PODCAST
Forgiveness from the Heart
September 6, 2026 | Kyle BjergaKyle Bjerga discusses how forgiveness is one of the most challenging teachings in the Christian faith, especially when the person who hurt you is someone close to you. In Matthew 18, Jesus answers Peter’s question about how many times we must forgive by making it clear that true forgiveness does not keep score. The Parable of the Unmerciful Servant puts our situation in sharp perspective: we have been forgiven an impossible debt before God, and that reality should shape how we respond to the far smaller debts others owe us. Forgiveness does not mean erasing consequences, rebuilding trust overnight, or pretending something never happened. It is both a decisive moment and an ongoing process, one that requires drawing fresh grace from God each day. Forgiven people forgive others, not because it is easy or natural, but because the King has already paid the debt.
TRANSCRIPT_______________________________________________+
The following is an uncorrected transcript generated by a transcription service. Before quoting in print, please check the corresponding audio for accuracy.
Well, good morning. Go ahead and grab your Bibles and turn to Matthew chapter 18. If you’re using one of the black pew Bibles there in front of you, it’s page 799. If you don’t have a Bible, that is our gift to you so you can find your place in it and then take it with you today. Two weeks ago, Daniel shared with us the story of Corrie Ten Boom, one of my heroes of the faith.
I mention her a lot. And the story he shared is one that we have talked about here, here a lot. Because Corrie, as a concentration camp prisoner and survivor, was able to forgive a Nazi guard whom she met years later after he became a Christian. She shook the hand of a man whose hand was responsible for her own suffering, for the suffering of family and friends. And she was able to look at him in the eye and say, I forgive you, brother, with all my heart.
Corrie Ten Boom, the lover of Jesus, the forgiver of a Nazi prison guard, never Struggled with forgiveness again.
False, false, she says in one interview. I wish I could say that merciful and charitable thoughts just naturally flowed for me then on, but they didn’t. Years later, she was hurt by a group of Christian friends of hers. And the pain caused by this group led to anger and bitterness. It led to sleepless nights of replaying that situation over and over again.
Maybe you understand what she’s talking about. Was it possible to forgive again? Because here’s what we know. We talked about this last week. Sin is going to happen in the church.
We are going to sin against each other. But what if that sin isn’t just a sin you point out in somebody because you see it in them? What if that sin is something against you? What if that sin is committed against you? What if the sin of that person and their gossip is actually gossip about you?
What if the lie that they tell is a lie about you? You see, there’s a little bit of a difference when we just point somebody’s sin out, when we actually experience that sin ourselves. Maybe even as I talk about this, there’s some pain in your own heart because a face or a name, you see them right now. Someone who has sinned against you, maybe even a brother or sister in Christ, maybe even in this room. And I will tell you, if you are sitting as a family, they are in this room.
Because we all sin against each other. If we are brothers and sisters in Christ, this will continue to happen, happen until he returns. So here’s what I know. Jesus sees that person that you see, and Jesus has forgiven that person. So the question is, have you or will you?
This whole series, the Little Kingdom we’ve been talking about, what does it mean to enter into the kingdom of God and then live as the people of God in the kingdom of God? And so we saw that we come into this kingdom, humility before the Lord like a child. We help each other out. We deal with sin in our life. We pursue each other because we love each other.
And today we finish by focusing on forgiveness within the community of God, within His kingdom. So let me give you the big idea right up front. It is this. Forgiven little ones, forgive others. Forgiven little ones, forgive others.
Worth defining forgiveness. Forgiveness is giving up the right to punish. It’s canceling a debt. And so in the definition, what we understand is there is a real wrong that has been done in order to forgive. We have to reconcile that there is wrong done toward someone.
And yet in forgiveness, we choose to absorb that wrong and not hold it against that person. Not treat them as they deserve. So I want to give a few preliminary thoughts on forgiveness, kind of looking at the whole of Scripture, because this is just part of a much larger understanding of one of the most important teachings in the Bible, and that is forgiveness. So I hope this grounds us a little bit more as we dive into Matthew 18. But before we get there, some things that we need to talk about.
