(upbeat music) - Welcome back to the Ask Pastor John podcast. Pastor John, you shared with me about a conversation you recently had with someone who was wondering if he could forgive his father, when his father did not even admit to having done anything that needed to be forgiven. And you said that as that conversation unfolded, it proved really fruitful for you and for the person you were talking with.

Could you take us into that conversation and explain why it was so helpful and explain what we can all learn about forgiving others? - Right, the reason it became so helpful is that I saw implications for my own life. My relationship with my wife, my children, my colleagues, I saw reverberations everywhere.

That very often happens to me when I'm trying to help someone else who asked me a question sort out their relational issues. I'm forced to apply those very things to myself. And so the insights don't stay at any kind of theoretical level or even just relevant for others, but they become urgent for me.

So that was the case and that's why this is on the front burner for me. So the first thing I was drawn to say to him was yes, the fullest experience of forgiveness involves the other person recognizing the wrong that he's done against you and repenting and asking for forgiveness.

And then you give forgiveness freely by grace because of what Christ has done for you. And so the offense that's been taken and the offense that was done are laid down, put aside and not brought up again. That's full, robust forgiveness. Jesus talked about it in Luke 17, three, where he said, "If your brother sins, rebuke him.

And if he repents, forgive him. And if he sins against you seven times in the day and turns seven times and says, I repent, you must forgive him." But my friend who asked me this question was asking not about that situation and how you get the grace to forgive somebody seven times who repents seven times, but what do you do with, in this case, a father who doesn't recognize any wrong that's been done and so isn't repenting, isn't asking for forgiveness.

Does forgiveness make any sense in that situation? How do you navigate that? And what I said was that there are two other, at least two other categories, biblical categories that need to be stirred in here besides forgiveness. One is, I'll call it enemy love. And when I say enemy love, I'm not just thinking about a declared enemy, and I've got this awful enemy, but rather people like spouses or sons or daughters or dads in this case, who in the moment are acting like an adversary.

I mean, they are hurting you the way an enemy would hurt you. They're not your enemies in that sense, in the big sense, but rather they are in that moment acting with enmity toward you. So the Bible doesn't just talk about forgiveness there, it talks about enemy love. Jesus said, "Love your enemies.

Pray for those who persecute you." And Peter picked it up in chapter three, verse nine, first Peter, "Do not repay evil for evil or reviling for reviling, but on the contrary, bless, for to this you were called, that you may obtain a blessing." So here we're told how to relate to a person who's not repenting, not recognizing any wrong being done, or maybe they are and they're glad they're doing it.

And the answer is don't return evil for evil, rather bless them. So it's not an issue of the fullest kind of forgiveness. You could call it maybe one-sided forgiveness. The Christian is choosing not to be the punisher, but treating the other person better than they deserve, in a sense, as if they hadn't been hurt.

Now, the second category, besides enemy love and forgiveness, is forbearance or endurance, Colossians 3:12. "Put on, as God's chosen ones, holy and beloved, compassionate hearts, meekness, patience, bearing with one another," or the old King James, "forbearing one another," or enduring. And Paul says in, what, 1 Corinthians 13, seven, I think, "Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things." So love doesn't just forgive when another person repents and doesn't just bless when we're hurt, but it bears with, it endures, it forbears.

And both Peter and James call that a covering of a multitude of sins. Love covers a multitude of sins. It just covers them and endures them. They don't go away. You're just enduring them and you're covering them. Now, at this point in our conversation with the man I'm talking about, it became clear that one of the main obstacles, I felt it, he felt it, to actually acting this way, forgiving, forbearing, returning good for evil, blessing those who hurt us, is that if we do this, if we really return good for evil, not the kind of manipulative way that hopes to really draw attention to the other person's guilt, but I'm talking about a really authentic blessing, treating with kindness and hope from the heart.

If we do that, very few people, if anybody, will know that we've been hurt. And if we're returning good for evil, then we're not moping around, our countenance is not cast down, our shoulders are not shrugged, we haven't withdrawn into a silent funk, we're not drawing attention to our woundedness, we're acting in a cheerful, hopeful, gracious way, and nobody will have any idea that we've been insulted or put down or wounded or cheated.

And here's the rub, almost everything in my sinful soul cries out, against that. We want people to know that we've been hurt, we want people to pity us, or at least sympathize with us, or recognize that our effort to return good for evil is a noble effort in the face of much difficulty, good grief, if nobody knows, shoot, then what?

And you can see what's going on. And perhaps, most of all, we want the person who has wounded us to be aware that they have wounded us. And we don't want to act in a way that looks as if they didn't hurt us, that looks as if it makes light of the fact that they wounded us or insulted us or put us down or criticized us in an inappropriate way or cheated on us or something.

And all of this is a huge obstacle to obeying the Lord when he says, "Do not return evil for evil, "but bless those who do you harm." And here's the key. This is where I am right now in my dealing with this and my trying to process it from my own soul.

Here's the key that proved so convicting to me. The key is how important and how satisfying to us is the fact that God knows we've been hurt, that God understands and God attends to us. God feels with us. He is a merciful high priest. Is that enough? What this showed me was how deeply my heart tends to be oriented on other people more than it's oriented on God.

Our great need, my great need, is that God be more real to me than other people are. When God sees us returning good for evil, he knows everything. He knows we've been insulted or treated unjustly or cheated or whatever. He knows it and he's sympathetic and he's attentive and he sees that we are returning good for evil when harm has been done to us.

He sees that we are obeying him. He sees that we're loving our adversary. And 1 Peter 2, 19 says, this is a gracious thing with God when we suffer unjustly and return good for evil. God delights in it. We're pleasing God at that moment. And the key passage that I think we have to come to terms with is 1 Peter 2, 23.

When Jesus was reviled, he did not revile in return. When he suffered, he did not threaten, but continued entrusting himself, his cause, to him who judges justly. And so my question for me and for my friend, for anybody who finds himself like us, is it enough for God to know our sorrow, for God to know our pain, for God to know our disappointment, our frustration?

Can we hand our cause entirely over to God? Can we move forward treating others better than they treat us, even if it means only God knows and nobody else? That's how real God has to become to us. - Boy, that is an incredible challenge, Pastor John, dying to our woundedness.

Thank you for prying into these dark motives at work in our hearts. Well, we're gonna return tomorrow and we're gonna close out the week looking at the motto, no creed but the Bible. Is it wise to avoid creeds? And how should we think about confessional Christianity? I'm your host, Tony Reinke.

I'll see you tomorrow. (upbeat music) (upbeat music)