Colossians 3.
It will be just two verses today.
Beginning in verse 12.
"Put on then (Paul says)
as God's chosen ones,
holy and beloved,
compassionate hearts,
kindness,
humility,
meekness,
and patience;
bearing with one another,
and if one has a complaint against another
forgiving each other,
as the Lord has forgiven you,
so you also must forgive."
Let's pray.
Father, You know.
Lord, You know our need this hour.
Father, I believe in the Holy Spirit,
and I pray You'd meet with Your people this hour
and bless Your Word to us all.
I pray You'd use it
to help Your people.
Father, that we would genuinely be helped.
That You would speak to us.
Lord, perhaps there's even one here
who this very subject matter
is what stands between You and them,
and I pray You might bring that wall down
today, Lord, if it would please You.
We ask You to meet with us
and bless us by Your Spirit.
We ask it for Jesus' sake
and in His name, Amen.
Well, the last time we were in Colossians,
we were looking at verse 12 here
where Paul transitions from this putting to death,
or putting off of those things associated
with the old man or the old self.
And we discussed how Paul presents
these five virtues,
as he calls them garments or clothing
that the Christian is called to put on.
And we discovered that these really
are none other than the virtues
of the Lord Jesus Himself
that flow to us and through us
by way of the Holy Spirit
as we set our minds and our eyes
upon the Lord Jesus Christ.
And so Paul continues to build upon these virtues here,
moving from what are primarily attitudes to actions.
Really, that's what we have here in v. 12.
Heart attitudes.
Heart attitudes that really are essential
prerequisites if you will to these actions
or participles that follow in v. 13,
bearing and forgiving.
Bearing with one another
and forgiving one another.
In our text, the ESV says "forgiving each other."
Bearing with another and forgiving each other.
That requires a heart of humility.
That requires a heart of compassion.
It requires a heart of patience.
There's a progression in Paul's teaching
really at the beginning of the chapter,
but particularly from v. 12-13.
Paul takes us from the individual adorning
or putting on of Christ's virtues,
to the public application of them.
More particularly, the application of them
within the church body.
These "one another" statements
we find strewn throughout the New Testament are unique.
They're unique to the church.
We would do well to do our own
little word study of all these
New Testament phrases,
these "one another" phrases.
I think Tim, at one point,
you made a list of those, didn't you?
There was quite a few of them.
There are like 50-something of them. There's a lot of them.
I didn't look them all up. But very significant.
Very significant in church life.
If you thought church life
and your relationship with your brothers and sisters,
it's kind of take it or leave it;
doesn't really matter.
I mean, they're nice people and all.
I like it. I enjoy spending time with them.
But my involvement or interaction with them
is really not all that important.
Well, you'd be sadly mistaken.
We'll discuss that more in a minute.
But these are two huge imperatives
here in v. 13.
These are not secondary items.
These are foundational to Christian living.
They're foundational to church relationships.
That's really what Paul's addressing here.
Although it certainly has broader applications.
These are not optional.
They're commands.
We as the people of God
are commanded by God
to bear and to forgive.
Let's look at this first one briefly.
What exactly does it mean
to bear with one another?
The ESV folks chose to go with the word "bearing,"
which has multiple definitions
depending on how it's used.
While the King James guys went with the term "forbearing."
That's the English language for you, right?
Where bearing and forbearing
can mean the same thing.
And they do.
The Greek word here is anecho.
It's a word that literally means
to hold up.
To hold oneself erect and firm
against something.
It's also a word that conveys this idea
of enduring or tolerating.
That is a load bearing wall.
That means it's a wall that holds up
under the weight that's placed upon it.
And it does so in an enduring fashion.
It doesn't give way.
At least, we hope it doesn't.
That's what the Greek word means here.
Relating to one another,
it means to enduringly hold up
what another places upon you.
Simply put, tolerating them.
Maybe you might be doing that this morning with me.
In a more negative tone,
to put up with them.
In fact, a handful of translations
including the NASB,
actually use that phrase,
"put up with," in Matthew 17:17,
Mark 9:19, Luke 9:41.