Forgiveness is not because there are some unhelpful and unbiblical teachings out there about forgiveness. So when we talk about forgiveness, we do not mean that there aren’t consequences. This isn’t a way to get out of those natural consequences. Or maybe a standard has been crossed and there’s consequences for it. So, for example, if you think of somebody’s sin against you and it also breaks the law, then they need to be held accountable to the law, even if you forgive them.
So you can forgive them and they could still be prosecuted and penalized if that was the case. Second, forgiveness does not equal trust. You can forgive someone even when trust is broken. So think about somebody who gossips about you. You can forgive them for that gossip, not treat them as they deserve.
But the next time you have something to share, you’re probably not going to share with that person. Or at least not in the same detail for a while. Because forgiveness doesn’t equal trust right away. And finally, forgiveness does not mean forgetfulness. Remember I said maybe even a face or a name popped into your mind as I was talking just a few minutes ago.
That just means you haven’t forgotten, but maybe you have forgiven them. Maybe you have forgiven them, but you have not forgotten. And forgive and forget is a very common phrase when we talk about forgiveness. It is impossible. And it is also not the teaching of Scripture.
And then people will point to where it says, God remembers our sins no more. It’s right there. But that doesn’t mean our sin slips God’s mind. He is omniscient. He is all knowing.
If he forgot our sin in that sense, then he would cease to be God. Because he is different now. He forgot something. No, he knows all of it. The amazing thing is that he chooses not to remain.
He chooses not to punish us as our sins deserve. That’s the amazing thing. Because if God forgot our sins, then he would wonder why Jesus was on the cross. He knows why he’s on the cross because of our sin. And he chooses not to remember.
He chooses not to punish anymore, and he cancels our debt. So with those things said, let’s turn to Matthew 18 where we see a continuation of Jesus teaching after Peter, good old Peter is going to interrupt him with a question. Jesus is going to tell us a story, and then we’re going to get the lesson from that story, all on the important topic of forgiveness. And so that will serve as our outline today, the question, then we’ll get the story and finally the lesson. Let’s look first at the question, verses 21 through 22.
Then Peter came to Jesus and asked, lord, how many times shall I forgive my brother or sister who sins against me? Up to seven times. Jesus answered, I tell you, not seven times, but 77 times. Peter has a good question. It’s a good question.
Coming on the heels of what we looked at last week, we love each other enough to confront sin in our lives. And once that person then repents of that sin, we should forgive them. Them. So we saw that process last week when somebody is called out for sin. We saw the process of going to them, just you and them, and then the smaller group, and then taking it to the church.
And the hoped for outcome in all of that is reconciliation. So it’s confession, repentance, forgiveness, reconciliation. That’s where hoping comes every time a sin is pointed out to us because we want to restore fellowship between them and God and fellowship between us and them. So repentance from the other person is key to forgiveness, since forgiveness should always include at least a desire and a pursuit for reconciliation. So let’s look at Luke 17 should be on the screen for you, I believe Luke 17.
This is Jesus talking again. He says, if your brother or sister sins against you, rebuke. That’s what we looked at last week in Matthew 18. Okay, and if they repent, forgive them. That’s what we’re looking at today.
Even if they sin against you seven times in a day and seven times come back to you saying, I repent. You must forgive them. So it’s clearly stated here that there’s repentance coming out of our passage last week. It is assumed that at some point in that church discipline, this person comes to terms with their sins, confesses, repents, and seeks forgiveness. And so, as brothers and sisters in Christ, how do we respond?
In the church, we have a heart ready to forgive. We have a heart ready to forgive. Think about it this way. How terrible would it be to call somebody out for their sin, see them go through the process. We looked at last week, week, see them repent, and come to you and say, I’m repenting.
Would you forgive me? And you say, I gotcha. I Told you you were wrong.
Like, how damaging would that be to the person? Cause we point out the sin not for that moment. We point out the sin for the moment where they come back and we’re reconciled with them. That’s the point. We don’t get to hold it over them.
