And Forgive Us Our Debts as We Forgive Our Debtors
Matthew 6:14-15
St. John’s United Church of Christ
Greeley, Colorado
February 4, 2024
Rev. Juvenal Cervantes
Some of you may remember October 2, 2014, when a gunman went into a one-room school house in an Amish community in Lancaster, Pennsylvania. The gunman took hostages, little girls, 12-16 years old, and he shot ten of them, killing five.
Equally astonishing was the response of the Amish community and it took the world shockingly by a storm. Even as we think of such an atrocious, heinous event, some people watching said, “Wow, a hasty forgiveness, that is emotionally unhealthy.” Others honored and said, “Wow, that’s just radical stuff.”
A dozen interviews of the Amish people reveal that it is the Amish approach to forgive and to do it quickly and to do it unconventionally.
The father of one of a slain daughters explained, “Our forgiveness is not our words, it’s what we did.” Members of the Amish family visited the gunman’s widow, bringing flowers, going to her home, bringing food, coming around the family members, hugging them and not saying a whole lot, but offering their presence as an act of grace. Of the seventy-five people that were at the funeral of the gunman, half of them are Amish who were there to offer their presence, and they contributed to a fund for the killer’s family.
For most people, the decision to forgive, comes, if ever, after a long, arduous time, maybe months, maybe even years. But the Amish invert the process. In their religious tradition it predisposes them to forgive, ahead of time, before an injustice is done to them.
As radical as that sounds, it is actually grounded in the teaching and the way of Jesus. Even for some of us dedicated Christians, we hear this story and it is so radical, but in fact this is the way we are called to live; loving our enemies, giving up our right for revenge, forgiveness is an act of faith in the end. “Vengeance is mine,” says the Lord, “not yours.” It is an act of faith in the end.
Often we think of forgiveness in radical ways and this story magnifies grace. Forgiveness is actually an everyday occurrence for the follower of Jesus.
The Lord’s Prayer is said in the context of the Sermon of the Mount, Jesus is speaking to kingdom people, not normal people, kingdom people who live a different life.
Matthew 6:12 is where we land, “And forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors.” Today we are going to ask three questions and I invite you to take notes, some of us may need to read books on forgiveness because this is not an easy thing to do. It is important for us to take this seriously, because some of us have hard work to do or we are going to shrivel up, our bitterness is going to kill us if we don’t apply this message.
Three things: 1) What is forgiveness? 2) Why do we forgive? 3) How do we forgive?
Again this comes from the Sermon on the Mount, it is a Christian manifesto, this is how kingdom people live and it is radical. Jesus said, “When you pray to the Holy One of Israel, Yahweh, call him ‘Abba.’” This is a new way of thinking and acting for his audience. This message is for people who have a relationship with Jesus. We are not normal. We say rather flippantly that Christianity is not a religion, it is a relationship. Do we live like that? Is your life really marked by an ongoing pursuit or relationship, intimacy, fellowship with God? Does that mark your life? Is it the primary thing that we’re about? If not, we’ve gone the way of religion, religion that bears his name, Christianity, so that others can see us. People see me, I’m doing the thing, I serve. My friends, our prayer life discloses our dependence on God, that’s where Jesus starts in this teaching.
Jesus said, “When you pray, you do it in your private life. You don’t do it on the corner so others can see you.”
Let’s reflect once again on the Lord’s Prayer, join me:
“Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name. Your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread, and forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors. And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil.”
“Forgive us as we also” implies that we’ve already been forgiven.
First, what is forgiveness? The foundation of forgiveness is based our salvation. As we explore our salvation we see there are three aspects: positional, progressive, and ultimate.
Positional means that we now have a new position before God, he is holy, we are sinners, but Christ paid a debt for us, having died on the cross for us, we received that by faith, not works, and we step into a new relationship, we have a new identity. This is synonymous when we talk about justification, we’ve been justified, declared righteous before him. Why? Precisely because the debt has been paid.
In Colossians 2 we’re reminded, “And you, who were dead in your trespasses and the uncircumcision of your flesh, God made alive together with him, having forgiven us all our trespasses, by canceling the record of debt that stood against us with its legal demands. This he set aside, nailing it to the cross.”