When Jesus says,
"How long shall I put up with you?"
The ESV renders it,
"O faithless and twisted generation,
how long am I to be with you?
How long am I to bear with you?"
There it is. That's our term.
Bear with you.
Or put up with you.
Having clothed ourselves with the virtues
of Jesus Christ in v. 12,
Paul says now see to it that you
bear with one another.
Put up with one another.
Put up with each other's faults and shortcomings.
Put up with each other's differences.
Put up with each other's dislikes.
Put up with each other's annoying habits.
Put up with people who are slow to learn.
Put up with people that are just obstinate.
Put up with people that are just plain difficult to deal with.
Put up with them Paul says.
How long, Jesus says, am I to bear with you?
What was the answer?
His whole life, right?
You think about being the holy Son of God on earth.
We're talking about pure perfection
personified in the midst of
just woefully imperfect people.
He calls them faithless and twisted.
Think about it.
This was every day of His life.
Every day of His life He was surrounded
by this constant reminder.
Everywhere He turned,
faithless and twisted.
Twisted and faithless.
Jesus lived daily bearing with the likes of such.
Nobody had to bear more than Jesus.
No wonder He ran off to the mountainside to pray.
Get away from it all.
Get this. The answer to His own question,
"how long shall I bear with you?"
The answer for Him is the same for you and I.
Till we die.
That's how long.
Jesus states in a question
what Paul, by the Holy Spirit,
puts in a commandment:
Bear with one another.
Brethren, it's part of God's purposed
design in your life,
to put difficult people in it.
That doesn't happen by chance.
It doesn't happen by accident.
It happens by divine design.
It's God's methodology of fashioning you
more and more like His Son.
See, that's the problem we have in life, right?
We're not enough like Jesus.
But God, you see, has set us in motion.
He has set us on this life-long mission
of becoming more and more and more
like Him.
And that is wonderful, isn't it?
I trust you can look back
and see from today going back
in your life, you can see those realities.
Though it feels like we've got a long way to go.
It's wonderful, but the process
can be, and I'd say, often is
a painful one.
The command of bearing with one another
necessitates that such types of people
are placed in our life that will require us
to bear or put up with, right?
The same with forgiveness
which we're about to talk about here in a minute.
But that reality of having such people
in our lives,
that's one of the major reasons
why "lone ranger" Christianity
is an unbiblical concept.
I don't need the church. I've got a mission from God.
He's called me to preach or He's called me to do this.
I don't need to commit myself to the church.
That's not biblical.
Isolation is not God's will for His people.
God created us for relationships.
He created us for relationship with Him
and relationship with one another.
And the great tragedy of the fall
was that relationship with Him
was completely severed.
And in our broken, fallen condition,
we've replaced that relationship
with everything under the sun,
primarily to self-consumption
and self-worship.
Jesus came to fix that.
In fact, the chief end of the gospel
is to restore that relationship.
To bring estranged, separated sinners
to Himself;
into relationship with God Almighty Himself.
Martin Luther said it was John 3:16
which I won't argue with.
That's a great verse.
But I think one of the greatest
one-verse summaries of the gospel
is 1 Peter 3:18.
"For Christ suffered once for sins..."
Hallelujah!
"...The righteous for the unrighteous."
For what purpose? For what end?
"...That He might bring us to God."
That's it, brethren.
What a glorious reality that is.
You think about eternity.
You think about glory.
What do we know?
Not a whole lot.
We know this though,
God Himself will be there,
and His children will be there, right?
That's what matters.
Not a whole lot we know more than that.
But that's the glorious reality we do know.
That's where God's going to be.
This thing is all about relationships.
Eternal relationships.
Those eternal relationships, however,
they don't start when we physically die
in this life.
They don't start when we pass
into the next realm.
They start the moment we die with Christ
and are given the gift of eternal life
through faith in Him.
God in His gospel gives us eternal life
and thereby brings us into eternal relationships
with one another that start right here
in the here and now.
And that's significant. That's very important to grasp.
Church relations are not secondary -
not in God's Word.