We don’t get to say, you know, I’d rather hold a grudge against you, so I’m glad that’s good for you, but I’d rather hold the grudge and keep this unforgiveness in my heart. Because what we know is that anger, bitterness is going to be there in our hearts, and it’s going to impact our relationship with them and with God.
So that’s not going to happen the first time. But what about the second time, the third time, the fourth time? Do you see what I’m getting at here? It’s very easy to forgive once, but what if it continues? And that’s why Peter steps up and asks the question, I can forgive once, I can do twice, I can do three times, Lord, how many times shall I forgive my brother or sister whose sins against me?
Up to seven times. And so what Peter’s done is he’s drawn a line in the sand. He said, okay, I’ll forgive, I’ll forgive up to seven times. But then that’s it, right, Jesus? That’s as far as I need to go.
When Peter does that in this moment, this actually looks pretty generous because the rabbis of the day were teaching you should forgive somebody up to three times, and then the fourth time you’re released from forgiving them. So what does Peter do? He doubles it. And more so, Lord, how about seven times? Like the rabbis of the day were kind of teaching, three strikes and you’re out before.
That was the original three strikes and you’re. You’re out. Like, then it’s done. You’re free. They’ve sinned against you, you don’t need to forgive them anymore.
And Peter thinks, we could really stand out, Jesus, if we forgive seven times.
But Peter is thinking horizontally. He’s just comparing himself to others. So their line is here. I want my line to be here. And doesn’t that look good?
Isn’t that better? And then Jesus says, I tell you, not seven times, but 77 times. Some of your Bibles, you might have a footnote at the bottom in the NIV, or maybe some of your Bibles translate it. 7 times, 70 times. 7 times can be translated either way, which is why you see it like that.
But the point is whether it’s 77 times. Or it’s 490 times. I had to do that math. No one, no one is actually keeping track of this number like nobody’s actually keeping track. Imagine at home, you’ve got a calendar.
We have a calendar in our fridge. And what if I said under that we have a sin checklist? And I say, oh, hey, 73 times you’ve lied to me. Four more, we’re done. Four more, and I don’t have to forgive you anymore.
We’ll just cross that one off, and I’ll just hold on to all that anger and bitterness towards you. How healthy of a family is that gonna be? But how many of us keep that checklist up here?
And it’s not even at 77 times yet, right? It’s not 490 times. We keep that checklist up here. But our love is supposed to be demonstrated through forgiveness that keeps no record of wrongs. Like we see in 1 Corinthians 13.
We don’t keep record of wrong. We keep short accounts. We just keep forgiving. We want the line in the sand as long as it looks more generous than others. But Jesus says, there is no line.
You keep forgiving people. Jesus, do you know how difficult it is to forgive people who have sinned against you? He knows. He knows, and he calls us to keep forgiving. And of course, he does this with a parent, so he tells this story.
Let’s go there next. Looking at verse 23 through 31. Therefore, the kingdom of heaven is like a king who wanted to settle accounts with his servants. As he began the settlement, a man who owed him 10,000 bags of gold was brought to him. Since he was not able to pay, the Master ordered that he and his wife and his children and all that he had be sold to repay the debt.
At this, the servant fell on his knees before him. Be patient with he begged, and I will pay everything. I will pay back everything. The servant’s master took pity on him, cancelled the debt, and let him go. But when that servant went out, he found one of his fellow servants who owed him 100 silver coins.
He grabbed him and began to choke him. Pay back what you owe me, he demanded. His fellow servant fell to his knees and begged him, be patient with me, and I will pay it back. But he refused. Instead, he went off and had the man thrown into prison until he could pay the debt.
When the other servants saw what had happened, they were outraged and went and told their master everything that had happened. So Jesus takes Peter’s kind of horizontal question Comparing to others, says you’re thinking from an earthly perspective. He says, let me tell you what forgiveness is like in the kingdom of God. Let me show you what this looks like here. And so in this parable, he tells us about a king and a servant.
So these guys are not equal. One has authority and great riches, the other is under that authority and needs the king’s help. And the amount owed here, it’s not as important about what the number is. It’s the fact that it’s astronomically different between what he owes the king and what the other servant owes him. And so they have tried to do some of the math and figured out that this is kind of equal to about $6 billion today in debt, compared to a $10,000 debt.
