What does it mean to “Forgive and forget” after you have been wronged by someone? To forgive and forget is to stop blaming someone for something they did and to stop thinking about it. Maybe you have heard someone say to you: “I forgive you, but I can’t forget...” What does that really mean? Can a person forgive and at the same time hold onto the memory of the wrong suffered?
The Bible makes a big deal about forgiving a wrong suffered. Just in case you are unfamiliar with what the Bible says about forgiving others, let me share a few scripture passages with you:
“And whenever you stand praying, forgive, if you have anything against anyone, so that your Father who is in heaven will also forgive you for your offenses.” (Mark 11:25)
“So, as those who have been chosen of God, holy and beloved, put on a heart of compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness, and patience; bearing with one another, and forgiving each other, whoever has a complaint against anyone; just as the Lord forgave you, so must you do also.” (Col. 3:12–13)
Included in Jesus’ prayer that He modeled for all Christians is the expectation to forgive others: “Our Father, who is in heaven, hallowed be Your name. Your kingdom come. Your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread. And forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors. And do not lead us into temptation, but deliver us from evil” (Matt. 6:9–13). Of the seven petitions included in the Lord’s Prayer is the need to forgive those who have sinned against us. But, just in case there is any confusion as to how serious Jesus is about His followers forgiving others, He followed up his prayer with these haunting words: “For if you forgive other people for their offences, your heavenly Father will also forgive you. But if you do not forgive other people, then your Father will not forgive your offenses” (Matt. 6:14-15).
What Does it Mean to Forgive?
So, what does it mean to forgive and does forgiving a wrong suffered require that you forget it? Peter asked Jesus a question not all that different: “Lord, how many times shall my brother sin against me and I still forgive him? Up to seven times?” In other words, when am I off the hook for having to forgive a person who is a repeat offender? When is enough... enough? It is believed that the rabbis in Jesus’ day taught that forgiveness should be limited to three instances of premeditated sin. If this is true, Peter asked his question about forgiving seven times thinking that seven times was more than generous with a willingness to forgive.
Jesus’ answer was not what Peter expected: “Jesus said to him, ‘I do not say to you, up to seven times, but up to seventy-seven times.’” Jesus did not mean 77 times, or 490 times, but an unlimited number of times. How many times should I forgive the one who sins against me? As many times as necessary. Jesus’ answer to Peter’s question leaves us with more questions:
- Are we supposed to forgive everyone for every offense against us?
- Are we to forgive even when the person who sinned against us is not sorry?
- Does Jesus want us to let others take advantage of us?
To answer these questions, we need to turn our attention to the parable Jesus told about forgiveness in Matthew 18:21-35.
The Slave Had an Impossible Debt that Could Not be Paid
To further elaborate on His point to Peter, Jesus told a parable to illustrate why forgiving as much as necessary makes more sense than three times or even seven times. Before we consider the parable, you should note that just before His parable, Jesus explained the process that we are to take when addressing the sins we suffer from others (see Matt. 18:15-20). If someone sins against us, Jesus told us to go and show that person their fault in private. If we go and that person does not listen, then Jesus said we are to take one or two witnesses in an effort to address that person’s sin. Ultimately, Jesus said that if a person repeatedly refuses to listen when you try to address their sin, that we are to treat that person as an unbeliever. So, it is important to understand that Jesus’ parable is not about ignoring the sins of others.
According to Jesus’ story, there was a king who wanted to settle accounts. As the king was seeking to settle accounts, a man was brought to him who owed him 10,000 talents, which was the equivalent of about 160,000 years of wages. If we were the man in Jesus’ story, our debt today would be in the billions of dollars. Jesus’ point was that it was impossible for the man to pay off his debt. Nothing the man could do would ever be enough to pay what he owed. So, the king demanded the man be sold into slavery along with his wife and children. The only recourse the man had was to beg for mercy that his life and the lives of his wife and children be spared: “So the slave fell to the ground and prostrated himself before him, saying, ‘Have patience with me and I will repay you everything’” (v. 26). We are not told how the slave accumulated his impossible debt, but the fact that it was astronomically high reveals that he deserved justice instead of mercy. Yet, it was mercy that the master gave the slave: “And the master of the slave felt compassion, and he released him and forgave him the debt” (v. 27).
