Graham Stuart Staines was an Australian Christian missionary who came to India in 1965. He had been working in Odisha among the tribal poor and lepers since 1965, sharing God’s love. He left his own country and comforts to work with the poorest communities, serving people with leprosy for 35 years. On January 23, 1999, he attended a jungle camp in Manoharpur with his two sons. There was no good house for them to stay in, so they slept in his van. While they were sleeping, a mob of about 50 people, armed with axes, knives, and sticks, attacked them. Staines and his sons were burned alive in their own vehicle. They apparently tried to escape but were prevented by the mob. He, along with his two sons, Philip (10) and Timothy (6), died.
When his wife, Gladys Staines, learned of this horrific incident, her reaction was not one of bitterness. She did not say, “What kind of people are you? We lived sacrificial lives to cure your leprosy and share God’s love with perishing people, and this is how you repay us?” Instead, she said, “God in Christ has forgiven all my sins. I have forgiven the killers, and I have no bitterness or anger toward the people I serve.” Her words were not empty. After her husband’s and children’s deaths, she continued to serve in India for another five years. In 2005, she was awarded the Padma Shree, the fourth-highest civilian honor in India, in recognition of her work with leprosy patients in Odisha. In 2016, she received the Mother Teresa Memorial International Award for Social Justice.
How could she do that? She lost her husband and her two little sons. What must be in the heart of a mother who saw the burnt bodies of her two cute sons? They could have lived happily and lavishly in Australia, but they came for these people and were killed by them. Yet she said, “I forgive, with no bitterness in my heart,” and she proved it by continuing to serve the same people. Why? It is because she knew the same God who forgave all our sins. But we don’t tolerate a small injury or insult to ourselves or our family. We immediately react with anger and revenge. Why are we so different?
I think the only reason is that we do not truly grasp the grandeur and wonder of God’s great forgiveness of all our sins. We have not deeply realized and are not living with the joy of his forgiveness. We must first be filled with awe and a sense of great indebtedness and realize what an inestimable blessing it is.
Jesus emphasizes the great need for forgiveness in the Lord’s Prayer. It is mentioned six times, not just in verse 12, but also after finishing the Lord’s Prayer in verse 16, as if to stress how important it is. Not only here, but he repeats it throughout the gospels, and the apostles repeat this a lot of times in the epistles, which means that it is a serious subject for the people of God. This verse says that if we don’t experience it and offer it to others, we will perish in our sin. So, it is tremendously important to know what this is that is so essential to our eternal life.
Forgiveness may be the most wonderful word in any language. There is nothing more wonderful to know than that all your sins are forgiven by God. It is the greatest blessing God can give a sinner. It never comes alone. It has an unbreakable golden link to glory. Whom God forgives, he also justifies, sanctifies, adopts, crowns as an heir, and glorifies. It is a display of his richness of his grace.
It is the most difficult thing the Almighty Holy God himself can do, and he did it with great sacrifice. It required more power than to create the universe. It is given to no one but the elect of God. It is the source of all peace. The great Holy God declares the forgiven sinner to be eternally righteous. God looks upon a pardoned soul as if they had never sinned. Oh, what a blessed privilege, to be reputed righteous in the sight of God as Christ, having his embroidered robe put upon the soul! More righteous than Adam before the fall. This is the comfort of everyone that is pardoned: he has a perfect righteousness. And now God says of him, “Thou art all fair, my love; there is no spot in thee.” No one can come before a holy God. People without faith are all stained with sin; even their prayer and charity are sinful and unacceptable. A forgiven, righteous, declared person can come boldly, and God accepts their services, sacrifice, and offering and is pleased with them. He will not remember their sins eternally. The forgiven person is eternally secure from the avenging, terrible wrath of God. The conscience has no more authority to accuse.