There’s a big difference between $6 billion and 10,000. So we’re going to come back to that smaller amount here in just a moment. But we have this servant looking at what he owes the king and he realized there is zero chance I pay this back. I can’t do this. And so the king is going to sell him and his wife and his children and all that he has in order to recoup some.
But there will never be enough to pay back the king, never to get close to the full amount, which means there’s never true freedom for the servant from his debt. It’s always going to be there in the back of his mind, and he is face to face with the judgment that he deserves, face to face with this just king. So what would you do in that moment? Exactly what he does. In desperation.
You throw yourself at the feet of the king, begging him, pleading with him, saying things that you can’t possibly promise, like, I’ll pay everything back. You just want it to sound good, like you really mean it, even though you know it can never happen. So he asked for patience from the king. And the key here is what the master does. The master looks at him, takes pity on him and says, the debt is paid, it’s cancelled, I forgive you.
And he lets him go. The king moves from justice to mercy. Because of the pity on this man, the debt is canceled, you owe me nothing. And he’s free. The king cuts his losses because of his compassion.
And if you’re here this morning and you wonder what the gospel message is, that’s it. That’s the good news, is that we have a perfect king, a just and merciful king who looks at us and knows we have sinned far more than we would like to admit. And any one sin against him is infinitely worse than anything else that we could sin against any other way. We could sin against each other. And we beg him.
We say, lord, can you save us? Can you be patient with me? And he looks at us and he says, the debt is canceled. It’s paid. Not because of anything we have done, but because of his mercy, his compassion.
And looking at us, those without hope, looking up at him and saying, I’m canceling it. I’m forgiving you. Forgiveness for us to others can only happen when we understand God’s forgiveness, the forgiveness that we have received. When you see your desperation before the King, when you fall to your knees confessing your sin, not your financial problem, your sin, you realize there’s nothing you can do to pay him back. When we are face to face with the just King, we realize everything we get is what we deserve.
We will not ask another question. We will know in that moment when we see him face to face. This is what I get. This is what I deserve. And yet in his compassion and mercy, he looks at us and he forgives.
In his justice, the debt must be paid. But in his mercy, he provides the way for it to be paid. That’s the amazing thing about this King. He will see the debt paid, but he’s going to do that through the death of his own son. That’s how it’s going to be paid.
Jesus death in our place on the cross secured our forgiveness so that we can live. Like Psalm 103 says, Robert read it for us before, just a couple parts from it. He does not treat us as our sins, deserve or repay us according to our iniquities. Why not? Because he’s merciful and he’s compassionate.
As far as the east is from the west, so far has he removed our transgressions from us. He says, you can’t even understand what it’s like to see your sins go away as far as the east is from the west. And so we echo the song we just sang a few moments ago. Behold the man upon a cross. My sin on his shoulders.
My sin and your sin. And it was my sin that held him there while I was a mocking voice in the crowd until it was accomplished. His dying breath has brought me life. I know that it is finished. That’s what it costs to say, I forgive your debt.
The debt was paid. And so at this moment we understand what Paul is saying in Ephesians 4:32. Be kind and compassionate to one another. Be kind and compassionate to one another, forgiving each other just as In Christ, God forgave you. We forgive because he forgave us.
Corrie10 Boom, who’d forgiven this Nazi soldier responsible for his suffering, eventually forgave that group of women who sinned against her. Or so she thought. Because years later, she’s explaining this situation to another friend of hers. The friend’s asking some questions. She’s like, you know what?
I can prove everything that they did because I have all their letters saved in my desk. And that friend looked at her and said, corrie, aren’t you the one whose sins are at the bottom of the sea for our purposes in Psalm 103? Aren’t your sins as far as the east is from the west? And are the sins of your friends etched in black and white? And Corrie knew in that moment, her freedom from sin in the eyes of God was complete.
He was never going to bring it up again. And yet she’s holding the letters from her friends as evidence for all the wrong they had done to her. And the only thing she knew to do was to burn the letters, to say, I can’t go back to them anymore. And she prayed Matthew 6, forgive me my trespasses, as I forgive those who trespassed against me.
