"Is there something you can't tell me?" asked Mother.

"Mother, if you stay here you'll just scold me. God will forgive and forget."

In the Genesis story of Joseph and his brothers we see an example of the unnatural act of forgiveness. Joseph acts harshly, throwing his brothers into prison, then he is overcome with sorrow and cries unconsolably. These were the ones who mocked him as a child, who hatched a scheme to murder him, who finally sold him into slavery.

I realize $10,000 is a lot of money. Because I embezzled $10,000 of your money, I ask you to forgive me. You will, won't you? After all, we are friends, and we wouldn't want to lose that friendship.

We all know that couldn't happen here, because I have no access to the money. And I shouldn't — no minister should have access to church funds.

There are worse things to steal than money! Like another person's mate! In the days of the Old Testament, a man could often take a woman without her consent. The status of women wasn't much above that of cattle. A king, of course, could take any woman he wanted. And he did! David took Bathsheba, whether or not she wanted it that way. He got her pregnant, and hired a hit man to do away with her husband.

Well, he got caught. Then he repented. He was sorry. He asked forgiveness. He was forgiven. Would he have been sorry if he had not got caught? That's a challenging question, isn't it!

If I had access to your money . . . and if I stole a sum . . . and if I got caught . . . and if I apologized and asked forgiveness — what then?

And if you forgave me, and I paid it back . . . and if it happened again, would you forgive me again?

Perhaps you've heard of the Arkansas preacher who absconded with his congregation's funds. He left town. He was found — minus the money.

When they got the preacher back to the hometown, the sheriff approached the board of elders: "You do want to prosecute, don't you?"

"No," answered the chairman, "We'll just let him preach it out!"

David, the shepherd-turned-king, wrote quite a few hymns. He was not the best example of moral rectitude, but he was an artist at heart.

One of his songs, Psalm 32, is today's psalm, a real challenge:

"Blessed is he whose transgression is forgiven, whose sin is covered. Blessed is the man to whom the Lord imputes not iniquity."

Notice the trinity of disobedience. Transgression. Sin. Iniquity. Then, verse 5 repeats the same 3 words — sin, iniquity, transgression.

Transgression (Hebrew pesha) means to rebel, revolt. King David did that!

Sin (Hebrew chataah) means to miss the mark, to fail to meet a standard, or goal. King David fits in there!

Iniquity (Hebrew avon) means to be perverted, distorted, crooked. King David was all that!

All kinds of sin, and David seems to have been one of the worst of sinners, no matter how you define it.

Now look at verses 1 and 2 again:

Transgression (rebellion, revolt) is forgiven (Hebrew nasa, which means to lift up, carry, take away). David's rebellious behavior was forgiven in that God lifted him up, took away his guilt. God carried his poor, stubborn poet-son.

Sin (the failure to meet God's standard) was covered (Hebrew kaphar, which means to cover up, to hide from sight).

Iniquity (perverted mind, distorted judgment, crooked behavior) was not imputed (Hebrew lo yachshobh, which means to pardon, restore, or make intercession for). David's perverted mind distorted his judgment . . . and God forgave him by pardoning him, restoring him.

So, you see, for any kind of sin, God has a special kind of forgiveness.

Charles Spurgeon noted that forgiveness is an act of God's grace. "When the Lord pardons a sinner, he doth not pay a debt, but gives a legacy."

That's all very interesting, but more important to you and me is the real, practical application of forgiveness in today's world, in our own lives. The Prodigal Son is an intriguing story of a runaway boy who repented and came home. And he was welcomed home by a loving father.

His sin was forgiven, cast into the depths of the sea (Micah 7:19), put as far as the east is from the west (Psalm 103:12), blotted out and never remembered (Isaiah 43:25).

If the Father could and did do that, don't you think God can and will forgive you, too? and me?

And if Jesus will forgive your sins, all of them, and will forget them, shouldn't you and I do the same for each other, and for ourselves?

