Center for Biblical Theology and Eschatology

Forgiveness? At What Price?

by Stuart D. Robertson

Psalm 25: 1-10 / Leviticus 25: 8-17

Matthew 18: 21-35

November 21st, 1999

Back in 1973, the eminent American psychiatrist, Karl Menninger, wrote a book that startled the mental health industry, Whatever Became of Sin? The founder of the highly esteemed Menninger Clinic in Wichita, Kansas proposed that much mental illness is caused by sin.

Many distressed Americans don’t need the "understanding" of a psychiatrist. They need forgiveness of sin. Thus he bit the hand that fed him. He declared that many of those who came to his expensive clinic should have been knocking on a pastor’s door, to find free forgiveness--for sin.

This morning I want to talk about forgiveness. But it is very hard to talk to you about forgiveness. It is hard because I find it easier to define what sin is than to tell you how to forgive--or what to forgive. To err, after all, is human. To forgive is Divine. Error and sin come naturally. Forgiveness does not come naturally to us humans.

Because to err is human, we humans know a lot about it. We have a refined sense of error, not realizing how often it is sin. There are some troubled people who have such a well-developed sense of their own sin that they have given up on the possibility of anything better. They live in moral squalor.

Not uncommonly, very religious people have a more highly developed sense of sin than of forgiveness.

But forgiveness is at the heart of the Gospel. Forgiveness is how God handles our sin. Forgiveness is how we must handle the sins of others. Forgiveness never comes cheap. It cost God His Son’s life. It will cost you and me too.

I don’t know of anything you need more than to know God is in the business of forgiving your sins. And there is scarcely anything you need to hear more urgently than Jesus’ scary words about your need to forgive the trespasses of others against you. "If you do not forgive others their trespasses neither will your Father in heaven forgive your trespasses." Literally? We wonder. We hope not.

Forgiveness is the theme of the Bible, even of the Old Testament. How is forgiveness the theme of the Old Testament, you ask? God taught Israel about forgiveness first with a detailed sacrificial system. Morning and evening in the Tabernacle, and then in the Temple, bulls, goats, and birds were slaughtered to atone for the sins of people. Incessant sinning required incessant sacrificing for atonement of sin.

Atonement was not quite forgiveness, but it tended in that direction. Atonement meant that a person's sins were covered. Once an Israelite saw that dead animal burning on the altar, he knew he was not held responsible for the sin that put it there. These sacrifices pointed to a time when Jesus' atonement for our sin would be the ultimate act of forgiveness.

Sacrificing animals covered an Israelite’s sins against God. But they couldn’t kill animals to establish right relationships with one another.

The most difficult law in the Old Testament had to do with peoples' relationship with each other. It taught them, we might say, to participate in the Divine nature.

In the New Testament we read that God has given us "his great and precious promises that. . . we might become partakers of the Divine nature." Little did Israel realize that when Moses gave them God’s commands concerning the "year of release," the Jubilee Year, He was teaching them how to partake of the Divine nature.

Jesus taught us to pray, "forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors." That’s how we Presbyterians pray each Sunday morning. Some Christian brothers and sisters pray a bit differently. They say, "Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us." They are sort of half right, if they are following the way Luke’s Gospel gives us the Lord’s Prayer. In Luke’s Gospel we read, "And forgive us our sins as we also forgive our debtors."

The reason why the words "debts" and "debtors" has been changed in the second part of the prayer today is that some good translator believed God surely did not mean what we usually mean when we say the words "debts" and "debtors." Jesus surely meant something different.

The reading from Leviticus this morning is well known to most of you who have been at Faith Church during the Christmas season. Each December we have a Jubilee Christmas when we share of our bounty with folk who haven’t the means to give Christmas gifts to their children. We call it Jubilee Christmas after the Jubilee, the Year of Release, that was proclaimed in ancient Israel every fifty years.

At the end of his life, Moses made clearer still God’s intentions. Not just every fifty years, but every seven years there will be a year of release. "You shall not shut your hand or harden your heart against your poor brother."

Not a few of you have asked me questions about this. It hardly seems fair that every fifty years, much less every seven years, people no longer had to pay what they owed. How could business survive? The year of Jubilee was a vivid object lesson for Israel of the cost of forgiveness of sin. How could a cobbler buy leather to make new shoes if he had to forgive every debt when the year of release came?