So for some of you, the first thing you need to do is you need to go burn the letter. For some of you, it’s that post, it’s that note, it’s that voicemail, something that you need to get rid of because you’re leaving it there and it’s just calling you back. You need to burn the letters because it’s going to cause you a pain and cultivate bitterness in your heart rather than forgiveness, love, and mercy towards that person. And this is the lesson this unmerciful servant didn’t learn, because shortly after this, after he is forgiven, he goes out, he finds another servant. Now, we don’t know if it means he went out and found the other servant just so happened to be walking on the same path, or as if he found it, went and found him purposely, we don’t really know.
But either way, how he handles the situation, not great. This is another servant who is equal to him, right? They’re both servants. There isn’t this authority thing anymore. They’re both equals.
And he owes him significantly less money, an amount of money that’s actually something you could pay back with time compared to his infinite financial problems with the King. And he reacts not just with anger, but with violence. He literally has the guy in a headlock. He’s choking him, demanding the money back and when this man can’t pay it back, he actually gives him a worse punishment than the King was going to give him. He throws him in prison, a debtor’s prison.
He cannot pay it back. He has no hope of ever getting out. And here I just have to mention this. As we were studying this passage as a family this week, you know, on our bookmarks when we studied the passage coming up, there was a question like, what does this teach you about mankind, Humanity? Something like that.
And this is my youngest son’s answer to that question. What does this passage teach us about humanity? You ready? We are foolish, dumb, stupid and idiotic.
He said it, not me. But he’s right. As a 10 year old, my son has an understanding of sinful human nature. Why did this man do this? Because he’s foolish.
Because he’s dumb. And that’s all of us. This is all of us in this moment. Because we would love to say, it’s just that man. We have to look in our own hearts.
We have to look in our own hearts. Why would my son think this? Because what this story reveals is that our sins against a holy God, a holy and righteous God, are infinitely more than someone else’s sins against us. And if God cancels our debt, who are we to hold others in their debt? It doesn’t make any sense.
When the servant takes the other servant, demanding his money, choking him as he sees this man looking back up at him and begging him for patience, promising to pay back his debt. Everything he just said to the King, by the way, almost verbatim, this man should have looked at this guy and with emotions in his heart, understanding the mercy and compassion he just has experienced, he should have put himself in that man’s shoes and said, what? Wow, I have been forgiven so much. I want this guy to get a little taste of the freedom I just experienced. And so I’m gonna forgive him his debt.
What would that do in that man’s heart in that moment, to be freed from that debt, a $10,000 debt, just gone. If that man had looked down and said, I forgive you, what would that do? What would that do to you? Because some of you know, you’re walking around with somebody else having unforgiveness in their heart towards you. What would it do in this moment if they called you today and said, I forgive you?
What kind of freedom would you experience? And what kind of freedom can you give somebody else today to call them up and say, I forgive you? No, but I forgive you. You.
The man doesn’t do that, he doubles down, has this man thrown in prison without any chance of paying back the debt. Just pure vengeance. The bad news is that servant only saw the numbers, the dollars and cents. He didn’t see his soul. He didn’t see the soul of the other servant.
He didn’t learn the bigger lesson. And we get angry when we read the story about the unmerciful servant. But again, we can’t point fingers too quickly. We need to look in the mirror. And sometimes we don’t like what we see.
But we need to look because we probably look a lot more like him most days than we’d like to admit. I say that because there is a sad reality known about the church by others outside the church. And that is we shoot our own wounded.
We aren’t the only place that this happens. Of course. It’s the only place it should never happen though. It’s the only place it should never happen. And we do this by living in unforgiveness toward each other.
I’ve heard it in one on one counseling. I’ve heard it in small groups. I’ve heard it in discipleship groups. I’ve heard it from many conversations over the last few decades. And it comes out like, I could never forgive them for that.
I will never forgive them for what they said to me. I will never forgive them for what they did to me. And these are Christians speaking about other Christians. And you need to understand what you’re saying in that moment is you are throwing that person in a debtor’s prison, saying that what you have done to me is infinitely worse than what you have done to God.