Listen to this - Romans 12:5,
"So we, though many, are one body
in Christ and individually members
one of another."
That's pretty intimate.
There are several places in the New Testament
that speak this way.
Christ laid down His life for the church.
God created marriage for that primary reason,
did He not?
To display His love;
to display this inseparable union.
Make no mistake about it,
homosexuality,
transgender,
same-sex marriage,
casual sex,
the porn industry,
divorce rates through the roof,
at the base of it all,
at the bottom of it all
lies one grand satanic design
to mar this beautiful, wonderful picture
of Jesus Christ and His bride;
of Jesus being made one
with those undeserving people,
those undeserving individuals,
yet the most privileged in the entire universe.
It's wonderful.
Yes, most certainly,
salvation is personal.
It's at an individual level.
But it doesn't stay there, you see.
It doesn't stay there.
When God saves a sinner,
He deals a death blow
to that old self.
And I emphasize self.
He transfers them out of that kingdom of darkness.
He places them in the kingdom of His dear Son.
In that kingdom, they're pursuing His will.
It's a new realm.
Everything's new.
New life, new clothes,
new community.
God intends for His people
to function together
in this new community He calls the church.
And texts like this one before us right here,
just these few sentences,
are reasons to be convinced
of the importance of church membership.
All of these one another statements in the New Testament,
they point to a clear, identifiable
body of believers committed
and united in fashion to the service,
worship, and commission
of the Lord Jesus Christ.
One of the surest proofs
of regenerate church membership
is found in the ability of the members within it
not to preach,
not to evangelize,
not even to pray.
Now, those things are
absolutely essential and very important.
But the devil has his cohorts doing that
all over the place.
The reality of redemption
is most clearly expressed
in the demonstration of God's grace
being worked out relationally
with His people in the church.
It is.
And so when difficult people are placed
in your pathway,
it's not for the purpose of teaching you
how to repel;
how to keep your distance;
how to avoid them; how to run from them.
It's for the purpose
of letting God's grace -
these virtues of Jesus Christ here -
shine like the blazing sun
in the midst of a dark - in Jesus' words -
twisted and faithfless generation.
So the next time you're finding it
hard to bear with someone,
be it your brother or sister,
just remember the kind forbearance
that God has shown you.
Do you remember how patient He was with you?
How long-suffering?
Oh, how He tolerated all your ugliness?
All your annoying, backward ways?
Not only did He bear with you
in all your overtly evil ways
prior to your salvation,
His forbearance has continued
throughout all your stumblings and failures
that you have incurred despite all
the innumerable blessings that He's poured
over your head.
God's people have every reason
to bear with one another
in whatever fashion He calls us to do so.
And bearing with one another,
while it most certainly is a virtue of Jesus Christ,
it's not exactly the most flourishing
demonstration of those virtues.
Douglas Moo points out in v. 12,
he suggests that "bearing with one another
does not even require the greatest display
of Christian kindness and patience.
But it is a necessary first step
in establishing community."
And it's a step that's followed
by this next progression.
Paul adds, "And if one has a complaint
against another, forgiving each other."
Some translations stick with the common
"one another" phraseology here.
They mean the exact same thing.
I prefer using the "one another,"
as the King James does.
But let me just stop here.
I'm going to grab this pen.
I just want to get three or four.
I want you to tell me.
I want to hear somebody tell me
what does it mean to forgive?
I want to write three or four definitions down.
Anyone. What does it mean to forgive?
Even if it's one word.
Yes, brother?
To let go.
Okay. We've got let go. Anyone else?
Reconcile. We've got that.
Two more.
Or one more.
Release a debt. That's a good one.
Release a debt/cancel. Okay.
We're all on the same page.
It's pretty much what we all were thinking
even though we didn't say it.
That's what we understand the term to mean, right?
To pardon, to cancel, to excuse,
to let go, reconcile.
Forgiving here in our text -
the word translated forgiving -
is the Greek work charizomenoi,
which I'm probably not pronouncing correctly.
Charizomenoi.
And it might surprise you -
it did me, it took up a good part of my day -
the meaning of this Greek word is this:
to gratify.