The greatest blessing in this life is forgiveness. For all people, even if they have money, health, and fame, without the forgiveness of sin, it is like Naaman who had a grand appearance but had leprosy eating him inside. The richest person is the forgiven person. All of life’s events happen for their good. Just as guilt embitters our comforts and puts a bitter taste in our cup, so pardon sweetens all and is like sugar to wine. He doesn’t have the fear of death. He may look on death with joy. To a pardoned soul, death has lost its sting. A pardoned soul may triumph over death, saying, “O death, where is thy sting? O grave, where is thy victory?”
If God has blessed us with forgiveness, shouldn’t we be much in praise and doxology? “Bless the Lord, O my soul, who forgives all thine iniquities.” You give thanks for “daily bread,” and will you not much more for a pardon? You give thanks for deliverance from sickness with tears, and will you not for deliverance from hell? God has done more for you in forgiving your sin than if he had given you a kingdom and ownership of the entire world. That you may be more thankful, just set the unpardoned condition before your eyes. How sad it is to want a pardon! All the curses of the law stand in full force against such a person. The unpardoned sinner drops into the grave and hell at once. He must reside among the damned. Will it not make you thankful that this is not your condition, but that you are “delivered from the wrath to come”?
Has God pardoned you? Then do all the service you can for God. “Always abounding in the work of the Lord.” Let your head study for God; let your hands work for him; let your tongue be the organ of his praise. When Paul got his pardon and could say, “I obtained mercy,” he also said, “I labored more abundantly than they all.” He did spend and was spent for Christ.
Last week, we saw there are two kinds of forgiveness. God not only forgave all my sins as a judge, but there is also fatherly forgiveness when I sin and confess as a believer. The judge’s forgiveness gives me salvation; the fatherly forgiveness gives me the joy of salvation and allows me to live in the full joy of his fellowship. The judge’s forgiveness is needed only once, and the fatherly forgiveness is needed regularly.
Each of us needs to ask ourselves some questions this morning. Given that forgiveness is a person’s deepest spiritual need, have you experienced the forgiveness that comes in Christ? That’s the first question. If you have, then even as a Christian, are you experiencing the usefulness, joyfulness, and intimacy with God? Are you forgiving others like that missionary’s wife? If not, why? Why, after being saved, is there no joy or peace in your life? You should feel a thrill.
Trace your steps back for a minute. Look at your life and you say, “I come to church all the time. I read the Bible. I hear sermons. But I don’t have the joy that I ought to have. I miss out on being used by God. I feel my life isn’t all it could be.” Why? Somebody says you need to pray more, so you try that. Or, you need to read your Bible; you’re not reading the Word enough. But where is the spiritual reality that is missing? I believe it is because you are not regularly experiencing the Father’s forgiveness and the joy that comes from his intimacy. Living without the Father’s forgiveness not only causes you to lose joy but also brings the Father’s chastening. The Bible warns in many places. There is no joy of salvation, terrible guilt even as a saved person, and a dull, barren life with no growth in grace or fruit. It is a terrible life to live like that.
Why am I not experiencing this? Because there are two important conditions for receiving the Father’s forgiveness. Maybe you are not meeting either of them. The first condition is repentance and confession. The second one is mentioned in verse 12: Forgive others. These are very important conditions for continuously experiencing the Father’s forgiveness. We will see that. But before that, let’s discuss the first condition.
