How can I forgive someone I hate?

Transcript

This transcript was generated automatically from the audio and may contain small errors.

We will be in the Gospel of Matthew. So if you want to go ahead and turn with me, we'll be in chapter 18, starting in verse 21. Now we're going to be there in just a little bit. We're going to hold off for just a while, but I wanted to go ahead and give you a heads up to go and turn there so you don't have to later. Today we'll be continuing our sermon series of week-minded, where each week we're discussing a different topic that it's going to help us work through our week as Christians. And the topic that I have today is, how do I forgive someone that I hate? And in order to answer that question, I'm actually going to change it around just a little bit, and we're going to answer a slightly different question. So instead of it being, how do I forgive someone I hate, we're going to answer the question of why do I forgive someone I hate? And I think that that'll help us better understand the idea of forgiveness

more than me trying to give you like a step-by-step or a playbook, and that you can just follow and, you know, go to every time that you need to forgive someone. I think that getting a better grasp on why we forgive people will better help us to be able to navigate through that. And I'm honestly very excited about this because out of all of God's attributes, His mercy and His forgiveness toward sinners is probably my favorite. Not to downplay the other ones, but it's just to say that this one to me is one that's most mysterious, because like His power, I kind of get that. He's all-powerful. He's in control of every molecule in this universe. I get that. His holiness, He's completely perfect, completely good. I get that. His wrath, He has wrath against sin and punishes sin. I get all of that. But when it comes to His forgiveness and His mercy toward sinners,

that's one that just blows my mind, because He doesn't have to forgive any one of us if He doesn't want to. We could all perfectly die and go to hell, and He would be completely just for it, because we're all sinful and we all fall short of the glory of God. So the fact that He chooses to forgive us instead of sending us to hell where we rightfully belong is amazing to me. And so before we dive into exactly what Scripture says about forgiveness, I want to talk about what forgiveness isn't. And to do that, we're going to talk about a couple common misconceptions that we have when it comes to forgiveness. The first one is forgiveness is not forgiving someone so that you can be free and move on with your life. You hear that a lot, that whenever you're holding on to some pain and suffering that someone has inflicted on you, it's weighing you down and it's bearing on you,

and so you just need to kind of release that so that you can move on with your life. You need to just kind of forgive and forget. I'm sure you've heard that one a lot. Well, sorry to say, but the Bible does not mention any such thing. Any time the Bible talks about forgiveness, never is forgetting about what you're forgiven for spoken of. God might be able to not remember our sins anymore, but we're not built that way. We remember things. And really, I would say that forgetting the sin that was done against you takes the glory out of forgiveness and really kind of makes the forgiveness pointless. Because if I'm just going to forget what you did to me after I forgive you, why even forgive you in the first place? I may as well just go straight to forgetting about it and not have to worry about forgiving you. But whenever we forgive someone who's wronged us, it gives God all the glory

because it demonstrates exactly the type of work that God did for us in forgiving us on the cross. So forgive and forget, not in the Bible. The second one is that in order for forgiveness to fully be satisfied, that person has to pay you back in some way. This might look like, say that you're pulling out of the parking lot today and you back into my car. Well, what this would look like is me going to you and saying, hey, look, I'm not mad at you. I forgive you. You know, I understand that it happens. You accidentally backed up into my car and damaged it a little bit. I get it. But I am going to take it to the shop. And if there's any repairs that need to be done, I mean, you're going to cover it, right? You're going to pay for it. And as good as that sounds to us, and as much as we want to do that, that's not what actual forgiveness really is. Real forgiveness is not taking anything into account.

And now I know, realize that can be somewhat dangerous if we just do that left and right and just give people, you know, free passes all the time. But I mean, that's really what true forgiveness. Imagine if God expected some sort of payback from us whenever He died for us on the cross. I mean, He'd be waiting forever because all of us are sinful and we would never be able to pay Him back even a little bit. And so what these two things actually do is they don't create forgiveness between you and the other person. They actually do the opposite. They create unforgiveness. And when we let unforgiveness simmer, and fester in our hearts, it can lead to us withholding love from one another. And when we withhold love, we are in a very dangerous area. And there's three typical ways that we withhold love from one another whenever we're angry with another. The first one is we withhold attention.