To bestow in kindness.
Grant as a free favor.
That comes directly out of my Mounce Greek Dictionary.
Thayer's Lexicon: "to do something pleasant
or agreeable to one.
To do favor to;
(again), gratify,
universally to show oneself gracious,
kind, and benevolent."
Now, I didn't realize before I got into this text
that there's actually three Greek words
that get translated "forgive, forgiving, forgiven, forgiveness."
And the primary one is the word aphiemi.
That's our word forgive in about 80%
of the times in Scripture you see it.
And that's the word that primarily means
to send away, but it conveys the same idea
that was just aired, right?
Let go, reconcile, pardon, cancel, clear.
It's forgive as we know the term forgive.
But that's not our word here in the text.
It's the word charizomenoi.
And it's a word that shows up 23 times
in the New Testament,
half of which are translated forgive,
depending on the translation.
Most of the other times,
it's give or grant.
And that's what this word primarily conveys.
To give or bestow kindness.
To grant free favor.
To do something pleasant, gracious,
kind to another.
As one Greek scholar stated,
"while it's not the common word
for remission and forgiveness,
it is one of richer content,
emphasizing the gracious nature
of the pardon."
Jesus uses this term
in sharing the story of forgiveness
with Simon the Pharisee
as he's sitting in his house, reclining at table, you remember that?
Where He talks about the money lender
who had two debtors.
One who had a massive debt,
and one who had a small debt.
And he forgave them both,
and He asked him who's going to love most,
and of course, the one who was forgiven most.
And using that word, Jesus was underscoring
the gracious nature or kind bestowal
that the money lender
had towards these debtors.
(unintelligible)
It wasn't just a legal act of removing debt.
It was heartless.
But a very gracious, kind act
of removing the obligation
for those men to pay him back.
And the response, of course, was
the one who owed the most,
loved the most.
And he was using that illustration
because a prostitute was wiping her hair on his feet.
And the Pharisees in their self-righteousness
were having some problems with that.
But Paul uses this word in Romans 8:32.
Well known verse.
"He who did not spare His own Son,
but gave Him up for us all,
how will He not also with Him
graciously give us all things?"
There's our word: give.
The word "give" is charizomenoi.
Charizomenoi.
In other words, how will God
not also with Christ,
graciously charizomenoi us all things?
And while the word there in that context
of that verse is not communicating forgiveness,
it is communicating the magnitude
of the giving.
The magnitude of the kindness
and gracious favor God is extending
in this open-ended promise.
Another instance is Paul's letter
to the Galatians.
In Galatians 3:18, Paul says,
"For if the inheritance comes by the law,
it no longer comes by promise,
but God gave it to Abraham
by a promise."
The word gave - that's our word.
Gave what?
The inheritance.
Again, the word's being used to convey
an unbelievable bestowal of favor
and gifting.
Something that is just freely
and wonderfully given.
And I share those verses to help us
get a better taste of the breadth
and depth of this term here: forgiving.
And it is translated "forgiven"
even in this letter.
If you look over to chapter 2:13,
Paul says, "And you who were dead
in your trespasses,
in the uncircumcision of your flesh,
God made alive together with Him,
having forgiven us all our trespasses."
Paul here elects to use the word:
charizomenoi,
instead of aphiemi -
the word standardly used for forgiveness,
and I think he does so to underscore
the incredible kindness of God
in such an act as forgiving
all our trespasses.
Okay, so now we have a clearer scope
of this word "forgiving,"
used in the text before us.
Let's look again at what Paul has to say here.
"And if one has a complaint against another,
forgiving each other."
Paul rightly assumes there's going to be
problems in the church.
You gather a few hundred people together
on a regular basis,
and they're still dwelling in their mortal flesh,
you're probably going to have a problem or two pop up, right?
There's a pretty good chance that someone's
going to have a complaint
as Paul calls it against another.
Legitimate or not,
complaints or going to happen.
If and when they do,
Paul doesn't say,
just seek to avoid that person
as much as you can.
No, he says forgive each other.
Have a charizomenoi mindset
with one another.
Be gracious.
