Forgive For Good

Colossians 3:12-17

January 24, 2010 – ©Rev. Dr. Linnea E. Carnes

Introduction

A kindergarten teacher in Texas was helping one of her students put on his cowboy boots. He asked for help, and she could see why. Even with her pulling and him pushing, the little boots still didn’t want to go on. By the time they got the second boot on, she had worked up a sweat. She almost cried when the little boy said, “Teacher, they’re on the wrong feet.”

It wasn’t any easier pulling the boots off than it was putting them on. She managed to keep her cool as together they worked to get the boots back on, this time on the right feet. He then announced, “These aren’t my boots.” She bit her tongue rather than get right in his face and scream, “Why didn’t you say so?” Once again, she struggled to help him pull the ill-fitting boots off his little feet.

No sooner had they gotten the boots off when he said, “They’re my brother’s boots. My mom made me wear ‘em.” Now she didn’t know if she should laugh or cry, but she mustered up what grace and courage she had left to help him get the boots back on his feet again. Helping him into his coat, she asked, “Now where are your mittens?” He said, “I stuffed ‘em in the toes of my boots.” [PreachingToday.com, “Child’s Boots Leave Teacher Frustrated”].

Children can sometimes do things that just make us want to scream. Yet, they are only children. They often don’t understand what they have done to make us angry. However, when someone at work or a friend does something that really upsets or offends us, we aren’t nearly as willing to excuse their behavior.

Putting up with and forgiving others isn’t easy. Yet, anything we do to get even for what someone has done to us only makes things worse.

Paul wrote in Colossians 3:8-9 that since we belong to Christ, “You must also rid yourselves of all such things as these: anger, rage, malice, slander and filthy language from your lips. Do not lie to each other.”

Forgive for good for the sake of the other.

Instead, we are to “show mercy to others, be kind, humble, gentle, and patient. Get along with each other and forgive each other.” [Col.3:12-13]. Paul’s words were to teach the people in this new church how to live as God’s people.

If you had a choice, would you rather live among people who are quick to get angry at you, say bad things about you, swear at you and lie to you? Or would you rather live with people who are kind, compassionate, patient and forgiving toward you?

Treating each other with kindness and patience, forgiving each other, brings harmony and peace to the Christian community. It restores relationships. Modeling Christ-like behavior shows those who don’t know Christ that there is a better way to live.

When a person puts his or her faith in Jesus Christ they become a new creation. [2 Cor.5:17]. This new creation is not like the old one, so all the old habits, the old behavior patterns, the old ways of treating people have to go.

Most people can show mercy, kindness, humility, gentleness and patience to others some of the time or maybe even most of the time. We even learn how to put up with the things in others that irritate us or make us angry.

However, when it comes to forgiving someone who has hurt us, that’s a different matter. Forgiving others is harder than anything else. When we have suffered, whether physically, mentally or emotionally, because of what someone has done to us, it is very difficult to forgive them.

We may say we forgive them, but when we think about what they did to us, we get upset again. “After what they did to us” how can we forgive them? Yet unless we forgive them, they are left unforgiven, stuck in time, and unable to move forward.

Thomas Edison invented the incandescent light bulb in 1879. It took hundreds of hours to manufacture one bulb. One day after finishing a bulb, he gave it to a young errand boy and asked him to take it upstairs to the testing room. As the boy started up the stairs, he stumbled and fell; the bulb shattered. Edison told the boy it was okay and then told his staff to start working on another bulb. Several days later when it was ready, Edison showed his forgiveness to the boy. He handed the bulb to him, saying, “Please take this up to the testing room.”

Imagine how that boy must have felt. He knew that he didn’t deserve to be trusted with this responsibility again. Yet, here it was, being offered to him again as though nothing had ever happened. Nothing could have restored this boy to the team more clearly, more quickly, or more fully. [PreachingToday.com, “Thomas Edison Exemplified Reconciliation” (Ken Sande, The Peacemaker, Baker Books, 1997)].

· Forgiving others sets them free, and helps them live in spite of their past mistakes.

· Forgiving others restores broken relationships.

· Forgiving others brings them peace.

· Forgiving others shows others what the Golden Rule looks like: “Always treat others as you would like them to treat you.” [Mt.7:12].

Forgive for good for your own sake.

