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JESUS' TOP TEN WORDS OF ADVICE #7

HOW TO FORGIVE FOR GOOD

Have you heard the latest from the medical front? There's a new way to reverse the symptoms of heart disease, symptoms like high blood pressure. At Florida Hospital in Orlando, Christian physicians are doing just that—by teaching patients how to forgive more effectively.
Forgiveness as the key to cardiovascular health. That's a new one isn't it?

And wouldn't it be nice if we could all do it---forgive cleanly, wipe out those ugly, resentful feelings. Wouldn’t it be great if past hurts didn’t come back to haunt us?
Forgive and forget. It’s not that easy is it? Not when you’ve really been disappointed, not when you've really been hurt.

The New Testament has a lot to say about forgiveness. It touches on the subject eighty-four times. And it typically urges us to forgive as we’ve been forgiven. We are to forgive as Christ forgave us. That's one of the New Testament's Top Ten admonitions.

But Jesus and His apostles do more than simply tell us to forgive. They also show us how to forgive cleanly, how to forgive so we experience peace instead of resentment down the road.
How does that happen?

First, let’s think about the kind of forgiveness Jesus offered. If we’re supposed to forgive like Him, what exactly did he extend to us from the cross?

More than anything else, it was a permanent pardon. In other words, Christ forgave with eternity in mind. He wiped out the debt of our sin. He cancelled our transgressions. Jesus is the kind of God who throws our worst mistakes into the deepest part of the sea. Gone. Deep-sixed.
Well, that's exactly what we all need to do. It would be absolutely wonderful if we could forgive for good. It would be great for our relationships; it would be great for the state of our hearts.
So what enabled Jesus to do that? How did He get to the point of being able to forgive for good?
Jesus did something very important before he went to the cross. And it’s something we often overlook. To put it simply, Jesus got mad. Jesus expressed anger. You can hear it ringing out loud and clear in Matthew 23. That's where He confronts His enemies, the Pharisees. He protests against whitewashed sepulchers full of greed and self-indulgence. He cries out against blind guides leading the blind, and a brood of vipers shedding the blood of prophets. He expresses outrage at the hypocrisy of those so desperately trying to kill him.
Listen, Jesus didn’t forgive by making Himself believe: it's not a big deal. On the contrary, He talked about how hurtful sin is. Before Jesus extended pardon from the cross, He had to lift His voice and declare how much sin was hurting Him.

So, it may seem like a paradox, but expressing anger is one of the prerequisites of forgiving permanently. We have to express our feelings, instead of discount them: That was wrong. That really hurt me. We don’t have to whine endlessly or get abusive, but we do need to let the pain speak: I didn’t deserve that. That was really inappropriate.

If we just ignore the hurt and try to smile our way through forgiveness, the pain will just come out in other ways. What we stuff in the bottom drawer will pop out of the top drawer when we least expect it.

To forgive without expressing anger or disappointment is to forgive from a position of weakness. You don’t want to offend the person who wronged you, so you wave off an apology with, “That’s okay.” Or maybe you're hoping to be accepted by the people who keep mistreating you, so you keep throwing out forgiveness---and they hardly notice.

Forgiving from weakness only invites more hurt. It never quite catches up with the pain. Forgiving to make friends is like knocking out the walls of your house to create wider shelter. What you end up with is not guests, not companions, but vandals, people who keep trampling over your boundaries.

There's something we usually miss when we picture Jesus hanging on the cross, when we speak of the Lamb of God led to the slaughter. Jesus forgave from a position of strength! That was important! He wasn’t shrugging off the hurt or excusing injustice. He was making a spectacle of the human cruelty that made His sacrifice necessary. He was standing up right to the end. He’d stood unmoved before his accusers and those who mocked him. He’d exposed the ugly face of sin. It was his passionate protest that enabled him to forgive for good.
Yes, Jesus shows us how to forgive from a position of strength.

