Mar 12
11
Forgiveness Works
Clay Curtis
If a man has ever truly heard the spirit of the law speak and beheld a glimpse of the depth of his sin, if he’s had fear strike his soul at the law’s condemning sentence, “Guilty! Guilty! Guilty!” then heard the Lord Jesus Christ whisper, “Lo, this hath touched thy lips; and thine iniquity is taken away, and thy sin purged” that man will spend the rest of his days trying to mortify that oppressive, old legalist that always wrestles to yoke him and his brethren. As he beholds that the kingdom of God is not meat and drink–he ceases to put confidence in the flesh (or emphasis on this flesh) but worships God in spirit and rejoices in Christ Jesus the Lord.
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“I am often called upon to sit at the bedside of folks who are about to die. Over the years I have become convinced that, on a purely natural level, dying people know how to live. I have yet to hear someone who is facing eternity say, “I wish I had bought a bigger house,” or “I regret not devoting more time to my career.” Instead, I have often heard plaintive groans such as, “I wish that I had been a better husband or wife,” or “If only I had spent more time with my kids,” or “Why did I waste so much time and energy on bitter grudges?” I have also noticed that those who attend a dying relative or friend quickly let go, if only for a short time, the petty differences on which they have expended precious energy. These natural lessons are of great spiritual value. We are told in Scripture that we are dying. In our youth, we know this in our heads. As the years go by, we not only know it in our heads, but also feel it in our bones…yet I am not convinced that we really believe it in our hearts. If we knew that we would not see tomorrow, which, by the way, we are not promised, what manner of folk might we be? How precious would one more gathering of the saints to worship be! How hungry would we be to hear the glorious Gospel of Sovereign Grace just once more! How easy it would be to say “I’m sorry,” or “Please forgive me!” How necessary would it be to embrace our loved ones; dandle our children on our knees! How ready would we be to receive kindness, mercy, even pity! David said in Psalm 39:4, “Lord, make me to know mine end, and the measure of my days, what it is; that I may know how frail I am.” Moses said in Psalm 90:12, “So teach us to number our days, that we may apply our hearts unto wisdom.” Death is a great university, and the lessons learned there are of inestimable worth. DEATH is LIFE 101.” –Pastor Tim James
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(extract) The FORGIVING Spirit of the Lord’s Prayer.
Octavius Winslow
“just as we have forgiven those who have sinned against us.” Matthew 6:12
To forgive, it has been remarked, is divine. If the forgiveness of sin is the sole prerogative of God, the highest and most gracious gift of heaven, then, man’s forgiveness of the wrong done him by his fellow bears a close resemblance to the divine. It was only by God that this precept of forgiveness of injury could be revealed, and it is only beneath the cross of the incarnate God it can be properly learned. It is in the region of our own forgiveness by God, that we learn the Christian precept of our forgiveness of others. As believers in the Lord Jesus, we stand before men discharged bankrupts. Passing out of God’s court of justice, released from a debt of “ten thousand talents,” we, perhaps, confront upon its threshold a fellow-servant owing us a “hundred pence.” The line of conduct towards our debtor is obvious and imperative. A pardoned sinner, all whose transgressions against Jehovah are fully and eternally forgiven, the great debt wholly cancelled, my duty to my fellow-sinner is written as with a sunbeam. Instead of grasping him by the throat, exclaiming, “Pay me what you owe me!” I am to deal with him as my Lord has dealt with me–fully releasing him from the claim. Forgiven, I am to forgive. How can I justly, or with any degree of assurance, put in a claim to be forgiven myself of God, while cherishing in my heart the spirit of unforgiveness towards man? This is Christian logic, Christian precept, yes, it is Christianity itself. Such is the spirit of the petition we now consider.
That there exists a great and wide necessity for the exercise of this godlike precept of forgiveness is obvious. Our Lord forewarned us of it when He said, “It must be that offences will come.” The present admixture of good and evil, the imperfect state of the Church, the existence of so much that is totally unrenewed in the unbeliever, and of so much that is but partially renewed in the believer, presents a wide field for the exercise of this divine grace. In the various Christian communions, in the domestic circles, in the social communion of life–among fellow-Christians, friends, relations, and neighbors–these sad sins between man and man are constantly occurring; misunderstandings arise, offences are given, injuries are inflicted, breaches are made, hearts are alienated, friendships are forfeited, demanding a perpetual recurrence to the divine precept, “Forgive us our sins, just as we have forgiven those who have sinned against us.”
