
2) The Cross put an end to the
law of eternal consequences.
3) The leap from personal
forgiveness to corporate forgiveness
crosses a deep chasm.We need only to look at Christian
history
after the Cross.
C. Forgiveness can be a powerful
weapon in the making of peace.
"Forgiven, but not
Forgiving?"
I.
Forgiving opens us up to being hurt again
and again.
A. Jesus put no limits on forgiving.
B. He made it a lifestyle.
II.
Four basic attitudes associated with
forgiveness.
A. "I won't."
1) The unmerciful servant refused
to forgive. Matt 18:30
2) If we won't, God won't.
3) The resulting isolation can
drive us to forgive.
B. "I can't."
1) Some feel they have been too
hurt to forgive.
2) An unforgiving spirit cannot
grow spiritually.
3) It takes much energy to
maintain a bitter heart.
C. "I don't want to."
1) This may be the most honest
response, and is usually conscious.
2) We cannot love if we cannot
forgive.
D. "I'm willing."
1) God does not condemn an
unforgiving heart. (?)
2) Anything is possible for him
who believes. Mark 9:22f
III.
Moving through the process of healing.
A. God forgives us, so we should
forgive others.
B. Chuck Swindoll:"The
extent to which you can envision God's
forgiveness of you, to that
same measure you will be given
the
capacity to forgive others."
"Forgive and Forget, and Other Myths
of Forgiveness,"
I.
Forgiveness and vengeance.
A. Thoughts of enemies inhaling
excrement. Isa 25:10-12
B. Does forgiving open us up to
further abuse?
C. "Forgiveness is too often
seen as merely an exercise in releasing
bad
feelings and ignoring past harm, pretending all is well."
II.
The myth of forgetting the harm.
A. Does God forget our sin?
1) Ps 25:7 and Jer 31:34 say he does.
2) Judgment Day assumes he does
not.2 Cor 5:10
3) Taken away and buried sin are metaphors.Ps 103:12; Mic 7:19
B. Emphasizing forgetting fuels a
spirit of denial.
1) It warps the perspective.
III.
The myth of releasing anger.
A. Forgiveness is usually not a
sudden deliverance from anger.
1) It is an on-going work of God.
B. Anger or hurt is not necessarily
contrary to forgiveness.
1) God feels anger and hurt at
our sin.
2) An absence of strong feelings
implies a lack of heart
involvement.
3) Anger can be a loving
response.
IV.
The myth of not desiring revenge.
A. Many see revenge as incompatible
with forgiveness.
1) Revenge involves a desire for
justice.
2) A true hunger for vengeance is
our commitment to destroy sin.
B. Vengeance belongs to God.
1) We should not seek it on our
own.
2) We anticipate the Day of the
Lord.
V.
The myth of peace at any price.
A. Offenders are not always won over
by unconditional love.
1) Turning the other cheek is the
not same as fear-based service
offered
to avoid guilt or attack.
2) Overlooking harm in order to
achieve a sentimental but not
substantive
peace actually encourages sin.
3) Forgiveness is a weapon of
wisdom that is designed to
disrupt
and entice.
B. Shrewd sacrifice exposes the ehart of the one doing harm.
1) This generosity has a
redemptive bite.
VI.
What does it mean to forgive?
A. A central image is the master who
mercifully cancels an
incomprehensible
debt. Matt 6:9-15; 18:21-35
B. The only debt that remains is to
offer others a taste of
redemptive
love.
C. Working definition of forgiveness:
"To forgive another means to
cancel a debt in order to provide:
1) Opportunity for repentance,
and
2) Restoration of the broken
relationship.
"Feeding your Enemy"
I.
True forgiveness not only cancels debt, it
challenges to repent
and be reconciled.
A. There is much confusion about
forgiveness.
B. God's command to forgive, turn
other cheek, is costly.
II.
What is forgiveness?
A. God's forgiveness is a passionate
movement of strength and
mercy
toward us, the offenders.
B. He cancels our debt, which
provides an opportunity for:
1) Repentance.
2) Restoration of the broken
relationship.
III.
A forgiving heart knows how much it has been
forgiven.
A. A forgiving heart reveals God's
character. Luke 7:47
B. The kind of faith that allows
forgiveness:
1) A true view of ourselves.
2) A true view of God.
IV.
A forgiving heart yearns for reconciliation.
A. Reconciliation is costly for both
sides.
1) The offended has to cancel the
debt.
2) The offender has to repent.
a) Reconciliation is never
one-sided.
B. Conditions for forgiveness?
1) Contradicts Jesus' other
teachings.
2) We are to forgive,
irrespective of other's response.
3) Restoration and peace,
however, depend on their repentance.
a) Cheap forgiveness is not
true forgiveness.
V.
A forgiving heart works to destroy sin.
A. Offer food and drink to an enemy.
B. The enemy will always respond -
one way or the other.
VI.
Offer the gift of forgiveness.
A. Forgiveness involves deep
questions.
B. Often, both see their sin, and
renew the relationship.
"The Freedom of
Forgiveness,"
I. Confession
is imperative to receiving forgiveness.
A. Young girl Jean felt unforgiven by God, was withdrawn.
B. God forgives and forgets our sin.
C. New thought patterns bring
transformation.
II. The flip
side of forgiveness.
A. We are commanded to forgive
others.
B. The unforgiving servant.
C. When we forgive we are conformed
to the image of Christ.
III. The cost of forgiving.
A. Forgiving is not easy, but costly.
1) Forgiving cost God his only
Son.
2) (Author's husband fired,
forgiveness cost her emotionally)
B. The cost of not forgiving.
1) Unforgiving ones go to hell.
2) Unforgiveness
leads to emotional torment.
a) (examples of molested women)
IV. Barriers
to forgiveness.
A. Those with a poor self-image use
wrongs to get attention.
B. Some need to control others to
feel significant.
C. Others feel some sins are beyond
forgiveness.
1) (Joseph forgave his hateful
family)
D. Forgiving, but not forgetting.
1) Remember past offenses so you
don't commit same acts.
2) Only God can forget sin.
3) Christ can heal the pain. Isa
61:1-3
E. The choice is ours.
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