With the spirit, I explained last week the great forgiveness of the judge and the Father. Someone hearing all this might say, “Okay, Pastor, it was great news that God has forgiven all my sins, so from now on, I will enjoy sin and not worry about consequences because Christ has paid the penalty. Even if I sin as a believer, the Father will continue to forgive me, so I will sin and enjoy life. What is there?” I think I have repeated this so many times. If you get such a reaction, my simple answer to that person is that I very much doubt if they are a saved person. If God has shown me such mercy through salvation by forgiving all my sins and continues to show and forgive me as a believer, will that not break a person’s heart and make me hate sin? If a person’s heart continues to abuse such love, it is a big question mark whether he is a transformed and a child of God. Note: If a person can continue to enjoy sin and be happy about sin and find excuses for it, he is not a believer. If a believer continues in sin, he will never be a happy believer. This is the cause of not having the joy of salvation. A true sense of God’s love in forgiving makes you more cautious and fearful of sin in the future. Why would God, who is so gracious, forgive us so that we can continue in sin? No. “There is forgiveness with thee that thou mayest be feared.” (Psalm 130:4). Oh, fear to offend the God who has been so forgiving to you. If a friend has done us a kindness, we shall not disoblige him or abuse his love. After Nathan had told David, “The Lord has put away thy sin,” how tender was his conscience! How fearful was he of staining his soul with the guilt of more blood! “Deliver me from bloodguiltiness, O God.” (Psalm 51:14). He pleads for a steadfast love, a changed heart; to create a new heart so he will not sin again. Also, note that though there is forgiveness, God doesn’t allow the consequences of our sins to be avoided as chastisement to sanctify us. For example, though he forgave David, he allowed consequences in his life.
Forgiveness is not just me saying “sorry” and assuming God has forgiven me. We need to have a sense of that forgiveness. Oh, the joy of God’s smile on us again and joy in our heart that we are forgiven! We feel the Father’s love again. That is the joy of life, peace, and that comes with two conditions.
The first condition is repentance and confession. We see David in Psalm 51. Nathan told him God had forgiven him, but he still pleads for the fatherly forgiveness and pleads for the joy of forgiveness, and he does this by repentance and confession.
Repentance is sorrow and hate for sin, a turning to God from sin, and confessing. It is a holy sorrow; it is grieving for sin because it is dishonoring God and defiling the soul. “Against thee, thee only, have I sinned.” “My sin is ever before me.” (Psalm 51:3). “I repented; I smote upon my thigh, put dust on my head, beat my breast.” The woman in the gospel stood at Jesus’ feet weeping, and a pardon followed. So, there is repenting and then confessing.
A hearty confession of sin. See Psalm 32, which shows that all the trouble and lack of joy in the Christian life is because of not repenting and confessing sins. Verses 1-4. But then, in verse 5, it says, “I said, ‘I will confess my transgressions to the Lord,’ and you forgave the iniquity of my sin.” (Psalm 32:5). “If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.” (1 John 1:9). One would have thought it should have said, “If we confess our sins, he is merciful to forgive them.” No, it says he is “just” to forgive them. Why “just”? Because he has bound himself by a promise to forgive humble, repenting people who turn to him and confess their sin. We need to believe that promise and believe he forgives when we repent.
This is very difficult. Adam and Eve sinned, and they were used to walking and talking with God in the cool of the day, but the minute they sinned, the next thing they did was hide. It’s tough to confess. As long as you don’t, you forfeit the joy. Confessing sin isn’t easy, but it’s necessary to appropriate the joy that comes with parental forgiveness. Don’t conceal your sin; confess your sin. John Stott says, and it’s true, that one of the surest antidotes to the process of moral hardening is the disciplined practice of uncovering our sins of thought and outlook as well as word and deed, and the repentant forsaking of the same. If you don’t do that, it will harden you. I’ve seen Christians, judicially forgiven and eternally secure, who are so hardened, so unconfessing, so insensitive to sin, and so totally joyless who didn’t even know the meaning of a loving, intimate fellowship with God. They’ve blocked it out by the barricade of their unconfessed sin. The act of confession itself strengthens us against committing that sin again.
So why do you live a joyless life? And maybe the answer is very simple. You’re not confessing your sins. You’re not going to the Lord and saying, “I am a sinner, I acknowledge it. I admit it. And here are the sins. Purify me.” And you say, “Yeah, I’m doing that. I go to the Lord and I say, ‘Lord, I’ve got sin in my life and here it is.’ Some people I’ve met even have a list, you know? They write it down. And I still don’t have the joy. And I still don’t have the fulfillment. And I still don’t see what I ought to see in my life.”
