Forgiveness

It is our absolute duty to forgive those who repent of their sins against us with the severe warnings that Jesus gives.

If we refuse to forgive those who sin against us when they repent, how can we expect God to forgive us? Many of us have dealt with a broken relationship. For many, the pain is still fresh.

It's still very deep. Perhaps you've been wronged by someone and don't know where to turn. Or maybe you're the offender and wonder how you can make things right.

In either case, there is hope and healing. Thirty years ago, when my daughter was just a little girl, I was working on the staff of a church in Cincinnati, and every year we had a special week of services that we called the annual preaching mission. And this was somewhat unusual for a Presbyterian church that we would have a heavy emphasis for one week on evangelism.

In fact, every year we even during this week would have altar calls in the church, which was also unheard of in such circles. And we would bring in a visiting preacher, and I had to participate and assist in the worship service on this particular evening. And there was a children's program that went on simultaneously in a different part of the church, and I took my little girl that evening and put her into the children's program, and then I went over to the church office and prepared for the worship service. Well, that night the church was packed. There were a couple of thousand people there, and at the end of the sermon I was standing at the front of the chancel, and I looked out and I saw these people coming down the aisles to the front of the church. And to my utter astonishment, numbered among them was my little daughter.

And I thought, oh no, she's too young to be involved in this sort of thing because she can't possibly understand what this is all about. But nevertheless, she came down and she made her profession of faith, and after the service I was driving her home. And I said, honey, what made you want to come forward during that part of this worship service? And she said, dad, I don't know. She said, I just couldn't sit still.

I had to go up there. It just was like something was pulling me and drawing me, and I just had to go. And I said, well, how do you feel now? And she said, oh dad, I feel so clean.

She said, I feel just like a brand new baby. And I thought, well, maybe she does understand what it's all about because the experience that she had, even as a young girl, was an experience of the forgiveness of God. And I related to that in my own daughter's life because my conversion experience was very similar.

My conversion to Christ came when I was alone in my room, and I was on my knees in front of my bed, and I begged God for His mercy, and I was overwhelmed with a sense of complete pardon and forgiveness. And I wanted to go out of that room and run down the street and shout, and I felt like I'd crawl over glass to tell anybody I could about the greatness of the mercy of God because what our salvation is about is forgiveness. And the only answer that I know of to real guilt is real forgiveness. The only answer to objective guilt is objective forgiveness. Now, just as we saw the confusion that may exist between subjective guilt feelings as distinguished from the objective reality of actual guilt, so we have the same kind of confusion between objective forgiveness and feelings of forgiveness, which are the subjective side of forgiveness.

And sometimes they are not always in agreement with each other. That is, sometimes we cannot be forgiven even though we feel forgiven, or we can actually be forgiven and still not feel forgiven. My favorite illustration of that is another woman who came to me in the church on one occasion, and she was all distressed, and she was struggling with her guilt, and she told me about what she had done. And she said, Dr. Sproul, you're a theologian, and I need to find an answer to what I can do with my problem. She said, I'm guilty, and she confessed her sins and all that stuff, and I said, well, what have you done? And she said, well, I've asked God ten times to forgive me of this sin, and I'm still not forgiven.

What can I do? And she was looking for me to give her some profound theological insight that she couldn't get anywhere else. And I said, well, what I think you need to do is to get down on your knees and ask God to forgive you. And she says, but I've already done that ten times. I said, I'm not asking you to ask God to forgive you for that sin that you've requested forgiveness for ten times. I want you to get down on your knees and ask God to forgive you for your arrogance.

What? She said, she's angry. She said, arrogance?

What arrogance? She said, I've been the model of humility. I have been on my face before God day and night pleading with Him to forgive me for this sin. I said, and how many times have you done it?

She said, ten times. And I said, and what is it that God says? Does not God say that if you confess your sins, He is faithful and just to forgive you your sins and to cleanse you of all unrighteousness? So I said, does God say that? She said, yes. I said, did you confess your sin?

Yes. She said, but I don't feel forgiven. I said, that's the problem. I said, you only have to confess your sin once to God. If you are honest and sincere in your confession, God promises absolutely to forgive you and to cleanse you from all unrighteousness. Why I'm asking you to go back on your knees is for refusing to believe the promise of God when He has given you His commitment and His Word to forgive you. I'm asking you to ask God to forgive you for having your sense of forgiveness rest upon your feelings rather than upon the integrity of His Word. Don't you see that you've cast a shadow on God's integrity based on your feelings? I hope that you will experience the joy of the feeling of forgiveness, but the actual state of forgiveness really has nothing to do with how you feel about it.

Just like before the law of God, you're either guilty or you're not guilty, so in terms of the presence of God, you are either forgiven or you're not forgiven. And so we need to cut through the confusion and come to an understanding of what real and authentic forgiveness looks like. Now I don't usually depend upon clever devices of alliteration to outline or structure my speeches or my messages.