Forgiving others is also good for us. Medical studies show that when we don’t forgive others, the anger, hatred and resentment builds up in us and causes symptoms of physical illness. Blood pressure rises other symptoms of stress affect the body. Holding on to these feeling is actually bad for our health.

A teacher once told each of her students to bring a clear plastic bag and a sack of potatoes to class. They were then told to call to mind every person they had a grudge against, were angry with. For each person they refused to forgive, they chose a potato, wrote on it a name and date and put it in the plastic bag. They were told to carry this bag with them everywhere: beside their bed at night, or next to their chair at meals or school, while driving or riding in a car, everywhere. Some bags became quite heavy. Lugging this around, paying attention to it all the time, and not leaving it in embarrassing places was difficult. Over time the potatoes became moldy, smelly and began to sprout “eyes.”

We usually think of forgiveness as a gift to the other person, but forgiveness clearly is a gift to ourselves. [PreachingToday.com, “Forgiveness Unloads a Sack of Potatoes”].

· Forgiving others sets us free from past hurts and helps us live in the joy of today.

· Forgiving others restores relationships.

· Forgiving others brings peace to our lives and peace in the body of Christ, the church.

· Forgiving others is how we live the Golden Rule.

We forgive others because we are blessed when we do. Yet it is not easy to forgive others even if it is good for us.

Forgive for good for Jesus’ sake!

The concept of forgiving others doesn’t come from the Old Testament, where forgiveness comes from God alone. David in Psalm 51 says, “Against you, you only, have I sinned and done what is evil in your sight.” [Ps.51:4]. He sought forgiveness only from God.

It is Jesus who calls us to forgive one another. The New Testament “talks more of forgiveness as an act of grace, given even to the undeserving and not-yet-repentant, than of justice,” writes Scot McKnight.

[Scot McKnight, The Jesus Creed (Brewster, MA, Paraclete Press, 2004) 220].

We haven’t done anything to deserve being forgiven. Forgiveness is God’s gift of grace to us. Romans 5:8 reminds us that “God proves his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.”

As we have been loved and forgiven by God, we are to love and forgive others. Colossians 3:13 says, “Bear with one another and, if anyone has a complaint again another, forgive each other; just as the Lord has forgiven you, so you also must forgive.”

In the parable from Matthew 18:21-35 we heard read today, Jesus says that just as the king “took pity on [his servant] and canceled the debt and let him go.” So we too are to cancel the debt of others. Whatever they have done to us, we are to forgive completely.

Yet, this servant, whose debt was beyond anything he could ever repay, refused to cancel the small debt of another person. So the king punished him.

Jesus said in Matthew 6:14, “If you forgive others when they sin against you, your heavenly Father will also forgive you. But if you do not forgive others their sins, your Father will not forgive your sins.”

Why? Because God, through Jesus’ death on the cross, has forgiven our sins.

Jesus died for our sins – all of them. When we stand before God on judgment day, all our sins will have been erased. So we forgive others as we have been forgiven.

In Colossians 2:13-14 Paul wrote, “When you were spiritually dead because of your sins and because you were not free from the power of your sinful self, God made you alive with Christ, and he forgave all our sins. He canceled the debt. … He took away that record with its rules and nailed it to the cross.” [NCV].

Ephesians 4:32 says, “Be kind and compassionate to one another, forgiving each other, just as in Christ God forgave you.”

Conclusion

I read a story of a little child who had been drawing with markers while sitting on the sofa and got marker on the sofa. She had been told not to use markers while on the sofa, but did it anyway. When her mother saw it she was very unhappy with her little girl. She disobeyed her mother by using markers there. The color might not come out of the sofa. So she sat down with her daughter and explained that she had done something she knew was wrong. She needed to be punished. The mother asked, “What do you think I should do to you?” The little girl looked up into her mother’s eyes and said, “Forgive me?”

Isn’t that what each of us really wants? Don’t we too want to be forgiven?

We look into Jesus’ eyes and say, please forgive me. And he does. We have been forgiven for good!

Isn’t that what we really want others to do for us?

If that’s what we want, shouldn’t we be willing to forgive others?

“Always treat others as you would like them to treat you.”

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This sermon is copyright ©2010 by Rev. Dr. Linnea E. Carnes, Immanuel Evangelical Covenant Church, Chicago, Illinois.