Spiritual Warfare: The Battle for Freedom in Christ
Learning to Forgive
SPEAKER: Michael P. Andrus
Note to reader: These sermons on Ephesians are not my typical verse-by-verse exposition. Most were preached in 1990 in a series on “Spiritual Warfare: The Battle for Freedom in Christ.” I used Ephesians as a springboard for this series but referred to many other passages as well. Some of the sermons in the series are stand-alone messages preached at various times and various places. The early sermons from 30-35 years ago are not well footnoted, as I never expected them to be published.
Introduction: Someone hurt you deeply. Maybe it was recently, perhaps years ago, but you didn’t deserve it and you can’t forget it. Bitterness is eating your lunch. You are not alone.
I believe more people are destroyed by bitterness and anger over real or perceived offenses than are plagued by cancer, heart disease, and alcoholism put together. You say, “That’s ridiculous.” Is it? The hospitals are full of cancer patients, heart patients, and those ruined by alcoholism, but the whole world is full of people who nurse grudges and plot revenge. We see it in international politics, we see it in the business world, and we see it in some religions, like Shiite Islam, which preaches that your enemy, whether he holds a weapon or just writes a book considered blasphemous, deserves to die.
Christianity takes an entirely different approach. Its founder said,
“You have heard that it was said, ‘Love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’ but I tell you: Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, that you may be sons of your Father in heaven. He causes his sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous. If you love those who love you, what reward will you get? Are not even the tax collectors doing that? And if you greet only your brothers, what are you doing more than others? Do not even pagans do that?” (Matthew 5:43-46)
But even in the Christian Church the failure to forgive is common, and this is one of the primary reasons for defeat in the spiritual battle. Lack of forgiveness destroys marriages, produces estrangement from parents, contributes to a whole host of physical, emotional, and mental illnesses, and robs the victims of the joy of living a victorious life.
Lewis B. Smedes writes,
“There are some hurts that we can all ignore. Not every slight sticks with us, thank God. But some old pains do not wash out so easily; they remain like stubborn stains in the fabric of our own memory.
Deep hurts we never deserved flow from a dead past into our living present. A friend betrays us; a parent abuses us; a spouse leaves us in the cold—these hurts do not heal with the coming of the sun.
We’ve all wished at one time or other that we could reach back to a painful moment and cut it out of our lives. Some people are lucky; they seem to have gracious glands that secrete the juices of forgetfulness. They never hold a grudge; they do not remember old hurts. Their painful yesterdays die with the coming of tomorrow. But most of us find that the pains of our past keep rolling through our memories, and there’s nothing we can do to stop the flow.”[i]
Well, there is one thing we can do—we can forgive. Forgiveness is God’s invention for coming to terms with a world in which people are unfair to each other and hurt each other deeply. He began by forgiving us. And he invites us all to forgive each other.
One January day in 1984 Pope John Paul walked into a prison in Rome to forgive the man who fired a bullet at his heart, and every news service in the western world made that historic event into a headline. But the Pope is a professional forgiver, and it may be easy for a religious leader to forgive when he knows ahead of time that the whole world will be watching. It is much harder for an ordinary person, whom nobody is watching, to forgive. Forgiveness has been called “the hardest trick in the whole bag of personal relationships,” but it is also the most powerful one and the most God-like.
Three weeks ago, I preached a sermon entitled, “The Greatest Word in all the World.” That word is “Forgiven,” and the message was about the forgiveness that God extends to lost sinners. But that same word describes the attitude and atmosphere that should dominate the relationships of God’s people to one another, and even to their enemies. Today I want to follow in the same vein by exploring the why’s and wherefore’s of learning to forgive.
Why should we forgive?
It is required by God. (Matt. 6:9-15). I have listed only one passage here, this one from the Sermon on the Mount, but there are many others that exhort us to forgive. This past summer Brad expounded on the forgiveness theme in the Lord’s prayer in Matt. 6. He talked about the critical importance Christ put upon forgiveness when He warned us that “if you do not forgive men their sins, your Father will not forgive your sins.” This is clearly not an optional thing which we can take or leave depending upon our feelings.