Someone does something to me, so I'm just going to kind of ignore them, act like they're a ghost. I'm just going to kind of, that's going to be my payback for what they did to me, is they don't get my attention. I'm going to ignore them and just let them feel me ignoring them. Another one is we withhold affection. We may say, okay, I'll give them a little bit of my attention. I won't completely act like they're a ghost. But the little bit that I do talk to them is going to be cold, going to be short, not going to really be loving to them, not even going to look at them when I talk to them. I'm just going to be, do the bare minimum to keep this interaction going. And then the third one is we withhold honor. This one is probably a little bit more common, one that goes under the radar a little more because we think it's more justified. But when we withhold honor, we start to lose respect from someone.

An example of this would be say that your boss made a bad financial decision and now you are either having to take some sort of minor pay cut or you're having to work extra hours to make up for that. And so you start to get a little resentment towards him and you start to lose a little bit of respect for him and think that, oh, well, someone in his position shouldn't be making such big mistakes like this. So, you know, maybe I can't trust this guy. And so I'm start to lose a little bit of respect for him. And really all three of these things are just incredibly petty. And we fail to forget that we are the same way. We are just as sinful as these other people who are saying against us. And so it really just comes from an unforgiving heart. And I would argue that we all struggle with unforgiveness a bit more than we think. Whether it be from fresh wounds or from old scars,

there is a little bit of unforgiveness that we usually probably all struggle with a bit. I know I myself am still struggling to forgive a couple people in my life. One of them is the director at my old soccer club. As many of you know, I'm a youth soccer coach. And at my old soccer club, I was fired by my director. Long story short, I had some issues with how my payment was delivered to me for several years, it being late or me having to go out of my way and receive it. It was never just a simple process of receiving it on time and getting what I was due. It was always some sort of extra obstacle. And so after about four years of dealing with that, I sent a lengthy message to my director, very professional one, maybe slightly heated but still professional. And didn't get any response, show up to the next practice. He sits me down with the president and fires me

and tells me that all of my teams are going to be taken over by someone else. And then not only that, but he tells me that every single one of my parents and every single one of my kids doesn't want me to be their coach. And now when he told me that I even right then and there, I knew that that wasn't true because I know that I knew several parents on both of my teams that I knew enjoyed me being their coach. So right then and there, I knew it was wrong, but it still hurt. And I would be lying if I said that I don't still have a bit of resentment towards that guy today. I mean, just last night, I saw a Facebook post of him with the famous Mexican soccer player, Chicharito. And him and his kids were being able to train with him. And I promise you, I didn't have any warmer, fuzzy feelings looking at that post. I mean, I wasn't jealous or anything, but it was just, you know,

I still have feelings towards that guy. And this is how it is. Forgiveness is not just something that you're going to wake up the next day and just forgive someone or you're going to say one prayer and then now that person is just forgiven and you can move on in your heart. I mean, that's just not how it works. And on some level, we can expect unforgiveness in our hearts because we are broken people in a broken world. We have sin from the inside out that we affect others. We have sin from the outside in that affects us. So we have sin completely engulfed all around us. And because of that, we have a natural desire for justice. We're made in the image of God. God is just. And so he puts that same thing in us. We desire justice. But here's the problem. If we all get justice, true justice, then we all die and go to hell. Because just like I said earlier, we are all under the wrath of God.

We are all made enemies of God until we're not. So we all deserve to go to hell. We all deserve God's justice. And that's why his forgiveness is so important. Because without it, we would all go to hell and rightfully so. So we need a God who not only judges sin, but we need a God who forgives it as well. Because there's two ways that Christ has victory over the sinner. And he has victory over every single sinner. First Corinthians 15 says that for he must reign until he puts all of his enemies under his feet. We know he's reigning now because he's seated at the right hand of the Father. So that means he's putting all of his enemies under his feet now. And there's two ways that he does that. By either sending the sinner to hell so that they can pay for their punishment, or he redeems them by the work of Christ on the cross. Because every sin that has ever been paid for by anybody,

or every sin that has ever been committed by anybody, will be paid for. It'll either be paid for by the sinner in hell, or it'll be paid by Christ on the cross. But every single sin is going to be punished. There's no sin that is going to go unnoticed. Even the minorist, little bitty lie, is going to be punished. But instead of focusing on the whole hellfire and brimstone and hell, which would be lovely to do, we're going to focus on that redemption part. And in order to do so, I'd like to turn to Psalm 103. You don't have to go there if you don't want to. You should be here up on the screen, hopefully. But Psalm 103 says, He does not deal with us according to our sins, nor repay us according to our iniquities. For as high as the heavens are above the earth, so great is his steadfast love toward those who fear him. As far as the east is from the west, so far does he remove our transgression from us.

