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Good Shepherd Lutheran Church Today's Frontline Devotion Sunday, July 10, 2003 "Jesus Commands Us to Forgive" |
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Frontline Devotion for Thursday, July 10, 2003 By Fritz Foltz
In Jesus’ day rabbis said you had to forgive someone who sinned against you three times. In this passage Jesus says you have to go further and even forgive if someone sinned against you seven times in one day. At another place, he tells Peter you have to forgive seventy times seven, a number that I imagine approaches what we mean by infinity.
That reply has made radical forgiveness a bedrock belief of our faith and still is very demanding on us. One of the most frequently asked questions during my forty years of ministry was, “Will I be forgiven if I cannot forgive someone who cruelly breaks my heart over and over again?” And certainly in the past few years Christians asked if we are supposed to forgive terrorists who proclaim they want to kill our people and destroy our society.
We make the answer more difficult when we base all on feelings like we often do when speaking of love. If love is only an intense affection for someone, then loving your enemy is impossible. If forgiveness involves only remaining friendly with someone who hurts you, then forgiving an abuser seventy times seven is impossible. We cannot control feelings.
We do better to think of Christian forgiveness and love in terms of action. I certainly think that is what Jesus intends. Then forgiveness becomes always returning good for evil. Paul, Peter, and Jesus declare this plainly, "Do not be overcome with evil but overcome evil with good. Always seek to do good to all. Be kind to the ungrateful and selfish. Be merciful as God is merciful. Forgive others as God forgives you."
When we understand forgiveness as always returning good for evil, we find we do not need to like those we forgive. We are not frustrated trying to control feelings. When forgiveness is returning good for evil, we find we do not have to forget what people have done to us. Christian forgiveness is not an act of stupidity that "forgives and forgets". We remember so we can protect ourselves from repeat performances. And in returning good for evil we find we do not pass over or trivialize sin. Sin harms people. Broken hearts hurt. Terrorism kills people and damages economies. We do not allow even our own children to burn down our houses or kill our other children. The good we return might include preventing the sinner from future acts of violence. But always we proceed in these matters with great care and anguish and prayer, mindful that every human is a child of God.
Let us pray: We thank you, Father, for constantly forgiving us day after day. And we ask that you would fill us with your Holy Spirit so that we might forgive those who sin against us, always trying to be good to others in spite of how they treat us. We pray in Jesus’ name. Amen.
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