Matthew 18:21-35 • The Freedom of Forgiveness
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(This transcript was prepared using software tools and has not been reviewed for complete accuracy.)
The subject that we'll be studying is a hard one for us, and so I'm going to ask that you help me by preparing with me in praying the Lord's prayer. It will be on the screen, and I'm going to ask if you would like, if it would help you, that you kneel with me. As we pray together, if you're able and you have space to do that, let's kneel together as we ask the Lord's blessing.
Our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed be your name. Thy kingdom come, thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.
Give us this day our daily bread, and forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors. And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil. For thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory forever. Amen.
I think you'll see in just a moment why I wanted you to pray key words of the Lord's prayer.
Matthew 18 reflects some of the principles that we just prayed.
Jesus is late in His ministry, teaching essential truths to His disciples, and among them are the truth that the forgiveness He extends He wants them to reflect.
Listen to these words, Matthew 18, starting at verse 21.
"Then Peter came up and said to Him, Lord, how often will my brother's son against me and I forgive him?
As many as seven times?
Jesus said to him, I do not say to you seven times, but seventy times seven.
Therefore the kingdom of heaven may be compared to a king who wished to settle accounts with his servants. When he began to settle, one was brought to him who owed him ten thousand talents.
And since he could not pay, his master ordered him to be sold with his wife and children in all that he had and payment to be made.
So the servant fell on his knees, imploring him, have patience with me and I will pay you everything. And out of pity for him, the master of that servant released him and forgave the debt.
But when that same servant went out, he found one of his fellow servants who owed him a hundred denarii. And seizing him, he began to choke him and said to him, pay what you owe. So his fellow servant fell down and pleaded with him, have patience with me and I will pay you.
He refused and went and put him in prison until he should pay the debt.
When his fellow servant saw what had taken place, they were greatly distressed and they went and reported to their master all that had taken place.
Then his master summoned him and said to him, 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.
So also my heavenly father will do to every one of you if you do not forgive your brother
from your heart.
So what do you want us to do?
The words spoken by a judge to an elderly woman at the Truth and Reconciliation Commission in post-apartheid South Africa.
The recent difficulties of Nelson Mandela have brought the difficulties of South Africa back to international consciousness as we think again of the pain and the difficulty of racism in its worst forms.
The young woman who, the elderly woman, 70 years old who was being asked, what do you want us to do, had experienced this under apartheid South Africa.
One night, a policeman knocked at her door.
And a crowd of policemen broke down the door, burst in, took her son, shot him, and on the ground in front of the house burned his body as they partied.
Months later, the police came back again, broke the door down again, took the woman's husband and for many months nothing was heard. No one knew what had happened until another night.
The policeman again knocked on the door, broke it in, and took her.
They took the elderly woman to a riverbank where her husband, brutally beaten, lay bound.
And she was forced to watch as they doused him in gasoline, his last words being, "Father,
forgive them."
Now she's in a courtroom and the nation is trying to decide what to do to the leader of the police crew who did this.
Van Der Buch was his name.
And the judge said, "So what do you want us to do to Mr. Van Der Buch?"
She said, "There are three things that I want.
The first thing that I want is to be taken to the riverbank so that I can locate my husband's ashes and give him a decent burial."
Number two, my husband and my son were my only family.
I want Mr. Van Der Buch to be my son, to come to my house and for an entire day let me pour out my love upon him so that he will know what it means to be loved as a son.
Number three, I want someone to help me out of this chair so that I can cross this courtroom
and embrace Mr. Van Der Buch with the love of Jesus Christ so that he too can know the mercy of God, the Christ who gave himself for my sins.
She got up out of her chair, they carried her to the man, but the embrace never happened because Mr. Van Der Buch fainted, overwhelmed by the mercy and the grace of God being extended to him.
The subject of course is forgiveness and it is as poignant as headlines of Sandy Hook
and Afghanistan and an Amish schoolhouse and it is as personal as the child who cursed us before he left for the last time or the parent who abused us or the spouse who betrayed us or the company who trashed us or the nation that forgot us.
The subject is forgiveness and we want to rebel, we want to reject. We hear Jesus saying, "Listen, not seven times, but seventy times seven. If somebody has wronged you, I want you to forgive and we want to say, "Get real!" I mean I know in this Christianity thing we're supposed to be nice people and good people and extend forgiveness, but we're talking about real life here.
