Welcome to the In Touch podcast with Charles Stanley for Wednesday, August 12th. Humanity's greatest need was fulfilled by God through Jesus Christ. Stay with us and learn how to receive and give the gift of forgiveness. When someone wrongs you, either by some slanderous statement or by some action, what is your response? Maybe what are.
How these two responses best fit you?
Well, do you get angry? And your first response is: well, how can I retaliate, or how can I get back at them? Would your response be? What gift could I give that person? What is the biblical response to those who wrong us?
The biblical response is the second one, that is, what gift can I give to that other person?
So what I want to talk about in this message is the gift of forgiveness. And I want you to turn, if you will, to Ephesians chapter 4. And Paul in this Ephesian chapter. Is talking about some things that do not fit who we are as believers. In fact, in the first three chapters, he's talking about who we are in Christ and what our position is in Him.
And then in the last three chapters, He's talking about how we ought to behave. That is, how we ought to practice who we are in Christ Jesus.
So, I want you to begin, if you will, in the. 29th verse, one of the things he says here, he says, Let no unwholesome word proceed from your mouth. But only such a word as is good for edification according to the need of the moment. that it may give grace to those who hear. And then he makes a statement that most of us know this one by heart.
He says, do not grieve the Holy Spirit of God, by whom you are sealed for the day of redemption. Then here's what he says. Let all bitterness and wrath, and anger, and clamour, and slander be put away from you, along with all malice. and be kind to one another. Tenderhearted, forgiving each other just as God in Christ also has forgiven you.
Now, if our first response to someone who wrongs us is anger and bitterness and hostility, then what he says here, let all bitterness, that is, a feeling of intense animosity towards someone, bitterness, Then he says, wrath, that is, that's anger with real aggressiveness. And anger and clamor with real loud protest towards someone. Slander, that is with the desire intention to really injure someone else. And he says, let all that be put away from you with all malice, that is, statements that you intend to damage someone's reputation or their occupation or whatever it might be.
So he says, none of these things fit who we are as believers. And then he takes the very opposite. He says, and Be kind to one another. Tenderhearted, forgiving one another, even as God in Christ Jesus has forgiven you.
Well, when I think about God, I think about this truth: that is, that forgiveness. is the gift of God to every single person. And if you'll think about it for a moment, the Bible says over and over again in different ways that when you and I sin against God, that's exactly who we sin against. We sin against God.
Now, we may sin against someone else by something we do or something we say, but in essence, we sin against God. You and I cannot sin against someone else without sinning against God. And so the Bible says that He's given us the decree that the soul that sinneth it shall die. You say, Well, that looked like to me that was awfully difficult and awfully hard for God to make such a decree as that. But what we have to ask is, what was his goal?
His goal was. To create a kingdom of holy people. And therefore, he says, Be ye holy, even as I am holy. And therefore, he laid down the law immediately that because sin is against God, There is an awesome penalty for sin. And therefore, God in His love, motivated by His love, He says that He so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him will not perish, but have everlasting life.
Motivated by love, and knowing that all of us have sinned against Him, He says, For all have sinned and come short of the glory of God. There's none righteous, no, not one. All of us. have indebted ourselves to God because of our sin. That is, We have sinned against the Almighty God.
We have violated His law, and therefore we have to be dealt with. And so either we will pay the penalty of our sin, which He says ultimately is eternal death, or someone else will pay that penalty.
Well, God, in His wonderful, loving, forgiving Spirit, chose not to make all of us pay the penalty. The cross is God's statement to the world. That in our sinfulness against Him. and our obligation to repay this debt. To Him, He has chosen to pay this debt in our behalf by sending His only begotten Son, the Lord Jesus Christ.
And the moment a person receives Christ as their Savior, the Bible says that debt has been canceled, and we are from that moment on free from the penalty of our sin. And therefore, God no longer holds it against us. He doesn't hold our sin against us any longer. He sets us free. He liberates us from the penalty of it.
He liberates us from the power of it so that you and I can feel accepted in the eyes of God.
Now, whether we feel accepted or not is not even the issue. The issue is, we are. What makes it acceptable? Even though we have sinned against Him, we are indebted to Him. He says, I have canceled that debt through the death of my Son, the Lord Jesus.
And so, therefore, you and I have the privilege of saying and knowing that we're accepted in the eyes of God, not on the basis of behavior, but on the basis of what Jesus Christ did at Calvary. And so the question is: how do we respond when people wrong us?
Well, how did God respond to you and me? He responded to us by saying that He's giving His only begotten Son, and that Son's blood would atone for all of our sin, past, present, and future. which means that now you and I serve a God who says, forgiven. Forgiven, forgiven. And one of the difficulties some people have with that is they think, well, now you just can't say, well, God forgive me and I'm sorry and therefore I'm forgiven.