David Platt says the Bible is not saying that it’s easy to forgive or that it’s natural to forgive. However, it is Christian to forgive. That’s the call we have from Jesus. When we look at this servant, we ask, why didn’t he forgive? So let’s turn that question on ourselves.
Why do we struggle to forgive, especially our brothers and sisters in Christ? Because we think horizontally, not vertically. We think earthly versus kingdom. So here’s a few different reasons. One, we think other sins against us are worse than our sins against God.
We downplay our sin before the holy and righteous God and we over exaggerate their sin to us. We have to flip that. We have to see that in a totally new light that our sins are infinite against God and theirs can be forgiven. The second is that we forget how great a debt we’ve been forgiven. We forget how big that chasm is, that infinite chasm between us and God.
An insurmountable chasm by human standards. Only God and God alone could forgive it. We forget how wide that chasm is. And finally, we prefer judgment over mercy when it comes to others. We love when people get what they deserve, especially if we get to bring that judgment.
But we love when God in His mercy, doesn’t give us what we deserve.
We have to see all of that changed, which means we need to have a heart that’s ready to forgive. A heart that can only be transformed by the good news. So when these things are true of us, we need to remember the lesson from this story. So let’s look and finish out the chapter, starting in verse 32. Then the master called the servant in you wicked servants.
He said, I cancelled all the debt of yours because you begged me to. Shouldn’t you have had mercy on your fellow servant just as I had on you? In anger, his master handed him over to the jailers to be tortured until he should pay back all he owed. This is how my Heavenly Father will treat each of you, unless you forgive your brother or sister from your heart. The haunting question in this passage, shouldn’t you have had mercy on your fellow servants just as I had on you?
And the Master here gives him the same fate that he wanted to give to this other servant. Because at this point, he has shown he does not understand what has happened for him. There is no paying it back now. He will be tortured, no way to paying off the money anymore, continually punished for his lack of compassion, for taking advantage of the King’s mercy. And in verse 35, there is a real warning for us that we need to take to heart this morning.
This is how my Heavenly Father will treat each of you unless you forgive your brother or sister from your heart. It’s not the only time Jesus says something like this. Matthew 6, 14, 15, he says, for if you forgive other people and 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. This is right at the end of the Lord’s Prayer that we just talked about with Corrie 10 boom praying right at the end of the Lord’s Prayer.
But what we need to understand is this is in a prayer that is given to God’s people to call him Father. Because we are his children, we are his little ones. And Jesus words Here in Matthew 18 are for the church, those little ones in the community of God. So what this cannot be saying is that we have to forgive others before we are saved by that is a works based righteousness. That is not true.
So I love how John Stott puts it. He says our Lord certainly does not mean that our forgiveness of others earns us the right to be forgiven. It is rather that God forgives only the penitent and that one of the chief evidences of true penitence is a forgiving spirit. Once our eyes have been opened to the enormity of our offense against God, the injuries which others have done to us appear by comparison extremely trifling. And I know this can sound so trite, but nothing that could happen to us will ever compare to what we did to God.
And I’m saying you could think about the worst possible thing. And then we go back to Corrie’s story. That’s pretty bad. That’s pretty bad because she recognized that nothing that guard could do to her or anybody is what she did to God. The perfect holy righteous one who gave her her very life.
So what is the warning that we have here then? If you keep harboring unforgiveness against others, you need to examine your life to see if you are truly in Christ.
Forgiveness or unforgiveness is a heart check for us. So you need to ask some tough questions and seek the Lord in that. We’ll have a time for confession in just a little bit before we go to the Lord’s table. Because forgiven little ones forgive others.
No exceptions. But how? How do we forgive? From the heart. Let me go to Corey one more time.
During that episode that she had with her friends sinned against her, she was confused. She was betrayed. She thought of their sin all the time. She. She couldn’t sleep.
