Grace through Forgiveness
Then Peter came and said to him, “Lord, if my brother or sister sins against me, how often should I forgive? As many as seven times?” Jesus said to him, “Not seven times, but, I tell you, seventy-seven times.
-Matthew 18:21-22
Forgiveness begins and ends with God. Forgiveness flows directly from God. Contrary to those who think the God of the Old Testament scriptures is angry, vengeful, and arbitrary, one of the key takeaways from Israel’s scriptures is that God is a God who forgives. The LORD is "merciful and gracious, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love." This becomes a refrain in the Hebrew bible. Because of this, it is true of God to say that God forgives.
There is a psalm (103) that says this simply and poetically:
…as far as the east is from the west,
so far he removes our transgressions from us. (Ps 103:12)
Prior to the arrival of Jesus, God sent John the Baptist to proclaim repentance for the forgiveness of sins. And then Jesus arrived, God’s own son, God’s very being, and through him, forgiveness of sins was offered to the world. In one passage, when Jesus arrives on the scene, John the Baptist proclaims, “Here is the lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world." Jesus went around announcing to people that their sins were forgiven.
This is a message that changes our lives; it’s a message we need to hear over and over again. In Christ God has removed our sins.
But then he also teaches us that we are to forgive. Our forgiveness of others flows from God’s forgiveness of us. In the Lord’s Prayer we pray that God would “forgive us our sins/trespasses/ as we forgive those who sin/trespass against us.” As we receive forgiveness from God, so we forgive others.
Forgiveness is the releasing of a debt, it is refusing to exact revenge, it entails letting go of the burdens that someone’s actions caused in your life. The debts are real, and the pain is real. But forgiveness releases these things into the hands of God. The result is that we let go of the anger and the power of those actions over us. All of this is made possible through God’s grace and God’s forgiveness of us. Or to say it another way, without God we cannot do this.
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