If you want to see man at his best, he is at his best in his ability to forgive, in overlooking a transgression, in forgetting a sin and an evil. It is the glory of a man that he should forgive another, and particularly for a Christian who has been forgiven so much by God through Christ. Welcome to Grace to You with John MacArthur.
I'm your host, Phil Johnson. Today, John MacArthur will continue his look at the biblical prescription for dealing with sin in the church, answering the age-old question, Am I my brother's keeper? John has been showing you the loving aspect of being your brother's keeper, the biblical reasons for this thing called church discipline, also the specific steps involved, and the authority of God that gives you the right to confront a sinning believer.
Now, to get into the restoration side of church discipline, here's John MacArthur continuing his study called, My Brother's Keeper. Let's open our Bibles to the 18th chapter of Matthew. Now in this great chapter, we have seen our Lord teaching on the child-likeness of the believer. Now as we come to verse 21, we will note that we are to be forgiven like children.
We are to be forgiven like children. There's a great sense of tolerance with children because we understand their weakness. We understand their ignorance.
We understand their inabilities. Being child-like is indicating that we're going to fail. There are going to be times when we do the wrong things.
We're still in the process of maturing, of growing up, of ordering our behavior. But when we do sin and after discipline has been enacted, we also are to be forgiven just as children are to be forgiven. People can rather easily hold grudges against adults, but it's somewhat abnormal to hold them against children. We tend to forgive children rather readily. Adults, we have difficulty forgiving, and we need then to remember the teaching of this passage that believers are to be treated like children for in a spiritual sense we are, and we need the same kind of gracious continuing forgiveness that a child does. Now forgiveness is a great, great virtue. I really believe that it is the key to the unity of the church. It's the key to love.
It's the key to meaningful relationships. It's what constantly tears down the barriers that try through sin to be built up to separate us from one another, to wall us off, to make us bitter and angry and vengeful. Forgiveness is a tremendous concept. In fact, in Proverbs 19-11, it says, it is a man's glory to pass over a transgression.
In other words, if you want to see man at his best, he is at his best in his ability to forgive, in overlooking a transgression, in forgetting a sin and an evil. Ephesians chapter 4 verse 32 takes the thought even a step further for Christians, and it says we are to be forgiving one another even as God for Christ's sake hath forgiven us. Based upon the fact that we have received the forgiveness of God in Christ, we are to offer forgiveness to others. Colossians 3 13 has the same thought in these words, forgiving one another even as Christ forgave you, so also do ye. It is the glory of a man that he should forgive another, and particularly for a Christian who has been forgiven so much by God through Christ. And if, in fact, it is the best of men in terms of their character quality to forgive, and if it is that we as Christians have been forgiven everything, how eager we should be to be able to forgive others. You look in the Old Testament and there is an exalted perspective on forgiveness. We all remember with great sense of respect the wonderful story of Joseph who forgave his brothers in Genesis chapter 50.
I don't know if you remember how that chapter ends, but it ends close to the end. It says in verse 20, As for you, you thought evil against me, says Joseph to his brothers, but God meant it unto good to bring to pass as it is this day to save many people alive. Now therefore fear ye not, I will nourish you and your little ones, and he comforted them and spoke kindly unto them. They had thrown him in a pit and sold him into slavery and treated him as if he were dead, he forgave them everything. And I think we all also with great respect remember the tender forgiveness and sensitivity that David exercised towards Saul. Saul who had spent himself trying to murder David, and when David could easily have thrust his sword through the sleeping Saul, he did not do that. He had a heart of forgiveness.
We find that expressed in 1 Samuel 24 and verse 7. We find David again a model of forgiveness, forgiving Nabal, his evil, for the sake of Abigail his pleading wife in 1 Samuel 25. Forgiveness is a glory of a man.
It is the highest human virtue. You show me an honorable man. You show me a man with real character, and I'll show you a man who can forgive. You show me a man who carries a bitterness deep down in his soul, and I'll show you a man without character. You show me a person who cannot release some vengeful, bitter, antagonistic, hateful attitude towards somebody, and I'll show you a man who knows not either the glory of a man nor understands the forgiveness of God to him. It is the best of a man to forgive.
Listen to this. Because it is the heart of God to forgive, and when man forgives, he radiates that which is true of the image of God. Forgiveness is so basic to God's heart that it certainly should be basic to the heart of God's children. Coming at it another way, you might as well learn to forgive because people are going to need it.
And may I add, so are you. Children of all people need forgiveness, and we are children. We are weak. We are ignorant. We're selfish. We're prone to disobey, and we need forgiveness frequently.