Then maybe you are going wrong with the second condition. Begin to examine your life at that level. Let us look at the great condition mentioned in the verse. Why are so many Christians… why don’t I have the joy of forgiveness? Maybe this could be the primary reason: somewhere there is unforgiven sin in your heart, bitterness, and anger.
Yes, God’s forgiveness is wonderful, but what about forgiving others? How many times have you forgiven others who wronged you last week? Now that is a different matter altogether! You might say, “Why are you bringing that here?” It is because the Lord has put these two things together. What God has put, let no one separate. Now it is clear from this petition taught us by the Savior, that God’s Fatherly forgiveness of us is to be the rule and the measure of our forgiveness of others. “The way you treat other people is the way God will treat you.” That is very shocking.
When someone does something wrong against us, abuses us, insults us, or hurts us, we feel it. They offend us, and it becomes a debt they owe us. They owe us something, and we intend to get paid or get revenge. Carrying a grudge is the act of not forgiving others for the wrongs they have done against you.
In essence, there are three mistakes we can make when people do things to us or say evil things about us.
First, we can harbor resentment and allow it to grow. This is a terrible mistake. To hold a resentment toward another is like drinking poison and hoping the other person dies. Resentment only creates an internal sore in the soul, and then it causes that sore to fester. The one with the resentment suffers, and the person against whom the resentment is held goes on in life without harm. If resentment is allowed to grow more and more, it will try to take revenge, and then it becomes a permanent wall and breaks the relationship forever.
From a selfish angle, before going to this verse, it is important to forgive others for our physical and spiritual health. People who carry grudges and bitterness and who carry an angry attitude toward an individual that goes on and on, are literally wounding themselves. People in the midst of an unforgiving situation have all kinds of problems. A root of bitterness creates all kinds of binding of the conscience. With a wounded conscience, how will there be joy?
Many people spoil their lives and family relationships because of this. Studies and clinical tests have shown that this is the problem for many drug addicts and drunkards. One addict said, “I was so addicted and finally found that the cause was a fierce resentment against my ex-wife.” His coach told him, “Boy, she’s living rent-free in your head.” “Having a resentment is like drinking poison and praying for the other guy to die. The great danger was that if I did not forgive her, I could not be released from this prison and might drink again. The solution was that I was told to pray for her every day and every time during the day that I thought of her for 90 days and to report to him every day what I had learned from this exercise. I discovered that somewhere between the 30th and 60th days, the resentment left me and for the most part has been gone ever since. When I think of her now, it’s mostly in gratitude for the good years and kids we had together and to remember how my own irresponsibility and anger led to the demise of that relationship.”
Are you harboring resentment toward someone today? If you are, I feel sorry for you. Your life is miserable, and you are hurting yourself, those around you, and the kingdom of God. Even if you are doing nothing to “get even” with the perpetrator of the wrong, you are doing a lot of damage to yourself. Your attitude is affecting you, and your usefulness to God is limited.
If you continue in it as a Christian, God will chastise you for it. We should forgive one another because it delivers us from chastening. Where there is an unforgiving spirit, there is sin, and where there is sin, there is chastening. And in 1 Corinthians, it says why many of them are sick, weak, and many are asleep. It is because of their unforgiveness toward one another, and their bitterness, and their party spirit and their factions were spoiling God’s work among them. The Holy Spirit stopped working, and the kingdom of God stopped growing. With that unforgiveness, you are gathering together to get worse. And because of that, many of them were weak, and sick, and some were even dead, and the Lord had chastened them to that point for a lack of a proper love relationship with one another. Now all those are important reasons why you should forgive one another. But there’s one more that is given in this verse.
The teaching of this verse can be given in one simple sentence: Unless you forgive, God will not forgive you. Augustine called this text “a terrible petition.” He pointed out that if you pray these words while harboring an unforgiving spirit, you are actually asking God not to forgive you. Ponder that for a moment. If you pray, “Forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors,” while refusing to forgive those who have wronged you, this prayer, which is meant to be a blessing, becomes a self-inflicted curse. In that case, you are really saying, “O God, since I have not forgiven my brother, please do not forgive me.”