Bestow kindness.
Forgive that thing and move on.
Not separate. Move on together.
Don't begrudgingly or mechanically
say the words, "I forgive you,"
and yet your heart is still holding on to that thing.
That's not biblical forgiveness.
That's biblical bitterness.
The biblical term here is telling us
to return that complaint or offense
with something pleasant.
Freely give it. Don't withhold it.
Graciously grant the pardon.
Release that thing. Let it go.
Meet it with kindness.
Yeah, but if you only knew brother...
I don't.
But the Lord knows.
And He says let that thing go.
In fact, not only let it go, but do it
in such a fashion that it communicates
a gracious and a kind spirit.
Yeah, but this isn't the first time
they've done this to me.
"Seventy times seven," Jesus tells Peter.
When he asked Him, Lord,
how many times shall I forgive my brother?
Okay, well, maybe that's for little sins.
What about when they're big sins?
And they're multiple times?
Paul has the answer for that
right here in our text.
"As the Lord has forgiven you..."
"As the Lord has forgiven you,
so you also must forgive."
Wow.
That's a stunning statement.
You know, in a verse like this,
we're apt to focus on the conclusion of the matter.
Okay. You also must forgive.
I need to be a forgiving person. I get it.
Not so fast.
Look at the beginning of the statement.
It's really most remarkable.
Notice the "as so" construction here.
As the Lord has forgiven you,
so you also must forgive.
As - in the same manner;
to the extent that God has forgiven
your sins against Him,
so you need to likewise
forgive other sins against you.
That's what's being said here.
This short phrase here: "As the Lord has forgiven you..."
That phrase represents the basis
and foundation for all Christian forgiveness.
Christians forgive
because they're a forgiven people.
Forgiven people forgive.
In fact, that's what I titled my message.
Forgiven people forgive.
You want an acid test as to who's real;
who's not.
Let a man or woman be wronged.
Before long, you'll find out the extent
to which they've been forgiven.
People who get all hung up
over little insignificant matters of life
and can't seem to let such things go
have a very, very small view of God,
and a very, very small view
of themselves before a holy God;
their sin before a holy God.
Now, I'm not saying -
I'm not even suggesting forgiveness
is an easy thing.
And I'm not saying it's an automatic thing.
But by Scriptural authority,
I can assure you that forgiven people
do forgive.
We perform what we call
the adhesion tape test at work.
We build ground support equipment
for military aircraft.
And unfortunately, they fall under
the same specifications the aircraft does.
And some of the stuff we do, especially the paint and finishes,
so we have all these hoops we have to jump through
and all these certain tests we've got to run.
And so, basically, what it is is you get a test panel,
you mix up your paint.
There's all kinds of variables that can throw this thing off.
The whole point of the test is to determine
if there's true, genuine adhesion
of the paint to the component.
You've got to have that.
You can't have that flaking off.
It's got to be quality.
It's got to meet a certain quality.
So what they do is you spray this panel,
let it dry, apply this military grade
masking tape basically,
and you take a razor blade
and you start scoring that masking tape,
and you let it sit for awhile.
You come back and you pull that tape up.
You pull that tape up.
And if there's any paint on that tape,
it's not proper adhesion.
That piece needs to go back and get blasted.
You start all over.
You pull that tape up and it's clean,
you have perfect adhesion.
A good, quality approved part.
It can move on.
I was thinking about that in relation to the Christian life,
particularly this - forgiveness.
It seemed like a good analogy
of whether we have genuine adherence
to Christ.
When the Lord presses on you
the tape test of forgiveness,
and allows you to be scored and cut deeply
by another person,
are we adhered to Christ?
When the tape's pulled back,
what's the story?
When the tape's pulled back, the testing's over,
are we holding fast to Christ?
Are we holding fast to Him?
And proving so by letting all those offenses go
as Christ let ours go?
Or are we fixated back here on the tape?
Are we hanging on to the cuts?
Are we not properly bonded to Christ?
Christian, mark this down
and be fully persuaded of this in your mind.