Mental illness is usually caused by guilt, remorse, depression, usually because of failures, mistakes, blunders, sins — either real or perceived as real.

God says to you, "Forget the past, I have." So I ask: Why not accept God's acceptance? Failure to accept God's acceptance is probably the single most tragic and significant reason for the lack of spiritual progress by us Christians.

Let me tell you, dear saints, I know few people who have had as many chances to make good as I have . . . and have messed it up as often as I have and have needed as much forgiveness as I have — forgiveness by God and forgiveness by other people.

When God forgives, God forgets. "I blot away your sins for my own sake and will never think of them again." (Isaiah 43:25)

"For I will forgive their iniquity, and I will remember their sin no more."
(Jeremiah 31:3 and Hebrews 8:12)

"If you, O Lord, kept a record of sins, O Lord, who could stand? But with you there is forgiveness . . ." (Psalm 130:3)

"He will cast all our sins into the depths of the sea." (Mich 7:19)

If he forgets, we better do the same. Forget your own past mistakes. And forget the mistakes of others.

The Prodigal Son's father didn't wait for an apology. He didn't wait for the son to ask for forgiveness!

There is a theological issue in the matter of forgiveness. Stephen, the first Christian martyr, cried, "Lord do not charge them with this sin."

Why not? Why not charge them with murder in the first degree? Planned, premeditated, deliberate murder! Why shouldn't they get the death penalty?

Jesus at his execution, said "Father, forgive these people because they don't know what they are doing."

Now wait just a minute. Of course they knew what they were doing. It was a planned, premeditated, deliberate execution. But Jesus said, "They don't know . . ." What did he mean by that?

That is the theological issue: Do sinners in fact know what they are doing? Or is their sinful behavior simply because of ignorance?

Someone has said there are two things you'll never know about a sinner; (1) you'll never know how hard he tried not to sin; and (2) you'll never know what forces influenced him to sin.

Must one be responsible for what he does? Yes, even when he is under the influence of alcohol and/or drugs? Absolutely! Will God forgive any and every awful sin? Yes.

Forgiveness, from a human point of view, is neither easy nor reasonable. Forgiveness, even for a Christian, is difficult, but possible. If it weren't, Jesus would not have commanded it.

There is no limit to the number of times God — or a Christian — forgives. No limit!

I made the same silly mistake over and over.
I prayed, "Lord, how many more times are you going to have to forgive me?" The answer was both clear and simple: "How many more times are you going to sin?"

Why won't we forgive? Because we, like Peter, aren't yet converted! That is the real theological issue.

The good news of Jesus is that we, altho we live in the world, need not be of the world. Christians can love. Christians can forgive. Christians can follow the example of Jesus Christ.

Of course the world will not understand it! Naturally, there will be cynical sneers and paternalistic scoffs. Sure, it is a completely different way to approach life. Logical? No, it is not logical. It doesn't "make sense."

But isn't that the call of Christ? Come out . . . be different. The gospel of Jesus Christ simply doesn't make sense to anyone but a Christian. That's why the good news (gospel) is really news!

The paroxysm of hate, violence and terrorism is a paradox in a nation which claims to be Christian. But again, isn't that exactly what Jesus prophesied? "They shall cry peace and safety . . ." but they shall beat their plowshares into swords.

Hate and violence, the lack of forgiveness, is a malignancy, a personal, social, national, international malignancy. Just look at the Middle East, Ireland, Yugoslavia, Bosnia, India, Africa, all over the world!

How often should we forgive? Jewish leaders taught that people should forgive three times. Peter, bless his heart, stretched it to seven, the perfect number! Jesus said, "70 times 7"! That's a lot of forgivings! No wonder theologian Karl Barth saw that "We live solely by forgiveness."

The point is obvious, of course, that forgiveness is not a numbers game. It is not celestial bookkeeping. No one is to keep score. Forgiveness is not an act but an attitude. Forgiveness is not what we do but what we are.