Now it is clear from this petition taught us by the Savior, that God’s forgiveness of us is to be the rule and the measure of our forgiveness of others. We cannot for a moment suppose that there exists anything like equality with, but simply conformity to, God’s forgiveness. Still less does our forgiveness of man involve any meritorious plea why God should forgive us. Nor does this exercise of forgiveness suppose the existence of insensibility to injury. Never was Jesus so sensible of the injustice and the wrong done Him by man than when impaled upon the tree for man He prayed, “Father, forgive them!” “It is the glory of a man to pass over a transgression”–that glory beamed around the dying head of Jesus when from the cross He breathed this prayer. And yet, as I have remarked, God’s forgiveness of us is to be the rule of our forgiveness of others. No rule less divine, no model less godlike, is to govern and guide us in this Christian duty. Our forgiveness of an offending yet repentant brother may not be equal, yet it must be like, God’s forgiveness of our offences. How, then, does God forgive?
God forgives us IMMEDIATELY–so ought we to forgive those who have trespassed against us. “You are a God ready to forgive.” Is there any demur, any, the least, hesitation on the part of God in remitting the sins of the penitent, in canceling the debt of the contrite sinner? None whatever! Listen to the language of David, already quoted, “I said I will confess my transgressions unto the Lord; and You forgave.” Not a moment’s hesitation! The royal penitent but acknowledged his sin, and immediately the sin-forgiving God pardoned it. Moses prayed, “Pardon, I beseech you, the iniquity of this people.” “And the Lord said, I have pardoned.” As if God had anticipated His servant’s request. To cite once more the case of David. In the matter of Uriah the Hittite, how did God deal with him? By the same messenger who told him of his sin God sent the message of His forgiveness. “And David said unto Nathan, I have sinned against the Lord. And Nathan said unto David, The Lord also has put away your sin; you shall not die.” Not a moment’s agonizing suspense intervened between the indictment and the pardon.
God forgives FULLY–so must we forgive our fellows. A partial forgiveness of sin would be no real forgiveness to us whatever. Were the ten thousand talents, but one, all paid, and that one were left for us to pay, we would be forever exiles from the land of the blest. All the demands of the law of God must be met, and the full penalty of justice must be endured either by ourselves or by our Surety, if ever we are saved. In default of our utter inability to meet these claims, the Lord Jesus, on behalf of His Church has, “by one offering perfected forever those who are sanctified.” On the cross the Son of God paid the bond, and at the grave the Father ratified it. “He was delivered for our offences, and was raised again for our justification.” And now Jesus saves to the uttermost all that come unto God by Him. Nothing stands between the greatest sinner and his full and eternal salvation. Believing in the Lord Jesus, he passes out of the court of Divine justice not simply protected from arrest, but fully, honorably, eternally discharged, Christ having done all.
God FORGETS, as well as forgives, our sins. So entirely are the sins of His people effaced that, speaking after the manner of men, God says, “I will remember them no more forever.” And again He says, “I have blotted out your transgressions as a cloud, and your iniquities as a thick cloud.” Blotted from the book of His justice, and of His law, and of His remembrance. This same truth comforted Hezekiah, “You have cast all my sins behind Your back.” How like our God is this–magnificent, stupendous, divine! Can God forget? He cannot. And yet so entirely has He cancelled out our debt; at so infinite a distance has He cast our transgressions, they are to Him as things out of mind, buried in the fathomless depths of Divine oblivion.
I think that this truth supplies an argument in favor of another–that THE SINS OF THE BELIEVER WILL NOT BE JUDGED IN THE LAST DAY, as the sins of the ungodly. The saints will already have been judged and condemned in the person of Jesus their Great Surety, and in Him punished to the utmost extent of the demands of Divine Justice; their sins, therefore, will have been sunk into the fathomless depths of the sea of His blood, never more to come into remembrance. “You will cast all their sins into the depths of the sea.” I cannot but conclude, therefore, that the trial of the saints in the great assize will be nominal rather than actual; that they will be appear–not for trial, but for discharge; not for judgement, but for acquittal. Remember that their Substitute will be the Judge! What a shadow upon His own finished work would be the same judicial process of the saints as that through which the ungodly must finally and inevitably pass! The great debt of the Church once paid will not a second time be brought into court.