Because there's not any situation -
I mean any -
not any situation that could ever occur,
not one act of providence
that could ever befall you,
no matter how bad,
no matter how horrific,
that does not demand your forgiveness.
We had a woman -
I've told this story before.
We had a woman going to Fatty's on a regular basis,
and we were helping her.
She lived over in our neighborhood.
And you know, you spend time with somebody
and you get to know them.
We start digging a little bit,
and we finally got to the issue
that was keeping her from Christ.
It was a horrific story, horrific background.
As a child, she was molested
and horribly, horribly abused
by her step-dad.
She told me with much sorrow and tears.
"I cannot do it.
I cannot forgive him."
And I told her, you have to,
or you'll never know the forgiveness of God.
And I realize, I've been around enough,
in a room this size,
some of you have gone through similar things.
So, I'm not belittling it.
And I understand that is incredibly wicked and evil.
I'm sure it's an absolute nightmare
for anyone to have to go through.
But let me tell you,
it's not even close,
dear brother or sister,
it's not even close to the wickedness
and evil that you have willfully expressed
against a pure and holy God.
It's not.
You see, "I can't forgive him."
That flows from a heart that's never seen
its own filth and wickedness before a holy God.
Because if it had, such a person,
they would see themselves no different than that man.
They would quickly conclude
they're just as evil.
They're the same lump. The same guilt.
The same need.
You see, when the scales of self-deception
fall off and you see yourself in such a light,
when you become aware that such a thing as that can be forgiven,
such wickedness and sin can be forgiven,
such rebellion, such self-absorption,
one who is so guilty of really
the greatest treason in the universe;
if they can be forgiven, that's a game changer.
That changes everything.
Mark it down. The failure to forgive
is a failure to see the enormity
of our own sin
and the enormity of God's incredible mercy
toward us.
Christian, if you're struggling here,
here's why.
You've got to get your eyes off you.
You've got to get your eyes off that person.
You've got to get them on Jesus Christ.
And as you do that,
you will see in Him
reason upon reason upon reason
to shed any and all offenses toward you.
Like my dad used to say,
like water off a duck's back,
offenses will just roll.
The cross has the power to do such things.
This is huge.
Forgiveness is a really, really big issue.
So big, Jesus touches on it several times
in His ministry, especially in His Sermon on the Mount.
Let's turn there. We'll scan through
the Sermon on the Mount.
Just look at the places where Jesus
at least makes reference to the concept
of forgiveness.
Matthew 5:7
"Blessed are the merciful,
for they shall receive mercy."
Here we find Jesus certainly implying forgiveness, right?
If we are extending mercy to others,
we're showing kindness and compassion
to an offender, right?
Merciful.
That kind of rings with our word charizomenoi, right?
Verse 23, "So if you are offering your gift
at the altar and there remember
that your brother has something against you,
leave your gift there before the altar
and go, be reconciled to your brother,
and then come and offer your gift.
Come to terms quickly with your accuser
while you're going with him to court,
lest your accuser hand you over to the judge,
and the judge to the guard,
and you be put in prison.
Truly, I say to you, you will never get out
until you've paid the last penny."
This is the same language
Jesus uses in another parable
we might look at here in a minute.
Is that time right?
But the simple teaching here in v. 23,
if you have an issue with a brother or sister,
if there's an offense,
you need to get that thing dealt with.
And right now.
That's an A1 number one priority.
Leave your gift at the altar, He says.
Forget about worship.
Forget about God even hearing your prayers.
As long as this thing's present,
that's an obstruction to God.
Go clear up the matter, He says, now.
Forgive. Reconcile.
Then, you're good to go.
But this thing of offense
has to be taken care of.
V. 39, "But I say unto you,
do not resist the one who is evil,
but if anyone slaps you on the right cheek
turn to him the other also,
and if anyone would sue you
and take your tunic,
let him have your cloak as well."
Wow.
Those are challenging verses.
Now that is the spirit of charizomenoi,
is it not?
That's somebody who's seen
something of themselves
in the blazing light of God's glory.
Mere flesh and blood can't do those things right there.
Matthew 6:9,
"Pray then like this..."
Jesus gives instruction on how to pray.