The problem is that most people don't really want to forgive. They want to get even. Retaliate. Fight back. And so we have military build-up, war, death penalty, violence and more violence. The score is never even. Loose ends are forever untied.

Forgiveness takes lots of time. Overcoming bitterness and hurt may take an inordinate amount of time and prayer.

Seated at Hubert Humphrey's funeral, next to his widow, was longtime political adversary, former president Nixon, already disgraced by Watergate. Humphrey had asked him to be there.

Just before Humphrey died, Jesse Jackson visited him. Humphrey had just called Nixon.

Jackson asked why. Here was his answer: "Jesse, from this vantage point, with the sun setting in my life, all the speeches, the political conventions, the crowds and the great fights are behind me. At a time like this you are forced to deal with your irreducible essence, forced to grapple with what is really important.

"I have concluded that when all is said and done, we must forgive each other, redeem each other, and move on."

The poet W. H. Auden understood the typical human nature that admits no forgiveness:

I and the public know
What all school children learn;
Those to whom evil is done
Do evil in return.

Sigmund Freud also understood this basic human attitude; "One must forgive one's enemies but not before they have been hanged."

You don't find dolphins forgiving sharks for eating their playmates. It's a dog-eat-dog world out there. The nations' financial markets run on the same principle as does much of politics or athletics. An umpire never says, "You were really out, but because of your exemplary spirit I'll call you safe." No nation responds to a belligerent neighbor with: "You were right, we violated your borders. Will you please forgive us?"

Christians reciting the prayer each week, "forgive us our sins, as we forgive those who sin against us" may fail to remember that at the heart of this prayer Jesus gave us as a model, lurks the unnatural act of forgiveness.

Tony Campolo sometimes asks students in secular universities what they know about Jesus, and if they can repeat anything Jesus said. The majority say, "Forgive your enemies." Such forgiveness is so unnatural as to seem stupid It's hard enough to forgive your brothers, but your enemies?

A priest told this story: An 11-year old Central American boy was found under the bullet-riddled bodies of his mother, grandmother and his brothers. He was bloody but uninjured.

In his next confession he asked the priest, "Pray for me so I can forgive the soldiers who killed my family. I do not want to live with hatred in my heart." That from an 11-year old!

Why would God require of us an unnatural act that defies every primal instinct? What makes forgiveness so important, so central to our faith?

First, forgiveness is the only way to break the cycle of blame and pain in a relationship. It seems unfair. It is unfair! Hindu scholars estimate that for the punishment in other lives to balance out all my wrongs in this life, 6,800,000 incarnations should suffice!

In a novel, Gabriel Garcia Marquez portrays a marriage that disintegrated over a bar of soap. One day the wife forgot to put a bar of soap in the bathroom, an oversight her husband exaggerated to "I've been bathing for almost a week without any soap." This accusation she vigorously denied.

Her pride was hurt and she would not back down. (Aren't we told pride and selfishness are two most abhorrent sins?) For many months they slept apart and ate in silence. Even when they were old and more placid they were careful about bringing up the incident, for the barelyhealed wound could begin to bleed again. How could a bar of soap nearly ruin a marriage? Simply because neither of the partners would say "Stop, this can't go on. Please, forgive me."

Forgiveness breaks the cycle. It does not settle all questions of guilt or blame, of injustice or fairness; it often evades these questions. It does allow relationships to start over.

Solzhenitsyn says, "We differ from animals not in our capacity to think but in our capacity to repent and to forgive. Only humans can perform that most unnatural act, and by doing so, they can develop relationships which transcend the relentless law of nature."

Charles Williams has said of the Lord's Prayer ("Forgive us our sins as we forgive those who sin against us . . .") "No word in the English language carries greater possibilities of terror than the little word 'as' in that clause, 'as' we forgive!"