They look at the awfulness of their sin, and then they say, Well, I've got to do more than just ask God to forgive me. And what you look at is once you look at your sin, the next thing you look at is what? What is the next thing you look at after you look at your sin? the cross, then you understand why God can say, forgiven. Not forgiven if, not forgiven when, not forgiven when you do the following things, but forgiven by the grace of God.
God's goodness and kindness toward us. Therefore, Forgiveness is God's gift and His offer to anyone and everyone who's willing to receive it. The second question, Is this, then what is my gift? to those who wrong me. the only legitimate gift.
I can give the only legitimate response to those who wrong me is to be forgiving toward them, even as God has forgiven us.
Now, listen to what he said in this verse. He says, and be kind one to another. tender-hearted, forgiving each other. How? Just as God, how?
In Christ Jesus through the cross. also has forgiven you.
So what I want us to look at here is how we're to respond to those who wrong us. And as the gift of forgiveness given by God is given to all of us. The only legitimate response I can have toward those who wrong me is to give the gift of forgiveness toward them, even as He has forgiven me.
Now, you think about this. You say, well, I can be forgiving up to a point. What point did God stop forgiving us? There is no point. You see, the truth is, there are no limitations.
I can't say I'm willing to forgive you except. I'm willing to forgive you when. I'm willing to forgive you, but. I'm willing to forgive you if. None of those fit the life of the believer who is indwelt with the person of Jesus Christ in whom we are following.
Now everybody gets hurt at some point in their life and sometimes those hurts are very, very painful and sometimes they go on a long time and sometimes they become intense and oftentimes you and I can look at someone else and say, well, I don't know why you're not forgiving. And often if we walked in their shoes, we'd understand why it may be that that person maybe in their spiritual walk at this point in their life, maybe in their sense of maturity, where they're in their spiritual life, maybe they don't understand the Word of God. They don't understand the fact that Jesus is living on the inside of them. And so they wrestle and they struggle being able to be forgiving. And so, for them, it's very difficult sometimes.
There are no limitations on what you and I must forgive. And so God doesn't say to you and me, Now, if you'll spend the next 20 years of your life serving me, and if you'll give so much money each year, then at the end of those 20 years, you'll be forgiven. God makes no requirement of work on your part and my part. That is, God nowhere says, pay me back.
Now, listen to this. If you withhold forgiveness from anyone for anything, what you are saying is, I'll forgive you when you pay me back. That is absolutely, totally unscriptural. Forgiveness is being willing to free that person, release them from whatever they've done to you, no matter what, no conditions. Because you see, some people are not going to ever come to you and say, I'm sorry.
Some people are not going to ever come to you and say, I need to ask you to forgive me.
Some folks will never say, I wronged you.
Some people will never be able to do that. And so what you have to decide is this. Am I going to live with this something in my heart toward that person because they don't pay me back?
So, a payback is not forgiveness. That's not real forgiveness. That is requiring someone to earn your forgiveness. That is not giving them the gift of forgiveness. You say, well, but you don't know how I've been mistreated.
You know what I've discovered? That no matter how much you and I may feel, we've been mistreated, there are other folks out there who have been treated a whole lot worse than we have. A whole lot worse than we have. There is no way to justify an unforgiving spirit, and yet many Christians do that all the time. We have no right.
To be unforgiving.
Now, the other person may not respond to our forgiving spirit. You and I can't make somebody else change, but we can be forgiving no matter what. It is the will of God that you and I. Be forgiving toward those who wrong us, toward those who say things or act toward us in a way that is unbecoming, unchrist-like. We cannot justify an ungodly spirit.
Now, the question comes: why is it that you and I fail to forgive other people when they wrong us? Why do we fail to do it? Say, well, it's because of what they did. No, not really. That's not the real reason.
One of the reasons we are not willing to release that other person, don't hold it against them anymore. One of the primary reasons is pride on our part. You did that to me, you owe me back. Isn't it interesting that God never said that? This is why this phrase is so important.
Just as God in Christ Jesus has forgiven you, He didn't ask for a payback. And therefore, I don't have a right to ask for a payback. A second reason I think people are unforgiving is because something happens in their life. And somehow in that situation they get stuck. They think it's so bad, or it's so evil, or it's so unkind.
Somehow, it's like they get stuck. They just can't get out of it. And what happens is The more they think about it, The worse it becomes, and the more stuck they feel, and after a while they just can't move. They're just stuck in this sense of bitterness, this intense anger, this intense animosity, these feelings. And you see, all of us can take any anthill and build a Mount Everest out of it if we want to.
If we choose to feel that way toward other people. But he says, Be ye kind one to another, tenderhearted, forgiving each other, just as God in Christ Jesus has forgiven us. And so some people get stuck. A third reason I think people are unforgiving is they can't look ahead. They're always looking back, always counting the things that have been done to them, always evaluating, weighing how people have treated them.
And somehow they can't make that 180-degree turn and look ahead to think about what does God think of me? You see, the truth is, no matter what somebody thinks of us, no matter what someone does to us, the issue is, what does God think of us? He loves us. How does He treat us? He loves us.
