Forgive One Another

Forgiveness is a beautiful word until you're the one that has to give. Dr. Tony Evans says freedom is found in forgiving others. To refuse to forgive is to burn a bridge over which you yourself must cross. This is the alternative broadcast featuring the timeless biblical teachings from the archives of Dr. Tony Evans. It's easy to talk about forgiveness when someone cuts you off on the highway or does something else to annoy you.

But when you're the victim of a hateful tragedy, like the ones reported so often in the news, it's a different story. Let's listen in to this classic message Dr. Evans delivered on how to follow God's ultimate example of forgiveness. In Colossians 3, Paul the Apostle says to forgive one another in verse 13, forgiving each other. It is the choice to release a person from a wrong committed against you.

Now let me clarify. Forgiveness does not necessarily mean reconciliation. You can forgive people with whom you are not yet reconciled. That may or may not happen, but that does not determine whether forgiveness has occurred. So please do not make the two equal.

One can lead to the other, but one is not the other. A Sunday school teacher asked the class, what does it take for you to obtain forgiveness for sin? What do you have to do to gain forgiveness for sin? One of the students raised his hand, I know what you must do to obtain forgiveness for sin.

The teacher said, what? He said, sin. Because forgiveness assumes a wrong done. That is an illegitimate evil that is detrimental to the person who is the offended party and who needs to be the forgiver to the person who has hurt them. Now let's clarify. Forgiveness can be either unilateral, can be unilateral, or forgiveness can also be transactional. Now let me explain what I mean.

Unilateral is to go one way. Forgiving people who have not asked you to forgive them. You see, a lot of people are held hostage waiting for somebody to say, I'm sorry. But if they never say, I'm sorry, and you don't forgive, you're held hostage by what they do or do not do. Stephen said, when they were stoning him to death in Acts 7, father forgive them because they don't know what they're doing. They didn't ask to be forgiven. But that's unilateral forgiveness. Forgiving someone who has not asked you for it.

What? Unilateral forgiveness is forgiving someone who is unable to ask you for it. Like someone who abused you but who is now dead.

They died. They can't now ask you to forgive them. So if you're holding something because somebody has hurt you, but they are unable to ask you for forgiveness because they're not here, then you're held hostage for the rest of your life.

Because if you're waiting for a request, that's a request that can never come. Or maybe it's a person who hurt you, but you don't know where they are. You don't know if they are alive or dead. They've relocated. They've started a new life somewhere.

You can't locate them. So there is no way for there to be a transaction. That's unilateral forgiveness. That's what Jesus did on the cross. Father forgive them for they know not what they do. Without you ever saying anything, forgiveness was granted. But then there is transactional forgiveness. Transactional forgiveness is forgiveness that comes because a person has confessed and repented of the wrong done against you. There's a transaction occur.

In other words, it's two ways. They have come and requested forgiveness and demonstrated repentance that they are indeed sorry. They've said the words, followed up by the action, which now opens up the door for reconciliation. Reconciliation can occur when there has been transactional forgiveness that takes place. When there is no transactional forgiveness, it's merely unilateral forgiveness, then reconciliation is difficult or impossible. That's why to restore a relationship, the Bible says that Jesus paid the sins of the whole world.

That was unilateral, but he's offering transactional. Because if you come to Christ in faith, you will be reconciled with the Father. The Father is already reconciled with you through the forgiveness of sins. But when the transaction occurs because you come to Jesus Christ, then reconciliation with the Father can occur. So let's get this straight. Forgiveness is releasing a debt whether unilaterally or whether transactionally.

But the transactional forgiveness gives a higher potential for reconciliation depending on what the infraction was and the time needed to get over the hurt or the pain that was caused by the infraction. I remember a man who ran into my car. He hit my car.

Come to find out, he was uninsured. So he had no insurance to fix my car. I have a debt in my car caused by somebody else who was unable to fix the problem.

I got my car fixed. Now, what I could have done was drive around with a debt in my car caused by somebody else being mad every day that they didn't fix it. Every time I go out and see that debt, that no-good driver, that uninsured driver has messed up my car.

Unfortunately, a lot of folks are living with debts on their soul. A dent on the soul. So somebody has run into your life and put a dent there. And you're spending so much time being mad that they were uninsured, that they couldn't fix what they dented, that you're running around and living life with a dent, that if forgiveness took place, would have been repaired by you. But you can become so angry, vengeful, and bitter that you get used to a dent and don't know how to live without it.

