The Major Obstacle in Forgiving Others

00:00:00.000 | (upbeat music)

00:00:02.580 | - Welcome back to the Ask Pastor John podcast.

00:00:07.720 | Pastor John, you shared with me about a conversation

00:00:11.360 | you recently had with someone who was wondering

00:00:13.300 | if he could forgive his father,

00:00:15.520 | when his father did not even admit to having done anything

00:00:18.800 | that needed to be forgiven.

00:00:20.680 | And you said that as that conversation unfolded,

00:00:24.560 | it proved really fruitful for you

00:00:27.120 | and for the person you were talking with.

00:00:29.580 | Could you take us into that conversation

00:00:31.720 | and explain why it was so helpful

00:00:34.280 | and explain what we can all learn about forgiving others?

00:00:38.040 | - Right, the reason it became so helpful

00:00:42.120 | is that I saw implications for my own life.

00:00:47.120 | My relationship with my wife, my children, my colleagues,

00:00:51.160 | I saw reverberations everywhere.

00:00:54.700 | That very often happens to me

00:00:57.480 | when I'm trying to help someone else who asked me a question

00:01:01.460 | sort out their relational issues.

00:01:04.700 | I'm forced to apply those very things to myself.

00:01:09.580 | And so the insights don't stay

00:01:11.500 | at any kind of theoretical level

00:01:13.700 | or even just relevant for others,

00:01:15.420 | but they become urgent for me.

00:01:17.780 | So that was the case

00:01:19.060 | and that's why this is on the front burner for me.

00:01:22.420 | So the first thing I was drawn to say to him

00:01:27.080 | was yes, the fullest experience of forgiveness

00:01:31.740 | involves the other person recognizing the wrong

00:01:35.940 | that he's done against you

00:01:37.540 | and repenting and asking for forgiveness.

00:01:40.260 | And then you give forgiveness freely by grace

00:01:44.740 | because of what Christ has done for you.

00:01:46.980 | And so the offense that's been taken

00:01:51.180 | and the offense that was done are laid down,

00:01:54.460 | put aside and not brought up again.

00:01:56.720 | That's full, robust forgiveness.

00:01:59.780 | Jesus talked about it in Luke 17, three,

00:02:02.500 | where he said, "If your brother sins, rebuke him.

00:02:06.020 | And if he repents, forgive him.

00:02:09.340 | And if he sins against you seven times in the day

00:02:11.940 | and turns seven times and says, I repent,

00:02:16.420 | you must forgive him."

00:02:17.900 | But my friend who asked me this question

00:02:22.620 | was asking not about that situation

00:02:25.620 | and how you get the grace to forgive somebody seven times

00:02:27.640 | who repents seven times,

00:02:28.760 | but what do you do with, in this case,

00:02:31.200 | a father who doesn't recognize any wrong that's been done

00:02:36.200 | and so isn't repenting, isn't asking for forgiveness.

00:02:40.260 | Does forgiveness make any sense in that situation?

00:02:44.120 | How do you navigate that?

00:02:46.160 | And what I said was that there are two other,

00:02:51.520 | at least two other categories, biblical categories

00:02:56.020 | that need to be stirred in here besides forgiveness.

00:03:00.780 | One is, I'll call it enemy love.

00:03:04.280 | And when I say enemy love,

00:03:07.020 | I'm not just thinking about a declared enemy,

00:03:10.500 | and I've got this awful enemy,

00:03:11.740 | but rather people like spouses or sons or daughters

00:03:16.100 | or dads in this case,

00:03:17.820 | who in the moment are acting like an adversary.

00:03:21.520 | I mean, they are hurting you the way an enemy would hurt you.

00:03:23.680 | They're not your enemies in that sense, in the big sense,

00:03:26.100 | but rather they are in that moment

00:03:27.840 | acting with enmity toward you.

00:03:31.120 | So the Bible doesn't just talk about forgiveness there,

00:03:34.600 | it talks about enemy love.

00:03:36.440 | Jesus said, "Love your enemies.

