The Freedom Found In Forgiveness (Part 4)

By Pastor Matthew

The parables of the prodigal son and the unmerciful servant teach us something else about repentance and forgiveness.  While we should ask God to forgive us of our sins, we should also ask forgiveness from any person who has suffered because of our sin, if that person is available.  Repentance and forgiveness are not limited to our relationship to God but, in many instances, can and should take place in our relationships with other human beings.  Jesus said that we should “believe in the gospel” that the “kingdom of God is at hand.”  The reign of God is a reality here and now for those who commit themselves to love God and to love their neighbor.  How do we know if we are committed to God’s way of love?  We know by our experience of “repentance” whenever we fail to love.

If we have chosen to follow God’s natural laws of love, we will experience remorse and sorrow whenever we fail to love.  This should lead us to repent (turn away from) such unloving behavior and seek forgiveness.  If a person is not committed to follow God’s natural laws, such a person will not feel remorse or sorrow over a failure to love.  Of course, no one is perfect.  There will be times when we fail to live by love.  But if we are trying to live by God’s natural laws of love, we will always experience repentance whenever we fail to love.  The ability to repent is a sign that we “believe in the gospel” of the Kingdom of God.

To pray this way is to pray for something radical, something that shatters all our assumptions and expectations about the basic patterns of ordinary social life.  In our world, you do not get anything for nothing.  If you want something, you must pay for it; you must make some kind of exchange.  But forgiveness overturns the entire economy of exchange-in forgiveness; I give you something for nothing, without requiring payment or exchange, without demanding anything in return.  In the economy of exchange, you are bound to me by various contracts and conditions.  However, in the economy of forgiveness, you are set free from all bondage to me, unconditionally liberated from all indebtedness to me.

Forgiveness is therefore something shocking, something astonishing and unexpected.  It lies outside the basic patterns and assumptions that underpin our entire culture.  It is wholly undetermined and contingent.  It is an event that can never be anticipated in advance.  It is an eruption of the ordinary until we have been shocked and astonished even to the point of being frightened by the power of forgiveness.  We have not yet even begun to understand what is involved in the area of forgiveness.

Forgiveness is shocking because it is a miracle.  In and of myself, I lack the capacity to forgive.  However, as I receive the forgiving love of God in Jesus, I am empowered by the Spirit to become an agent of that same forgiveness.  Because I have been forgiven, I can and must forgive.  When I forgive a person who has wronged me, that person is truly forgiven-they are liberated from the chains of the past and set free to participate in the life of God’s coming kingdom.  So too, when this person forgives me, I am truly forgiven.  I am liberated from the past and welcomed into the life of the kingdom.  Through the power of the Spirit, human society in all its forms can then begin to glimpse and to participate in the life of the kingdom through this astounding miracle of reciprocal forgiveness.