Believer in Jesus! realize this to be your present standing before God. Your great concern is, not with your sins, but with the Atonement that has put them away; not with the debt, but with your obligation to Him who paid it. Oh, see into what a blessed state the atoning blood of Christ places you! It has put away your sins from God–oh, how far!–but it has brought you near to God–oh, how near! “Now in Christ Jesus you who once were far off are made near by the blood of Christ.” Such must be our forgiveness! It must be like God’s–full, complete, unreserved. How can we repair to the throne of grace, and pray, “Forgive me my sins as I forgive those who have sinned against me,” while we have refused an offending brother or sister a full, frank, honest forgiveness? The offence must be entirely forgiven, the debt wholly cancelled, if we would deal with our fellow-servant as his Master and ours has dealt with us.
What a field for the exercise of forgiveness, that Christian act of which it has been remarked, “It requires more grace to forgive an injury than it does to suffer martyrdom.” A man requires less grace to endure the hardest toil, to carry the heaviest cross, and to submit to the severest suffering, than to hold out his hand to an offending brother and say, “I freely and fully forgive.” The greatest display of grace in God is in the pardon of sin; the greatest exercise of grace in man is to forgive and forget an injury. But this grace Jesus can and is engaged to give.
No Christian precept did our Lord enforce with greater minuteness and solemnity than that of forgiveness of our enemies. Thus He speaks concerning this duty–“If you forgive men their sins, your Heavenly Father will also forgive you; but if you forgive not men their sins, neither will your Father forgive your sins.” “Forgive, and you shall be forgiven.” Equally explicit is His instruction respecting the FREQUENCY of our forgiveness. Peter, recognizing the duty, inquires, “Lord, how often shall my brother sin against me, and I forgive him? until seven times?” This was the utmost limit of the disciple! But Jesus, putting a definite for an indefinite number, “says unto him, I say not unto you until seven times, but until seventy times seven.” Such are the forgivenesses of our God! “Let the wicked forsake his way, and the unrighteous man his thoughts–and let him return unto the Lord, and he will have mercy upon him; and to our God, for he will abundantly [margin, multiply] pardon.”
How often, my reader, has your God forgiven you? Suppose He had dealt with you as you in your heart have dealt with your brother, or, perhaps, in reality are dealing with him now–limiting His forgiveness of sin to the seven offences–perhaps to the one! Where and what would you now be? But, countless as the sands that belt the ocean have your sins against God been! And yet, the ocean of His love has again and again tided over them all, and still it flows, day by day, hour by hour, moment by moment. Where your sins have multiplied, exceeded and abounded–His rich, free pardoning grace has much more abounded. Oh, if your Lord should deal with you as you now may be dealing with a fellow-servant–and why may He not?–you would be cast into prison, and by no means come out until you had paid the uttermost farthing.
But God the Holy Spirit, the Author of peace and lover of concord, shall speak–“Let all bitterness, and wrath, and anger, and clamor, and evil-speaking, be put away from you, with all malice–and be kind one to another, tender hearted, forgiving one another, even as God for Christ’s sake has forgiven you.” Whenever any may have sought to injure your fair name, to lower your influence, to impair your usefulness–wilfully, wickedly, slanderously–imitate Jesus, and render not evil for evil, and when reviled revile not again. Revenge not yourself, but commit the matter to God, and by a silent spirit and a holy life live down the venomous slander. Your good may be evil spoken of, and your evil may be magnified and exaggerated–nevertheless, by a meek and quiet spirit, by a consistent walk, and by well-doing, you may put to silence the strife of lying tongues and the ignorance of foolish men, and thus glorify your Father who is in heaven.
Do not take revenge, my friends, but leave room for God’s wrath, for it is written: “It is mine to avenge; I will repay,” says the Lord. On the contrary: “If your enemy is hungry, feed him; if he is thirsty, give him something to drink. In doing this, you will heap burning coals on his head.” Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good.
Romans 12:19-21