That's what we need. That's what we need. God's justice. We need his mercy and forgiveness. We need him to take our sins and get them as far away from us as possible. Because if he doesn't do that, then we are just completely engulfed in our sin. And we see another—we see a similar language in Micah 7, where it says, Who is a God like you, hardening iniquity and passing over transgression? He will have compassion on us. He will tread our iniquities underfoot. He will cast our sins into the depths of the sea. Notice it's similar imagery to 1 Corinthians 15 about treading the iniquities underfoot. Everything is going to be put under the foot of Christ. So it's just whether it's through his forgiveness or through his wrath. So now that we understand a little better idea of what unforgiveness looks like, and we have a better idea of why forgiveness is so important,

let's now get into a little bit of the mechanism of it and how it should appear in our life. And to do that, we will now turn to Matthew 18, and we'll be starting in verse 21. Then Peter came to him and said, Lord, how often shall my brother sin against me? And I forgive him. Up to seven times? Jesus said to him, I did not say to you up to seven times, but up to seventy times seven. So I'm sure that—I can imagine that Peter probably thought he was being generous by saying seven. Because I'm sure that by this point he's heard Jesus' whole speech of turning the other cheek, and so he probably thinks, I mean, I only have two cheeks. I don't know how many times I can turn my cheek. So, you know, seven seems like a good number, so I'm just gonna pick seven. You know, that seems good. And Christ's response is not him saying, actually, the number's not seven. It's 490, seventy times seven.

No, what Christ is actually doing there, and his response is saying that you got it all wrong. You're putting forgiveness as conditional when it's completely unconditional. Whenever we forgive someone, we are to take nothing into account. When Christ forgave us on the cross, it's not like he left a few sins around that we have to deal with ourselves. No, he completely paid for every little bitty sin. So we are to do the same when we are forgiving others. We are to take nothing into account. Now, that doesn't mean forgetting it. That just means that you know what happened, but you're choosing to not let it impact your love towards that person. Your love towards that person is going to stay the same whether they ask for your forgiveness, whether you give it to them or whatever. Your love for them should stay the same because Christ's love towards us stays the same whether we sin or not. So ours should be the same.

All right, now let's continue reading a little bit. Therefore, the kingdom of heaven is like a certain king who wanted to settle accounts with his servants. And when he had begun to settle accounts, one was brought to him who owed him 10,000 talents. But as he was not able to pay, his master commanded that he be sold with his wife and children and all that he had, and that payment be made. The servant therefore fell down before him saying, Master, have patience with me and I will pay you all. And the master of that servant was moved with compassion, released him and forgave him the debt. So a couple things to point out. One, notice how immeasurable amount of the debt the servant has. Now, I know we all aren't familiar with what talents are, but essentially 10,000 talents is a lifetime or more worth of work. That's in today's money. It's the equivalent of like a billion plus dollars or more.

So what that guy owed the master was more than he could ever pay. He was never going to pay for it even if he worked every day for the rest of his life. But also notice how immediate and total the master's forgiveness is. He doesn't wait for him to pay even 1% of it back. He doesn't say, Oh man, that was the best speech I've ever heard. Thank you for giving me that. No, he just simply had compassion on the guy. And so he forgave him everything. And that's exactly the same picture we see with Christ is Christ just has compassion on us. It's nothing that we do that's worthy to be forgiven. It's not like our prayers are special. It's not anything our prayers sound like a bunch of muffled donkeys. I mean, but it's Christ that does the work to forgive us. And now let's read on and continue and see what happens with the with this servant. But that servant went out and found one of his fellow servants who owed him a hundred denarii.

And he laid hands on him and took him by the throat saying, Pay me what you owe. So his fellow servant fell down at his feet and begged him, saying, Have patience with me and I will pay you all. I wonder where we heard that one from. And he would not but went and threw him into prison until he should pay the debt. So when his fellow servant saw what had been done, they were very grieved and came and told their master all that had been done. Then his master, after he had called him, said to him, You wicked servant, I forgave you all that debt because you begged me. Should you not also have had compassion on your fellow servant, just as I had pity on you. And his master was angry and delivered him to the torturers until he should pay all that was due to him. So my heavenly Father also will do to you if each of you from his heart does not forgive his brother his trespass.