Colossians 2:13-14
What about “the legal demands.” He is talking about the law, religion, dogma, they did not know anything about grace. Jesus is preaching a new message; it is a message of grace. The law is crushing all of us, because it calls for perfection and none of us are living like that.
Jesus takes our sin upon himself. He lived a perfect life, he pays the perfect sacrifice on the cross, the perfect lamb of God that takes away our sin. The great exchange: our sin for his righteousness, because our debt has been cancelled.
1 John 1:8-9 we read:
“If we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us. 9 If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.”
Have you received God’s grace? If not, you’re still under the judgement of God.
There is the positional and then the progressive aspect of salvation, that is becoming who we already are. Progressive salvation is what we call “sanctification,” becoming holy, becoming like Jesus. This is where a lot of us are, becoming like Christ, as we’re set apart in this world of God’s purposes.
Then there is ultimate salvation, which is glorification, when we’re totally removed from sin and we’re now perfected in our holiness, we become like Jesus, completely forgiven, in his presence.
The three aspect of salvation are done by God, completed by him. That is what forgiveness is, the cancelling of all debts. If you have received his grace, that’s who you are, you are forgiven. Now, God says, “Forgive, because you have been forgiven.”
Why do we forgive? We forgive because we have been forgiven. We are not normal people. To be forgiven is to live as a preemptive forgiver. This is what the Amish are teaching us here. Too often we forget that we are to give what we have been given. Too often we forget that we’ve been blessed to be a blessing.
Matthew 6:14-15, For if you forgive others their trespasses, your heavenly Father will also forgive you, but if you do not forgive others their trespasses, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses.
That sounds pretty clear, if we don’t forgive, we’re not forgiven. If we forgive, then he’ll forgive us. Let me offer a little biblical interpretation, exegesis, how to unpack a passage, principles that we follow including scripture that interprets scripture.
We’ve already noted that salvation is not based on anything that we do, even something as novel as forgiving someone.
We don’t do something and God says, “Okay, we got to act now.” No, grace is one-way love. But we want this law of reciprocity because it is about power and control. If I can do something, now I’ve brought something to the table, so he must respond. Then we get frustrated. We say, “I go to church and my life is messed up, they did me wrong, this is not supposed to happen!”
Therefore, we get messed up. We begin not to believe in the Scriptures and not believe in God. It is not the law of reciprocity, that is not the Christian faith.
So what is He saying here? If he is not saying this, then, what is he saying? Another way of interpretation is to understand the context where the scripture falls.
The context is the Sermon on the Mount, he has gone through chapter five, six, and seven and he is teaching a people who know nothing about grace. They are religions people, they are hearing him and say, “What is this about?” Jesus says, “I’ve come to fulfill the law, therefore you heard it say, but I say…” For example, hatred is murder, lust is adultery, if your eye caused you to sin, pluck it out, it’s better for you to pull your eye out instead of going to hell. If someone slaps you on the face, turn the other side, if someone wants your sweater, give them your sweater and your coat. Love your enemies.”
People are confused, they say, “Really, this is preposterous! Can we even trust him?”
Christ is trying to bury every person under the weight of God’s holy demands. This is not to cause us to blush, but to give up, to fall out before him.
The point is that none of us can do what Jesus calls us to do; he raised the bar so high that none of us can reach the mark of perfection. Even his disciples said, “Who then can be saved?” as they heard Jesus talking to the rich young ruler. Do you see the need for him? I think that’s why we’re here.
He also said, “To the degree that I am able to forgive others, forgive people.” There is a correlation on how I have received his grace for me. It is important that we stop trying to be like him, simply behold him. See his love for you, that’s what prompts us to obedience.
So Christ is trying to show us that we can’t do this. But he is saying that you are going to forgive to the degree that you understand the grace of God. That’s why our central message is grace, grace, grace. We want to preach the heck out of grace because that’s where we get traction in obedience. Jesus basically said, “If you forgive, you’re forgiven, if you don’t forgive, you’re not. You don’t get it.” Because forgiveness is a byproduct of what’s happened in your life.