For the king to forgive the slave of his astronomical debt, the king had to take upon himself the great loss the slave’s debt caused. The King showed great mercy towards his slave; mercy is when you do not give a person what they actually deserve.
The Slave was Unaffected by the King’s Great Mercy
The mercy the slave received from his master should have changed him. Because of the great debt that he had been forgiven he should have been a changed man, but he was not. As soon as he experienced underserved pardon and freedom, we are told that the slave, “...went out and found one of his fellow slaves who owed him a hundred denarii; and he seized him and began to choke him, saying, ‘Pay back what you owe!” What was owed to the slave was nothing compared to the debt he himself had been forgiven, yet he was unwilling to show any form of mercy to the one who owed him infinitely less. The irony is that what was owed could have been paid back eventually; it was not unreasonable for the man who owed 100 denarii to promise to pay it back. Yet even though the man was willing to pay every penny back, the servant who had been forgiven much chose to throw the man in prison until he paid back what was owed. The paradox is that if you are in prison, then working off a debt is nearly impossible.
The great mercy the slave experienced with the cancelation of his impossible debt should have changed him, but it didn’t. Jesus then concluded his parable with the following sobering words:
“So when his fellow slaves saw what had happened, they were deeply grieved and came and reported to their master all that had happened. Then summoning him, his master said to him, ‘You wicked slave, I forgave you all that debt because you pleaded with me. Should you not also have had mercy on your fellow slave, in the same way that I had mercy on you?’ And his master, moved with anger, handed him over to the torturers until he would repay all that was owed him.” (Matt. 18:31–34)
If Jesus’ story ended with verse 34, then it would only be a sad story about a slave who remained unaffected by the king’s great mercy. However, that is not how the story ended. The story ends with Jesus’ sobering words that serve as a warning to us all: “My heavenly Father will also do the same to you, if each of you does not forgive his brother from your heart” (v. 35).
What Jesus Teaches Us About Forgiveness
It ought to be obvious who the characters are in Jesus’ parable, but in case you are not sure, we are the slave in the story who owed an impossible debt to the king. The King is the holy God we have sinned against. The One who made the canceling of our great debt possible is Jesus who suffered in our place for our redemption.
So there are some lessons about forgiveness that I would like to highlight that I think you will find helpful from the life of Jesus that is true if you are a Christian and I want to show you those lessons from Revelation 5.
Our sins will no longer be held against us (Rev. 5:6)
In Revelation 5:6, Jesus is presented in heaven as the Lamb of God standing victoriously who had been slaughtered for the sins we committed. Throughout the Old and New Testaments, Jesus is presented as the “Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world” (John 1:29). Jesus did not take part of your sins away; He addressed all of your sins upon the cross where He was slaughtered!
The Lamb of God is standing in Revelation 5:6 because He did not stay dead! He rose from the grave and stands as our advocate and sin-substitute! He is, “standing, as if slaughtered...” because He bears the marks of the cross as a perpetual reminder that what He accomplished on the cross was and is all that we need! Because He will forever be known as the Lamb of God who stands as if slaughtered, there will never be a moment in eternity that His great sacrifice for our sins will ever be forgotten.