So that guy owed 10,000 talent. This guy just owed what is an equivalent of a few thousand dollars. So he was mad at someone over and own him a few thousand dollars when he just owed somebody billions. And he's over here being the biggest hypocrite in the world by getting mad at someone else. But yet that's something that we do every single day, even in a small capacity. We could have someone maybe pay for our lunch at pay for our lunch. And we think that's great. And then 30 minutes later, we're getting mad at somebody who cut us off in traffic. Now our day is just completely ruined. So we do this type of thing left and right when we don't even realize it. We have some good deed done to us. We've been forgiven of something. We're like, Yeah, that's great. And then we go on and just don't even try to do the same thing for others. And so I want to call back.

I want to go back up to verse verse 33. I want to focus on that for just a second because that verse will really help us answer the question of why do I forgive someone that I hate. So let's read it one more time. Should you not also have had compassion on your fellow servant just as I had pity on you? And really, that's the answer. That is the primary answer as to why we forgive others. It's because Christ forgave us. There is no other solid definitive answer that Scripture gives you to forgive others other than on the basis that Christ forgave you. That is should be the main basis that we forgive others. Ephesians 4 32 talks about be kind to one another, tender hearted, forgiving one another as God in Christ forgave you. And then Colossians 3 says, bearing with one another, and if one has a complaint against another, forgiving each other as the Lord has forgiven you, so you must also forgive.

So not only is this a command and instruction to go forgive others, but we can kind of see that what it's saying is that if you are truly forgiven, then you should want to bestow that on others. If you have truly had your sins completely wiped away and forgiven, then you should want to grant that same sort of offer to others because Christ wants us to be like Him. And so being like Him is forgiving others the way that He forgave as well. So imagine that it's kind of like when you're at a drive-thru and somebody and you get up to the window and the cashier is like, oh, congratulations, the car in front of you, just paid your mail for you. Just paid your mail forward for you. And of course, what's the next question that comes out of their mouth? Yeah, would you like to pay for the person behind you? They just stick the dagger right in your heart and turn it without you even being ready for it.

But we all have to admit that we do have a natural inclination when that happens to pay for the person behind us. We don't want to just be like, oh, man, thank you, God, I'm going to take this and run with it. No, naturally, if we're normal people, we want to pay for the car behind us. Now, obviously, sometimes we're not in the financial situation to do so, but we still have that inclination inside of us to try to do that. Maybe our first question is, what did they order? But see how much I'm going to be spending. But still, we have that inclination that is naturally inside of us because Christ put it in us to try to care and worry about other people. So that's the first and primary reason is that we forgive others because Christ forgave us. But I want to talk about a couple other minor reasons of why we forgive as well. First minor reason is that forgiveness is the cornerstone to any healthy marriage, family, and society.

Why do you think that married couples who have been with each other for decades have the strongest relationship? It's because they've had years and years and years of forgiving each other their debt and bearing one another's burden. Because forgiveness is what makes us closer. Just like when Jesus forgave us of our debt, it draws him closer to us. When somebody wrongs me and I choose to not take it into account and to still love them, that makes my connection with that person stronger. So married couples do this daily. That's why you see couples who have been with each other for 50 years, they can just sit down at lunch and not even speak to each other because they just enjoy each other's presence. Because they have that such deep connection from forgiving one another and bearing another's burdens. And this doesn't just apply to the marriage life, this also applies to family life.

Parents, I would highly encourage you if you don't already ask for forgiveness for your kids. Whenever you do something wrong against them, which you will do because we're all sinful and all imperfect, ask them to forgive you. Because they're human beings, they were done wrong against, so they need to forgive us the same way. And by doing that, we set an example to our kids of what forgiveness looks like. And we set an example of when you have something wrong done to you, you're not going to get mad and point the finger, you're going to try to reconcile with that person, you're going to try to forgive that person. And if we have a bunch of people living in society that are built like this and forgive one another, then it's what makes society flow and be steady. I mean, how refreshing is it when you see a company or a famous person come out and publicly own a wrong that they did?

