This summer, while our two kids are home for the summer, we are reading through Paul Tripp’s book, War of Words as part of our family devotional time. In it he writes, “In my counseling experience I have seen that there is no greater impediment to change than the unwillingness to seek and grant forgiveness. The lack of forgiveness causes us to fight God rather than submit to him and causes us to stand against rather than with one another” (p. 128).
He speaks here of seeking and granting forgiveness from one another—the horizontal forgiveness that is necessary in Christian relationships. Both seeking and granting forgiveness are crucial to the health of the Christian life, the Christian family, and the body of Christ.
Pride is what leads to an unwillingness to seek forgiveness for sinful behavior or words towards someone else. Pride refuses to believe that what has been done is truly sinful. Pride says that one must remain in a position of power and control, and therefore to communicate repentance for wrong-doing and seek forgiveness would communicate weakness.
Pride also leads to an unwillingness to forgive others. Pride seeks to make others pay for their words or actions. A person may hold grudges, seek revenge in some tangible way, or give someone the silent treatment, adding to the hurt of the situation.
Our Savior’s parable in Matthew 18 of the “Unforgiving Servant” is incredibly helpful in this discussion. The servant who owed ten thousand talents had absolutely no chance to repay it all, yet he was completely forgiven when he pled for mercy. When that same servant then refused to forgive another servant of the 100 denarii—pittance compared to what the first servant owed, and a reasonable amount to repay—it was viewed with disdain by others. The forgiven servant refused to forgive, and he was rebuked and punished for it.
One of the problems of people in relation to this parable is that we do not rightly identify ourselves with the first servant who owed ten thousand talents. This servant represents all people with an unpayable debt of sin towards God. There is absolutely no chance for any of us to make ourselves right with a holy, righteous, and just God due to the Himalayan-sized mountain of sin we have committed against Him. And yet, God, who is rich in mercy, and because of His incredible love, has chosen to save people by His grace who come to Him in humble faith.
The travesty of the situation is that we who have been forgiven so much refuse to forgive others who have sinned against us so little. We attribute their sin against us as the “ten thousand talents” worth of sin, when in actuality it is simply the “100 denarii” worth. No sin that a person commits against us remotely compares to the sins we have committed against God. Every sin, therefore, that another person commits against us—no matter how heinous to the world’s eyes, or how painful to us—must be forgiven by us. To refuse to forgive is to put ourselves on a more righteous footing than God, which is foolishness to think.
Every sin that a spouse commits against you must be forgiven. Every sin that a child or parent commits against you must be forgiven. Every sin that a fellow church member commits against you must be forgiven. There is no unpardonable sin when it comes to interpersonal relationships. A refusal to forgive others of their sin against us is evidence of our own lack of understanding and appreciation of God’s forgiveness of our own sin.
This matter of forgiveness is crucial to the spiritual health and vitality of a marriage, a family, and a church body. This is one of the key distinguishing factors of true Christianity that the world needs to see and observe. We must learn to die to ourselves—our pride, our vanity, our ego, our puffed-up view of self—and choose to forgive “even as God in Christ forgave [us]” (Eph 4:31).