Some people are very good at that. I don't normally practice it. But today I'm going to depart from my normal procedure and give the five R's of forgiveness. The five R's. You've heard of the three R's, reading, writing, and arithmetic. I'm going to give you the five R's that had to do with forgiveness.

I'll mention them all at once first, and then we'll look at them seriatim. First of all, the first R is repentance. The second R is remission. The third R is restitution. And the fourth R is reconciliation. And the fifth R is restoration.

The five R's. Repentance, remission, restitution, reconciliation, and restoration. These are all intimate parts or aspects of actual forgiveness.

I said to the woman again, the college student, I said, the only cure for real guilt is real forgiveness, and the necessary requirement for real forgiveness is real repentance. There is no forgiveness before God without repentance. God does put a condition upon His forgiveness, and that is that we repent.

Now, there's a host of confusion about this, not only with respect to our vertical relationship to God, but also with respect to our relationships with other people. Somehow, the idea has permeated the Christian community that it is always the Christian's duty in every life situation to grant forgiveness to those who sin against us unilaterally and immediately, whether the people repent of their sins or not, that we are simply not allowed to withhold forgiveness from people. I don't know where people get that from the New Testament, except that our Lord on certain occasions did unilaterally pray for the forgiveness of His enemies without their repenting and before their repenting. Even on the cross, He said, Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do. Now, we are certainly to emulate Christ in terms of our gracious attitude toward those who have violated us, and we must always stand ready to forgive at the drop of a hat.

The whole system of church discipline in the New Testament and the judgment at the gates of Israel and the Old Testament has to do with seeking redress before the councils of the church for those who have violated us and who have not repented. And there are those occasions where we can withhold our beneficence towards people if they have sinned against us and have not repented, just as God will not just unilaterally forgive everybody unless they repent. Now, the other side of that is that if somebody does violate us and that person repents, if we refuse to forgive them, then we heap piles of coals upon our own heads. It is our absolute duty to forgive those who repent of their sins against us, with the severe warnings that Jesus gives. If we refuse to forgive those who sin against us when they repent, how can we expect God to forgive us? We live by forgiveness, and we should be manifesting a spirit of forgiveness in response to the grace and tenderness of God. Well, what does repentance mean? Repentance means a godly sorrow for having broken the law of God, having violated the relationship with God, having violated our relationships with each other. That is a true sorrow, and a sorrow that carries with it a desire and a resolve to turn away from that sin.

It's not simply enough to acknowledge that I'm guilty, but I have to say in my guilt, not only am I guilty, but I'm sorry, and oh God, please help me not to do that again. Now obviously, we're told by Jesus that if your brother sins against you seven times seventy and repents seven times seventy, what are you supposed to do? You're supposed to forgive seventy times seven, and that may be that you begin to wonder of the genuineness and sincerity of the person's repentance when they continue to commit the same sin.

But that's the nature of sin, and that's the nature of sinners. All of us have been guilty in our lives of committing the same sin more than once. But when God forgives a sin, real forgiveness doesn't keep track, as we will see in a moment. Repentance, the word in the New Testament, is the word metanoia, which literally means a changing of the mind. Now it's not just an intellectual conclusion that is different from a former conclusion, but suddenly I begin to see my sin for what it really is, and where before I was not bothered by it or I rationalized it, now I change my mind and I'm ready to acknowledge the reality of my guilt and to turn from my rationalizings and my attempts to deny the reality of my guilt. Now when that condition is met, when true repentance, which involves an acknowledgment of your guilt and a sorrow for your guilt and a resolve to turn away from your guilt, that is followed by the remission of sins. Now, if we turn to the book of Isaiah in the first chapter, at verse 18, we read these words, "'Come now and let us reason together,' says the Lord. Though your sins are like scarlet, they shall be as white as snow. Though they are red like crimson, they shall be as wool." Here in the poetic expression of the prophet, we get the stark contrast between blood redness and pure whiteness. For with forgiveness and the remission of sin comes the cleansing of the soul by the pardon of God. What does David say? Purge me with hyssop, and I will be clean.

Wash me, and I will be as snow. And this is the promise of God. The term remission means to send away. The word mission means to send, missio. We have missiles. We have missives. We have missions. We have missionaries.

All are involved in some kind of sending activity. Well, what we're talking about with the remission of sins is God's sending our sins away from us, where He says, as far as the east is from the west, so far do I remove your transgressions from you. Isaiah in the temple, when the seraph came with the tongs to the altar, took that hot coal and came and put it on the mouth of the prophet. The angel said to Isaiah, behold, your iniquity is forgiven, and your sins have been taken away.