Ephesians 4:30-32 reiterates the same truth: “And do not grieve the Holy Spirit of God, with whom you were sealed for the day of redemption. Get rid of all bitterness, rage and anger, brawling and slander, along with every form of malice. Be kind and compassionate to one another, forgiving each other, just as in Christ God forgave you.” God requires it.
It is essential for our own spiritual freedom. (2 Cor. 2:5-11) I have referred several times in the past to a passage in 2 Cor. 2, where Paul exhorts the church to forgive a man who had committed a heinous sin. In verse 11 Paul concludes his strong appeal for forgiveness with this rationale: “in order that Satan might not outwit us. For we are not unaware of his schemes.” This indicates to me that a failure to forgive is one of the primary tools Satan uses to get an advantage over God’s people, and it is one of the key ways he builds strongholds in our minds. If we are to gain freedom from his influence, we must learn to forgive.
No one is so much in bondage as those who nurse bitterness. It robs them of sleep, it eats away at their family relationships, it prevents them from worshipping God in spirit and in truth, and it distorts their entire perspective on life.
It is the only way to STOP THE PAIN. People try other methods to deal with their anger and bitterness. For example, they try suppressing it or denying it. For a while that seems to work, but it invariably erupts down the road, sometimes in bizarre ways. Some try feeding it, but it has a voracious appetite, and sooner or later leads to self-destruction. The only way to stop the pain is to forgive. The problem is there are a lot of fuzzy ideas floating around what forgiveness is, so let’s take a few moments to define it. As is often the case, we can gain understanding about the nature of a thing by first examining what it is not.
What does it mean to forgive?
Forgiving is not forgetting. People who try to forget find they cannot, and the harder they try, usually, the better they remember. I’ve heard people say that since God forgets our sins, we ought to do the same for one another. They are referring to Jer. 31:34 where God says, “I will forgive their wickedness and will remember their sins no more.” But please observe here that forgiveness comes before forgetting. Further, I ask if it is actually possible for God, being omniscient, to forget anything. Perhaps the word “forgive” here means that He doesn’t take our past sins into account or use them against us. He determines to respond to us the way He would respond if He had forgotten.
Forgetting can actually be a dangerous way to escape forgiving. There are two kinds of hurts we tend to forget. We forget the kind that are too trivial to bother about. And we forget the kind that are too horrible for our memory to manage. The most extreme cases can result in multiple personality disorder, in which a child develops distinct alternate personalities as they seek to cope with severe trauma. There are many ordinary people who have stuffed horrible memories into the black holes of their unconsciousness, where they suppose it cannot hurt them anymore. But it just lies there in the walls and closets of their minds, where it rots and putrefies.
Several years ago a mouse died somewhere in the walls of the church office. We couldn’t see it and we couldn’t find it, but its effect was quite noticeable until it eventually dried up. Unfortunately, bitterness never dries up by itself. Its tap root goes deep into the human psyche and saps the strength and vitality from our bones.
Sometimes godly professional therapy is needed to help us remember deep hurts so we can forgive them and be healed. I am, however, very leery of the increasing use of drugs and hypnosis as tools to dredge up all kinds of evil from the past. Godly counseling and prayer are the primary tools we should use to bring to mind those things in the past for which we need healing. Besides, for most of us the problem is not failing to forgive what we don’t remember—it’s failing to forgive what we doremember.
We must never mistake forgetting for forgiving. Interestingly, however, once we truly forgive, we often gain a new freedom to forget. That freedom, however, is the result of forgiveness, never the cause of it.
Forgiving is not excusing. In fact, excusing is just the opposite of forgiving. We excuse people when we understand that they were not to blame. Maybe there were extenuating circumstances. Maybe they were weak and vulnerable. Maybe they were too young or too senile to be responsible. Whatever the case, we excuse them because we don’t hold them accountable. But forgiveness is demanded when there are no excuses. Excusing is easy but forgiving is tough.
Forgiving is not tolerating. It is possible to forgive anything, but there are many things we cannot tolerate. I have known men and women who have forgiven their spouses for flagrant, repeated infidelity. But at the same time, they have drawn the line and said, “I forgive you, but I can no longer tolerate what this is doing to me. You have demeaned me, you have threatened my health, you have destroyed all the trust necessary for a continuing relationship, and you must go.” In other words, forgiveness is compatible with tough love.
Well, if forgiving is not forgetting, excusing, or tolerating, what is it?