Forgiving from weakness submerges the hurt. Forgiving from strength gets rid of the hurt.
Forgiving from weakness creates an unspoken debt. Forgiving from strength squares things eye to eye.

Forgiving from weakness is a way to get something. Forgiving from strength is a way to give something.

You know, there’s something else that stands out about the way Jesus forgave from the cross. He forgave for good also because He understood exactly who He was. He understood His role as the Messiah. Despite appearances, no one manipulated Him into going to Golgotha.

If you look carefully in the gospels you will find a “Suffering Servant” who was very much in charge. He did a lot of talking back.

He told the mob trying to take him captive: “This has all taken place that the writings of the prophets might be fulfilled.” (Matthew 26:56 NIV)

He let the high priest know who he was: “You will see the Son of Man sitting at the right hand of the Mighty One.”

He let Pilate know who had fallen into his hands: “I am a king. In fact, for this reason I was born, and for this I came into the world, to testify to the truth.”

Yes, Christ was led as a lamb to the slaughter, but he didn’t absorb the blows and lashes and nails because he thought he deserved it. He wasn’t silent before his adversaries because he felt intimidated. No, He remained supremely confident of His mission.

Jesus forgave so well because he knew who He was. He forgave from a position of strength. He forgave because He freely chose to do that.

That’s how you can forgive for good. Know who you are. You are a child of God, cherished by a wonderful Savior. You deserve to be respected. You deserve to be loved.

So please, don’t say, “Oh it was nothing,” when you’re hurting. Please don’t forgive in order to score points or make people like you.

Listen, forgiving others just to find yourself is like trying to cover ugly graffiti with a thin coat of water color. You brush and brush; you slop on the weak mixture, but the obscenities still show through.

Forgiving because you know who you are is to paint with thick, red brush strokes. We don’t have to keep covering up over and over. Christ's kind of forgiveness---that's the deep red mixture, that's the kind of forgiving that enables us to wipe out those hurts, those wrongs. It wasn’t right. It wasn’t fair. I didn’t deserve it. But I choose to forgive—just as Jesus did. When we forgive with this confidence, we can forgive and move on.

A good friend of mine told me how he finally took that step. Roland had been struggling through the aftermath of a divorce for several years. He had come to deeply resent how he'd been an enabler in his marriage relationship.

But one spring morning as the sun streamed through his bedroom window, Roland decided to have a no-holds-barred talk with God about his life. In the middle of that conversation he suddenly realized he didn’t want to be angry anymore. He'd vented enough. It was time to center his life around love again.

A few days later Roland woke up with another bit of news in his head: it was time to forgive Katie, his ex-wife. He hadn't really thought about it until then. Sure he understood the concept; he could tell other people that forgiveness is important. But when it came to Katie--he'd just felt a complete blank. All his ugly interaction with her felt like ancient history---sort of like the family albums he'd stuffed into a paper sack in the back of his closet. He and Katie hadn't been able to agree on how to split up the pictures. So there they sat in the dark, hostage to the couple's animosity.

But now Roland felt compelled to pick up the phone. It was a tough call, but he told Katie he needed to forgive her and hoped she would be able to forgive him.

Some time after that short conversation, Roland remembered those photo albums gathering dust in the closet. He grabbed the paper sack and took it to Kinko's, where he paid to have photo-quality copies made of all of the pictures. Then he drove to Katie's house and gave her the originals.

Back home he began paging through his copies, his record of their life together. And for the first time he was able to savor the good memories, for the first time he was able to put all their conflict into perspective.

These are Roland's words: "I came close to sinking into a bitter, middle-aged limbo. But rediscovering who I was, someone who wanted to love, moved me to forgive, and get on with my life."

Yes, each one of us can forgive from a position of strength. Each one of us can forgive like Jesus did---forgiving for good because we are His beloved children.

Thank you for being with us today. Tomorrow we'll look at another of the New Testament's Ten Commandments. Please join me and you'll discover why, "Truth Reaches Out for More." Until then, this is Lonnie Melashenko reminding you that it's always true, friend, God loves you.