Second, as forgiveness breaks the cycle of blame in relationships, it also loosens the stranglehold of guilt on us and on others.

Floyd Bruce tells the story of Tom, who at a fraternity initiation was the cause of the death of a boy. Responsibility and guilt haunted him. He married; it lasted six years. He got a job, but was without success.

Finally, he was confronted by the mother of the boy who died. "Tom, I forgave you long ago. Your friends have forgiven you. God has forgiven you. Who are you to be the only one who refuses forgiveness?"

The presentation of Victor Hugo's famous play "Les Miserables" musically recounts the story of Jean Valjean, a French prisoner hounded and ultimately transformed by forgiveness.

Jean Valjean served a 19-year term at hard labor for stealing bread. He went into the French penal system as an impressionable young man, came out as a tough, hardened convict. No one could beat him in a fight, no one could break his will.

Released convicts in those days had to carry identity cards. No innkeeper would let a dangerous felon spend the night. For five days he wandered the village roads seeking shelter. Finally, a kindly bishop had mercy on him and took him in.

That night he lay in a comfortable bed until the household was asleep. Then, arising, he rummaged through the cupboard, taking the parish silver and crept off into the darkness. All of which proves, once a thief, always a thief. Right?

The next morning three policemen knocked on the bishop's door with Jean Valjean in tow. They had caught him running away with the silver in his pack. They were willing, anxious to put him in chains for life. But the bishop did the very opposite of what the gendarmes or Jean expected.

"So here you are!" the bishop cried. "I'm delighted to see you. Did you forget that I gave you the candlesticks as well? They're silver like the rest, and worth a good 200 francs. Did you forget to take them?"

"Valjean is no thief," the bishop assured the gendarmes. "This silver was my gift to him." After the gendarmes had left, the bishop gave the candlesticks to his guest, now speechless and trembling.

"Do not forget, do not ever forget," said the bishop, "that you have promised me to use the money to make yourself an honest man." This naked encounter with forgiveness melted the defenses of his soul. He kept the candlesticks as a memento, but dedicated the rest of his life to helping people in need.

Hugo's novel stands as a two-edged parable of forgiveness. A detective who knew no law but "justice" stalked Jean Valjean mercilessly over the next two decades. As Valjean is transformed by forgiveness, the detective is consumed by revenge. Finally finding no room for grace in his life, he jumped off a bridge into the Seine River. The poor man, he never learned to forgive, even himself!

Forgiveness transforms individuals, both the forgivers and the forgiven. Forgiveness breaks the cycle of blame, and loosens the stranglehold of guilt. It accomplishes this thru a remarkable transaction: Forgiveness puts the forgiver on the same side as the party who did the wrong. Thru this, we realize we are not as different from the wrongdoer as we are similar.

A Buddhist priest was once asked the difference between Buddhism and Christianity? His prompt answer was, "Christianity offers forgiveness." I pray he is right.

Before she died of cancer at age 34, Lorraine Hansberry gave us that stimulating play, "A Raisin in the Sun."

It's the story of a black family in the depths of poverty, crowded into a dingy apartment. The mother is a domestic. The son is a chauffeur. The daughter is in school wanting to become a doctor. The father has died and left the family $10,000 insurance.

Mother wants to make a down payment on a house and send the daughter to medical school. Her son wants to invest in a liquor store and get rich.

Mother gives the check to her son to take to the bank until plans for the house and medical school can be arranged. Instead, he gives it to someone to invest in the liquor store. The someone skips town with the money!

Daughter's dreams are dashed. She is angry. "That is not a man. He is nothing but a toothless rat," she cries.

Mother replies: "Yes — death done come in this here house. Done come walking in my house. On the lips of my children. You — what supposed to be my beginning again. You — what supposed to be my harvest. You — you mourning your brother?"

"He's no brother of mine."

"What you say?"

"I said that that individual in that room is no brother of mine."

