Forgive Us As We Forgive

The Lord's Prayer is our series looking at each line of the prayer that the Lord Jesus taught us to pray. And I want to invite you right now to go to TLC.org/notes. You'll want to download those notes so you can follow along with the message today. This week I want to talk to you about forgiveness. And honestly, I do not know a more important subject for us to address right now than forgiveness.

There is so much conflict happening right now in the world. Our families are filled with conflict. Marriages filled with conflict. Counties filled with conflict. Churches filled with conflict. If you don't believe me, just take a look at my email box. And maybe this is hitting you very, very personally right now. Maybe one of your family members hurt you and it's still creating a wedge in that relationship. Maybe years later or maybe a friend said something that wounded you and offended and insulted you deeply.

Or maybe your spouse had an affair or you were abused or someone hurt you in some other way. And you're feeling that hurt. And you have been dreading this week in the Lord's Prayer series because you know what Jesus said in Matthew 6:12. You have said it a hundred times, maybe a thousand times when you've said the Lord's Prayer and forgive us our debts. Oh, here's the hard part. As we forgive our debtors. You know this. You know it by heart.

And in fact, you probably even know that a couple of verses after the Lord's Prayer, Jesus doubled down on this idea and he explained it like in case you missed it the first time for if you forgive other people. If you forgive other people when they sin against you, your heavenly Father will also forgive you. But, and then he says it again for a third time in three verses. But if you do not forgive others their sins, your Father will not forgive you your sin. And that makes you very uncomfortable.

And I got to tell you any time over the years that I've talked about the subject of forgiveness, it creates a ton of tension, a lot of emotion. And every single weekend people after a message like this, they'll email me or they'll come up to me and they'll say, "René, I got to talk to you about this because I can't do this. I cannot forgive. I have tried and I cannot seem to let go." So does this mean that I am not forgiven by God? Am I like not going to heaven now because I just can't get over something that was done to me in my past?

Look, I don't want to make this sermon a theological lecture. I want to get to the very practical application of this. But let me just say this. The vast majority of Bible commentators and scholars agree if you see these verses in context with everything else that the Bible teaches us on forgiveness, forgiveness of God is unconditional. You are saved by grace and not by works.

But I do not want to blunt the edge of this. Jesus is saying something very urgent about forgiving other people. Forgiving them is of such utmost importance that if you continue to hold a grudge, I think what he's getting at is that may just be a litmus test sign that you are actually not a Christian. And that makes us uncomfortable. Honestly, I think really the problem with this line of the Lord's Prayer is not that we don't understand it. It's not that it's unclear. That is not unclear. It's not even that we don't believe it. The problem is we don't know how to do it.

We want to obey this. We want to forgive. The problem is so many of us, we know we need to forgive. We know Jesus told us to forgive. And we try to forgive. But it doesn't seem to work. Well, I want to help you with that today. I want to help you make some progress on that today because Jesus said, "This is that urgent." And honestly, I think part of the problem is this. I think many people misunderstand even the word forgiveness. It may be one of the most misunderstood words in the entire English language, especially how it's applied these days.

So today I want to look at what forgiveness is not, what it is, and how to do it. I really think some people are going to be set free today in ways that maybe you haven't even imagined before. So jot these things down. First, here's what forgiveness is not. And I adapted part of this list from a wonderful sermon on this by Rick Warren. First, it isn't minimizing the offense. Forgiveness is not minimizing the offense. It's not pretending you weren't hurt.

A lot of people think, "If I forgive, I have to pretend." "Oh, that's no big deal. No worries, brother. You think that didn't offend me. I have to pretend it doesn't bother me anymore." If you wait to forgive until you try that, then that's just going to delay your own healing. It's not minimizing the offense. Next, it isn't resuming a relationship without changes. Forgiveness and resuming a relationship are two completely different things.

There is a huge difference between trust and forgiveness. You know, when somebody hurts you, you forgive them, but you don't have to trust them. Forgiveness is unearned. Trust must be earned. God asks you to forgive. God does not ask you to be an idiot and trust somebody again who's at a track record of hurting you. What you do is you forgive them, and then you observe their actions and see if they can be trusted.

Next, it isn't forgetting what happened. You know, you and I have probably heard this phrase a hundred times, right? Forgive and forget, forgive and forget. Only problem with that, it's impossible. Human beings cannot forget a real deep, deep, deep hurt. But you know what? There's something better than forgiving and forgetting. Forgiving and remembering and observing how God is bringing something good out of that hurt.