Are you really saying that no matter what they have done and how hard it's been and how many times it's occurred, you are calling for us to forgive?
Well I know the difficulty of the question, so did an apostle.
I mean after all, the apostle Peter has just heard earlier in this passage what Jesus has said. If you just back up in your eyes, you will see at verse 10 of Matthew 18 there is the parable of the lost sheep where Jesus says, "What one of you, if he has ninety-nine safe sheep, will not still go after the one that's lost? So is the love of God for his people. And God so loved his lost sheep that he would send his only son to suffer and die and bleed to shed his blood for our forgiveness. Now that you know it," says Jesus, "I want you to extend it. If you've got difficulties with other people, even in the church, first go and try to make it right with them, just one on one.
And then if that won't occur, then take somebody with you. And if that won't occur, take it to the church. Do whatever it takes to be reconciled to one another so that what God intends to be, his mercy is flowing." And then Peter says, "Lord, do you really mean that?
I mean how many times do I have to forgive?
Ten times? Now you have to understand what Peter is thinking. The rabbinic Jewish standard was that you had to forgive three times. After that, you know, they're on their own.
So Peter takes the rabbinic standard, he doubles it and adds one. Surely that's going to be enough.
But to the seven, Jesus says, "No, you're not getting it."
Mercy times seven, which is to say, you cannot limit the mercy that has been extended to you or that I am asking you to extend.
And to all the rebellion, you can't really mean that. Jesus says, "Listen, let me tell you, there was a man who owed 10,000 talents to his master in your footnotes and a lot of your Bibles. You're going to see that's the six billion dollar equivalent.
And the man who could not pay it was told, you're going to be thrown into prison, you're going to sell your family. They'll be slaves, well at least the value of their slavery against the debt.
But the man in misery pleads, "Master, forgive it. I'll find a way to pay it back. You'll find a way to pay it back? Really? Six billion dollars?"
But in mercy at the man's pleading, the master relents and forgives the debt.
And then as the language seems to say, even as that man is going on his way, he meets one of his fellow servants who owes him in the equivalent six thousand dollars. Now that's a debt. That's real. Six thousand dollars.
But that servant can't pay.
And the one who has just been forgiven, six billion, will not relent and has that one thrown into prison.
When fellow servants find out, they go tell the master and the master confronts the one given, forgiven so much.
You wicked servant.
I forgave you a million times more.
And you won't forgive a pittance of this one who owes you.
It doesn't get tougher than this in the Christian life, does it? It doesn't get tougher.
As Jesus is saying to us, "I know he really owes you. I know there really is a debt and still I am calling for you to…" He's not ignoring the debt. He's not ignoring the wrong. He's saying it is real. And still we are being urged to forgive.
Because unforgiveness undermines the purposes of the gospel.
Those purposes are clear here, right? Even in the structure of the passage, God has established from heaven itself a plan to reach in mercy toward people who would be without him, without his love, whom hell faces. He says, "I will redeem and I send my son who will shed his blood in behalf of people who do not deserve it so that the mercy of God might come for lost sheep."
And now that you know that, now even that you have received that, you can't take that stream of mercy that's flowing from heaven and is meant to flow through the church as we forgive one another and forgive those that we know have wronged us and suddenly say, "No!
Not pass me.
You don't understand what they did to me or to my family.
I know that from heaven itself and the plan and purpose of God through Jesus Christ, the mercy of God is meant to flow to the church through the ages for all people, but not with what they did to me.
It doesn't go past me." And do you imagine that God who sent his son, who shed his blood, would it all be agitated to say, "No! If you've received such a great mercy. It's meant to go beyond you."
The very purposes of the Lord are so undermined that even when Jesus, when he's teaching us how to pray, reminds us of these truths, of the purposes and intentions of God.
You prayed the prayer. We pray it so often.
Forgive our debts as we forgive our debtors.
That is a scary prayer, isn't it?
Lord you forgive me as I forgive, particularly if you've been wronged or hurt or damaged or your family has and you recognize that in you is that, that knot of bitterness and anger.
And yet you are praying, "Lord you forgive me as I forgive."
Well, we better be pretty careful about what's being meant. What does God mean? What does the Lord mean when he's teaching us to pray, "Lord you forgive us as we forgive us." Different ways that could be meant.
One way that could be meant is, "Lord you forgive in the same way or to the same degree as I forgive.