Down to v. 12, "Forgive us our debts,
as we also have forgiven our debtors."
You see how Jesus ties forgiveness to prayer here?
Praying with an unforgiving spirit,
you might as well be praying to that wall.
This thing is so important.
After Jesus finishes His instruction on prayer,
He continues on with the subject.
V. 14, "For if you forgive others their trespasses,
your heavenly Father
will also forgive you,
but if you do not forgive others their trespasses,
neither will your Father forgive your trespasses."
Whoa.
Now Jesus has a number of stunning,
blow-you-away statements in this sermon,
but this has got to be one of the most shocking ones of all.
If those folks were sitting there
eating bread and fish and He was preaching,
I'd venture to say several men stopped chewing.
Or some might even start choking.
This world is full, and I mean full
of people like the woman I just mentioned
that used to go to Fatty's
whose father she could not forgive.
People are full of bitterness and anger
and resentment.
And they're people that feel fully justified in it.
These words spoken by our Lord here,
they seem utterly absurd to them.
"What is that?
Surely He doesn't mean that.
I mean, I love God -
nobody's telling me any different.
Me and God, we got a thing going.
I was sick back in '98
on my deathbed in the hospital,
God brought me out of it.
He saved me from it.
I know I'm on good terms with Him.
I've always believed.
I believe John 3:16, you know.
I believe God.
And it says whosoever believes shall not perish, but have eternal life.
Once saved, always saved."
I would say this verse does not at all
conflict with John 3:16
in any way, shape, or form.
And I would say, once saved, yes,
you are always saved. Hallelujah!
The problem is not with the Scripture.
The problem is with the assumption.
An assumption that my belief,
my believing, my "faith"
trumps all other realities
and truth of Scripture.
And the reality is, as Jesus so clearly expresses here,
if you do not forgive others,
you will not know the forgiveness of God.
That's serious.
If you're sitting here this morning
and you're holding on to something
you can't forgive, you need to hear this.
Hear it again: Jesus says you will never know
the forgiveness of God,
if you don't let that thing go.
Is it worth it?
Is it worth your never-dying soul?
And the reason why a person
who can never come to the place of forgiveness in their heart -
the reason why they can't be forgiven,
it's not because God forgave them at one time
and now they've come to this place
where now they can't forgive this person,
so He takes away their salvation.
No, that's not it at all.
The reason why they'll never know the forgiveness of God
is because they've never truly seen
the forgiveness of God themselves.
And that's because they've never,
as I said, never really seen themselves
in light of who they really are
before a holy God.
They've simply laid hold of a feel-good gospel
which is no gospel at all,
and ironically, it has them feeling quite miserable
and discontent and full of hate.
Again, forgiven people forgive.
Those who understand something
of the magnitude of their offense towards God,
they learn to forgive.
Matthew 7, "Judge not, that you be not judged.
For with the judgment you pronounce, you will be judged;
with the measure you use, it will be measured to you."
This kind of echoes back to the verse we just read, right?
If you can't forgive that brother
for speaking ill of you,
you will drown
in the absolute fury of God
poured out on you for profaning His name
with all manner of blasphemies
and perverted speech.
Verse 12, "So whatever you wish
that others would do to you,
do also to them."
Again, this is the spirit of charizomenoi.
An others- mindedness.
An others-mindedness to do them good.
And to shower them with kindness.
Verse 24, "Everyone who hears these words of Mine..."
Jesus closes the message.
"Everyone then who hears these words of Mine
and does them will be like unto the wise man
who built his house on the rock."
And the ones who don't do these words of Jesus,
well, you know, they just won't get as many rewards
when they get into heaven.
That's not what Jesus teaches.
No, He likens those people
who do not do His words -
He likens them to houses that are built
on a shoreline in the aftermath
of a massive hurricane.
We've all seen those pictures, right?
Complete devastation.
Complete destruction.
That's how serious forgiveness is.
So serious Jesus draws attention to it again in Matthew 18.
I was going to have us turn there, but I'm not
for the sake of time.
But read that account,
where the man owes the king
a great sum of money.