General Oglethorpe was a great military leader, but he had a reputation as a harsh and brutal man. One day he said to John Wesley, “I never forgive.” To which Wesley replied, “Then, sir, I hope you never sin.”
The meaning of “forgive” is to stop feeling angry or resentful towards someone for an offense, to no longer feel angry about or wish to punish them, or to cancel a debt.
Logically, when God forgave us a debt that we could never pay—the debt of our sins—He requires that we act toward people the way He has acted toward us. I know that is a far too simple way to state the issue, but it does give us a sense of God’s will for us in matters pertaining to the forgiveness of others. We are to forgive one another, because if we don’t, we don’t get forgiven either. And that’s in our passage. Now, that’s a shocking and startling set of verses, verses 14 and 15. Why am I not enjoying the salvation of God, the joy of his fellowship? It seems as if Jesus is saying, “The way you treat other people is the way God will treat you.” On one level, that thought is puzzling; on another, it is profoundly disquieting.
When we pray, “Forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors,” we are asking God to forgive our sins according to the same standard we have used in forgiving others. The entire meaning of this petition hinges on that little word, “as.”
This conjunction joins the first half of the prayer to the second. When Jesus says “as,” He is setting up a comparison between the way we forgive and the way God forgives us. This text says that we set the standard, and God follows it. We establish the pattern, and God follows that pattern in how He deals with us.
When you pray this prayer, you are truly saying, “O God, deal with me as I have dealt with others.” We are virtually saying, “God, I was bitter and angry with my wife and did not care for her wishes or comfort, so please deal with me in that way.” Or, “God, I insulted and shouted at my son and was not merciful or kind to him, so deal with me as I dealt with him.” It’s as if we’re praying, “O God, people hurt me. I am so angry that I can’t wait to get even. Deal with me as I have dealt with him.” We set the standard, and God follows our lead. It’s amazing.
A Serious Word to the Unforgiving
Unless you forgive, you will not be forgiven. To refuse to forgive someone else and then ask God for forgiveness is self-deception, and you will never experience the joy of forgiveness. You are asking God to give you what you are unwilling to give to someone else. The fifth petition of the Lord’s Prayer tells us you cannot have it both ways. Do you want to be forgiven? You must forgive others.
This is a shocking verse. The Bible truly teaches that God’s forgiveness of us is linked to our forgiveness of others. Jesus knew we would feel uncomfortable with this, which is why He singles out the fifth petition for additional commentary. In verses 14 and 15, He repeats and clarifies it so that no one can misunderstand: “For if you forgive men their trespasses, your heavenly Father will also forgive you, but if you do not forgive men their trespasses, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses.”
An “Unforgiven” Christian
As strange as it may sound, there is such a thing as an “unforgiven” Christian. This is not a statement about ultimate destinies or whether a person will go to heaven or hell; that is taken care of by the judicial forgiveness we receive through Christ. To be “unforgiven” in this sense means that the channel of God’s grace is blocked from the human side. It means that you have chosen to hold on to bitterness and forfeit your daily walk with the Lord. You would rather be angry than joyful. You have chosen resentment over peace. Your grudges and angry emotions have become more important to you than God’s daily blessing.
If you are a Christian—a genuine believer in Jesus Christ—unless you forgive, you will not be forgiven. Why? Because God has already forgiven your sins 100% through the blood of Jesus Christ. How dare you, then, be unforgiving to someone who hurt you after what Jesus Christ did for you on the cross?
Here are ten consequences of an unforgiving life:
- Our fellowship with the Father is blocked.
- The Holy Spirit is grieved.
- Your prayers will not be answered.
- God leaves you to face life’s problems in your own strength.
- The devil gains a foothold through your bitterness.
- You force God to become your enemy.
- You lose God’s blessing on your life.
- You waste time nursing a wounded spirit.
- You become enslaved to the people you hate.