They have been removed from us. That's what happens, and in the place of that burden of guilt comes the cleansing of God, of the soul. That which I say, which was scarlet, now is white as snow.

That which was crimson now becomes as wool. Now, we have a popular expression here about forgiving and forgetting, and the idea is that God forgets our sins. When He pronounces us forgiven, He forgets our sins. Now, we can have a very serious misunderstanding of that. It's not as though when we ask God to forgive us, and He remits our sins and removes them from us and sends them away, that all of a sudden He has a memory lapse, and the great God of heaven, who is omniscient, suddenly can no longer remember that we ever sinned against Him.

That's not what happens. It's not that God forgets, literally, the information of the reality of my sin. But the point of the Scripture here is that God remembers our sins against us no more. Now, a few moments ago I talked about repeated forgiving to repeated offenses, and this is the other thing that we need to understand. When we forgive people, what do we mean by that? When somebody comes up to me and says, I'm sorry, I did this and this and I violated you, and I'll say that's okay, forget it, I forgive you. What does that mean?

We can be very cheap when we say that. Yeah, it's okay, don't worry about it. There is no seventy times seven, really, because once I forgive you of a transgression, if you do it again, it's as if it were the first time, because by giving my forgiveness the first time, I have made a commitment not to remember that transgression against you again. It's not that I forget it, I know it happened, but when the second time comes around, I can't say that's two. It's one, because it's a new relationship, and that's what we need to learn in the discipline of our granting forgiveness to other people, that when we say that we forgive people, our yay needs to be yay and our nay needs to be nay.

The ministry of the gospel is called in the New Testament the ministry of reconciliation, and the chief person to whom we are reconciled is God Himself. And that vertical model of reconciliation is to mirror and reflect the way we're supposed to seek reconciliation on the horizontal level with human relationships. I know that every person has broken relationships. I've had broken relationships, broken relationships that pained me deeply. Some I can think of times in my life where I've had broken relationships with people that were wonderfully and marvelously restored. I also can remember times of having broken relationships with people who were never restored, and probably never will be restored, and that's a failure.

There's something seriously wrong. Sometimes you can do everything you know how to seek reconciliation and never achieve it. It can't be done. But we are to seek reconciliation. Now reconciliation, the one necessary requirement for reconciliation is estrangement.

People who aren't estranged don't need to be reconciled. So the prior condition that requires reconciliation is estrangement, and that's one of the problems we have in our culture with God. People don't really believe that they're estranged from God. People don't really believe that they're at enmity of God, but if you have sinned against God and have never repented before God, you are God's enemy.

You are in a posture of hostility and estrangement toward the living God. And the only way you can be reconciled to that God is through coming to the Mediator, who is Christ, and repenting of your sin. God stands ready to reconcile with you no matter what you've done in your life. But He will not be reconciled with you without repentance. But the good news is when you repent, He reconciles.

He enters into a whole new relationship with you. And at an earthly level, when that happens, when relations have been broken, and then they are brought together again, it's a magnificent, magnificent thing. That's why we have the fifth R, which is restoration. That's the benefit of forgiveness. That's the benefit of repentance. David can say, restore to me the joy of my salvation. And the restoration of a child of God to God is the subject of which the angels dance. We remember the prodigal son and of the great story of the restoration of that young man with his father. In a very real sense, that's our story in terms of our relationship with God. But it's not only our relationship with God. We can have the restoration of marriages, of friendships, of other relationships in our community because of the power of forgiveness. In fact, what the whole gospel is all about ultimately is cosmic restoration. The new heaven and the new earth brought about through the work of One who came to reconcile all things to Himself. That's why forgiveness, its reality, its objective character is at the very heart of the Christian faith. Forgiveness, the starting point for the restoration of marriages, friendships, and every broken relationship in our lives.

I hope you've been helped by Dr. R.C. Sproul's message today here on Renewing Your Mind. It's from his series Dealing with Difficult Problems. In six lessons, R.C. points us to practical and biblical solutions to understanding God's will. We can make sense of suffering and how to deal with anxiety and anger. We'd like to send you this six-session series on a single DVD.

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Our number again is 800-435-4343, and our web address is renewingyourmind.org. Seeking solutions for life's problems should send us directly to the pages of Scripture. If you're facing an issue and need to know what God has said about it, let me encourage you to try our online chat service. We call it Ask Ligonier. Our well-trained team here and around the world is ready to answer any theological question you may have. It's available 24 hours a day, six days a week, and you can access it by going to ask.ligonier.org. Let me repeat that.

It's ask.ligonier.org. Well, tomorrow Dr. Sproul helps us deal with a problem that plagues so many of us today. Jesus said, why are you worried, ye of little faith? Our worries and anxieties really do come from a lack of trust in the promises of God. We hope you'll join us tomorrow as RC identifies the antidote for anxiety. .