We are such children. Now our Lord has just concluded a section on disciplining sinners, and he follows it up masterfully with a section on forgiving them. You remember in 2 Corinthians chapter 2, there was a man in the Corinthian assembly who had sinned, and this particular man had been disciplined by the assembly of believers. And Paul says to them in 2 Corinthians 2, 6, sufficient to such a man is this punishment which was inflicted by the majority. In other words, you've sufficiently punished the man.
You've sufficiently made the point. You've done what needed to be done in terms of bringing to bear a rebuke on his sin. So now, rather in verse 7, you need to forgive him and comfort him, lest such a one should be swallowed up with overmuch sorrow. Confirm, it says in verse 8, your love toward him.
And then he goes on to say, if you don't do this, in verse 11, Satan's going to get an advantage of you, for we're not ignorant of his devices, and one of his devices is to generate a bitter spirit and unforgiving heart. Now we all need to learn to forgive because we all need to be forgiven, and because God has forgiven us, it is the best of a man to forgive, and it is the best, if I may say so, of God to forgive, for it is the expression of his loving nature. So we see then in this passage beginning in verse 21, a transition into the matter of forgiveness.
Let's look at an outline. First of all, in verse 21, the inquiry about forgiveness. The inquiry about forgiveness. Now after all of this discussion of discipline and how we are to confront the sinner and rebuke the sinner and restore the sinner and all that, Peter asks a very insightful question. Then came Peter to him and said, Lord, how often shall my brother sin against me and I forgive him?
It's a good question. See, Peter knows the tendency of man. You know why he knows it?
Because he knows himself. And he knew how many times he needed to be forgiven. He also is talking out of the context of his Jewish background, where there were certain hard lines drawn in relation to forgiveness. And he is saying in this whole matter of a person sinning and being restored, you know, the problem, Lord, is going to be they're going to do that and we're going to restore them and they're going to go right out and do it again.
Or they're going to do something else. I mean, how many times do we keep on forgiving them? He could anticipate the inability of human kind to turn their life all the way around and not sin anymore. So he could see you correct this thing and maybe it'll happen later or something like it'll happen later and you're going to be stuck forgiving this guy over and over.
How many times do we do this? Notice the phrase, then came Peter. They're sitting together in the house at Capernaum where our Lord is teaching with the little infant in his arms. And Peter leans forward, comes close to Jesus.
Maybe there's a little time interval from the former teaching to this one. We don't know, but he steps forward, comes close to Jesus, and he really has a burning question in his mind. And may I add just as a footnote, not related to this particular text, that we are greatly indebted to Peter for a lot of things. One of them is that he asks questions. God bless people who ask questions. Because people who ask questions of the right people get answers.
And sometimes we all get to enjoy the answer. Peter asked questions. His quick tongue and his inquisitive mind did get him into trouble, but on the other hand, he elicited out of the Lord a lot of profound teaching, didn't he?
Because he asked questions. So Peter had heard about the matter of discipline. And at this point he's saying, now look, Lord, let's say we go after this guy and we bring him back and we restore him and we've even gained our brother, as it says at the end of verse 15. How many times do we do that if he sins again or sins the same sin? Does forgiveness have a limit?
Do you get that? That's really the salient question of the whole text. Does forgiveness have a limit? Do you say to somebody, look, man, you have gone too far. I mean, there are some things that I can forgive that I can't. Or I have forgiven you already five times for that. I mean, that's it.
You have gone beyond the limit. That's what Peter's really asking. And notice he says, how often shall my brother sin against me? Against me does not mean necessarily that the sin was directly against you in the physical sense or in the sense of touching your life personally, purposely, directly. But that the sin was against you either directly or what?
Or indirectly. In other words, all sin in the assembly affects the assembly. But the idea that Peter adds the against me really involves you in a situation where you feel the lack of forgiveness or you feel the hurt and the pain that wants you to say, that's enough out of you. I'm not going to forgive that.
I've heard people actually say, I will never forgive that person for what they've done to me. Now that's just the very antithesis, both of the glory of a man and the heart of God. And so Peter is saying, look, if it does come against me and it's so close to me that I might on a human level have good reason to maintain an attitude of unforgiveness, how many times do I forgive him? And then he adds at the end of verse 21, seven times. And you know, he's waiting for congratulations.
He's waiting for the Lord to say, marvelous, Peter. You are so magnanimous. I think many people, most people find it hard to forgive one time. Really. Louis XII said, nothing smells so sweet as the dead body of your enemy.