00:03:38.220 | Pray for those who persecute you."

00:03:40.320 | And Peter picked it up in chapter three, verse nine,

00:03:43.980 | first Peter, "Do not repay evil for evil

00:03:48.520 | or reviling for reviling, but on the contrary, bless,

00:03:53.400 | for to this you were called,

00:03:55.080 | that you may obtain a blessing."

00:03:56.720 | So here we're told how to relate to a person

00:04:01.720 | who's not repenting, not recognizing any wrong being done,

00:04:05.480 | or maybe they are and they're glad they're doing it.

00:04:07.880 | And the answer is don't return evil for evil,

00:04:11.440 | rather bless them.

00:04:13.420 | So it's not an issue of the fullest kind of forgiveness.

00:04:16.280 | You could call it maybe one-sided forgiveness.

00:04:19.520 | The Christian is choosing not to be the punisher,

00:04:24.160 | but treating the other person better than they deserve,

00:04:28.360 | in a sense, as if they hadn't been hurt.

00:04:32.260 | Now, the second category,

00:04:34.560 | besides enemy love and forgiveness,

00:04:37.120 | is forbearance or endurance, Colossians 3:12.

00:04:41.920 | "Put on, as God's chosen ones,

00:04:44.240 | holy and beloved, compassionate hearts,

00:04:47.240 | meekness, patience, bearing with one another,"

00:04:50.500 | or the old King James, "forbearing one another,"

00:04:54.380 | or enduring.

00:04:55.620 | And Paul says in, what, 1 Corinthians 13, seven, I think,

00:05:00.620 | "Love bears all things, believes all things,

00:05:05.140 | hopes all things, endures all things."

00:05:10.160 | So love doesn't just forgive when another person repents

00:05:13.460 | and doesn't just bless when we're hurt,

00:05:17.240 | but it bears with, it endures, it forbears.

00:05:21.260 | And both Peter and James call that

00:05:24.780 | a covering of a multitude of sins.

00:05:27.060 | Love covers a multitude of sins.

00:05:29.460 | It just covers them and endures them.

00:05:32.120 | They don't go away.

00:05:33.180 | You're just enduring them and you're covering them.

00:05:36.380 | Now, at this point in our conversation

00:05:39.620 | with the man I'm talking about,

00:05:41.820 | it became clear that one of the main obstacles,

00:05:46.300 | I felt it, he felt it, to actually acting this way,

00:05:50.360 | forgiving, forbearing, returning good for evil,

00:05:53.540 | blessing those who hurt us, is that if we do this,

00:05:58.540 | if we really return good for evil,

00:06:01.140 | not the kind of manipulative way

00:06:03.560 | that hopes to really draw attention

00:06:05.320 | to the other person's guilt,

00:06:07.020 | but I'm talking about a really authentic blessing,

00:06:12.020 | treating with kindness and hope from the heart.

00:06:15.740 | If we do that, very few people,

00:06:19.660 | if anybody, will know that we've been hurt.

00:06:23.260 | And if we're returning good for evil,

00:06:27.980 | then we're not moping around,

00:06:31.040 | our countenance is not cast down,

00:06:33.860 | our shoulders are not shrugged,

00:06:36.300 | we haven't withdrawn into a silent funk,

00:06:40.780 | we're not drawing attention to our woundedness,

00:06:44.620 | we're acting in a cheerful, hopeful, gracious way,

00:06:49.620 | and nobody will have any idea that we've been insulted

00:06:54.980 | or put down or wounded or cheated.

00:06:59.380 | And here's the rub,

00:07:01.060 | almost everything in my sinful soul cries out,

00:07:06.500 | against that.

00:07:07.940 | We want people to know that we've been hurt,

00:07:12.940 | we want people to pity us, or at least sympathize with us,

00:07:17.540 | or recognize that our effort to return good for evil

00:07:22.420 | is a noble effort in the face of much difficulty,

00:07:26.140 | good grief, if nobody knows, shoot, then what?

00:07:29.520 | And you can see what's going on.