Because every time you see that dent, it justifies your anger at the person who caused it. Forgiveness is releasing someone for an obligation because of an offense against you. Please notice he says, stay with me here, in verse 13, he says, forgiving each other, whoever has a complaint against anyone, just as the Lord forgave you, so also should you. He says, what makes it possible to forgive is recognizing you have been forgiven. If you lose sight of the fact that you are forgiven, it will be much more difficult for you to forgive. And there's nobody here who has not needed to be forgiven. Now, different strokes for different folks, but if you're here and you're saved, it's because God has forgiven you. There is an inseparable link between forgiving and recognize you have been forgiven. Forgiveness is a beautiful word until you're the one that has to give it. Now, we love the word when we need it, but the word becomes much more difficult when we are the ones that have to disperse the forgiveness because we are the wounded party. On the cross, God took the initiative to provide forgiveness before we ever requested it. For God demonstrated his love toward us that even while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us. He unilaterally forgave on the cross, and he wants us to be forgivers.

Stay with me here because I can feel the consternation. To refuse to forgive is to burn a bridge over which you yourself must cross or will need to cross if not now one day. There are some here today who are being held hostage by unforgiveness. And because of what happened to you, how it happened, who did it, the collar is around your neck, and every time you try to go vroom, the devil drags you back, and he yanks the chain. You're not going anywhere because this collar of unforgiveness controls you.

It'll help you discover how light and free you can feel when you let go of resentment and the desire for revenge against people who've hurt you, as well as the remorse and regret that result from hurting others. This is a simple yet effective month-long journey of healing, and we'd like to send you a copy as our gift when you make a donation to help keep this program coming your way each day. Along with it, we'll include all six messages in the current teaching series that we'll be wrapping up in just a few days, Freedom Through Forgiveness. Be sure to contact us right away to make the arrangements before time runs out.

The easiest way to do that is to visit us online at TonyEvans.org, or call us day or night at 1-800-800-3222. I'll repeat that information for you after part two of today's lesson. Let's get back to it. He says, I want you to forgive as you have been forgiven. Now this gets even deeper, because when Jesus prays the Lord's Prayer, forgive us our debts, in Matthew 6, as we forgive those who have trespassed against us.

You remember that? That's the Lord's Prayer. We pray that. Forgive us our debts as we forgive those who've trespassed against us. But what a lot of people miss when they pray the Lord's Prayer is the tagline that Jesus puts on the prayer. See, there's a tagline to the Lord's Prayer. For thine is the kingdom, the power, and the glory, forever and ever. Amen.

Now you think the prayer is over. After he says, Amen, verse 14 of Matthew 6, For if you forgive others for their transgressions, your heavenly Father will also forgive you. But if you do not forgive others, then your Father will not forgive your transgressions.

Whoa. He says, in order to be forgiven, you must be a forgiver. Many of us are walking around out of fellowship with the Father because of an unwillingness to forgive. If you have a refusal to forgive, you and God are not on the same page. No matter how many prayers you pray, no matter how many Bibles you read, no matter how many church services you go to, refusal to forgive horizontally breaks down fellowship with God vertically because the vertical is tethered to the horizontal. Forgive just as your heavenly Father has forgiven you. I love the way Ephesians puts it. Ephesians talks about the same thing, and here's what Ephesians 4 verses 30 to 32 says. It says, Do not grieve the Holy Spirit of God, by whom you are sealed for the day of redemption. Let all bitterness and wrath and anger and clamor and slander be put away from you, along with all malice.

Be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving each other, just as God and Christ forgave you. Here it is. Here it is.

Here it is. When you forgive, as difficult as it may be, you have just crossed over from the natural to the supernatural. Why? Because the Holy Spirit is no longer sad inside of you. A lot of us are walking around with a sad Holy Ghost, and that's why we are sad people. A sad Holy Spirit, that's why we are discouraged and depressed, because the Holy Spirit is sad. He says, Do not grieve the Holy Spirit. How do you know the Holy Spirit is sad inside of you?