And maybe articulated something of most people's feelings. Forgiveness is very foreign to man's nature. That's why we're all somewhat shocked when we see Jesus dying on the cross and people are spitting on him. They've shoved a crown of thorns into his brow. They've hammered nails through his limbs and he's hanging naked with flies and blood as a cloak before the whole watching world. And he looks down and says, Father, what? Forgive them.
They don't know what they're doing. And that's why we're shocked in the seventh chapter of Acts in the sixtieth verse to see Stephen crushed beneath the bloody stones off a ledge where he's been thrown as they plummet them into his body to crush out the life. And he looks up and says, lay not this sin to their charge.
And I think the profundity of Stephen's testimony affected one in particular who happened to be there holding the coats of the stoners by the name of Saul. But God's people are to be like Christ and God's people are to be like Stephen, especially with their fellow Christians. We are to hold nothing against the person who has wronged us, no matter how they've wronged us, no matter how intimately we are wronged. God has been wronged. David said in Psalm 51 against thee, the only, the only God, have I sinned and done this evil in thy sight. And he cries out to God against whom he has sinned and what is God's heart toward David? Forgiveness.
And you've done the same. You've sinned against God. Every sin you've ever sinned in your whole life was sinned against God. It's as if you walked into his holy presence in the middle of heaven and sinned the sin in front of the throne in his face.
It's defiant. Every sin you've ever sinned, you've sinned in the face of God and he's forgiven you. Are you better than God that you can't forgive what God forgives? And you don't even know the full evil of sin for two reasons.
One, you're not omniscient until you're not so holy that you can understand its utter sinfulness. So the inquiry. How many times do I forgive? Seven times?
And Peter really thought he was being generous. Now that leads from the inquiry about forgiveness to the extent of forgiveness. Verse 21 again. Peter says, seven times? Jesus saith unto him, I say not unto thee until seven times, but until what?
Seventy times seven. Now, what did Peter have in mind when he said seven times? He was thinking he was so generous.
What was he thinking about? Let me tell you something. Jewish tradition said you forgive a person three times. That's the limit.
And you can see why they said that. Let me take you back in your Bible to Amos. And if you can't find Amos, don't worry about it.
Just listen. Amos 1, 3, Thus saith the Lord for three transgressions of Damascus, and for four I will not turn away its punishment. Verse 6, Thus saith the Lord for three transgressions of Geza, and for four I will not turn away its punishment. Verse 9, Thus saith the Lord for three transgressions of Tyre, and for four I will not turn away its punishment. Verse 11, Thus saith the Lord for three transgressions of Edom, and for four I will not turn away its punishment. Verse 13, Thus saith the Lord for three transgressions of the children of Ammon, and for four I will not turn away its punishment.
Now you find a similar statement made in Job 33, 29. And so the Jews concluded then that the three times you could be forgiven when you did it, the fourth time you got the blast of God's divine judgment. So they said that this, and of course they misinterpreted the passage, that this justified the limit of three times for forgiveness. They said this, if three transgressions fills up the measure of God's forgiveness, men can't go beyond God.
So after three times, that's it. And you read things like Rabbi Joseph ben Hanina who said, he who begs forgiveness from his neighbor must not do so more than three times. Or Rabbi Joseph ben Jehuda who said, if a man commits an offense once, they forgive him. If he commits an offense a second time, they forgive him. If he commits an offense a third time, they forgive him.
The fourth time, they do not forgive him. So, doubtless when Peter said he thought seven times, he was really going beyond his own tradition. And he was being generous.
He probably thought he would be commended and he no doubt had some kind of a smirk of self-congratulation on his face, thinking how generous he had been. And I might add that in his favor, his three years with Jesus had had some impact on him. He had no doubt picked up the merciful, generous, gracious, kind, forgiving spirit of Jesus, and that's why he knew that Jesus would go far beyond, at least twice and one again, the tradition of his own people. So he did see that Jesus would certainly love and forgive in a way beyond the narrow kind of limit of Judaism. He had in that sense advanced beyond the men of his own nation, and the Lord was about to lead him even further so that he would understand fully what grace is. And that's why the Lord says in verse 22, 70 times 7.
Now that would take his breath away. I mean, that would just literally dumb found the man because it's so out of proportion with the magnanimity that he had designed in his own mind when he said seven. The number is so large that you just would lose count. I mean, you don't really count up 490 times.
It's questionable whether that would even happen. Now, there's nothing really binding. You don't keep a book and say, all right, that's 491, you know, you're finished. Jesus just picks up on Peter's numeral and multiplies it by ten and by seven again.