And forgiveness is not forgoing justice. If you forgive a criminal, for example, you know, Dan and Lynn Wagner are two of the most forgiving people I know. They forgave the woman who was driving under the influence and had the accident that killed both of their teenage daughters. They forgave her, but she still served her time. They have a wonderful relationship with her now, but she still paid her debt to society.

If I forgive somebody, that doesn't mean they don't still owe their debt to society. More on that in a minute. And it isn't conditional. Jesus asks you and me to forgive whether somebody asks for it or not. They can't earn it. They don't deserve it. You just give it. That's why it's called forgiveness. You give it. Watch this. Jesus said, and when you stand praying, if you hold anything against anyone, forgive him. Do you see what he's saying there? He's saying the ball's in your court.

When it comes to forgiving somebody, the ball is always in your court. If you think I will forgive them when that's not forgiveness. Now, let me say this. All of this is not theoretical for me. I've shared this many times, so I won't belabor it here. In fact, I only share it again because we've had so many new people join us for these live streams. Who've never attended Twin Lakes Church before. Welcome from all around the world. People who may have never heard this. So I will not belabor it, but it is relevant.

When I was about nine years old, my piano teacher sexually molested me. And I told adults right away. But all that happened was I just got moved on to a new piano teacher. Very typical for those days, right? For decades, I had elaborate fantasies of revenge. I would dream of pulling him limb from limb for what he did to me. And the really frustrating thing for me was I had no idea who he was. I was too young to remember, and so I had no idea how to get to him, how to find him.

Now, looking back, I thank God for that lack of knowledge, right? Because I truly think that if I had found this person when I was a teenager, I might have killed him. Or at least assaulted him. But to this day, I don't remember his name. There is no possibility of closure or of justice. So how do you move on from that? How do you forgive someone like that? In fact, how do I really forgive anyone who has deliberately hurt me?

Well, there's four steps that the Bible talks about, not just once, not just twice, but over and over and over and over again. You and I have to know these things. God, that they were so important. He just wove them into the fabric of just about every Bible story it talks about. These four steps over and over again. So know these, do these. Number one, release thoughts of vengeance. Release thoughts of vengeance.

The Bible says, do not take revenge, my dear friends, but leave room for God's wrath. For it is written, it is mine to avenge. I will repay, says the Lord. You know, I still remember the freeway exit that I was driving on when once more I started to imagine that just a grisly payback I would give to that person who molested me. It wasn't too many years ago. And suddenly it was like I heard God's voice. Now, I did not hear an audible voice, but it was two words just came into my consciousness. You know what the two words were? And I knew they came from God. The two words were, that's enough.

It was like God was saying to me, that's enough. Like you've tried this method long enough. Now give it to me. And I was pounding on the dashboard of my car and refusing, saying no, no, no, I will not give it up. He doesn't deserve it. He deserves retribution. And it was like God said, I know. Now you give it to me. I can do that better than you. And finally I said, okay. That was it. That was my big spiritual moment. Okay. And a feeling of release washed over me.

You know, I never knew, I never realized how much weight I had been carrying my whole life until it was gone. And I have to tell you, I felt like I was floating. Now, I'm going to get back to my story in a second. But maybe you're thinking, well, yeah, you were a pretty intense case, René. You know, you see the word revenge here in this verse and you think, well, I don't want revenge. I don't want to kill them and torture them like you did, pastor.

Well, this word can literally mean plans to inflict pain, yes. But also gossip can be a disguise for revenge. Passive aggressive punishment, you know, making life miserable for them. That can be a form of revenge or just revenge fantasies that you never act on. That is all covered in this word. And we need to take this very seriously because look at this interesting verse. The Bible says, "Watch out that no poisonous root of bitterness grows up to trouble you, corrupting many."

You know, one day my wife, Lori, said, "René, I was thinking back to how you were kind of an anger problem at times when we first moved to Santa Cruz, but I almost never see you lose your temper anymore." Now, just to clarify, I was never violent with her or with the kids, but I would kind of go off in rages about things that frustrated me. I had a very short fuse and I said, "Yeah, you know, that's interesting. I don't really lose my temper like that anymore. I wonder what changed."

And I started thinking about this and I think at least part of my diminished anger is due to letting this thing in my past go. Listen, when you are rehearsing violent fantasies in your head all the time, guess what? That is a tendency to make you more upset. That does not calm you down. And maybe they're not violent fantasies, but you're rehearsing your hurts or you're rehearsing what that stupid group is doing to our nation or what those people are doing. You're just angry all the time. This is the poisonous root of bitterness.