Forgiving is resolving to pay the consequences of the offender’s sin and to never use it against him. When a genuine offense has been perpetrated, someone must pay. The normal human approach is to want the offender to pay, and when the offense is corporate—against society or the church—God has granted to leaders the responsibility to see that the offender is punished and the larger body protected. But when the offense is personal, God allows no revenge—not even the spirit of revenge.
Just this week I read in the paper the account of a man whose 26-year-old daughter had been raped and brutally murdered. Here are his words: “An animal wouldn’t do this. I’m not a vengeful person, but I would like to push the button, pull the rope, cut them up myself.” I understand his pain and I recognize that if I were in his shoes, I might feel the same way, but the fact is, despite his protest to the contrary, he is a vengeful person right now. He wants the perpetrator to pay and he himself wants to make him pay.
The way of forgiveness is that the victim pays the price and accepts the consequences of the evil done to him, just as Jesus paid the price of our sin. Dr. Neil Anderson shares valuable insight when he says, “In reality, you will have to live with the consequences of the offender’s sin whether you forgive him or not…. You can either choose to live in bitterness and unforgiveness or in peace and forgiveness by deciding not to use the offense against them.”
“But they hurt me so badly,” we protest. The point is they are still hurting us and the hurt will continue to bind us until we release ourselves from the past by forgiving. “But they are off the hook,” we are quick to complain. Yes, they are off our hook, which also means we are unhooked. But they are not off God’s hook. And that brings us to the final point on the meaning of forgiveness.
It is allowing God to be the Judge. (1 Cor. 4:4-5; 2 Cor. 5:10). You may feel like exacting justice, but you are not an impartial judge. God is the only one able to see all the facts in perfect light and render just judgment. In 1 Cor. 4 the Apostle Paul offers us some very sound advice:
“I care very little if I am judged by you or by any human court; indeed, I do not even judge myself. My conscience is clear, but even that does not make me innocent. It is the Lord who judges me. Therefore, judge nothing before the appointed time; wait till the Lord comes. He will bring to light what is hidden in darkness and will expose the motives of men’s hearts.”
Friends, I cannot overemphasize the importance of this issue. If we decide to take revenge, God will let us. But we are not nearly as capable of just punishment as is God. Listen to Romans 12:17-20:
“Do not repay anyone evil for evil. Be careful to do what is right in the eyes of everybody. If it is possible, as far as it depends on you, live at peace with everyone. Do not take revenge, my friends, but leave room for God’s wrath, for it is written: ‘It is mine to avenge; I will repay,’ says the Lord. On the contrary: ‘If your enemy is hungry, feed him; if he is thirsty, give him something to drink. In doing this, you will heap burning coals on his head.'”
What are the steps to forgiveness?
Here I want to offer you some practical steps in dealing with unforgiven people in your life. Some of these are found in Neil Anderson’s book, Victory over Darkness; others I have added. Please give careful consideration—your spiritual freedom may depend on it.
Make a list of all those who have offended you. I’m not talking about a mental list. I’m talking about taking a pen and paper and committing to writing the names of those who have offended you during your lifetime. Some may have a very short list, perhaps only a half dozen names or so. Some will have lists of 50 or more. Think about children who wounded you with cruel words when you were a youngster. Consider the teacher who put you down in front of the class by telling you that you would never amount to anything. Put down the name of the coach who let his own kid play while you sat on the bench, even though you were a better player. Name the boss who fired you for no good reason, giving your job to a friend of his. What about the spouse who has cheated on you, the parent who never hugged you, the friend who rejected you at a time of crisis in your life, the pastor who ignored you when you were hurting. Put them all down in a private list.
Face the hurt, admit the hate. Next to each one’s name, put down a brief description of the hurt, and describe your feelings about these people and their offenses. Remember, it is not a sin to acknowledge the reality of your emotions. God knows exactly how you feel whether you admit it or not. If you bury your feelings. you will bypass the possibility of forgiveness. You must forgive from your heart. There are a whole group of Psalms called “the Imprecatory Psalms,” in which the writer pours out emotions of anger, hate, and vengeance to God (not at God) (see Psalms 55,59, 69, 79, 109, and 137). The very presence of these Psalms in the Bible should give us encouragement that we can share any emotions with God so long as it is our desire to deal with them in a godly way.
