TO FORGIVE ISN’T EASY

Otago Daily Times, Issue 23436, 26 February 1938, Page 7

TO FORGIVE ISN’T EASY

Written for the Otago Daily Times By the Rev. D. Gardner Miller One day Peter asked Jesus a question that all of us have asked more than once. The question was about forgiveness. Peter felt that there must be a limit 1 to one’s forgiveness of another wno has wronged us and so he pul the matter before his Master. Mow, 1 have just said that this question of how far, or how long, are we to go on forgiving is asked by us all more than once. I have known many men -and women who have gone on and on forgiving until they felt they couldn’t forgive any more. It seemed as if the one who had been forgiven actually traded on the fact of being forgiven. I have known many sinners in many homes do that. It does seem as if there should be a limit for the sake of pulling up the sinner with a sharp turn so as to make hiip, or her, realise that they simply cannot go on making fools of others. Indeed, it might be argued that continually to forgive the same person tends to make a weakling of that person. Something like that was in Peter’s mind when he spoke to Jesus about forgiveness. To Peter’s surprise, Jesus said that our forgiveness of others must be without'limit. ,

When you come to think about it, to forgive without limit seems to put no check on sin and wrong-doing at all. But. of course, that would be putting a wrong interpretation on the answer of Jesus. Jesus asks us to forgive without limit in order that sin might be checked and the sinner brought tc repentance. And it is just there where so many of us make the mistake. We forgive and forgive as the easy way out, or we forgive because we feel hopeless about doing any good. But really to forgive, means that we strive to bring the sinner to repentance, go out of our way to bring him into Christ’s way, to take upon ourselves the burden of the other’s sin and yet forgive it To forgive must cost something, it is never easy. Indeed, so costly is forgiveness that Jesus paid the ultimate price for it, His life. So that Peter, and you arid me, might grasp the significance of this question of forgiving those who have wronged us, Jesus lifts it up and sets it in the light of the forgiveness that God gives to sinners, that is, to you and me and Peter. He does this by telling a story. It is a strange story and its details, which after all don t matter much to us, can only be grasped when we remember that Jesus always accommodated His stories to the minds of His hearers You will find the story in the eighteenth chapter of Matthew. It is called the “Unforgiving Debtor. Remember, it is an eastern story containing ideas that are not in the least familiar to us. But the broad truth, the significance, the inwardness. and the cost of forgiveness are ihere for all time. I won’t go over the story, but will simply emphasise the fact that the man who owed millions tb the King and was forgiven, wouldn’t forgive the man who owed him fifty shillings. The amounts don’t matter at all. They are simply mentioned by Jesus as a contrast. But the one thing, the one big contrast, that does matter is this: Jesus says you simply cannot expect God to forgive you if you bo not forgive others. If you are merciless to others, don’t expect mercy from God. Your forgiveness must be limitless for God’s forgiveness of you is limitless". God went to Calvary to forgive us, how far are we willing to go to win the wrong-doer against .ourselveis! You see, at once, how costly forgiveness can be. No, it isn’t easy to forgive, but, believe me, forgiveness wins in the long run.

I know that sometimes the doubt creeps into our minds that it is hopeless to go on forgiving. But, my friends, if forgiveness ever did fail in a single human instance, the whole of our Christian faith would, be shattered. It is on the fact that forgiveness must be victorious that Calvary has any meaning at air The last word must be with goodness, not evil. God reigns, not the devil.. So keep on forgiving, and pay the price of it, and God will take care of the results. I recalled, the other day, a story told by that great and gracious woman, Mrs Booth Clibbom, the Marechale, whose visit lately to New Zealand was a veritable visitation of God in grace. This story is one that moved me deeply. “ One evening,” she said, “ after a late crowded service, I was leaving the church, when by the half-light I noticed a woman sitting at the end of a pew with her head in x her hands. Going towards her, I asked the cause of her evident distress. For a minute or two there were only heart-breaking sobs, and then she said. ‘ Can I ever be forgiven? No. never.’ It may help you to tell me the trouble,” I whispered. “‘ My son went to the war,’ she said. I My sister who lived with we had a son who did not go because he was a conscientious objector. I persecuted my sister; oh, how bitterly I persecuted her every day for months, and it ran into years. L would not send her boy anything in prison or mend his clothes. I refused to help my sister or her son. During all this time she was never angry with me, and she even served me continually. One day, when ‘shopping in town. I got a message by telenhone that she was dangerously ill. and that I must come immediately. When I reached the house she had passed away, and only then, as I looked at her pale face chd I realise my awful sin. and all T had made her suffer If she had only answered and resented my wicked conduct —but she never said a word, and now I see what a real saint she was. and it is too late, cannot even ask her pardom No, I can nevei be forgiven.’ And so that patient, strong, loving life won in the end and led to the conversion of the sister who, althougl a professing Christian and a member of a church, was not more than a heathen before.” The spirit of forgiveness. which is the spirit of God. never fails: it is absolutely irresistible and almighty So to the statement that you have gone on forgiving and nothing has happened, the sinner has not been reconciled, I say this to you, “If you have done your part, leave the wrong ( doer to God and pray and hope on.” It is the remembrance surely of what God' has done for us that should help us not to be weary in well-doing. The' unforgiving spirit makes us bitter; the forgiving spirit makes us better. To forgive isn’t easy, for it means copying God.