Why does He allow these things to happen to us? Because He sees then allow these things to happen. He's going to build character. He's going to mold us. He's going to work into our lives those character traits that He's looking for in life.
And so even the things that God allows that are hurtful and painful and sometimes shameful to us, what is God doing? He is molding and sanding and sifting and working our life those things that He knows will make us Christ-like. One of the reasons some people can't forgive is because they don't deal with it early enough.
Now, we said in the very beginning, it would be easy for us to say to someone who maybe has wronged us that we don't know about, they come to us and say, I need to ask you to forgive me for what I've done, what I've said, so forth.
Now, if we didn't feel the hurt, it's real easy. But now, suppose we do feel the hurt. Suppose it's extremely painful. I mean, it just penetrates all the way down to the depths of our sense of worth and being and appreciation for our own selves. And I mean, it just hits us on the blind side hard.
Then how do we respond?
Well, If we don't go to God immediately, If we don't respond immediately, Here's what's going to happen. That little bit of hurt is going to develop into some anger. And the more that anger sets there and lodges there, the more like bitterness it's going to smell. And before long, that anger is going to become bitterness. And if we don't deal with it, before long that bitterness is going to get very aggressive and it's going to become hostility.
And before long that hostility is going to begin to express itself in some form of vengeance toward the other person to take something out on them or in some way to injure the other person. And this is why it's so very important when our children grow up that we keep dealing with those situations and circumstances in life. Because if we don't deal with them the best, we know how to say, well, look, if I've wronged you, if I've done this, or I did do this, please forgive me here, whatever it might be. They grow up and they grow up seething on the inside of them, this bitterness, this anxiety, this turmoil on the inside.
So they're miserable and they make everybody else miserable. Why? Because there's something they either don't know how to deal with or don't want to deal with. My friend, there's not a single one of us who has the right to make somebody else pay the price. We cannot do it.
No matter how they respond, we can't make them pay the price. That becomes hatred. And there are two forms of hatred: passive hatred, which says, I don't want to be around you, I don't like you, stay out of my way. And then there's that aggressive hatred that says, I'm going to get you one way or the other, I'm going to pay you back. And that's what this nation is full of angry people who want to pay somebody back.
And that's why the whole legal system is making billions and billions and billions of dollars. Why? People wanted to get somebody to pay them back. wanting to make them pay somehow. But he said, Be ye kind.
Tenderhearted one toward another, forgiving each other even as God in Christ Jesus has forgiven us. There are lots of reasons that people live with this molten volcano of anger and bitterness and hostility brewing on the inside of them. And you know what happens? After a while, if a person doesn't deal with it, after a while, here's what happens: they become, now, watch this word. They become so comfortable at first, some people get comfortable, some people become so acclimated to that atmosphere within themselves.
They don't even want to change. It's not that they like it, they just don't want to change. because it's what they have become. Custom to. Waking up feeling anger, living their life feeling anger, expressing their bitterness on people.
You'll hear people say, Well, you know, I just have a temper, that's the way God made me. No, He didn't. Don't blame God for that. God didn't make us bitter, He didn't make us resentful, and He didn't give us this hot-tempered attitude. God doesn't do any of those things.
He says, Be ye kind one to another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, even as God in Christ Jesus has forgiven us.
So, when I look at that passage and I ask the question: how is it that a person can say, yes. I know that I ought to be forgiving, but I'm here to tell you, you don't know what's happened to me. The truth is, listen, when somebody tells you that, it doesn't make any difference. No person has the right to hold, demand, require payment back for wrong done to them if that person is a believer. They cannot make that requirement.
And here's the tragedy, oftentimes. When we may say something to someone or do something that really isn't really all that harsh or bad. It may be a mistake or something we say off the cup.
Sometimes their response toward us They're not responding to you and me. They're responding to some other incident, somebody else in their life that they can't get to. Maybe they've already died. Maybe somebody lived somewhere else, moved away. They can't get to them.
They never settled it while they could get to them, and so what happens? They're going to express it on someone else, and this is the tragedy. This is the tragedy of growing up in a home, for example. Let's say a father or mother were terribly mistreated. The children come along, and the parents mistreat that child, not because of what the child is, but because they can't get back to their parents who've already died.
And so, what do they do? They project on these innocent children their venom, their anger, their hostility, their bitterness, their resentment because the way they were treated, the way they were mistreated back there, the way they were abused. And so, these kids grew up thinking, Why do you treat me this way? Then they get angry.
So their parents die.
So what do they do? They come along and do the same thing to their children.
So generation after generation of children grow up angry and bitter and hostile and acting out ways that we think, what in the world is going on inside of them because it was handed down. And friend, we can hand it down unless we shut it down somewhere in our life.
Okay. Thank you for listening to The Gift of Forgiveness. If you'd like to know more about Charles Stanley or In Touch Ministries, stop by intouch.org. This podcast is a presentation of In Touch Ministries, Atlanta, Georgia.
