David Bahn – Reflections

Matthew 6:14-15

¹⁴ For if you forgive others their trespasses, your heavenly Father will also forgive you, ¹⁵ but if you do not forgive others their trespasses, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses.

Jesus’ teaching on forgiveness is difficult for some people – especially those who have had terrible evil visited on them by someone. It’s so difficult for people to think that the most heinous criminal can get off Scott free. Murderers, child abusers,  and the like surely must have to do something in order to have their sins forgiven! This seems particularly true when we imagine the crime in vivid detail or when we are the one who has been hurt. I can’t imagine how difficult it would be for me to forgive someone who had stolen all my retirement money just when I was at the end of my career, for example.

Jesus’ words here are, however, sobering and clear: We simply must forgive. No ifs, ands, or buts: we must forgive.

When it comes to forgiving others, Jesus knew that of which he spoke! As he was nailed to the cross, he prayed, “Father forgive them…” When he met his disciples on Easter, and they were cowering behind closed doors, he greeted them, “Peace!” When he saw the paralyzed man, let down through the roof, he forgave his sins. For us it may seem a smaller thing to forgive the paralytic than those who drove the nails into his hands. But the reality and impact of sin is much deeper than simply the personal immediate impact it has on the one against whom the sin is visited. In the cosmic and celestial reality of God every sin is an attack on his being; every sin undercuts his will, plans for blessing, and the good that he intends for us.

Sin attacks every good, right, just and pure thing that God has established. God’s justice demands that sin be punished. God’s holiness makes it impossible for sin to be in his presence. God’s purity requires the removal of sin – not just the overlooking of it. Too often we think of forgiveness as being a matter of shrugging off a hurt, or overlooking an offense. Forgiveness is far more than that, however.

Forgiveness means acknowledging the pain and wrong, and taking that pain into the heart and letting it kill (the wages of sin is death, after all). While you or I cannot do that, that is precisely what Jesus did: he took the pain, wrong, evil, and poison of our sins into his heart. And it killed him. It wasn’t just nails, and spear, and beatings and crucifixion that killed Jesus: sin killed him.

If we are to forgive others, we must bring them to the One who forgives all sin: ours and theirs. We must let Jesus have our pain, and see him suffering for us not only for our sins, but for the sins of others against us. He took our sin and the pain others cause us into his heart and died for us.

When we embrace the fullness of Jesus’ death for the sin of the world we will find strength to forgive those who sin against us. No easy task to be sure, but Jesus’ death was far more difficult.