00:07:31.740 | And perhaps, most of all,

00:07:35.740 | we want the person who has wounded us

00:07:39.940 | to be aware that they have wounded us.

00:07:43.020 | And we don't want to act in a way

00:07:46.200 | that looks as if they didn't hurt us,

00:07:48.860 | that looks as if it makes light of the fact

00:07:51.860 | that they wounded us or insulted us or put us down

00:07:55.480 | or criticized us in an inappropriate way

00:07:57.580 | or cheated on us or something.

00:07:59.820 | And all of this is a huge obstacle to obeying the Lord

00:08:04.820 | when he says, "Do not return evil for evil,

00:08:08.220 | "but bless those who do you harm."

00:08:12.060 | And here's the key.

00:08:13.260 | This is where I am right now in my dealing with this

00:08:17.300 | and my trying to process it from my own soul.

00:08:20.260 | Here's the key that proved so convicting to me.

00:08:24.300 | The key is how important and how satisfying

00:08:30.140 | to us is the fact that God knows we've been hurt,

00:08:35.140 | that God understands and God attends to us.

00:08:40.320 | God feels with us.

00:08:41.680 | He is a merciful high priest.

00:08:44.300 | Is that enough?

00:08:45.560 | What this showed me was how deeply my heart

00:08:51.380 | tends to be oriented on other people

00:08:56.860 | more than it's oriented on God.

00:08:59.980 | Our great need, my great need,

00:09:02.740 | is that God be more real to me than other people are.

00:09:07.740 | When God sees us returning good for evil,

00:09:12.780 | he knows everything.

00:09:14.940 | He knows we've been insulted or treated unjustly

00:09:18.140 | or cheated or whatever.

00:09:20.700 | He knows it and he's sympathetic and he's attentive

00:09:24.940 | and he sees that we are returning good for evil

00:09:29.460 | when harm has been done to us.

00:09:33.020 | He sees that we are obeying him.

00:09:35.420 | He sees that we're loving our adversary.

00:09:38.300 | And 1 Peter 2, 19 says,

00:09:41.820 | this is a gracious thing with God

00:09:46.020 | when we suffer unjustly and return good for evil.

00:09:48.980 | God delights in it.

00:09:50.500 | We're pleasing God at that moment.

00:09:52.860 | And the key passage that I think we have to come to terms

00:09:55.980 | with is 1 Peter 2, 23.

00:09:58.300 | When Jesus was reviled, he did not revile in return.

00:10:03.300 | When he suffered, he did not threaten,

00:10:07.140 | but continued entrusting himself, his cause,

00:10:11.980 | to him who judges justly.

00:10:14.740 | And so my question for me and for my friend,

00:10:18.220 | for anybody who finds himself like us,

00:10:21.500 | is it enough for God to know our sorrow,

00:10:24.980 | for God to know our pain,

00:10:26.380 | for God to know our disappointment, our frustration?

00:10:29.540 | Can we hand our cause entirely over to God?

00:10:34.220 | Can we move forward treating others better

00:10:37.700 | than they treat us,

00:10:39.260 | even if it means only God knows and nobody else?

00:10:44.140 | That's how real God has to become to us.

00:10:48.620 | - Boy, that is an incredible challenge, Pastor John,

00:10:51.940 | dying to our woundedness.

00:10:53.500 | Thank you for prying into these dark motives

00:10:56.460 | at work in our hearts.

00:10:58.700 | Well, we're gonna return tomorrow

00:11:00.220 | and we're gonna close out the week looking at the motto,

00:11:02.620 | no creed but the Bible.

00:11:05.220 | Is it wise to avoid creeds?

00:11:07.300 | And how should we think about confessional Christianity?

00:11:10.060 | I'm your host, Tony Reinke.

00:11:11.580 | I'll see you tomorrow.

00:11:12.660 | (upbeat music)

00:11:15.260 | (upbeat music)

00:11:17.860 | [BLANK_AUDIO]

The Major Obstacle in Forgiving Others

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