In Matthew 18:21-35, Jesus tells a parable about forgiveness. In the story a slave who owed his master an outrageously large amount of money is forgiven his debt. Within moments of being forgiven, that same slave shows no mercy in calling in a debt for a ridiculously small amount of money. Upon hearing about this hypocrisy, the king calls the first slave back in, and promptly punishes him. At the conclusion of telling this story, Jesus says that the king is God, and the slaves are us. He warns that if we do not sincerely forgive one another that we will not be forgiven by God.
I began with this story and remarked that the king in the story, must have said "are you kidding me!?!?" to the first slave. Here this king just forgave a debt that could never be paid off, and the slave turns around and shows no forgiveness to his fellow brother. I find myself thinking the same thing, when my oldest daughter Emily (3 years old) will come to me apologizing for tearing half the pages out of my favorite book, and then once receiving forgiveness, turns around and pushes her sister, Hannah (18 months) down for playing with a toy she never even plays with.
I then pointed out that this phrase, "are you kidding me!?!?" must be exactly what God says every time we fail to forgive each other! God is that king. God has forgiven us all a debt we could never pay, the debt of sin. God sent his only son, Jesus Christ, that we might reap the rewards of that which we do not deserve (ie life everlasting). For us to accept God's forgiveness and then not grant forgiveness to others is literally a joke! It is the pot calling the kettle black!
In an attempt not to be too hard on everyone, including myself, I did acknowledge that some people make it very hard to forgive them. You know the ones who do terrible things to you or your loved ones, and then proclaim that YOU are the one in the wrong! The person who pokes, and picks, and wrongs you as if that is what they are employed to do. The person who doesn't ask for your forgiveness, and if you told them you forgave them, would be angry that you thought they needed your forgiveness.
I lived next door to a person like that, growing up. This person always seemed to think that he was better than me and my family. Our homes had a stone path between them, that lead from his house to ours. As a young child I remember walking on the path to visit his elderly mother (who owned the house). Within weeks of her death, an eight foot wall was erected right through that stone path. This neighbor used to clean his pool and then throw the junk he cleaned out over that wall into my yard. He would neatly rake his yard after mowing and deposit all the leaves and grass clippings into our yard. He and his family seemed to think that our yard was their garbage can! This man owned a classic Corvette, and one day threated to kill the family cat if he caught it near his car again. He made this threat to my 4 year old sister!
So I shared that I knew such a person, and was quite familiar with those who are harder to forgive. Then I pointed out something that was shared with me. Such a person does not deserve our anger, but rather our pity. A person like that is not a mean terrible human being, they are a sad, little (inside) person. Someone who seems to live only to make your life miserable is really someone who's life is so empty, and so sad that they have nothing better to do. Having said all this, I still acknowledged that forgiveness is not always easy. Therefore we spent the next few moments focussing on the person(s) in our lives that we need to forgive the most and asked God to help us begin to forgive them.
I would encourage you to stop what you are doing right now, and pray to God. Ask the Lord to help you in coming to forgive that man or woman who seems so unforgiveable to you. You might find that in attempting to bless another you yourself are the one who is blessed.
Grace & Peace,
Pastor John
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