Forgiveness

We're dealing this morning with the topic of forgiveness. I read somewhere a philosopher called Arthur Schopenhauer, a German philosopher, told a story or wrote a story about the human condition and how as humanity we are like a bunch of porcupines on a cold winter's night. The more we get cold, the more we huddle together, the more we need one another. But the more we need one another and huddle together, the more we prickle each other with our little needles. And so we don't want to leave the warmth, but we also hurt one another.

And it was a really interesting expression of how as humans we will cause one another pain as we live in each other's space. If you have your bibles with you, I'm just going to read something that Jesus taught about radical forgiveness, radical grace towards one another. It's from Matthew five, and we're gonna read from verse 38 to 42. It's within the context of the Sermon on the Mount where he gave a lot of teaching. It's just this small snippet.

Verse 38 of chapter five. Jesus said, you have heard that it was said, "Eye for an eye and tooth for a tooth." But I tell you, do not resist an evil person. If someone strikes you on the right cheek, turn to him the other also. And if someone wants to sue you and take your tunic, let him have your cloak as well.

If someone forces you to go one mile, go with him two miles. Give to the one who asks you and do not turn away from the one who wants to borrow from you. What was Jesus intending to teach with this little snippet? He takes the Old Testament teaching of Deuteronomy and, oh sorry, yeah.

Of Exodus and Deuteronomy and he flips it. He says, this is what you've heard, but now I tell you this. His audience varied from poor peasants from Galilee. This is where he was doing his teaching on the mount. From peasants, fishermen, tradesmen, to Pharisees, to the learned professors of his day.

And he was sharing the same message to them all. Jesus was speaking to an audience that had been taught since childhood that revenge is something that leads to peace. If you want peace in your life, you must balance the scales. When Jesus reminded his audience, "You've heard that it was said, eye for an eye, tooth for a tooth," he was talking about how everyone operated.

This was how each person dealt with pain and suffering caused by someone else. I hurt you when you've hurt me. Now, the people of Jesus' time followed a certain set of cultural rules. It was common practice for people to take a tooth for a tooth or an eye for an eye. But the reason it was actually given to Israel in Deuteronomy and Exodus was to restrain a sense of revenge, of vigilante systems in Israel.

It was a way of keeping control in society, keeping order within their context. But the Jews by this time had not seen it as a system of government, but had made it a system of personal ethics. Rather than, say, our Australian government having the constitution that keeps order within society, they had adopted it to their own lives. And so there was this sort of tit for tat mentality, it seems. And it permeated all of their relationships.

Jesus gives certain illustrations to flip this whole thing, to show how a personal ethic of tit for tat can really damage relationships, can damage the personal welfare even of the person who has been wrongly hurt. Jesus goes on. He talks about a blow on the cheek.

He says, if someone hits you on the right cheek, turn to him the left as well. In that day, it would have been outrageous for Jesus to say that. A strike on the cheek was an incredible insult. It was like spitting in someone's face. It was terrible to do something like that.

It was punishable, in fact, according to archaeological finds. It had a very heavy fine. You got fined for slapping someone in the face. Jesus says, if someone sues you for your tunic, give him your cloak as well. This is an incredible illustration again.

It was so shocking because in Exodus 22:26 and 27, there's actually a law that protects someone's cloak. A cloak was this really important thing to the people of that time. So Jesus says, if he wants a shirt on your back, give him this valuable cloak that you have as well. Then Jesus says, if someone forces you to go a mile with them, go with them an extra mile. That's where we get that English phrase "to go the extra mile".

If someone forces you to go one mile, go an extra mile, go two miles with that person. The Good News Bible translates verse 41 as, "If one of the occupation troops or forces tried to get you to carry their pack with them for a kilometre, carry it two kilometres." That's the idea. The word "force" in the Greek is actually to commandeer someone. So the forces, the Romans that occupied Jerusalem or Judea at that time, they could ask any random Jew that was passing around to carry their swords, carry their armour, and commandeer them to walk to the next town and, you know, then they will take someone else.