It’s no wonder that Israel developed a system to take away the bite of the Year of Jubilee for creditors. In Jesus’ day, Rabbi Hillel enacted a rule called Prozbul. This was a legal document that a debt was not subject to the Jubilee release.

Do you see what an object lesson this was to Israel of the cost of forgiveness?! Forgiveness is costly! God called Israel to costly forgiveness. Jesus calls you and me to respond to each other with costly forgiveness.

Jesus taught us the word "debt" in the Lord's Prayer because it seems He had in mind the year of release, the Jubilee Year. It was a radical idea in the human economy to illustrate a more radical idea in the Divine economy.

Do you remember Jesus’ startling words near the beginning of His ministry when He preached in the synagogue of Nazareth? He had just read from the Prophet Isaiah, "The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to preach good news to the poor." What good news to the poor? The good news of the year of release. Jesus said, "Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing." That is, "I bring you this release."

We seem to forget. How gladly we speak of the grace of God. As the hymn writer put it, it is "Grace greater than our sin." Adamantly our Reformed forbears argued, "We are saved by grace alone." They were right. In fact, Jesus forgave where they would not and where we would not. And we think we are right.

We’re startled by the story Luke tells of Jesus response to a street-woman who lavished on Him attention that would have shocked us to se in real life. She came in uninvited and stood behind Jesus as He reclined at dinner in the home of Simon, a Pharisee. She stood, how long? She was weeping, bathing His feet with her tears. She wiped His feet with her hair, and then poured on them expensive, fragrant ointment. Paint yourself a picture of this. It's not how you think a religious act should look.

After Jesus answered a protest from his pious host, He said to the woman, "Your sins are forgiven. Your faith has saved you; go in peace." Just that. Unbelievable. Just that? Only that!

I think of Jesus’ response to Peter at the very moment the cock crowed the morning of His trial. Peter had just denied Jesus three times. Their eyes met. Peter went out and wept bitterly. Why? Maybe because Peter saw in that look absolute forgiveness? He received what has been called, "The judgment of grace." He could do nothing but receive it. He saw no rebuke in Jesus' eyes that could have allowed him to think, I deserved it. He got what he thought he did not deserve, a look of love, only love.

Peter once asked Jesus, "How often shall my brother sin against me and I forgive him? As many as seven times?" Jesus told him, "I do not say to you seven times, but seventy times seven times." I wonder if at that moment, when He saw the look in Jesus eyes, there rushed into Peter’s mind what Jesus taught Him about forgiveness. It's hard to receive this.

We refuse to forgive for many reasons. It doesn't come naturally. We keep on being offended. We’re too hurt. We think it means being soft on sin. We think it encourages irresponsibility in others.

We refuse to forgive in many different ways. We carry grudges. We gossip. We think the worst. We find refined ways of getting even.

Is this why we find it so hard to receive forgiveness, and the peace that it allows? We linger in our guilt because having found it so hard to forgive, we can't receive forgiveness either. We feel we don't deserve it. What needless anxiety riddles the Church's people? How would the air be cleared if we took to heart the command to forgive and could receive the blessed gift of forgiveness?

If we will not forgive, we reject the will of Christ for us. Jesus taught us something we hope is over-statement to make a point---your heavenly Father will not forgive you "if you do not forgive your brother from your heart." How are things with you and your Heavenly Father? How are things with me? How are things with us?

Let us pray: O Lord, teach us to live more nearly as we pray. Amen.

Stuart D. Robertson

Faith Presbyterian Church

West Lafayette, Indiana

Stuart D. Robertson earned the M.Div. from Princeton Theological Seminary, and the Ph.D. from the Annenberg Research Institute, formerly known as the Dropsie College of Hebrew and Cognate Learning in Philadelphia. He is now a Lecturer in biblical Hebrew in Purdue University's Department of Foreign Languages and Literatures. He was born of missionary parents in India, and was a Presbyterian pastor for thirty-five years, the last twenty-one at Faith Presbyterian Church, West Lafayette, Indiana. Here he preached this sermon on "Forgiveness? At What Price?"