What's the deal with forgiveness?
Center stage in the OT is God's graciousness to forgive.
What we don't see in the OT is the expectation and challenge for humans to forgive each other. Revenge and retaliation dominate stories.
Enter Jesus.
As Scot McKnight points out in his book The Jesus Creed, "Forgiveness gets a new shape with Jesus."
Jesus holds nothing back:
"Forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors."
"For if you forgive others their trespasses, your heavenly Father will also forgive you; but if you do not forgive others, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses."
"Lord, if another member of the church sins against me, how often should I forgive? As many as seven times?" Jesus said to him, "Not seven times, but, I tell you, seventy-seven times."
"So my heavenly Father will also do to every one of you, if you do not forgive your brother or sister from your heart."
"Father forgive them for they know not what they do."
Philip Yancey is right, "We live in a dog-eat-dog not world; not a dog-forgive-dog world."
I'm preaching on forgiveness this week and I'm consumed by questions:
Are we supposed to forgive and forget?
Does God forgive and forget?
Why is forgiveness so hard?
How is forgiveness taught?
How do we prepare our children to be forgivers?
How is forgiveness about letting go of power?
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Josh,
ReplyDeleteI've wrestled with your first question quite a bit. It seems to me we tend to jump to forgetting before forgiving, and once we've "forgotten," there is nothing to forgive.
To say it another way, I'm not sure it's possible truly to forgive if we forget. It's similar to how we tend to approach unity. If we're uniform, we think we've attained unity, when in fact, diversity, not uniformity, is a prerequisite for unity. True forgiveness likewise seems to require healthy memory, not forgetfulness. I certainly haven't traced out the full implications of these thoughts, but I continue to wrestle with the questions. Thanks for restating them and bringing them back to the surface.
Keith
I think the way we teach our children to forgive is when they see us forgiving each other in our daily lives and especially in hard circunstances. Karen
ReplyDeleteI just finished listening to a 3 part series on forgiveness by Rob Bell (the Nooma video guy) from the Mars Hills Bible Church...he talks about this and I really appreciated how he explains it. You can find them for free on iTunes. (titles: Drop the Jawbone, Tortured By Books, and It Stops Here)--April
ReplyDeleteMe too, April.
ReplyDeleteKeith,
ReplyDeleteI like your emphasis on "healthy memory." That's good.
Karen,
I agree.
April,
I listened to "It Stops Here." Very powerful and convicting.
This is something I have wrestled with for awhile. The "forgive and forget" idea is one that seems to be loaded with peril. On one hand, we can't really forget and one person already mentioned his idea on why he wants a healthy memory. On the other hand, not forgetting can also lead to anger and bitterness that lasts a life time.
ReplyDeleteA good friend of mine talks about how God throws our forgiven sins into a sea of forgetfulness. I can't forget the sins I have done but I shudder to think that God keeps a running memory of them. I have struggled to think God can forgive some of the things I have done and one of the things that has helped me is being able to imagine God letting go of my sin and not remembering it but, instead, dealing with me today and not yesterday.
I know forgetting can go down a thin line and I hope I get to hear your sermons about it.
What a blessing you are to all of us at Sycamore View! This series on the Lord's Prayer has certainly made me rethink a lot of what I was taught as a kid about it and I am better for it! Praise God!
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