Because you're walking around thinking about, I'm gonna get you. What goes around comes around. If you are walking around thinking that way, feeling that way, acting that way, here's another way you know the Holy Spirit is grieving inside of you, because you are slandering the person that hurt you. But forgiveness is to cross over into the supernatural, freeing the Holy Spirit up, guess what, to free you up. One of the greatest stories of forgiveness in the Bible, on the issue of forgiveness, and that's the story of Joseph. It wasn't fair what they did to him. They sold him into slavery like a dog, lied and said he was killed by an animal, bringing grief to his father. And he had to carry this thing for what became a total of 22 years. This thing has been going on for 22 years, the effects of what happened when he was a teenager. There's some folks here that had some stuff happen to you when you were a kid, when you were a teenager, and that thing has stuck with you, that thing has grabbed you, and it won't let you go, it's collared you. Well, you know the story.

A set of events. Joseph is now in Egypt. His brothers need food. They got to go up and get it from Joseph. They don't know it's Joseph, but they got to come and get the food from Joseph. They discover Joseph is the one they got to get the food from. They run into Joseph.

They didn't expect that. They run into their brother 22 years later. Joseph says four words that would forever change everything. He tells his brothers, come near to me. Come near to me. He goes on to say, do not be afraid.

Most of us would have said, I'm going to get you. I ain't forgot. I ain't forgot.

22 years. I ain't forgot. You think I forgot?

Oh, I ain't forgot. He says, come near to me. And he makes a statement that blows my mind. He says, God orchestrated this. Not orchestrated the evil you did, but orchestrated this scenario. God doesn't do evil. He doesn't command evil.

But God does use evil. He says, God has orchestrated this. Let me tell you something else He did. He says, go tell my father, Jacob.

Watch this. This is the language he is. He says, go tell my father, Jacob, that I'm alive and well. Let me tell you what he didn't say. Go tell my father what you did. Come on, we would have said, go tell him. Go tell him.

Because if you don't tell him, I'm going to tell him. He not only—he protected their reputation with their father when there was every reason to get him back, because he was now head man in charge. How could he do that? He said, because even though you meant it for evil, chapter 50, verse 20, God meant it for good. He didn't mean the evil, but He used the evil to accomplish something.

You will never know how God is going to use something done against you until forgiveness has occurred. Now, I know there's a question on the floor. There's got to be this question.

Would it be unreasonable if there was not this question? What about the pain? What about the pain?

Because it still hurts. In the old tower bells that used to hang on churches and steeples, they would go bing, bong, bing, bong, bing, bong, ringing the bell, bing, bong, bing, bong. You just ring the bell at the hour, and it would go bing, bong, and then you would let the rope go. But when you let the rope go, it didn't mean the bell stopped ringing because you were swinging it.

So you went bing, bong, bing. So it would ring as long as you had your hand on it. When you let it go, it would keep swinging. But the longer you kept your hand off the rope, the slower the swinging took place. On the rope, it was bing, bong, bing, bong, because you're controlling it. But when you let it go, it may go bing, bong, bing, bong, bing, bong, bing, bong, bing, bong, bing, bong. You see, if you're still holding on to that rope, the pain will never go away.

But depending on how long you've been swinging it and how hard you've been swinging it will depend on how long it may take for it to slow down until you barely hear it. As long as you hold on to unforgiveness, the pain will not go away. Dr. Tony Evans on the link between being forgiving and being forgiven. Now let me encourage you to get the full-length version of today's lesson, Forgive One Another, so you can share this important teaching with your small group or Bible study. You can get it on its own or as a part of our current series, Freedom Through Forgiveness.

Remember, this complete six-lesson collection includes material we didn't have time to bring you on the air. And it's yours as our thank you gift when you make a contribution to help us keep the alternative broadcast on this station. As a special bonus, it'll come to you bundled along with the book I told you about earlier, 30 Days to Victory Through Forgiveness. Time is running out on this special offer, so don't wait. Visit us today at tonyevans.org to get the details and make the arrangements. Or give us a call day or night at 1-800-800-3222 and let one of our resource team members help you.

That's 1-800-800-3222. Until someone invents a time machine, we can't live anywhere but the present. But that doesn't stop a lot of Christians from being trapped in the past. Tomorrow we'll hear as Dr. Evans talked about a Biblical way to break free. I hope you'll join us. We'll see you next time.