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Okay, we'll wrap it up with one positive.
Let's be clear, to be discriminating and critical is necessary. To be judgmental and hypercritical is wrong.
That brings us to one positive statement, and we've got time for just one.
After all, it's only one word, and we probably can't think of much to say about this word. It's the first word in the third sentence of verse 37 and it's the word "forgive."
Forgive.
Now think for just a moment about the kind of transformation that would be brought about in our relationships if we were to take seriously this one dramatic directive.
Forgive.
It's one word, apoluo, it actually means “release.” And the bondage in which individuals and families and couples and churches and groups live can be traced, in a vast majority of cases, to an unwillingness to obey this one simple directive: “Forgive.” It’s not the same as “Excuse.” It’s not the same as “Deny.” It’s not the same as “Just forget about it for a while, and it will just all pass over and be gone.” It is actually an act of the will, driven by the Word of God, enabled by the Spirit of God, to recognize that although this person is habitually this way, is a total royal pain-in-the-neck (he said, without a spirit of censoriousness at all) and the person is this way, that I am still to forgive him.
Shakespeare says,
Though justice be thy plea, consider this—
That in the course of justice none of us
Should see salvation. We do pray for mercy,
And that same prayer doth teach us all to render
the deeds of mercy.
Chinese proverb says, “The man who opts for revenge should dig two graves, for he will go in one of them.”
George MacDonald says a striking thing when he says, “It may be infinitely worse to refuse to forgive than to murder.”
You say, “This is overstating the case, surely.” Listen to how he puts it: “It may be infinitely worse to refuse to forgive than to murder, because the latter”—namely, murder—“may be an impulse in the heat of the moment, whereas the former is a cold and deliberate choice of the heart.”
And that is absolutely true. Every time that I refuse to forgive or you refuse to forgive from the very bottom of our hearts, it is a cold and deliberate choice. And every time that you and I make that cold and deliberate choice, we entomb ourselves; we live within a dungeon of our own construction; we are trapped in the bondage of our own unforgiving hearts.
And those of us who have made a career of harboring bitterness and of holding grudges should not be surprised at the chaos of our lives, no matter how well we’ve concealed it with whatever we’ve enjoyed in terms of physical things, or material things, or whatever else it is. There is not a thing that is invented on the face of God’s earth that can deal with this.
Do you want to know how to stay in your marriage?
Forgive!
That’s it! That’s all of it!
Forgive!
All the other bells and whistles you can add at different times, but if I refuse to forgive my wife, I will never make it, and if she refuses to forgive me, she will never make it, for God knows how much offense I cause her. How do you stay in a church when somebody ticks you off? Pretend they don’t tick you off? No! Admit they tick you off, and forgive them. How do you stay as the pastor of a church?
Forgive!
It’s the whole business in one word.
“Without being forgiven, released from the consequences of what we have done, our capacity to act would, as it were, be confined to a single deed from which we could never recover. We would remain the victims of its consequences forever..."
If we’re prepared to take this seriously, I think it will make a dramatic impact in our lives. I don’t know the details of your lives; I just know there’s enough in my life that can be covered by this. Maybe there is in yours.
Send us out, Lord, with that thought uppermost in our minds, so that the principle may be applied: Be merciful, be full of steadfast love, just as your Father is full of steadfast love. For Jesus’ sake we ask it. Amen.
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