"That's what I thought you said. You feeling like you better than he is today? Yes? What you tell him a minute ago that he wasn't a man? Yes?

"You give him up for me? You done wrote his epitaph, too — like the rest of the world? Well, who give you that privilege?"

Daughter replies: "Be on my side for once! You saw what he did . . . Wasn't it you who taught me to despise something like that?"

"Yes, — I taught you that. Me and your daddy. But I thought I taught you something else too . . . I thought I taught you to love."

"Love? Love him?" the daughter fairly screams. "There is nothing left to love."

Then the mother utters these memorable lines: "There is always something left to love. And if you ain't learned that, you ain't learned nothing. Have you cried for that boy today? I don't mean for yourself and for the family 'cause we lost the money. I mean for him; what he been through and what it done to him.

"Child, when do you think is the time to love somebody the most; when they done good and made things easy for everybody? Well then, you ain't through learning — because that ain't the time at all.

"It's when he's at his lowest and can't believe in hisself 'cause the world done whipped him so. When you starts measuring somebody, measure him right, child, measure him right. Make sure you done taken into account what hills and valleys he come through before he got to wherever he is."


On a summer Sunday in 1974, at the Atlanta Ebenezer Baptist church, Martin Luther King, Sr. was preparing to preach.

Sitting at the organ was his wife, Alberta, whom he affectionately called "Bunch." She and Daddy King had been married 50 years.

As the congregation sang "The Lord's Prayer" they came to the words, "Forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors." A deranged young man jumped from his pew shouting obscenities.

He pulled two pistols and began firing. The first bullet hit Mrs. King. She slumped over the keyboard. Daddy King ran to her shouting, "Bunch, where are you hurt?" Within minutes she was dead.

Two years later, Daddy King talked about his life and ministry. He answered questions with humor.

One question really aroused his feelings. "What do you think about the death penalty for Marcus Chenault, your wife's murderer?"

King suddenly became emotional. "Oh, please, don't let them kill him. Please, don't let them do that. That won't bring her back. God's been too good to me for me to hate. He's just a boy. God loves him. God can forgive him. I forgive him. I can't hate."

Dearly saints, you are forgiven. No matter what you have done, what you have said or tho't, you are forgiven. God loves you . . . and forgives you.

Forgiveness is an unnatural act. It is not easy. But it is the command of Jesus Christ.

The cross is God's way of saying to us: "I forgive you for all the dastardly things you've done."

An Episcopalian writer, Gale D. Webbe, once said, ". . . the only ultimate way to conquer evil is to smothered it in a willing, living human being. When it is absorbed there like blood in a sponge or a spear into one's heart, it loses its power and goes no further."

He who refuses to forgive thereby casts away his hope of salvation.

After the first free elections of the East German Parliament, West Germany proposed reunification. Parliament had weighty matters to consider, but their first official act was to vote on this extraordinary statement:

"We, the freely elected parliament of the GDR . . . on behalf of the citizens of this land, admit responsibility for the humiliation, expulsion and murder of Jewish men, women and children. We feel sorrow and shame, and acknowledge this burden of German history . . . We ask all the Jews of the world to forgive us. We ask the people of Israel to forgive us for the hypocrisy and hostility of official East German policies toward Israel and for the persecution and humiliation of Jewish citizens in our country after 1945 as well."

The statement was then passed unanimously. What did this accomplish? It did not bring back the murdered Jews, nor undo the horrible deeds of Nazism. No, but it did loosen the stranglehold of guilt that had burdened the East Germans for 50 years, years their government had denied the need for forgiveness.

How could a perfect God tolerate the notion of evil? Somehow he had to come to terms with those creatures he so desperately wanted to love. How? He put Himself on our side. Hebrews 4 makes this mystery of incarnation clear: ". . . we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but . . . who has been tempted just as we are — yet without sin."

God bridged the gap.

Just before dying, Jesus said, "Forgive then," all of them, "for they know not what they do."

Let us pray . . .