So are you being poisoned? As long as you will not forgive, as long as you're going to be dwelling on the negative, you're going to keep hurting and hurting and hurting and hurting. You don't let them go for your sake. They don't deserve it. You let them go for your sake because you've been drinking poison. I mean, it's literally poison for you. Research has shown that resentment is the most unhealthy emotion you can have. It leads to high blood pressure and heart attacks and bad cholesterol and everything else. But it can also poison all your other relationships who had nothing to do with that hurt.

Now, if you don't go for vengeance or revenge, what's the option? Because now there's a vacuum, right? Your imagination's been very busy thinking of your hurt all the time. And the perpetrator, you've got to give your imagination something else to do. And that's point two, respond to evil with good. Respond to evil with good. You want to see one of the most amazing verses of the Bible? Jesus said, "But to you who are listening, I say, do good to those who've hurt you. Bless those who curse you and pray for those who mistreat you."

Instead of revenge fantasies, you substitute praying for them. Why? Because resentment villainizes prayer humanizes. When you do nothing but rehearse a hurt, the way somebody did you wrong, it dehumanizes the perpetrator because they are more than just the sum of the bad thing they did to you. It demonizes them. It villainizes them. It dehumanizes them. But when you really start praying for them regularly, not praying, "God, may an anvil drop on their head," but praying, "God, bless them," it humanizes them because you can't hate somebody that you're praying for.

Now, I know some of you are thinking, "But René, what about justice?" Some of you are going, "René, but let's say that you knew who this person was, and if you forgave the guy who molested you, does that mean he gets away scot-free? What about justice? And what about social justice? What about, you know, racial justice right now?" That's a great question. And the Bible addresses it. Look at Micah 6:8. Great familiar verse. "What does the Lord require of you but to do justice, love mercy, and walk humbly with your God?"

You love mercy. That means you forgive, and you still do justice. You love mercy. You forgive. But that does not mean they escape the consequences, the justice. Somebody who has way more credibility than me on this is Bernice King, who is a pastor also in Atlanta, like Rich Kahnwisher, who we heard from last weekend. Now, her father, of course, the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., was assassinated when she was six years old. Wow. And she says, "I struggled with anger and hatred for years. I hated the people who killed my father. I hated white people. But my mother kept telling me, 'Someone has to stop the chain.' We cannot hate those who killed your father. Your hatred only hurts you.

For many Christians, God set us free through Christ. We've locked ourselves up through unforgiveness." It's understandable to feel anger, but the choice is, are you going to serve your emotions, or are you going to serve God? But forgiveness does not mean we don't also, and unrelentingly, do the work of systemic change. The Bible says to do justice, love mercy, and walk humbly with God. We have to do all three. My father used to say, "Peace is not just the absence of tension, but the presence of justice." And that is so true.

In fact, you can only really seek justice after you forgive. Do you get that? Let that soak in for just a second. You can only really seek justice after you forgive, because before that you're probably not seeking justice, you're seeking vengeance. Only after you forgive can you seek justice, because before that it's probably not justice, it's just revenge. So, how do I move emotionally from evil to good? How do I move emotionally from vengeance to justice and mercy? Well, number three, you remember how God forgave you. Remember how God forgave you.

The Bible says, "Remember, the Lord forgave you, so you must forgive others." Remember, it says, when I remember what God did for me, man, this has such power. When Jesus Christ died on the cross, He paid the debt for every sin you ever committed or ever will commit. Yes, even that sin that you're thinking of right now. He gave you a clean slate. He gave you a new lease on life. He gives you a brand new fresh start. His mercies are new every morning to you.

The more you let that sink in, the more you remember it, the more you revel in it, the more you are just going to naturally just overflow with grace toward others. Now, even when you remember how God forgave you, forgiveness is not always instant. In fact, I would say it's usually a process. Yes, God empowers you to do it, but God's power grows a redwood tree, but it still takes many, many years for that tree to reach full height. God will empower you to forgive through the power of the Holy Spirit in you, but it's still a process.

So step four, our final step is simple. You take the first three steps and then repeat as necessary, right? Keep doing the steps every time you remember how they hurt you, and the pain comes back. You release your vengeance, you respond with good, and then you remember how God forgave you, and you do this over and over and over again. You might remember that the Bible says one time, Peter asked, "Lord, how often should I forgive somebody who sins against me seven times?" And Jesus said, "No, how about 70 times seven?" You know, how about 490 times?

Now, one of the reasons that I think he said that was, "It may take 490 times to forgive the same person for the same thing. It may take 490 times to really work through the process. It takes reputation." I personally had that breakthrough that day when I was driving in the car on that freeway off-ramp, but I still had to say no to resentment many, many times after that. It's a process. But let me say something kind of obvious. You need to start with the first time before you get to the 490th time, right?