Lord you forgive me as I forgive."
Now, the trouble is, if we're really asking God to forgive us in the same degree as we forgive others, I don't want to live in that universe because I recognize the difficulty in my heart. I mean, I'm not just talking about the enemies. I'm talking about loved ones who have hurt us or themselves and we just have in us the unstoppable rage that they could have done that. And we want it to go away. And sometimes it does, but sometimes it comes right back.
Do I really want God to forgive me as I forgive others to the same degree or in the same way?
Others take it to say, "It's not about the same degree, it's on the condition that."
"Lord, you forgive us on the condition that we will forgive others." Now let me tell you, if I don't want to live in the universe where God would forgive to the same degree, I certainly don't want to live in the universe where God is going to forgive me only on the condition that I forgive others. And you must know that that would be so contrary to so much other Scripture, right? Ephesians 2, 8, 9, right? "For by grace are you saved through faith, and that not of yourselves, it is the," what? It's the gift of God, not of works, listening to any man. God's not saying, "All right, I will forgive you on the basis of faith, the grace of God will come to you except if you don't forgive."
That's not what's happening.
Some of you are using translations that may help you, and I haven't taken you to the Lord's Prayer, but it may help you to remember that if you have ESV translations or some which are going to help you with the Greek language in itself, that Matthew 6, 12 is actually saying, "Lord, you forgive our debts as we have forgiven others their debts." It's not a condition of what will occur.
It's the understanding that as Jesus is teaching us to pray, He's teaching us what grace has already done to us. It has changed us so that forgiving others as we have been forgiven is a way of life. Lord, forgive us our debts in the context of a life that is forgiving.
It's understanding that as grace changes us, it changes attitudes and hearts. We are not made perfect, but there is something about us that has been changed so that Jesus, when He actually repeats the Lord's Prayer later in His life, He says, "Lord, forgive us as we ourselves forgive everyone indebted to us." Something that is already in the context of our lives. It's an ongoing aspect of who we are, because you see, the real problem was you could not show forgiveness unless you know it.
And if you don't show it, you somehow don't know it fully yet.
If you have received forgiveness, if you receive the mercy of God, your heart's inclination — I'm not saying the struggle is gone — but your heart's inclination is to be forgiving.
In the context of your prayer, you're wanting to be that forgiving purpose. And you realize that the reason that God is saying to you and to me, "I want you to be forgiving," is because of how much damage is done to the gospel, not just externally, but internally, if the context of our lives is not one of forgiveness.
If you just want to see how damaging it is to us to be unforgiving, you have only to look at the passage as it unfolds. If you remember verse 26 of Matthew 18, we really have benevolent feelings about the servant at this stage. He falls on his knees, he implores his master, have patience with me, save my family, my child — I don't want them to say it. I mean, we kind of have this fatherly persona of appreciation for the man at this point who's seeking the good for his family.
But by the time you get to verse 28, every perception of him is different. When that same servant went out, he found one of his fellow servants who owed him a hundred denarii — that's that $6,000 — and seizing him, he began to choke him, saying, "Pay what you owe me."
Now I want to be silly, but I want you to hear what's being said. He has made himself ugly by his own rage. His bitterness has transformed our perception of him. I mean, we have our own cultural icons to make sense of it, right? You remember the wicked witch of the west, right?
I'll get you my pretty, and your little dog too, you know.
And you recognize even in the expression of the bitterness, she is made ugly.
And it is not what God intends for us to recognize if unforgiveness and bitterness characterizes, it will ultimately change us. Yes, we're concerned about others, but here is the Savior concerned for us as well in the way that he is speaking to us about this need of forgiveness. Some of you know that experiencing God material that Dick Tripp has written. And one of the most moving passages is where he talks so wonderful that we've had young people leading us today, because he talks about a 15-year-old in communist Cuba who, for sharing his faith and not stopping when told to, is facing execution.
And the 15-year-old leads an expression of the gospel by speaking to his mother, "Mamasita,
forgive them, or they will be the victors."
Our hearts will be changed. We will become in bitterness. The darkness will imprison us if we don't learn to forgive. You know that, right? Bitterness is the acid that eats its own container.
To hang on to it, to close ourself into the darkness is an imprisonment that's here. I don't just have to talk about other people. Listen, we can't go through this life without having been wronged and faced hard things that we recognize require the Savior to say to us, "Lest you be imprisoned in the darkness of your own bitterness, you must learn to let it go."