And so they wouldn't have to carry this as well. Again, this was ridiculous because they hated the Romans. The Romans had occupied their land unfairly. They had killed their husbands and their wives and their sons. And now they have to do this thing an extra mile.

Imagine having heard these words from Jesus back then. It would have been absolutely incredible. Jesus must have been delusional. Turn the other cheek. Give them not only the shirt off my own back, but my cloak as well.

Walk an extra mile carrying a soldier's weaponry and armour, weaponry and armour that he's going to use on my people. Jesus was calling for an unselfish attitude which not only refused to retaliate when someone had done something wrong, but didn't even resist, even though it would have been legally right to do so. The illustration of the cloak, for example. God gave a cloak law.

If you have your bibles, let's quickly just flip to that. Exodus 22. God gave a cloak law that protected the cloak. It shows how important it was to people back then. Exodus chapter 22, verses 26 and 27.

If you take your neighbour's cloak as a pledge, return it to him by sunset because his cloak is the only covering he has for his body. What else will he sleep in? When he cries out to me, I will hear, for I am compassionate. So in this context, if you say, I need to borrow some money off you, but I'll give you my cloak as a pledge that I will pay it back. That person who has received the cloak has to actually go and give it back to the person at sunset so they have a blanket.

So they will keep warm at night, so they won't freeze to death. God really cared about His people and He gives them this little, it's just two lines, this law. It was a valuable piece of property.

And so Jesus says, well, if someone takes everything from you, takes your clothes, give him this valuable piece of clothing as well. Jesus reminds him that an eye for an eye was the national law. And it felt so good. It felt so right when you could get vengeance, when you could level the playing field, when you could balance out the scales. But Jesus gave a new law.

A law of radical grace, a law of radical forgiveness. He gave a law that looks beyond our own pain and our discomfort, looks to the good in the other person. He gave a law that seeks to see the image of God imprinted on the offender.

Forgiveness. Forgiveness is a strange, difficult concept. Everything in us says seek revenge. Everything in us says make it right, balance everything out.

Someone needs to pay for what they've done. By nature, we all want justice. We all want revenge. We want to settle old scores. But there's something supernatural about forgiveness.

Something that goes beyond nature. In fact, a poet by the name of Alexander Pope said that to err is human, to forgive is divine. To make mistakes is human, to seek revenge is human, but to forgive had something altogether different. We just watched a clip from the movie Les Mis.

In the opening scene, we see Jean Valjean, a convicted thief who served a hard nineteen years in prison, steal from someone who had shown him incredible compassion, who offered him as much food as he wanted, as much wine as he wanted, and a soft bed to sleep in. We see that he absolutely abuses that. The act of forgiveness at the end that we saw right there when he gave him all his silverware and set him free, not only saved Jean Valjean from being imprisoned for the rest of his life, but it changed radically the course that his life would take. All the evidence was there.

All the evidence was there to convict Jean Valjean. The guards were on the bishop's side. They didn't believe Jean Valjean's lies. The law was on the bishop's side. Common morality was on the bishop's side.

Even the captain of the guard was on the bishop's side. He did not trust Jean Valjean at all. What does this bishop do? He literally turns the other cheek. He was smashed in the one eye.

He lets him go. Not only that, but he gives him his candlesticks that are worth far more than the silver he had already stolen. It's the tunic plus the cloak. That is forgiveness, amazing forgiveness.

That heart-wrenching moment when Jean Valjean is looking into the bruised face of his forgiver is an incredibly powerful moment in the story. Forgiveness. Forgiveness doesn't mean just giving up, letting go, forgetting. Forgiveness actually means you give up justice. You give up justice.

It means you pass up the opportunity to get even. Forgiveness isn't a case of, oh, it's just, you know, it's okay. I'll just let it go, just move on. I'll forget it.