Now, let me start bringing this in for a landing. Why did Jesus make this so important? Why in the Lord's Prayer did he paint our forgiveness of others in such urgent terms? Forgive or you're not forgiven. Forgive that you may be forgiven because forgiveness is so important being the core of the message of Jesus and the core of our message as Christians. As Bernice King says, "People won't know how to forgive unless we forgive."

How will the world know how to—forgiveness and reconciliation is the answer to the division of the world today. Are they going to know how to do that unless we forgive, unless they see us forgiving? She says, "You are the answer. We are the answer to this broken world, which is in need of reconciliation." She's talking about how the Bible says God was in Christ, reconciling the world to himself, no longer counting people's sins against them. Isn't that awesome? And then he gave us this wonderful message of reconciliation.

Man, that's just like the coolest thing ever. This is our commission. This is your commission from God. I mean, it's as if God appeared to you and said, "I've got a purpose for your life. I've got a mission for you. You're on a mission from God, and the mission is this." Just spread my message of reconciliation. You know, be the bridge. We've got a Bible study on racial reconciliation starting up here in a few weeks. Be the bridge. That's our mission. That is the purpose we've been given by God.

Now, how am I—how are you going to be an ambassador for reconciliation with integrity if you and I don't forgive? Now I want to wrap this up with a guest speaker. Last month, I heard Reverend Sean Smith. Sean's got a wonderful ministry in San Francisco, but I heard him tell his personal story to Chi Alpha. That's the Christian club or one of the Christian clubs at Stanford University. And it related to this topic so perfectly, and it's so relevant to today, that the other day, I emailed Sean and I just said, "Sean, I'm talking about forgiveness. Can you share your story with TLC?" He said, of course, "So here is Sean with his story. You will never forget this."

Nine years of age, I'm on a playground. The teacher comes and gets me and comes to the principal's office, and I'm told at that point in time that I need to immediately go home, that there has been an emergency. And even as a nine-year-old kid, I knew in the bottom of my heart I had this sinking feeling in the pit of my stomach, something was not right. I get on the bus. I go back home as I get into our place of where we lived, and my grandmother, she had been drinking. There was a way of coping with things then, and she told me, "I'm so sorry, baby, but last night your dad was murdered."

I immediately ran to my room, and I just wept and cried. And for three days I didn't eat. I was crying. And here's how the story went down. My dad finished a late-night meeting with his research and development department at IBM. He's driving down Stevens Creek Boulevard, which today is pretty populated. Car dealerships, businesses, strip malls, all of the above. But back in the day it was largely in some places undeveloped. My dad's driving home. It's night. He sees the cherry go off on top of the police car siren, and he does what anyone would do. He'd pull over on the side of the road where he pulls over.

It's dark. It doesn't seem like it's well lit. There are people. There's no visible people around that people could see. The officers demand my dad get out of the car. One officer sprayed my dad with mace, and a coroner later said, "Hey, my dad lived." He would not have been able to see. Odds were against him. He's ever seen him again. "Have a 2020." He probably would have been blind. My dad committed no crime, mind you. He didn't look like anyone that committed a crime. My dad's criminality in the eyes of these officers was his pigmentation. Melanin layers. It's color.

They sprayed mace in his eyes. They demanded that he run. They pulled him out of the car. The one officer said, "Run in run." They used a six-letter word for African American. It should never be used by anyone, in my opinion. They had a dog. It was two officers. They released and sick the dog on my dad. They chased him into a field. While the dog held my dad, the empty rounds in my dad's back, and he was in chest. He was dead on arrival at a hospital. Initially, these officers tried to pass the story that my dad resisted arrest and tried to go to his trunk and get the entire iron and attack them.

During that time, witnesses surfaced that were the same race as those officers that shared the story in court that was admitted that I just shared with you. With the addition, they found that the tire iron that was in my dad's car did not have my dad's fingerprints on it. They had the officer's fingerprints. It was a plant. It was planted. So, nine years of age, I find out that people who were paid professionals to protect were actually the perpetrators of, at that point in time, the most staining, the most traumatic injustice of my life. My dad is murdered. I do not have a dad. I'm nine years of age. I'm at a funeral, and I'm weeping, thinking, "This is not fair," not only did my dad die, but my dream died, my hero died, everything else.