You don't need to know time and place, but some years ago, Kathy and I were leaving a church setting where we had wonderful ministry and wonderful times for persons. And when we got off the scene of that church, there was a controversy that developed in the church. And one man that we knew very well in order to take the heat off of himself of his own mistakes and errors blamed us.
We weren't even there anymore, but he blamed us.
Listen, this was a man whose family health problems had meant that I had consistently, regularly sacrificed time and energy and effort to minister to his family in hospital situations.
Because he was in political office at one point, he got in terrible trouble, and I was the one who publicly defended him and helped his family through that crisis.
Now we are off the scene, and the man that I have given myself for, sacrificed for, betrays me and hurts me and tries to hurt my family, and we're not even there anymore. I must tell you.
I had trouble sleeping. I had trouble eating.
I can't tell you the rage that I felt until one day it hit me.
So this is what it feels like.
This is what unforgiveness feels like.
Lord, please rescue me.
Because if this is what I become, if I can't focus on anything else, if this is what begins to characterize my heart and my life, I recognize I can't minister the gospel, and I don't know what it will even do to me or to my own family.
It's actually for the protection of us that our Savior is saying, "I want you to learn to forgive, to let it go."
There are three words in the New Testament for what forgiveness means, and we need to be very particular about what they are so that we express them rightly ourselves.
Two of the words for forgiveness mean to send away or to release, and that's important because when Jesus will say something in Luke 6 and verse 37, "Forgive and you will be forgiven," you can take it as a conditionality until you put the right words in their place. What would it mean if Jesus were, "You release and you'll be released"?
As if to say, "You have to let it go or it will imprison and bind you and even those that you love."
One of the very awkward situations in a previous pastorate when I was helping a man prepare the funeral of his father, and as we were going through the preparations, his wife was at the kitchen table with me and he was there, and we were going, and at some point the wife said to him these simple words, "Are you going to invite your sister-in-law to the funeral?"
He flushed, then grew red, did not say a word but looked like he was going to explode. He got up, left the room, went down the bedroom, down the hallway some minutes before he returned.
But when he returned back, he said, "Pastor, my sister-in-law, because she wanted a little extra money, encouraged her husband, my brother, to go on a dangerous assignment in Vietnam.
He was killed and in grief for him, my mother died.
For a little money, my sister-in-law killed my brother and my mother and she is not going to come to my father's funeral."
Hard, hard things, made harder because a few months later that man's daughter came to me wanting to be married to a young man that she'd been living with without the benefit of marriage.
But the Lord had done something wonderful in their lives, and they wanted to make their hearts and their lives right before him and also to be married to each other. And as we went through the premarital counseling and we talked, I said, "Do you understand, before you come together before the Lord, do you know that the sin you believe you committed is now gone, not between you and not between you and the Lord, that you want the Lord to walk with you in your marriage now? Are you understanding that your sin is forgiven?"
And the daughter of the man who would not forgive his sister-in-law said to me at that moment, "My own father won't forgive. How do I know that my heavenly father will forgive?
And suddenly I knew it, the consequence of this stream of mercy being stopped up, not just hurting the gospel and us, but even those we love being affected by an unforgiving spirit as the gospel is not accomplishing its purposes. I know it sounds hard and tough and maybe even not right to say, "Let it go," but you have to know, you have to let it go. Now here's why we resist.
We confuse forgiveness and pardon.
We say, "Now wait a second, are you really saying that Hitler and the Commeruge and the murderers and the molesters and the abusers, that we just say, "Oh, well, that's okay, I guess, no harm, no foul."
No, there's been tremendous harm.
Are you just saying that we just let it go as though it doesn't have any consequence? No, that's something different. Listen, pardon is something that governors and God do, released from all consequence.
Forgiveness is about a relationship and the attitude of our hearts.
The third word in Greek for forgiveness is one that means to give grace, as what we are ultimately determining is what is best for the other person. What is best, not in terms of my vengeance, not my recompense, not my vindication, but actually desiring the spiritual good of another person.
One of the hardest examples and yet one of the clearest I know is Ken Seward, a name some of you may know, an Anglican evangelical who a few years ago in England had people because of his faith and because of the difficulties that were happening and sectarian violence in his area, had some young men break down his door, beat him mercilessly with a cricket bat and then attack his daughter.