Make the choice to accept the burden of their actions. This must be a conscious choice, and no one can make it for you. There are no arguments that reason can produce as to why the person who hurt you deserves this. They don’t; you do. You’re not doing it for them; you’re doing it for yourself and for the sake of obedience to God. If some good comes to the person you forgive, that’s frosting on the cake, but that is not be the primary motive.
Take it to the Cross in prayer. It is the cross of Jesus that makes forgiveness legally and morally right. Jesus took upon Himself all the sins of the world—including yours and those of the persons who have offended you. I suggest that with the Cross in mind you pray separately regarding every name on your list. If some of the hurts are traumatic and you’re not sure you can do it in good conscience, you may want to call a trusted friend alongside to support you as you pray. A simple prayer like this might be appropriate: “Father, because you have forgiven me, I now choose to forgive (name) for (the offense, such as, “my father for never saying he loved me,” “my friend Sue for betraying me,” “my boss for never expressing appreciation,” etc.).
Don’t tell the offender that you have forgiven him. In fact, tear up your list. If you call up your father and say, “Dad, after all these years I have finally decided to forgive you for all the pain you caused in my childhood,” you’re not expressing forgiveness; you’re demanding a confession and an apology. It puts the other person in an untenable position. They may not even be aware they hurt you. Their recollection of the facts may be totally different. And, of course, there is the possibility they don’t want your forgiveness, which may just generate more hurt. Keep it between you and the Lord. But don’t be surprised if the act of forgiving them may in and of itself so change your attitude toward that person that they will be brought to repentance by your kindness.
There is one exception to this principle of not telling the offender that you have forgiven him. Suppose he has in the past asked for forgiveness and you refused because you were unwilling or unable to do so at that time. In that case, by all means, tell him now that you grant his request. Subtle but significant barriers between good friends can exist for years because the words, “I forgive you,” are left unspoken.
Be open to reconciliation within the bounds of reality. This raises a very difficult issue. Some suggest that until reconciliation and restoration of a relationship is achieved, there has been no true forgiveness. I disagree with that. There are some relationships that are beyond repair due to serious offenses in the past, and there are others that can be repaired only partially. Whatever reconciliation is possible, we should be open to it.
I think of a situation in which a man divorced his wife and married a younger woman. Complete reconciliation with his former wife is, of course, impossible. Even if his present wife were to die, God’s Word would not allow him to go back to his former wife (Deut. 24). But forgiveness on both sides has brought about a large measure of healing and reconciliation. They are now able to talk pleasantly, and perhaps even share a meal together on occasion when their grown children are present. That’s what I’m talking about when I suggest that we need to be open to reconciliation within the bounds of reality.
A forgiveness that says, “I forgive you but I never want to see your face or hear your voice again as long as I live,” is generally not true forgiveness. I say “generally” because we may someday be called upon to forgive a “monster of a person” who, God forbid, molests one of our children or murders a loved one. In that case our forgiveness may have to be completely a matter between us and God, with no reconciliation either desired or desirable.
Lord willing, next Sunday we’re going to talk specifically about those who are especially hard to forgive, including those who are already dead, those who are monstrously evil, and those who couldn’t care less about what they did to us. We will also talk about forgiving ourselves, forgiving God, and how to seek forgiveness when we are the perpetrators.
Recognize that forgiveness may not come immediately and completely, but rather …
1. Slowly, a little at a time. Friends, the hate and bitterness habit is hard to break. And, as we do with other bad habits, we usually break it many times before we finally get rid of it altogether. C. S. Lewis was badly hurt as a boy in the early years of this century by a bully who made a living as a teacher in an English public school. This sadist turned the life of the boys in his class into a living hell. Not long before he died Lewis wrote a letter to an American friend.