He just plays with the number that Peter suggested and he's really saying there's no limit to it. There's kind of an interesting comparison that as I was studying this, I read in Genesis 4 24 where it talks about vengeance being brought 77 times. And here it says, the Lord says, forgiveness is 70 times seven. So whatever base there would be even for legitimate vengeance, there's an infinitely greater one for gracious forgiveness. Our Lord is really calling for an indefinite number. And just to show you that, let me have you turn in your Bible to a passage that is, if you think this is mind-boggling, look at this one, Luke 17 4.
And this is Luke's insights into basically the same event. Back in verse 3, take heed to yourselves, if thy brother trespass against thee, rebuke him. And if he repents, forgive him. In other words, when he repents, you give him the full forgiveness. And if he trespass against thee seven times in a day, and seven times in a day turn again to thee, saying, I repent, thou shalt forgive him. And again, he just plays off this same number and if we combine Luke with Matthew, what we've got is, am I to forgive him seven times? No, forgive him 70 times seven if he sins seven times a day.
In other words, it's just hyperbole. The point is, there's unlimited forgiveness. John Wesley said, if this be Christianity, where do Christians live? It's a fair question. No limit and no boundary to forgiveness.
Very serious matter. Look at James 2.13 for a moment. It says, for he shall have judgment without mercy. That hath shown no mercy.
Did you get that? He shall have judgment without mercy from God. That hath shown no mercy.
Very important truth. We are called to mercy. Back in Matthew 5, you remember the wonderful beatitude in verse 7, blessed are the merciful for they shall obtain mercy. Now the thought here is this, the extent of forgiveness is unending, limitless. If it were 490 times a day, person should be forgiven. So don't parade your vengeance and don't parade your bitterness and your anger and your unforgiving spirit as if it were a virtue.
It is the very opposite of a virtue. It is not even the glory of humans, let alone a manifestation of the heart of one who has in him the Spirit of God. That's John MacArthur, Chancellor of the Masters University and Seminary. John's current study here on Grace To You is titled, My Brother's Keeper. Now John, about the issue of confronting sin in other people, everything we're seeing from Matthew 18, the goal always is for the restoration of the believer whose sin has been discovered. And restoration means just what it sounds like, the grateful and joyful return of that person to full fellowship with his church family. But I know you would say that if the person being restored is someone who had been in church leadership, there's a sense in which that person can never rightly recapture the trust that he had before the sin was uncovered.
So talk about that for a minute. The highest standard for behavior in the church belongs to those leaders. First Timothy 3, Titus 1, lays out in detail the things that have to be true of one who is in leadership in the church.
If they are not true, if they are not true or have not been true, then there is disqualification. And that is the unique reality of leadership. If you're going to be a leader, you're going to stand in the place of Christ. You're literally standing in for him, exercising your ministry as an under-shepherd of the great shepherd, and you can bring no reproach on the church. That's why the Bible also says, stop being so many teachers, for theirs is the greater condemnation. Yes, if you're a teacher and a leader in the church and you sin, there is a greater condemnation. There are so many pastors who have fallen into sin and become a reproach.
It's almost an epidemic. How tragic is that? And the church has only one way to deal with that, and that is to disqualify them permanently from ministry. Watching the Lord, they can be spiritually restored, but never put back into leadership because they have a stain on their life that demonstrates their inability to be a Christ-like leader.
Thanks, John. That's a helpful perspective, and it's also a sobering reminder for anyone who leads God's people. And friend, to learn more about God's standards for those who lead the church, let me recommend John's book, The Master's Plan for the Church.
Contact us today. You can call us here at 855-GRACE or go to gty.org. The Master's Plan for the Church spells out the biblical requirements for church leaders as well as for every other member of a local congregation.
The Master's Plan for the Church is available for a reasonable price. You can order a copy online at gty.org, or you can order by calling us at 855-GRACE. And when you visit gty.org, you'll find a variety of free resources. Look for the Grace to You blog series titled Standards for Shepherds. It's a great supplement to today's broadcast. You can also listen to any radio programs you may have missed, watch Grace to You television, and you can search John's entire sermon archive by date, by book of the Bible, by topic. There's over 3,600 sermons from nearly 56 years of pulpit ministry, and all of it is free to download in audio and transcript format. All of those things and more are available at gty.org. Now for John MacArthur, I'm Phil Johnson. Watch Grace to You television this Sunday on DirecTV channel 378, and be back tomorrow as John continues his study, My Brother's Keeper, with another 30 minutes of unleashing God's truth one verse at a time, on Grace to You.
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