The nation of England was changed early on because only days after the attacks he went on national TV and said, "I forgive the attackers. I forgive the men who have done this."
But then a year later at the end of their trial when there had been virtually no sentence at all of any consequence, he criticized the system and he criticized the sentence saying, "I'm concerned for the men, I'm concerned for the society to let it go as though this is of no consequence." It's actually not good for them. It was not a seeking of vengeance. It was at the same time saying, "Listen, sin may have consequences even as we forgive. Pardon and forgiveness are not the..." You see it right in the passage, right?
I mean, remember that Jesus has already said, "If your brother sins against you, first go to him." There's a consequence.
Then take someone else and go, "There's a consequence." Then bring it to the church and if it can't be reconciled in that way, you need to treat that man even as though he's not a member of the church it's saying. Why? So that he will be reclaimed, so that he will not continue in his sin. There's a consequence that has a redemptive purpose, a redemptive focus.
Even Jesus, when he is telling this parable member of the master, ultimately looks at the sin of the man who will not forgive another and holds him accountable.
I know we struggle to make sense of it, but our hearts are not going to struggle as much. I can at the same moment say, "I believe it would be good for you or even society or our family that there be a consequence." We don't say to an abuser or to a molester, "Listen, it doesn't matter." We say, "No, there are precautions, protections. We need to have them." There are consequences of what... But we will love you in the name of Christ.
And your spiritual good is what we still now deep down desire because we are about forgiving, which actually means we are about giving grace to one another.
And whatever is most necessary for the grace of God to be extended is what we are most concerned for because ultimately what we do when we let things go in terms of bitterness and anger, I'm not talking about consequence now, bitterness, anger, vengeance, is we ourselves are released from the unforgiveness that would trap us otherwise.
One of the best accounts that I know is from David Augsburg in that book, "Freedom to Forgive," where he actually talks about a man who's been betrayed by his wife, who took up a lover who's another man in the church.
And the night after he discovers that news where he had driven the back roads fuming
and dying in so many ways with what he had discovered and the hatred, he went to church the next day, didn't know why, find some relief, maybe just a place to sit down, maybe like someone here today.
And as he was leading church, Augsburg wrote this, "There he stood.
His hand held out, the same old smile sang his saccharine hello. My hand felt frozen to my pocket. I could not get it out. All through that long bitter night I had vowed, I will never forgive, never, never.
But then the truths I thoughtlessly prayed a thousand times echoed in my emptiness. Forgive me my debts as I forgive my debtors.
All the hatred in my heart fought with those truths as I now faced my friend, my enemy.
Then with a sob in my soul my hand came out and gripped his. I took the hand of the man who had betrayed everything I loved, the man who ruined my life for a few moments passion.
And for the first time in my life I knew what it was to forgive.
For the first time I felt the tremendous sense of freedom, of liberty, of lighter than air release of the unbearable weight of bitterness as it washed out of me. I was free to forgive and free to live again." Some of you know exactly what I'm talking about. As your very countenance has changed because of the anger and the bitterness that has been weighing upon you for so long and the people who have loved you and know you're warm and the engaging spirit have seen you change because of what's in you.
And God is calling you to say, "I love you so much. I want the mercy that has come to you to be extended from you." Or you cannot really know it fully and well. It's the very thing that will change your heart and give you the forgiveness, the release that you need. I'm not talking in the abstract.
I must tell you I know the difficulty. I've mentioned the man to you that I so struggled with after so helping him. Listen, "Ultimately the Lord did some wonderful things and he came to our home. He drove with his wife. We were in a different town by then. He drove and he came and he confessed his sin and asked our forgiveness."
It's wonderful to be able to forgive.
But I want you to know how difficult it is.
Sometimes I still get mad at him.
He's with the Lord and sometimes I still get mad at him.
Some time ago I was reading, some of you have read it too, "The Bridge Over the River Kwai." And I read that passage where the Japanese had their wounded soldiers coming on a train through near where the camp was. And because just of what was going on in Japanese culture at the time, the wounded were considered to be victims not protected by their God and their gods as they should have been. And so even the wounded were disdained by the healthy-bodied Japanese soldiers.