“Dear Mary, do you know, only a few weeks ago I realized suddenly that I had at last forgiven the cruel schoolmaster who so darkened my childhood. I’d been trying to do it for years; and like you, each time I thought I’d done it, I found after a week or so it all had to be attempted over again. But this time I feel sure it is the real thing….” [ii]
I’m not suggesting that you take your time with forgiveness, for it is an urgent matter, as is every issue of obedience to God. But I am saying that if your efforts don’t resolve everything overnight, do not conclude that you are a spiritual failure. Sometimes growth comes slowly. Then too, forgiveness comes …
2. With some confusion. Very few of us are virtuosos in the art of forgiving. The reason is that very few offenses are black and white. When we stop and examine a hurtful event carefully, we probably must admit that in many cases, if not most, the person who offended us did not make a conscious decision to do so. How do I know? Well, let me ask you a question: “How many of you have ever, with malice aforethought, set out to hurt another human being?” Will anyone be honest enough to admit that today? Not a soul?
There are two possibilities here: (1) those who have done so are afraid to admit it, or (2) no one has done so. I’m inclined to believe the latter. Now let me ask you a second question: “How many of you have ever been accused of maliciously hurting another human being?” I don’t even need to ask for hands on that question, for every one of us has at some time been so accused.
Friends, that difference is one of the greatest reasons in the world why we ought to practice forgiveness. There is always a gap in perception between the offended and the offender about the facts of a hurtful situation and about the motives. We are confused about why our adversary did what he did, what he was thinking, what part we may have contributed to his behavior, or even whether Satan may have had a direct influence on him. Our confusion ought to move us towardforgiveness, not away from it. Thirdly, forgiveness may come…
3. With anger left over. It is probably unrealistic to expect a single act of forgiving to get rid of all anger. You are not a failure at forgiving just because you are still angry that a painful wrong was done to you. But the anger should shift from the person to the wrong. When you forgive, you heal your hate for the person who offended you, but you do not erase the past and you cannot undo the circumstances. The dead stay dead; the wounded are often crippled still. The reality of evil and its damage to people is not magically undone by the words, “I forgive you.” It can still make us very angry, but the anger can be there without hate.
Left-over anger can actually be a good thing; it just needs direction. Most of the significant reforms in society are generated by anger concerning evil. MADD (Mothers Against Drunk Driving) would never have been formed if a mother had not allowed her anger at losing a child to motivate her to protect others.
Conclusion: Allow me to close with a paragraph from Lewis Smedes’ book, Forgive and Forget: Healing the Hurts We Don’t Deserve. When we forgive …
“We perform a miracle that hardly anyone notices.
We do it alone; other people can help us, but when we finally do it, we
perform the miracle in the private place of our inner selves.
We do it silently, no one can record our miracle on tape.
We do it invisibly, no one can record our miracle on film.
We do it freely, no one can ever trick us into forgiving someone.
It is creative: when we forgive, we come as close an any human being can to the essentially divine act of creation. For we create a new beginning out of past pain that never had a right to exist in the first place.”[iii]
The really amazing thing about this miracle of forgiveness is that it doesn’t depend upon anyone else. You don’t need anyone’s cooperation. No one else needs to even know about it. Forgiveness is between you and God. I wish there were a way to bring us to the altar of forgiveness before we leave this morning. If we had another hour, perhaps we could make our lists and pray our prayers of forgiveness while it is fresh in our minds. The fact is that an hour would not be nearly enough for some.
I return to our key passage, Ephesians 4:30-32: “And do not grieve the Holy Spirit of God, with whom you were sealed for the day of redemption. Get rid of all bitterness, rage and anger, brawling and slander, along with every form of malice. Be kind and compassionate to one another, forgiving each other, just as in Christ God forgave you.” God provided forgiveness for all our sins through the death of His Son on Calvary’s cross. No one ever suffered more, or with less provocation. Yet He offers full pardon and restoration to all who put their faith in Him. Can we not forgive the offenses we have experienced?
The danger I sense is that if we leave this place without doing anything other than hearing another sermon, albeit perhaps a somewhat more convicting one than usual, we may end up like the man in the mirror in James 1:23-24, who after looking at himself, goes away and immediately forgets what he sees.
May I suggest that we simply bow our heads and make a commitment to set aside some time this week to deal with unforgiven people in our lives. In other words, decide right now to allow God the opportunity to apply these truths to our specific hurts.
DATE: November 25, 1990
Tags:
Forgiveness
Reconciliation
[i] Lewis B. Smedes, Forgive and Forget: Healing the Hurts We Don’t Deserve, xii.
[ii] Cited in Smedes, 95.
[iii] Smedes, postlude.