Why do we forgive? Because that’s who we are.
Then finally, how do we forgive? In short, just like Jesus, because He is our King, we’re trying to live like him.
Consider the words of Ephesians 4:32,
Be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, as God in Christ forgave you.
It already happened. We’re like little Christ. How do we forgive? Just like him.
Then in Colossians 3:12-13 we learn:
“Put on then, as God's chosen ones, holy and beloved, compassionate hearts, kindness, humility, meekness, and patience, bearing with one another and, if one has a complaint against another, forgiving each other; as the Lord has forgiven you, so you also must forgive.”
In an age when Christians have got to be right, we watch our representatives on television, individuals who purport to be Christian, and they may have doctrine and dogma, but they are not even close to following on the way of Jesus. What if we take on compassionate hearts, kindness, humility, meekness, and enemy love, what could go wrong?
This is our witness, this is how we show up at the office, at gathering, at home. To be forgiven is to forgive and we can only forgive as much as we understand how we have been forgiven.
We don’t jeopardize a relationship we have with God; it is a fellowship we have with God. We follow our perfect Jesus.
N.T. Wright said, “to refuse to forgive is to cut off the branch you’re sitting on.” When we think of forgiveness as a daily need we have, then we begin to see how powerful it is as we give it to others.
We think we’re holding on to forgiveness, they need to make the first move, but we’re building up this bitterness, un-grace.
Phillip Yancy, in What’s So Amazing About Grace, reminds us that forgiveness, like grace, has this magnet quality of being undeserved. But we try to withhold it and it contaminates our own hearts. Anne Lamott on Traveling Mercy: Some Thoughts on Faith reflected, “To not forgive is like drinking rat poison and waiting on the rat to die, while its eating us alive.”
Yancy writes, “Ungrace does its work quietly and lethally, like a poisonous, undetectable gas. A father dies unforgiven, a mother who once carried he child in her own body does not speak to that child for half of his life. The toxins steal on from generation to generation. We wonder, “How am I going to forgive my dad, my stepfather, others, how am I going to do it?”
Forgiveness is monumental. Hilde Tillic is a Jew who survived the horrors of Nazism and he wrestled with how to forgive and he says, “This business of forgiving is by no means a simple thing. We say, ‘Very well, if the other person is sorry I’ll forgive him, then I’ll give in.’ We make of forgiveness a law of reciprocity and this never works, for both of us say to ourselves, the other fellow has to make the first move and then I’ll watch him like a hawk to see if the other person will flash a signal to me, his eyes, so that I can detect a small hint, between the lines, that shows that he is sorry. I am always at the point of forgiveness, but I never forgive, I am too just.”
The Bible says that mercy triumphs over justice, in Jesus. Grace triumphs over justice.
Lewis Mead in the Art of Forgiving, helps us understand what forgiveness is not. At times we may need to ignore and move on, establish boundaries. We forgive individuals, not entities; it is important to get to the source of the problem. It is unproductive to say, that college did me wrong or that church did me wrong, not it is an individual and we need to deal with that.
This is what forgiveness is not:
· Forgives is not condoning or agreeing with what the person has done.
· Forgives does not mean that you necessarily allow that person back into your life. If you’ve experienced doubt in a relationship, leave the relationship.
· Forgiveness does not mean that you release the person from accountability.
Steps toward forgiveness:
First, rediscover their humanity. Often when we hear of a person who murdered someone we say “murderer!” a person who has an affair, “adulterer!” a person who lies, “liar!” we make them out to be what they’ve done when they’re much more than that.
Unforgiveness in our hearts is often an expression of pride.
I’ve visited prisoners in jail who have committed horrible crimes. As I hear their story, I say, “Wow, he is just like me, a human being in need of love and grace.”
Secondly, surrender your right to get even. We want people to experience pain, but as kingdom people we’re here to bring love, compassion, and grace, not pain.
Thirdly, revise your feelings and hopes for them.
As Jesus was nailed to the cross, he prayed that God would forgive the people that were killing him. Among those were you and me.
Jesus wants us to live forgiven and to forgive. Who do you need to forgive today?