Asbury Free Methodist
February 9, 2025 Matthew 18:21–35 (NLT)
We are in a series about things we need to be reminded of. In the first week, I talked about sowing and reaping. For the last couple of weeks, I have been talking about holiness. This week I want to remind you about forgiving others.
We live in a world where, almost assuredly, we are going to be hurt. People will do things that will offend us. People will say things that hurt us. We live in a world where we can be betrayed, gossiped about, taken advantage of, and hurt deeply.
We also live in a world, especially the post-COVID world, where people are just mean. If you have a job working with the public, I am not telling you anything new. Some people in our world go out of their way to offend others.
Now, if you have been a follower of Jesus for a while, then you know that the proper response when hurt or offended, is to forgive. But what I have found is that some hurts go so deep that forgiveness seems unattainable. For others, we accumulate a number of smaller offences that we don’t take the time to deal with and forgive. When that happens, it puts a weight on our soul, and we tend to become negative people.
So, this morning I want to remind you about forgiveness because we all need to be reminded from time to time.
Let me remind you of some scriptures. You heard the Gospel of Matthew being read this morning.
Matthew 6:14–15 (NIV)
14 For if you forgive other people when they sin against you, your heavenly Father will also forgive you. 15 But if you do not forgive others their sins, your Father will not forgive your sins.
A couple of weeks back you heard me read from
Luke 6:37 (NIV)
37 “Do not judge, and you will not be judged. Do not condemn, and you will not be condemned. Forgive, and you will be forgiven.
Jesus had a lot to say about forgiveness. Let me read you just one story.
Matthew 18:21–35 (NLT)
21 Then Peter came to him and asked, “Lord, how often should I forgive someone* who sins against me? Seven times?”
22 “No, not seven times,” Jesus replied, “but seventy times seven!*
23 “Therefore, the Kingdom of Heaven can be compared to a king who decided to bring his accounts up to date with servants who had borrowed money from him. 24 In the process, one of his debtors was brought in who owed him millions of dollars. 25 He couldn’t pay, so his master ordered that he be sold—along with his wife, his children, and everything he owned—to pay the debt.
26 “But the man fell down before his master and begged him, ‘Please, be patient with me, and I will pay it all.’ 27 Then his master was filled with pity for him, and he released him and forgave his debt.
28 “But when the man left the king, he went to a fellow servant who owed him a few thousand dollars He grabbed him by the throat and demanded instant payment.
29 “His fellow servant fell down before him and begged for a little more time. ‘Be patient with me, and I will pay it,’ he pleaded. 30 But his creditor wouldn’t wait. He had the man arrested and put in prison until the debt could be paid in full.
31 “When some of the other servants saw this, they were very upset. They went to the king and told him everything that had happened. 32 Then the king called in the man he had forgiven and said, ‘You evil servant! I forgave you that tremendous debt because you pleaded with me. 33 Shouldn’t you have mercy on your fellow servant, just as I had mercy on you?’ 34 Then the angry king sent the man to prison to be tortured until he had paid his entire debt.
35 “That’s what my heavenly Father will do to you if you refuse to forgive your brothers and sisters from your heart.”
If you have been a follower of Jesus for a while, then you know that forgiving others is important. What you may not know is that forgiveness is more of an issue between you and God than it is between you and the person who hurt you.
If you are not a follower of Jesus, forgiveness is still important. There are all kinds of psychological studies to back that up. If you have some people in your life who have hurt you, I hope this time together will help you to choose to forgive. But, I am going to talk to people who are followers of Jesus. We have more tools to deal with forgiveness and more motivation to forgive.
The story that we just read can be summed up by saying we offended a holy God deeply, and the size of our debt towards him was overwhelming. Yet, he chose to forgive us our sins. He erased the debt between him and us. When people offend us and hurt us, compared to what God has forgiven us, their debt to us is relatively minor.
The verse that fascinates me is
Matthew 18:34 (NLT)
34 Then the angry king sent the man to prison to be tortured until he had paid his entire debt.
This seems weird to us because we are not familiar with what Jesu’s audience would have been familiar with. They were used to the concept of a debtor’s prison. People were imprisoned until they could pay off their debt. That concept never made a whole lot of sense to me – but nevertheless, debtors’ prison was a real thing.
When some people read verse 34, their minds go toward hell. But I don’t think that is what Jesus is talking about here. He is saying that if you refuse to forgive, you will torture your own soul.
Someone once said choosing not to forgive is like drinking poison and hoping the other person dies. If you hang onto anger for too long, it will become unforgiveness. If you hang on to unforgiveness for too long, it will turn into bitterness. If you become a bitter person, nobody will want to be around you, including you.
I want to be very practical with this morning’s sermon, so let me tell you what forgiveness is not and then tell you about the process of forgiveness.
When someone sins against you – it hurts. If it is a small offence, it hurts a little. If it is a big offence, it hurts a lot. Sometimes, the hurt can be devastatingly deep. The first thing in understanding forgiveness is understanding what it is not.