In his hypocrisy, he goes to strangle
and throw those who owe him far less money.
In the same statement He used
in that other verse we looked at.
You won't get out until you've paid the last penny.
And the implication there is that some amount,
100 thousand talents -
you try to compare the currencies on google
and you get all kinds of conflicting results,
but it is a massive sum of money.
Well into the billions.
The idea Jesus is trying to get across
is you'll never pay it.
You're never getting out.
You go in with the unforgiveness,
you get in that prison,
you get locked up with an unforgiving heart,
you're never getting out.
So while you're not in, let it go.
That's the message.
Jesus ends it by saying,
"So also My heavenly Father will do to every one of you
who does not forgive your brother from your heart."
Wow.
From the heart.
He's looking at the heart.
It kind of makes complaining,
a complaining brother or sister
rather insignificant, doesn't it?
It makes that seemingly large offense
not so large at all.
It kind of makes Jesus' debt that He paid for me,
that He delivered me from
rather glorious.
It ought to provoke our minds
to start counting all of the hundreds of thousands of talents
that have been tossed into the sea
of God's forgetfulness.
Sent away as it were
as far as the east is from the west.
(I'm sorry, that's the east and that's the west, isn't it?
So far, the Scripture says,
has He removed our sins from us.
That truth ought to melt our hearts
into this charizomenoi - that Greek term -
that kindness and graciousness
and it should pour out into the lives
of God's people in relationships with others.
There's so much more that could be said
about the subject of forgiveness.
I just can't get it all in in one message.
But I do want to wrap up here
by just appealing to anybody,
anybody in here who might be struggling with this
letting go of offenses.
Perhaps you are holding a grudge against someone.
And you know if you are.
I encourage you to take a fresh look at the cross.
And the wonderful person
who was nailed there to it.
For crimes far, far worse
than those you're holding on to.
I stand before you today as one
who wrestled and struggled with forgiveness
at a very deep level.
And by God's grace alone,
through some of these realities I'm sharing with you today,
the Lord was pleased to help me through it.
And I'm convinced this is one of those
working out your salvation with fear and trembling.
Forgiveness has to happen.
It has to be a reality.
It has to be worked out within you or else.
Oh, how everying in our flesh
cries out for vengeance and self-pity.
We want people to know we were wronged!
We want payback for that
which made us suffer.
Listen to these words:
"Consider Him who endured from sinners
such hostility against Himself.
When He was reviled,
He didn't revile in return.
When He suffered, He did not threaten,
but continued entrusting Himself
to Him who judges justly."
That's how Jesus handled the injuries of others.
He didn't throw a pity party.
He didn't hold a grudge.
He didn't broadcast it to others.
He knew His Father knew
and trusted Him.
And that was enough.
See, when we're wronged by others,
it answers the question:
just how precious and sufficient is the Lord to me?
Is it enough that God knows I was wronged?
Or do I need to let others know about it?
That's a real test, isn't it?
Dying to our own woundedness.
Praise be to God the cross dispels it all.
I'm going to end by quoting Isaiah 53 here.
Just listen to this:
This is what the Lord Jesus subjected Himself to
for the sole purpose of forgiving sin.
"He was despised
and we esteemed Him not.
Surely, He has borne our griefs
and carried our sorrows,
yet we esteemed Him stricken,
smitten by God and afflicted.
He was pierced for our transgressions.
He was crushed for our iniquities.
Upon Him was the chastisement
that brought us peace,
and with His wounds, we are healed.
All we, like sheep, have gone astray.
We've turned every one to his own way.
And the Lord has laid on Him
the iniquity of us all.
He was oppressed
and He was afflicted.
He opened not His mouth,
like a lamb is led to the slaughter,
like a sheep that before its shearers is silent,
so He opened not His mouth."
That reality afresh within our minds
helps us die to our own woundedness.
That reality when it's registered within
helps kill an unforgiving heart.
Thank you.
Father, we ask You to bless Your Word to us.
We thank You for being such a forgiving God.
Oh, that those that know it not
might know it today.
We pray in Jesus' name,
Amen.