I'm not sure I understand why but it is on my worst days, the Wednesday and Thursday after I receive chemo on Monday, that I feel my sinfulness most. Perhaps it is because I am so self-focused on those days but my failures to love my family and to care for others and to be honest in all my dealings with others and etc. etc. loom very large in my thinking. It is on those days I am so glad for Jesus' command to daily ask my Father in heaven to forgive me. It is on those days that I am so glad for the reassuring promise of the gospel that though once I was dead in my trespasses and sins I am now alive in Christ and forgiven of all my sins, past, present and future because all my sins were nailed once and for all to the cross of Christ. So it is very right for all who suffer cancer or any of the innumerable ways that humans suffer to daily ask their Father in heaven to forgive their sins for the sake of Christ.
However, it is the second half of this petition regarding forgiveness that causes us the most trouble. Jesus commands us, when we ask our Father to forgive us, to also tell him that we have also forgiven everyone who is in debt to us. In fact we ask him to forgive us as also we have forgiven others. This makes it sound as if God's forgiveness of us is in some way dependent on our forgiving others. Then to make the problem worse Jesus says, right after concluding the prayer, in 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."
The promise of the gospel is that our sins are forgiven by grace alone through faith in Christ alone and not by our works. All of our sins are placed on Christ and he is killed in our place and all of his righteousness is credited to us so that we are justified completely apart from our performed obedience. Yet this appears to say something different. So how are we to understand this?
First, consider the logic that is being used if God's forgiveness of me depends upon my forgiveness of others. Imagine I owed a friend, we call him Jim, $10,000 which I've promised to repay. However, I suffer a severe financial setback which will prevent me from paying Jim back. So before I go to Jim to ask him to forgive the debt I owe him, I go to another friend, Tim, who owes me $20 and I tell him I forgive him the debt, that doesn't have to pay me back the $20. Then I go to Jim and after I ask him to forgive the $10,000 debt I tell him, by the way, I forgave Tim the $20 he owed me. In what way could my forgiving Tim $20 obligate Jim to forgive me the $10,000? That makes no sense. My forgiving others cannot obligate God to forgive me.
What Jesus is saying here is that these two things always go together, everyone who is forgiven by God forgives others. If you do not forgive those who sin against you it simply means you are not forgiven because everyone who is forgiven by God gladly forgives others. The logic is very similar to the logic of 1 John 4:19, "We love because he first loved us." Our love is the fruit of his love for us. Thus John can say, as Jesus says here, "anyone who does not love does not know God (1 John 4:8).
Jesus tells a parable in Matthew 18 to make this exact point. He tells the parable in response to Peter's question (Matthew 18:21): "Lord, how often will my brother sin against me, and I forgive him? As many as seven times?" Thus Peter wants to put a limit on how many times we have to forgive people who sin against us before we have the right to make them pay for what they have done to us. Jesus tells the parable of a king who has a servant that owes him millions of dollars. He justly demands repayment. The servant, unable to pay the king back begs to be forgiven. The king, graciously, forgives all his debt. The forgiven servant leaves the throne room of the king and immediately sees a fellow servant who owes him several hundred dollars. He grabs him by the throat and demands that he repay him immediately. The fellow servant begs to be forgiven but the forgiven servant says no and throws him into debtors prison until he pays him back.
When the king finds out what the forgiven servant did he calls him into court and says to him (vv.32-34), "'You wicked servant! I forgave you all that debt because you pleaded with me. And should not you have had mercy on your fellow servant, as I had mercy on you?' And in anger his master delivered him to the jailers, until he should pay all his debt." Jesus concludes the parable with this frightening sentence: "So also my heavenly Father will do to every one of you, if you do not forgive your brother from your heart." Do you see the logic? Being forgiven always produces people who forgive. This is the logic of the gospel. If we refuse to forgive it simply means we do not really believe the gospel, which says that we deserve an eternal hell but have been rescued from God's wrath and forgiven all our sins by the living and dying of the dear Son of God.
If you are struggling with forgiving others you need to go back to the gospel and consider what has actually been done for you. It is only by knowing the wonder of God's forgiveness that you can forgive others. And when you know the wonder of his forgiveness you will gladly forgive others.
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