What forgiveness is not
Forgiveness does not mean that you are saying what was done to you is Ok or that it doesn’t matter. The whole point of forgiveness is that what was done to you was wrong. What was done to you does matter. In fact, forgiveness is best done when you realize the full extent of the damage and hurt that it caused you.
If you forgive someone who has committed a crime, that does not mean that they should escape the legal consequences of what they have done. You can forgive someone and press charges at the same time. Forgiveness is a heart matter; charges are a matter of law – those are two different things.
Forgiveness does not mean that the relationship is restored.. Forgiveness may start that process. However, having the relationship restored is partially dependent on the other person. They have to deal with what they did.
Forgiveness does not mean that you trust the person who offended you. Trust is earned. If you were abused by a parent, you can forgive them, but you are not required to entrust your kids to them. In some cases, trust can be rebuilt, and some cases it cannot. When you grant a person forgiveness, that does not mean that the other person automatically becomes safe. They do not.
Forgiveness is not dependent on the other person. I sometimes hear people say, “I will forgive them when they apologize to me.” If you have been hurt and or offended, it is really, really nice to get an apology from the person who hurt you. But your forgiveness is not dependent on the other person. If it were, you would be held captive to what they do – you are not. You can and should forgive a person, whether or not they apologize to you.
What is forgiveness?
Forgiveness is a choice that you make or don’t make. Forgiveness is not a feeling. It is a choice to clear your heart and release debt. It is a choice to forgive. If you wait until you feel like forgiving, you may never get there.
So what is the choice you are making when you choose to forgive?
You are choosing to pay the pain and emotional consequences of what was done to you. You are choosing to take that person out of your hands and put him or her into God’s hands.
You are choosing to let go of your demand for emotional justice.
What I mean by that is that when you were sinned against, when you were offended, you were hurt. Sometimes it was a little hurt, sometimes it was a big hurt – but you were hurt. And when we are hurt, we want the person who hurt us to pay. But the reality is, it really doesn’t matter what the other person does or doesn’t do – the emotional hurt the pain is still going to be in your heart.
We try sometimes try to soften that pain by telling ourselves that they didn’t understand what they were doing. We try to soften the pain by saying that person doesn’t matter anyway. But no matter the stories that we tell ourselves – the pain is there.
Sometimes, matters of the soul are hard to envision. The names you were called, the betrayal that you felt, the shame that was foisted upon you is easy to feel but hard to envision.
So, instead of envisioning pain in your soul, imagine that instead of hurting your soul – the offender cut your arm with a knife.
The pain you feel is your pain. You didn’t cause it, and you probably didn’t deserve it, but nevertheless, it is yours. Forgiveness says I am going to choose to pay the price of that pain. Now, the reality is that you are going to pay the price whether you choose to or not. But in accepting the pain as yours, in taking responsibility for the pain, in owning the pain, then you can do something with it. Until you own the pain – you can’t do anything with it.
You could demand that they pay for causing you pain. Is that going to take your pain away? No. Or, more likely, instead of owning the pain, we curse them to everyone who will listen. Or, we plot revenge in our hearts. Sometimes, we nurture the pain. We keep on prodding and poking the cut to remind us of how much they hurt us.
Others of us do the opposite. We ignore the pain and pretend that it didn’t hurt. If we ignore it, it will just go away. This is where my analogy with the knife breaks down – where a knife wound may heal on its own, things that hurt our soul seldom go away with time.
The Process of Forgiveness
The way to healing and wholeness is to own the pain. I am hurting. This pain is mine. I need to deal with the pain. That is what I mean by owning the pain.
Let me walk you through how to forgive. In an ideal world, when I am hurt – I would recognize that I have been hurt and that I have been offended. I would then own the pain as mine. I have to deal with the pain. The offender can’t deal with my pain – I have to do that. It hurts, but I am going to choose to forgive. I am not going to get revenge or make them pay for my pain – I am going to let it go. I am going to choose to forgive. I am going to give that person to God.
One of the signs that I have forgiven is that I have an open heart towards that person.
In our ideal world, while you are dealing with your own heart – the offender is dealing with theirs. The offender recognizes that they have hurt you. They confess what they have done – and acknowledge that it was wrong. They repent and say I am sorry – I hope never to do that again. They seek forgiveness. Please forgive me.
If they are asking for forgiveness and your heart is open to them, hopefully, reconciliation can happen. Hopefully, trust can be rebuilt.
There are situations where this happens, and you want the best for the other person – but you just don’t feel safe with that person. You have seen this pattern over and over again. If that is the case, deep reconciliation may not be possible. You may never have a substantial relationship with that person.
That is the forgiveness process in an ideal world. I don’t know if you have noticed – but sometimes our world is less than ideal. Many people who hurt you will not acknowledge their part in the hurt. So, what do you do?
You, as the offended party, do the same thing. You recognize the hurt, and you own the pain. You choose to forgive. Granted, it is harder when someone doesn’t own their part in the hurt. But you choose to forgive because of how much you have been forgiven. Forgiveness is more about what is between you and God than it is between you and the offender.