- You become like the people you refuse to forgive.
The problem of unforgiveness is a deep one. People who do not forgive do not know their own hearts; they are not walking closely with God, and the Holy Spirit is not revealing their sins to them. They live in spiritual delusion. If that is not corrected, it proves they are not a believer at all.
The reason we cannot forgive others is that we do not see ourselves as great sinners; therefore, we do not appreciate how greatly God has forgiven us. When our own sins seem small, the sins of others against us will seem big indeed. The reverse is also true: the greater you see the depth of your sin before God, the less the sins of other people against you will bother you. True repentance always starts with a change of mind that leads to a change of heart, which in turn leads to a change in the way we view those who have sinned against us.
Needed: A Serious Moral Inventory
Jesus is telling us that there is a vital link between the way you treat other people and the way God in heaven is going to treat you. Let’s face it: we don’t like that. We would prefer to hate someone for what they did to us and still have the blessings of God. We would much prefer to have our relationship with God insulated and encapsulated so we could treat other people any way we like.
Jesus says, “No deal. You can’t have it that way.” Unless you forgive, you will not be forgiven. This is a hard word, but it is a hard word of grace. As we come to the Lord’s Supper, many of us desperately need to take a searching moral inventory and ask ourselves:
- Am I up to date on my forgiving?
- Am I holding a grudge against anyone?
- Do I harbor any bitterness against any person?
- Am I talking too much about what others have done to me?
- Have I forgiven those closest to me who have hurt me so deeply?
Someone may say, “But I can’t forgive.” Don’t ever say that. The word “can’t” is a cop-out. The issue is deeper than that. You won’t forgive. Don’t make excuses or play games. If you are a true Christian, a genuine believer in Jesus Christ, and your sins have been washed away, then you can forgive. What God has done for you, you can do for others.
And in all of this, we have the example of our Lord Jesus Christ. The entire world did Him a great injustice. His own disciples betrayed and denied Him, and the rest forsook Him. His own countrymen unjustly handed Him over to the Gentiles, and the Romans twisted justice, cruelly crucifying Him. Yet as He hung on the cross—the innocent for the guilty, the righteous for the unrighteous—Jesus cried out, “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.”
A Place to Begin
Let’s conclude with three simple statements of application. As you partake in communion today, remember that this ordinance proclaims that you are living in a close relationship with God and your brothers and sisters. What a lie it would be if this were only an outward show, a hypocrisy where you live daily without experiencing God’s forgiveness and fellowship, never loving or forgiving your brothers and sisters. How long will you eat and drink condemnation? Today, will you repent of your sins, seek God’s forgiveness, and plead with Him to forgive everyone? Remember, unless you forgive, God will not forgive.
- You become close to Jesus Christ when you repent and confess your sins to Him. Are you laboring under a burden of guilt because of foolish things you have said or done? A sense of your own sin is a sign of God’s grace at work in your heart. When you cry out, “God, be merciful to me, a sinner,” you will find that the Father will not turn you away.
- You are more like Jesus when you forgive those who have sinned against you. Do you want to be like Jesus? Become a great forgiver. Jesus was a forgiving man. He came to create a race of forgiving men and women.
- You will never fully enter into your freedom in Christ until you learn the freedom of forgiveness. The two freedoms go together. As long as you hold on to your resentments, you are still chained to the past and only hurt yourself. By refusing to forgive, you block off the channel of God’s blessing in your life. The unforgiving Christian knows nothing about the freedom in Christ; he is still in bondage to the remembered hurts from the past. Until those chains are broken by a decisive act of forgiveness, he will remain a slave to the past.
This is a hard word, but it is also a cleansing word that cuts through all our flimsy excuses and leads us to a fountain of grace where we can be healed, made whole, and restored to a right relationship with our Creator. Our God freely forgave us while we were His enemies. Can we not do for others what He has done for us?
The word of the Lord remains: “Unless you forgive, you will not be forgiven.”
Grace Reformed Baptist Church, Bangalore 