Now, you may be saying to yourself: “But Pastor Keith, what about those verses in the Bible that say that God forgets our sins?” Let’s look at some of those verses briefly:
- “They will not teach again, each one his neighbor and each one his brother, saying, ‘Know the Lord,’ for they will all know Me, from the least of them to the greatest of them,” declares the Lord, “for I will forgive their wrongdoing, and their sin I will no longer remember.” (Jer. 31:34)
- “I, I alone, am the one who wipes out your wrongdoings for My own sake, And I will not remember your sins.” (Isa. 43:25)
- “For I will be merciful toward their wrongdoings, and their sins I will no longer remember.”” (Heb. 8:12)
The verses from Jeremiah and Isaiah are promises concerning the New Covenant that God said would come through Jesus. The passage in Hebrews is a reference to that promise that only Jesus can make possible. The Hebrew word used in both Jeremiah and Isaiah not only can mean “remember” but it can also mean “named.” It is not that God forgets from His memory all our sins, it is much better than that! Because Jesus was slaughtered for our sins, our sins will never be named for the purpose of being held against us. Our guilt has been taken away, and Jesus bears the marks of the cross for all eternity as a testament to that reality! Now, against the backdrop of that truth, listen to Psalm 104:12, “As far as the east is from the west, so far has He removed our wrongdoings from us.”
God does not forget our sins as though He suffers from amnesia, but He has chosen to never hold our sins against us because they were placed upon Jesus in our place.
Principle #1: If you chose to forgive, you chose to no longer hold the offense of that person against him/her.
We are the recipients of God’s great mercy (Rev. 5:9-10)
In heaven, the heavenly chorus includes lyrics of a new song about Jesus: “Worthy are You to take the scroll and to break its seals; for You were slaughtered, and You purchased people for God with Your blood from every tribe, language, people, and nation. You have made them into a kingdom and priests to our God, and they will reign upon the earth” (Rev. 5:9–10).
All our deserved hell Jesus endured to make the forgiveness of our sins possible and redemption a reality! The way that He did it was with the shedding of His blood. In other words, He died for sinners like us. In 2 Corinthians 5:21, we read that, “He made Him who knew no sin to be sin on our behalf, so that we might become the righteousness of God in Him.” Mercy is not getting what we deserved and what we deserved was condemnation, but praise God that He is a God who is rich in mercy, great in His love, and sufficient in His grace (see Eph. 2:4-9)!
Here is what mercy cost Jesus according to Galatians 3:13-14, “Christ redeemed us from the curse of the Law, having become a curse for us—for it is written: “Cursed is everyone who hangs on a Tree”—in order that in Christ Jesus the blessing of Abraham would come to the Gentiles, so that we would receive the promise of the Spirit through faith” (Gal. 3:13–14).
Principle #2: We who have received great mercy, are expected to extend mercy even when it is not deserved as citizens of Jesus’ kingdom.
Reconciliation is impossible unless forgiveness is given, and it is received.
This is the final lesson on forgiveness from Revelation 5, and it seems obvious. Jesus already made redemption and the forgiveness of sins possible for anyone who wants to receive it, but it is not complete for the sinner until it is received by the sinner. The incalculable scores of angels, along with the 24 elders shout with a loud voice concerning Jesus: “Worthy is the Lamb that was slaughtered to receive power, wealth, wisdom, might, honor, glory, and blessing.” In response, all of heaven affirms what is already true: “To Him who sits on the throne and to the Lamb be the blessing, the honor, the glory, and the dominion forever and ever” (v. 13).
Jesus offers forgiveness through what He already accomplished on the cross and through the empty tomb, but it must be received for reconciliation with God and the forgiveness of our sins to be possible.
When it comes to Jesus’ parable about forgiveness, you alone have to choose to forgive those who have sinned against you, but once you do, you have also chosen to longer hold the offence against that person. To forgive is an act of mercy that you chose to gift to that person. However, there is a third principle:
Principle #3: Reconciliation cannot be possible unless the person forgiven is willing to receive your forgiveness. All you can do is forgive those who have sinned against you and to no longer hold their sins against them.
If we truly understand what it means to be forgiven of our sins and what it cost Jesus, we will hold short accounts of wrongs suffered knowing that what Jesus suffered on the cross was and is sufficient for those who have sinned aginst us. Amen.