And so as the Japanese soldiers ignored their own Japanese wounded, it was the British who'd been so abused by their Japanese concentration camp guards that began to minister to the wounded Japanese. And then began to write of somehow what it meant to them to care for their enemy and how it gave them a sense of life and purpose and release even in the chains of the concentration camp. And as I read that account, I cannot adequately tell you what it did to me to almost feel a physical release as though I was being, I don't know how to tell you exactly, almost lifted into the air by the sense of the unforgiving and bitter spirit being taken off of me and being able to live again without feeling like I just had to be vindicated or made right or recompensed in some way.
Because the concern of those who are in Christ Jesus is not that there be no consequence, but that whatever comes, it would be for the spiritual good of the person who has hurt us.
Listen, you can't believe that and feel that if you don't somehow believe in the reality of eternity and hell itself with what has been done to you. I know, do you really desire hell for them? I mean, no witness of the mercy of the gospel to them. Maybe you do. I mean, maybe you do want hell for them.
But then you have to say, what does that mean you have become if you really want hell for somebody else?
And it's not really what you want for them. Then you're asking, Lord, what has to happen in me to express the compassion of you for them?
Listen, I'm here to say forgiveness is not somehow requiring of you injustice, no consequence.
But whatever consequence comes, whatever behavior comes from you, it is to be driven by a heart of compassion moved by the mercy of God toward you.
So that what you're saying is, Lord, what is best for them? This is absolute humility before God as we are subverting our need for vengeance and recompense and retribution and any sort of vindication. I subvert that to their need.
So forgiveness may really require humility.
And to be fair to us all, I'm going to say it may require one more thing. It may simply require time.
Oh, I know I would like for it to be a light switch. You know, just kind of turn it on there. I forget.
Well, you're a better saint than I.
Listen, the, the apostle been with Jesus for three years now and they're struggling still to get it. There's maturing that has to happen in them.
And sometimes I need the humility of confessing my humanity.
Lord, I can't do this right now unless you help me. I really need your help. I have licked the wound so often the poison fills my heart and you have to prick it with the love of Jesus to drain it out so that I can really recognize and reflect the love that's in him.
This isn't easy, isn't easy for anybody. And in humility, we confess that as well.
And you know, for three decades I have had the privilege of teaching young men to preach the gospel. I know it doesn't always show, but that was my privilege.
And I will tell you, having done that for three decades, the most common sermon illustration I have ever heard, and it comes up over and over again, is the account of Corrie Ten Boom. Remember?
Undergoing terrible hardship in a Nazi concentration camp that ended up killing her sister.
And after the war, teaching the gospel in a service in Munich, Germany, and after just proclaiming the wonderful grace of the mercy of God, walking out of the service only to face the prison guard who had been the worst to her and to her sister.
Walking out his hand, saying, "Ah, sister, so good to hear the gospel that he forgives the worst of our sins.
So good that you believe this gospel."
And she said she could not raise her hand.
Seared in her mind were the images of this guard's cruelty to her and to her sister and to others.
And as he was claiming the goodness of the gospel for giving his sins and wanting her to affirm it, she simply said, "I could not raise my arm.
All I could do was to pray to God that he would lift my hand so that I could take his hand."
And God did.
It is the prayer some of us need to make even today. "Lord, I can't lift my hand.
I can't get to the point of saying I really desire what is best for them spiritually.
You've got to do something in me. You've got to lift my hand and soften my heart and turn my head to the things of the gospel again. Lord, it's not in me, but it's in you. Help me."
And when we pray that prayer, the gospel begins to work in us in the way that it must for us to know the freedom, the absolute freedom of true forgiveness.
Cory DenBoom said, "You never touch the ocean of God's mercy so much as when you forgive your enemy." I love the scene. Here's the ocean of God's mercy, the ocean of what we need ourselves, but we never so much touch it as when we ourselves forgive our enemies and suddenly the reality of what Christ has done for us fills us and frees us.
I don't know what God is calling you to think about even these moments, or the person, or the wrong done.
For the moment, I'm more concerned about you than they are the person so that you might know the freedom of the mercy of God that comes from Christ.
Ask Him to help you to forgive, that His mercy might flow, and you might know the freedom
of forgiveness. Father, work the gospel into us. We know it so well, but life hits us and hurts us. We don't know what to do. And even when we know what to do, it seems impossible, and it is apart from the work of Christ in us. So we pray, work in us, change our hearts, make us new, that we might know the blessing of the freedom that you intend in Christ Jesus.
Do this work of grace again, we pray, in His name, amen.