And I can't describe, even at nine years of age, the level of anger and the level of outrage that I felt in that moment. My mom, who's biracial, she helped me and taught me not to be prejudiced and not aim that at a race. But if I'm to be honest, at that time, I did aim it towards police officers, law enforcement. Now, today, I'm a grown man. I've come to know the Lord Jesus Christ. I've got family members and great friends that are part of law enforcement. I do not make that broad, sweeping generality of condemnation. But in the midst of that time, man, there was so much ache and pain, and it carried over.

Now, let me revisit this. We're in a time when you're seeing this, and you've got to understand that in the midst of all of this, here is something that we've got to understand. As people that know the Lord Jesus Christ, we have to be better. We have to go higher. We have to fight a fight, but we've got to fight it with not only the principles of God, but the demeanor of the King. When we walk in love, and now let me finish the rest of my story.

When I gave my life to Jesus Christ, as a part of a Chi Alpha at the University of Pacific, the night I met Christ, God spoke to my heart and said, "I needed to forgive those police officers." Can you imagine? I didn't have any modeling of that. At that point, I wasn't being discipled, and my mentor said to me, "Shawn, you need to do this." I made a decision in that moment because of God, and I made it because there was an overflow of love that came out of my heart, that God so loved me that I thought, "Man, I need to forgive those dudes."

I prayed for that officer. I never saw him. My mom never allowed me to go to the trials, and she judiciously made that decision. At that age, I didn't need to see that. But I prayed for that guy, and I prayed for his family. I forgave, not because what they did was right. The Bible says love does not rejoice in evil. What they did was wrong. I prayed because I needed my heart right for what I was going to go on to do. There are practical things that we need to carry out, but if we will fight the battles God calls us to fight, God's way, we will have God on our side.

You're called to be a bridge of reconciliation. You're called to model something that can pull a generation out of the morass of literally the division that has destroyed us and the thing that we've seen on so many levels, and it's an opportunity to be better, to do better. And so I call you higher. I'm at Abigail saying, "Don't allow the hurt and the bitterness of your heart to be carried out. Don't stay in that place, but recognize you're part of the solution."

Man, that is so, so, so powerful. Do you see why I wanted to show you and share with you Sean's story? Because it just dovetails point by point into what I've been talking about, and that's no accident. That's why all these points are in the Word of God, because they're in the DNA of the universe. This is how to get over a hurt. Now, as in Sean's case, it happened to his father when Sean was just a child, as in my case with the thing that happened to me when I was a child.

Sometimes, yes, you can go to a person face to face, and you can be reconciled, or you can extend forgiveness at least. But sometimes it's not possible. Sometimes it's not wise. It may be the wrong time. They may have moved. Things may have changed. They may have died. But for your sake, you still need to forgive them. So how do you do it then? Well, one suggestion is write down their name and what they did on a piece of paper, and then write "forgiven," and then bury it, or burn up that piece of paper, saying, "That is my way of saying I'm releasing them."

So let me wrap this up. I want to close with two straightforward questions. There are two questions that come out of that line in the Lord's Prayer. Forgive us as we forgive those who have trespassed against us. Are you ready for these two questions? First, who do you need to forgive? Right now, who do you need to forgive? Would you like to share the good news of reconciliation, of forgiveness, the message of peace with other people? Well, then you need to forgive so that you can do it with integrity and with power.

Like Sean said, when we share God's word with God's way, then we have God's power behind us. And then second, do you know that you are forgiven by God? I got good news for you. If you don't, if you're not sure, then today is your day. Don't stop watching this livestream with a load of guilt still on you. There is no reason to. God's grace can wash away all your sin today, all your shame today. Everything you've ever done wrong can be completely forgiven by God today.

And this is so important because this is the key. When you know you are forgiven by God, when you know that kind of grace, then how can you not show grace to other people? Sean was not able to forgive until he knew this to be true. And suddenly he found he had the power. So with those two questions in mind, let's go to God in prayer right now. Would you bow your head with me? I'm going to pray a prayer, and I just want to invite everybody to just pray this along with me.

In fact, I even put this prayer in the message notes, and I'm going to put it on screen too. If this reflects where your heart is at, pray this with me. Dear God, you know how much I've carried on forgiveness in my heart, but today I want to let it go. First, I want to accept your forgiveness. Thank you for sending Jesus to wipe out my debts. I don't understand it all, but I believe and receive, and I'm grateful. And now because you've forgiven me, today I am choosing to forgive. And in your mind, you put your name there in that blank. I am choosing to overcome evil with good. Jesus Christ, please replace my hurt with your peace. Thank you for your love. I accept my responsibility now to share this good news of forgiveness, the message of peace with others. Amen.