And so she confessed this to one of her pastor friends. And the pastor pointed out the window to a church tower and he said, there is a bell up there that is rung by pulling on a rope. Eventually they’ll release that rope, but the bell keeps swinging, making that sound, ding dong over and over again. But after he releases that rope, it gets slower. Slower and quieter and quieter until without much notice you realize the sound has stopped.
And he said to her, I believe the same thing is true forgiveness. When we forgive someone, we take our hand off the rope. But if we’ve been tugging on that rope with our grievances for such a long time, we mustn’t be surprised. The old angry thoughts keep coming up for a while. Mile.
They’re just the ding dongs, the old bell slowing down. But you have to let go of the rope. So what he says Here in this quote shows an often neglected teaching on forgiveness. Because most of the time we talk about forgiveness as an event, and it is an event 2000 years ago on a cross and in an empty tomb. But it is also a process every single day.
And that’s what we often miss. And Corey understood this. This is what she said. If there’s one thing I’ve learned at 80 years of age, it’s that I can’t store up good feelings and behavior, but only draw them fresh from God each day. She couldn’t hold up those feelings that she had with that Nazi guard for 10 years down the road, for 20 years down the road.
She needs to draw on those fresh every single day from God. And if we want to have hope to forgive others, we need to draw fresh from God each day. So yes, in a moment we forgive. And then it’s a process of every day. We continue to die to ourselves, take up our cross and follow him.
We do that daily with Jesus. And so it’s why we keep praying the Lord’s Prayer. Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us. It’s not a one time thing. We are always doing this.
It’s why one John says, if you are faithful, if you confess your sins, he is faithful and just to forgive you your sins, to forgive our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. So we need to let go of the rope. The ding and the dong might still be there, but what helps it slow down is drawing fresh from God each and every day. So how do we draw fresh from God? Just a few thoughts as we close.
We draw fresh by going to God’s word each and every day. Especially the Gospel passages that say, in spite of who we are and what we have done, our sin and imperfections, Jesus has paid it all, cleansing us, making us as white as snow. Praise the one who what paid my debt, he paid it all for me on the cross. I need to draw fresh from that each day if I want to have hope for forgiving others. We draw fresh by not focusing on someone else’s sin against us, but by our sin on a holy God.
So when that thing stirs up inside of us and we start to think about their sin, instead turn it back to God and say, lord, I remember who I am and what I have done to you. And when we’re focused on what God has done for us, we’re not gonna be focused on what others have done to us. So we keep going back to to him. In our experience of his mercy and his compassion, when he looks at us and says, I free time to think of others sins. We draw fresh from the Lord’s table as we remember the body and the blood, the cost that it was for Jesus Christ to forgive us our sins, to pay that debt.
We draw fresh by singing his truths and the promises of God, that while we should have been lost forever, we should have been lost forever. We are undeserving people. We get to praise a God that says, you are forgiven. We draw fresh from the Lord’s Prayer, asking the Lord to forgive us always. And then we draw fresh by gathering with God’s people each and every week together, like we are right now, brothers and sisters in Christ who have been redeemed and saying to each other, there will come a time where I will sin against you and I hope you’re ready to forgive me.
And there’s a time where you will sin against me and I am ready to forgive. It’s about having that heart and attitude of being ready to forgive at any moment. Because you see the glory of God in the gospel, his mercy and his compassion for us. So forgiven little ones. Forgive others.
Let’s pray.
Oh Lord, to say that we are forgiven are such beautiful, powerful words, words that I hope for all of us. We think about every single day because we know as we want to forgive others, we need to be thinking about what you have done for us on that cross and in that empty tomb 2,000 years ago, you made a way for us to be saved, A way for us to be forgiven, for our debt to be paid because it had to be paid. And we praise the one who paid that debt for us so that we can gain that great reward that we do not deserve. So that we can have fellowship with you, we can have fellowship with each other. And Lord, as we go from here, we are leaving people who we know will sin again.
And so we pray for all of us, Lord, that you give us hearts ready to forgive, to keep short accounts, to hold no record of wrongs. And as we do that, we both get to point to each other and say, how great is our redeeming, forgiving God. Thank you Lord for your forgiveness. We love you, you. We pray this in Jesus name.
Amen.