When the Lord responded to the Disciples’ question, asking how they should pray, He responded with the Lord’s Prayer and the indelible words of the petition, “Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us.” These key words of the prayer pervade the entirety of the Christian life. True forgiveness is a gift little understood outside of Christ’s Church. In the world an offense may be forgotten, but it’s rarely truly forgiven. Forgiveness is the the New Covenant language and action that God has given us that we may be elevated beyond the ‘tit-for-tat’ fallen relationships so manifest in the world around us.
In the world it is easy to begrudge and grow bitter or to write off those who’ve offended or hurt us. The reality is, though, that bitterness and grudges are like getting bit by a snake over and over again. Whatever the initial harm that’s been done to us or another—whether real or perceived—our growing bitterness and grudges against that person means that we continue to nurse the same old wound, over and over again. It’s like a scab that we just keep re-opening; it can never fully heal and the damage to our souls will be great.
Often, whatever the initial offense or hurt, our dwelling on it, our cultivating enmity against the offender, will grow the hurt or offense into something even larger than it originally was; it will take on a life of its own, becoming a means through which the enemy underscores to us even more how much we’ve been wronged or how deeply our pride’s been wounded. As we give into such feelings of hurt ego, anger follows. So, without forgiveness, these self-inflicted passions, as well as those truly committed against us, continue to bite and sink into us, doing us further harm.
The truth is that when we’re bitter, nursing a grudge or deep wound, we turn someone else’s sin into our own sin; it eats at us like some spiritual ‘cancer’; if unchecked, it grows, infecting our souls, destroying our faith even as it alters our sense of reality. We cannot be close to God, we cannot maintain and grow our relationship and communion with Him, while holding onto bitterness and withholding forgiveness from one another.
For this reason, God, in His great love for us, desires our freedom from such a spiritual cancer: bitterness, grudges, enmity, and the sin of pride that makes it so easy to take offense. When St. Peter asks the Lord how many times we must forgive, thinking maybe seven times would be sufficient, the Lord replies, ”seventy times seven” (Matt. 18:22), symbolic of an infinite sum.
The premise of this infinite forgiveness comes from God; He is its Author: He grants forgiveness to us over and over and over again, as many times as we confess our sins to Him with the intent to change and amend our words, thoughts, and actions. And while we ourselves sin and then fight to forgive those who wrong us, God does not sin and yet He forgives us for our sins against Him and others.
To illustrate this truth, Christ gives us today’s parable: One of the Master’s servants owes him an incredible amount, ten thousand talents, an impossible sum. If we thought of God’s forgiveness towards us in terms of a debt to be paid, we’d never be able to settle such an account, which is why we call God’s salvation, “grace,” “mercy.” The servant is forgiven as God forgives us our sins—our disobedience, pride, lustfulness, unfaithfulness, etc. But the servant, having received that gracious gift of forgiveness for his own debts, immediately takes his fellow servant by the throat, demanding that he pay all his debts, which in comparison to his own, are but a pittance.
So, the question that’s raised here is how we can dare to withhold forgiveness from our fellow man and yet expect that no matter what, God will forgive us. If we do so, we may presume on God’s grace and the fear of God is not in us, and such a state of hypocrisy puts us spiritually in a very perilous place indeed. The Lord warns us that such a double-standard simply cannot be.
When the Master in today’s parable finds out what the wicked servant has done, throwing his fellow servant into prison, failing to forgive his debt, the Master grows righteously angry and throws him in prison. Jesus warns us, “So My heavenly Father also will do to you if each of you, from his heart, does not forgive his brother his trespasses.” This teaching goes to the core of what the Body of Christ is meant to be about: forgiving one another from the heart because we cannot claim communion with God while withholding forgiveness from another.
At the same time, let’s recognize that forgiving others can often be a deep struggle, particularly in the cases of abuse or other such deep and painful wounds caused by another’s sins.
For this reason, we do well to remember that forgiving is not the same as forgetting. We may never forget a wrong, abuse, some grievous sin done against us, but we can with God’s help, learn through much struggle to forgive that person and practice ongoing forgiveness. In other words, we can make the ongoing work of forgiveness a matter of regular prayer and confession.
We remember the Lord’s words on the cross asking the Father to forgive His tormentors, “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.” St. Stephen, the Protomartyr said the same thing of those who in their hatred stoned him to death. Only the love of God can do this. He, who has gone before us in all things, shows us the way, leading us by His own example.
For our part, we can pray regularly to grow in such love; we can pray for healing; we can pray that God will give us freedom from bitterness and the great mercy to forgive. Even if it takes a life-time, God will honor our struggle. God’s healing in this regard begins with the desire to want to learn to forgive others as God has forgiven and does forgive us. The world would indeed be a different, more virtuous place, if more people were willing to put forgiveness into action.
Along with active forgiving, we can also learn to say no to nursing wounds and building grudges or spreading gossip and mistrust that result from perceived wrongs. We can learn to go to the person who’s offended us to speak to them about it first. We can give that person an opportunity to explain, ask forgiveness, and reconcile with us. But even if that person doesn’t offer to apologize, we can, in humility, learn to forgive and love them and, even better, to ask them their forgiveness. This is the strength and love our growing communion with Christ God gives us.
As we grow in love for Christ, we learn to cultivate an attitude of being “slow to speak, slow to anger, and quick to forgive” (Js. I:19) St. Paul admonishes us, likewise, to “be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, even as God in Christ forgave you” (Eph. 4:22).
In this way, we learn to combat bitterness and grudges before they set root and begin spreading their ‘poison’. We grow free of and find healing from this spiritual ‘cancer’ in our local body of the Church. We demonstrate the love and forgiveness not of this world, but so indicative of life in the Kingdom of Heaven. In God’s love and mercy for us and His desire to save us, to free us, to heal us, Christ commands us to forgive as we have been forgiven—seventy times seven. Glory to God for His forgiveness of us sinners and the power He works in us to likewise forgive.
Fr. Robert Miclean
Holy Archangels Orthodox Church
Sunday, 20 August 2017
On Forgiveness 4
Epistle: I Cor. 9:2-12
Gospel: Matthew 18:23-35
