Church Directory January 26, 2017
“Bear with each other and forgive whatever grievances you may have against one another.
Forgive as the Lord forgave you.” --Colossians 3:13
A while back I read a book by Timothy Keller. In one of the chapters he illustrates forgiveness in a wonderfully interesting way.
He speaks of forgiveness as a debt. For example, if someone breaks something valuable of yours (say a $100 lamp), you can respond in one of two ways. You can either make him pay the $100, or you can say, “I forgive you, that’s okay.” But if you do this, you will have to either pay for a new lamp yourself, or you “lose $100 worth of light and get used to a darker room. Either way, someone pays.”
This works on a deeper level as well. Keller writes:
When someone robs you of happiness, of reputation, or takes away something else that you’ll never get back, that creates a sense of debt. Justice has been violated - this person owes you. Once you sense that debt...there are only two things you can do.
One thing you can do is try to make that person pay: you can try to destroy their opportunities or ruin their reputation; you can hope they suffer, or you can actually see to it. But…as you’re making them pay off the debt, as you’re making them suffer…you’re becoming like them. You’re becoming harder, colder; you’re becoming like the perpetrator. Evil wins. What else can you do? The alternative is to forgive. But…when you forgive, it’s agony. Why? Instead of making the other person suffer, you’re absorbing the cost yourself…You are forgiving them and it’s costing you. That’s what forgiveness is. –King’s Cross, pp. 100-101.
Since reading this, I have begun looking at forgiveness differently. This view agrees nicely with the verse above.
“Bear with each other” - there is a weight that comes with any wound. I can choose to try to push it back onto the one who wounded me (and add more weight - that’s called revenge), or I can bear it. But how, you may be asking, do I do that? More to the point, why would I ever choose that?
For two reasons; first as Keller says, if I refuse to forgive I become a wounder myself - I become like the one who wounded me - cold hard, bitter, and dead.
The second reason is this: “Forgive as the Lord forgave you”. I remember that I’m the one who broke the “lamp”, I have wounded the Lord with my rebellion, my sin nailed Him to a cross. And in the face of that He absorbed the cost, He bore the weight, He took the wounds and carried them all.
In short He forgave me. He calls me to look at the awful weight of my sin placed on the back of the Son, and the awesome willingness of Him to bear it - gladly.
What does He ask in return? Simply to follow His lead and do the same.