Here is a prayer that you might pray – Prayer
Lord Jesus, I choose to forgive (name the person) for (name the offence) I am willing to pay for the pain and the emotional consequences of what was done to me. I desire to be free to love and be open-hearted to the person who hurt me. I want to be kind and tender-hearted towards them.
We will come back to that prayer. If you choose to pray, a prayer like that is the start of forgiveness.
When you own the pain and choose to forgive, here is what often happens. You see the person again, and you can feel the hurt. You feel your anger and the resentment building up again – and you say sorry about that, Lord – I want to choose to forgive from my heart – but I see them, and I am angry. I am not open-hearted. My heart towards them isn’t good.
What we are tempted to do is mull over the offence in our own mind or tell others about it – you know what they did to me. Or, bring up the offence to the offender – Remember when. You can choose to bring up the offence to the offender when you are in the process of forgiving. You can say, I felt hurt when you… But after you have chosen to forgive, it is time to let it go.
If you find yourself mulling over the offence telling others about the offence, or bringing it up to the other person- then you probably haven’t forgiven that offence.
So, you see that person who hurt you. You start mulling over what they did to you. Then you come to your senses and say – I have chosen to forgive. Lord, I recognize I am holding onto the pain. I am sorry, so please forgive me. You confess. You repent. You ask for forgiveness. The Lord is always faithful to forgive.
Then you see the person again, and the cycle starts again. I have a well-worn path around that cycle. Your heart is good. You want to forgive. You choose to forgive – but each time you see that person, it doesn’t feel like you have forgiven. I believe God honours a heart like that. And if you persevere in this, the hurt eventually diminishes. But there is a better way.
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When you get to the place where you are willing to forgive, and when you own the hurt, – you are willing to pay for the pain and emotional consequences of what was done to you —The next thing you need to do is bring the hurt to Jesus.
Now, I believe in the supernatural. I believe that Jesus can supernaturally walk us through the hurt. I believe that Jesus can and does heal us of the hurt. He has done it for me; he can do it for you.
But it often isn’t as simple as a prayer, Jesus heal me of this hurt. I have found that it is most helpful to ask him some questions and allow him to impress on your mind the answers. I would say that if the hurt is really deep, you might need someone to help you through this process.
Start by asking, Jesus, what is this hurt doing to my heart? Often, he will give you some words or a concept or a picture of what the hurt is doing to your heart.
Ask him if he cares about what is going on in your heart?
Ask him what he would like to do in your heart. Then, invite him to do just that.
Usually, if the hurt has gone deep, there are some lies that we tend to believe about ourselves. Remember, you are not who the offender says you are. You are who God says you are. Ask Jesus if you have believed any lies in this hurt. Sometimes, he will show you the lies that you believed. When you see those lies, confess and repent of them so you can move forward.
You bring your hurts to Jesus. You ask him to do what he wants to do in your heart – and if you know him, you know that what he wants to do is good.
Then, choose to forgive. You choose to pay the emotional price of the hurt, and then you give the hurt to Jesus.
Then, ask him to give you love and an open heart for the offender.
Again, that does not mean you trust them. That does not mean that they are safe. Sometimes, the best thing that you can choose is not to be around them – depending on the issue. But if you have an open heart to them, you will want God’s best for them. You have released them into God’s hands, and God can do what he likes with them, but you are free of the offence.
You are never more like Jesus than when you forgive from the heart. You will hear people say, “Forgive and forget.” But you don’t forget. But you will know that you are healed when you see that person, and it doesn’t feel like there is a knife stuck into the wound of your soul.
Remember, you reap what you sow. If you sow forgiveness, you will reap the fruit of forgiveness. If you sow unforgiveness, you will reap the fruit of unforgiveness.
Up until now, I have been talking about the theory of forgiveness. But if all you do is think about sowing and never actually get around to doing it, your harvest is going to be very small. If you only think about forgiveness but don’t actually do it you will not reap the fruit of it.
So, let me meddle for a moment. Are there people in your life that you have not yet chosen to forgive. If there are, are you willing to pray this prayer,
Lord Jesus, I choose to forgive (name the person) for (name the offence) I am willing to pay for the pain and the emotional consequences of what was done to me. I desire to be free to love and be open-hearted to the person who hurt me. I want to be kind and tender-hearted towards them.
Lord, I bring the hurt in my heart to you.
What is has the hurt done to my heart?
Is there something you want to do about the hurt?
Lord, will you do that?
Lord, is there some lie that I have believed with the hurt?
Now, when I am working with people through issues of forgiveness, one of the hardest things for them to forgive is themselves. Yet the same process holds true. Lord, I choose to forgive myself for – and name the issue. I am willing to pay the pain and emotional consequences of what I did to myself. I want to be free myself.
Lord, I bring the hurt to you.
What is this hurt doing to my heart
Is there something you want to do about the hurt?
Lord, will you do that
Lord, is there some lie that I have believed with the hurt?
It was for freedom that Christ has set you free. He forgave us so much, and you will forgive us as well. It will keep you from being bound up as you walk through life.