Forgiveness costs something. It has a cost. It costs the bishop all of his silverware to forgive Jean Valjean. It cost him a black eye. Forgiveness costs something.

If Rob came to my house and we had dinner and he accidentally bumped a lamp in my house and it broke, smashed. Getting justice would mean that I get Rob to replace it. He goes out and he buys my $2 lamp that I bought at the op shop. Now let's say it's an expensive one.

Let's say it's $500. Getting justice would mean he goes and does that, or he replaces it, or he gives me the value of the lamp. He gives me $500 so I can go and replace it. It costs Rob something to replace that.

But if I forgive Rob and I tell him he doesn't have to pay for the lamp, that doesn't mean that there's no cost involved. Because I either have to go on living without a lamp and I lose the joy and the warmth and the glow of this lamp, or I have to fork out $500 to replace this lamp. A cost is involved either by replacing the lamp or by going on without the luxury of a lamp. When we think of forgiveness, we're worried about being doormats. We're worried about people taking advantage of us.

And it is a tough thing for sure. But the reason, the motivator for us being able to forgive is because we have been forgiven so much. And this is the reason I believe that Christians should be the most gracious, most compassionate, most forgiving people of all, because they completely understand what it means to say forgiveness has a cost. Jesus wasn't worried about being a doormat. He seems almost reckless with His love, inviting people into His confidence, inviting people into His closest circles, only to have them betray Him at His darkest hour.

But He forgives. You and I are worried about giving people too much permission, but Jesus gave people permission to doubt Him. He gave people permission to reject Him and eventually kill Him. But He forgave them. When the whole world turned its back on Jesus and He had every right, every right to turn His back on them, He continued to love.

He embraced them and He forgave them. According to God's requirements, we were ruined. But forgiveness means that I am not ruined. Forgiveness cost Jesus something. It cost God something.

While I rejected His name, while I used His name as a profanity, while I hurt other people who are created in God's image, who are His image bearers and His joy, God forgave. He gave His son Jesus to incur the cost that I should have paid for my sin. Jesus invites us again this morning in this service to think about our motivator for forgiveness. It will cost us something. It does cost us something.

But we have the absolute greatest example of forgiveness and motivator for forgiveness because Jesus Christ has forgiven us. In fact, Colossians 3:13, in a situation where there was strife within the church, Paul writes to them and says, "Forgive as the Lord has forgiven you." It's a supernatural act. Forgiveness has something supernatural about it. It goes beyond our natural tendencies of seeking revenge and justice.

Ernest Hemingway, an author, wrote a story about a father and his teenage son. In this story, the relationship between the father and the son had become somewhat strained. The son runs away from home, and the story goes that the father goes out in pursuit of the son to find him. Finally, in Madrid, Spain, in the last desperate attempt to find the boy, the father put an ad in the local paper. The ad read, "Dear Paco, which is the son's name, meet me in front of the newspaper office at noon.

All is forgiven. I love you, your father." The next day in front of the newspaper office, 800 Pacos showed up. They were all seeking forgiveness. They were all seeking the love of their father.

There might be some Pacos here with us this morning who need forgiveness, who are in desperate need of having a relationship restored, having a friendship redeemed, having a hurt that needs to be overcome. I'd like to encourage you to take some time thinking about your relationships. How are they really going? Is there a brother that you haven't talked with in ages? Is there a dad who's disappointed you?

How about those relationships that you know, shove in the back of the cupboard somewhere and you don't wanna think about? Maybe there's a few fathers here who need to offer some forgiveness, who have to incur the cost of forgiving someone. It could be a close friend. It could be someone who betrayed your trust.

Heavens forbid, it could be someone in this church. There is forgiveness and freedom for both the person who needs forgiveness and the person who is giving forgiveness. It's a supernatural act, but it's an act that God desires of us and gives us for our own good.