Sermon on the Mount: Emphasizing Forgiveness
Matthew 6:14-15
“For if you forgive others for their transgressions, your heavenly Father will also forgive you. But if you do not forgive others, then your Father will not forgive your transgressions.”
Matthew 6:14-15 NASB1995
Only two verses after the petition in the Lord’s Prayer in the Sermon on the Mount on forgiveness, Jesus re-emphasizes the vital importance of forgiving others for their transgressions. If we forgive, then your Father in heaven will forgive you for your sins. This is a non-negotiable command from Jesus and one of the most difficult things to do in this world. Forgive this devotional for being rather lengthy (no pun intended), but I am compelled to write my full thoughts on this and share a good story about forgiveness.
Forgiveness is definitely not “cool” right now. We live in a time of “cancel culture”, where a person’s life can be ruined because of a single thing they said or a minor incident in their life many years ago. People have been driven from jobs or lost opportunities in life or even had their lives threatened because they are unfairly measured by an unforgiving mob (and abetted by the media) as being no better than the worst thing they ever did or said in their lives, no matter how many good things they may have done since or how many apologies they issue. Social ostracism is the defining condition, especially if you do not endorse every single aspect of an ever-changing “woke” paradigm. Historical figures from our past are demonized and monuments and statues are being removed because those figures could never live up to the standards of today’s social arbiters. Cancel culture has had historical precedence in the totalitarian states of the former USSR (Stalin purges), the People’s Republic of China (Cultural Revolution ), under the brutal Khmer Rouge in Cambodia, and in ethnic cleansing and genocide in Nazi Germany and Rwanda. The ostracism of large segments of society for arbitrary reasons and purging of historical artifacts in those places (and others) moved into actual mass murder and “disappearances”.
How do we forgive when we are faced with such madness? A marvelous story of forgiveness comes from Corrie ten Boom, who was a Dutch Christian who, along with her father and sister Betsie, came to the aid of many Jews trying to escape the Nazis during WWII. Corrie and her sister were arrested and sent to the Ravensbruck concentration camp, where they were brutalized at the hands of the guards (Betsie died in that camp). After the war, Corrie was traveling through Western Europe to talk about God’s mercy and forgiveness. Here is an excerpt of her story about a man who approached her after she gave a talk in Germany, from Guideposts Magazine:
And that’s when I saw him, working his way forward against the others. One moment I saw the overcoat and the brown hat; the next, a blue uniform and a visored cap with its skull and crossbones. It came back with a rush: the huge room with its harsh overhead lights, the pathetic pile of dresses and shoes in the center of the floor, the shame of walking naked past this man. I could see my sister’s frail form ahead of me, ribs sharp beneath the parchment skin. Betsie, how thin you were!
Betsie and I had been arrested for concealing Jews in our home during the Nazi occupation of Holland; this man had been a guard at Ravensbrück concentration camp where we were sent. Now he was in front of me, hand thrust out: “A fine message, fräulein! How good it is to know that, as you say, all our sins are at the bottom of the sea!”
And I, who had spoken so glibly of forgiveness, fumbled in my pocketbook rather than take that hand. He would not remember me, of course–how could he remember one prisoner among those thousands of women? But I remembered him and the leather crop swinging from his belt. It was the first time since my release that I had been face to face with one of my captors and my blood seemed to freeze.
“You mentioned Ravensbrück in your talk,” he was saying. “I was a guard in there.” No, he did not remember me. “But since that time,” he went on, “I have become a Christian. I know that God has forgiven me for the cruel things I did there, but I would like to hear it from your lips as well. Fräulein”–again the hand came out–“will you forgive me?”
And I stood there–I whose sins had every day to be forgiven–and could not. Betsie had died in that place–could he erase her slow terrible death simply for the asking? It could not have been many seconds that he stood there, hand held out, but to me it seemed hours as I wrestled with the most difficult thing I had ever had to do.
For I had to do it–I knew that. The message that God forgives has a prior condition: that we forgive those who have injured us. “If you do not forgive men their trespasses,” Jesus says, “neither will your Father in heaven forgive your trespasses.” I knew it not only as a commandment of God, but as a daily experience. Since the end of the war I had had a home in Holland for victims of Nazi brutality.
Those who were able to forgive their former enemies were able also to return to the outside world and rebuild their lives, no matter what the physical scars. Those who nursed their bitterness remained invalids. It was as simple and as horrible as that. And still I stood there with the coldness clutching my heart. But forgiveness is not an emotion–I knew that too. Forgiveness is an act of the will, and the will can function regardless of the temperature of the heart.
“Jesus, help me!” I prayed silently. “I can lift my hand. I can do that much. You supply the feeling.” And so woodenly, mechanically, I thrust my hand into the one stretched out to me. And as I did, an incredible thing took place. The current started in my shoulder, raced down my arm, sprang into our joined hands. And then this healing warmth seemed to flood my whole being, bringing tears to my eyes.
“I forgive you, brother!” I cried. “With all my heart!”
Don’t give in to Cancel Culture or join the mob! Forgive and forgive again and forgive publicly and work diligently to see the holiness in other humans, who all have a chance for redemption from our Lord and Savior!
My next Sermon on the Mount devotional continues with Matthew 6:15-18 on fasting in secret.
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