I mean, it's incredibly refreshing. I remember back in 2022, a streaming service, Fubo, was running and was hosting all of the World Cup games. They're doing it again this summer, so I hope what I'm about to say doesn't happen again. But back in 2022, in one of the semifinal games, they had some connectivity issues to where the game kept cutting out or if it did come back in, the graphics weren't very good. And so you didn't really get to enjoy the game how you'd like. And as you can imagine, they received a ton of backlash from that because it's the World Cup. You have billions and billions of people watching these games. And what did they do within less than 24 hours? They sent a very long email from, I think it was the CEO himself, stating what the issue was, what happened, and saying that they are very sorry and they understand that this was an inconvenience to people and that it won't happen again.

And that for the World Cup final and the coming days, they'll make sure that nothing like this happens and that the quality is great. Now, when I read that, that just completely wiped away any anger, any fear that I had about the final because they immediately took accountability. And they asked for us to not hold them accountable. They asked us to forgive them their debt. And I mean, up until I was writing this sermon, I kind of forgot that that even happened because they immediately came in and asked for us to forgiveness. And so that's something that we should do as well. Don't wait until you feel like you're ready to ask for forgiveness. As soon as you sin against someone, ask for that forgiveness. Make the reconciliation right then and there. Don't wait along for the unforgiveness to simmer and fester around in both of your hearts. Try to reconcile as quickly as you can.

So that's the second, or that's the first minor reason is that it's a cornerstone to society and family and marriage. Second minor reason is that forgiving someone can help point them to Christ. Because if we just forgive, or if we don't forgive our enemies, then we're no better than an unbeliever. The Bible instructs us to love our enemies. Matthew five says, you have heard it was said, you shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy. But I say to you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you so that you may be sons of your father who is in heaven. For he makes his son rise on the evil and the good and sends rain on the just and the unjust. For if you love those who love you, what reward do you have? Do not even the tax collectors do the same? And if you greet only your brothers, what more are you doing than others? Do not even the Gentiles do the same?

You therefore must be perfect as your heavenly Father is perfect. I know many of you probably think in your heads, well, I can't be perfect. That's just a bar that I'll never reach. I get it. No one's expecting you to be perfect. God is not expecting you to be perfect. But the standard is the standard. God is perfect. And so that's the standard. He's not going to lower the standard for us so that we can potentially reach it a little bit. The standard is the standard. And what he's going to do is instead make us more Christ-like so that we grow closer to that standard. Now, we're never going to reach it until we're fully glorified and actually perfected. But the standard is going to be the standard all the same, whether we're glorified or not, because Christ is the standard and he's not going to lower that at all. He is perfect. He is holy. He is completely good.

And so we must strive to be like that as much as we can. Now, I say the same type of thing to my players whenever I'm coaching them. I tell them, try to be perfect. Whenever you're taking a shot, try to make it perfect. Whenever you're dribbling, try to take perfect touches. Now, I know they're not going to do that. But if you can, if you aim small, then you miss small. If I'm aiming for the center of the dartboard and I barely miss, I still hit the center. But if I'm just aiming for the dartboard, that's a big target and I miss. Now I miss the whole dartboard. So our goal is to try to be as perfect as we can, and we do that through submitting to Christ.

And so ultimately, we see that Christ, or that forgiveness is not some sort of technique or playbook. If it was, I would have just given it to you the first minute you walked in here. And we could have sang a couple hymns and been on about our day. But that's not what forgiveness is. Forgiveness is not a technique. Forgiveness is a person. And the only way to truly learn how to forgive is to be fully submitted and in surrender to that person, which is Christ. Because Christ already satisfied justice on the cross. He already paid for sin on the cross. And he already fulfilled God's wrath on the cross. So our job now isn't to try to figure out how to forgive. Our job is to realize that we are now able to forgive. Because Christ forgave us, we're able to forgive others. Something that I always say is, we have two goals, two missions in this life. To know Christ, and then after that, to help others know Christ.

Nothing else matters. Nothing else at all. Obviously, we have bills to pay and things to worry about. But those are really our two main things. Whenever we're on our deathbed, the two biggest things that we should be concerned about is, did I come to know Christ, and did I help others do the same? So my encouragement to you is, when you go out throughout this week, when you go out throughout to your schools, when you go to your job, if someone does a wrong to you, try not to get heated about it. Maybe for a few minutes. But try to realize the forgiveness that Christ has offered to you, and try to offer that same forgiveness to others. Because at the end of the day, that's all that matters.