Audio Transcript

Good Monday, everyone, on this day before Independence Day here in the States. Last time, last week, we addressed sibling rivalries — a common theme in the Bible, and a concern we should have for our own homes today. Sibling rivalries was Thursday’s theme, in APJ 1954. And today we look at forgiving family members.

The question is from a listener to the podcast, a young man who lives in Brazil. He writes this: “Hello, Pastor John, thank you for this podcast, which has been a huge resource God has used in my own sanctification. My question is this: My family struggles to forgive each other, and it’s been this way for years. They argue along the line that ‘even Jesus was harsh with his enemies, so why should I forgive my enemies?’ How would you answer them? In dealing with hurt in the past, what is the difference between Jesus dealing with his enemies like the Pharisees, contrasted with what God expects from us in dealing with our own family members who have sinned against us?”

This is utterly crucial. It’s a matter of life and death, and I mean eternal life and death, as we will see in just a moment. So, I take this question really seriously, and I hope this family will take the issue seriously also.

What Is Forgiveness?

First, let’s clarify what forgiveness is and isn’t. That’s a huge stumbling block for a lot of people. When they start arguing about whether they should forgive or not, they don’t pause to define what it is and isn’t. So, let’s do that.

First, forgiveness is not thinking or saying or acting as though no great wrong was done. A great wrong may well have been done against you.

Second, forgiveness is not reestablishing a wonderful relationship. In Romans 12:18, Paul says, “If possible, so far as it depends on you, live peaceably with all.” It may not be possible. He also says in Colossians 3:13, “[Bear] with one another and, if one has a complaint against another, [forgive] each other.” Now “bearing with one another” means, literally, “endure one another,” “forbear one another.” In other words, there will be frustrating, annoying, even hurtful things about others that no amount of forgiveness will fix, and they must be endured. We must bear with them. You’ll see why in a minute.

“Forgiveness can be real even if the other person does not accept it or want it.”

Third, forgiveness does not mean that trust is immediately restored. This is crucial. So many think that to forgive is to restore trust — to give trust to someone who has betrayed you. But that assumes that the person has reformed, and does not have those same untrustworthy patterns of life that made them do wrong. But, in fact, they may be worse, not better. Forgiveness may lead to new and deeper trust; it may not.

Fourth, forgiveness can be real even if the other person does not accept it or want it. They may not think they did anything wrong. That’s just a huge problem in marriage, for example. You want to forgive, and they don’t think they’ve wronged you. In those cases, the full transaction of repentance and forgiveness is not possible, but a forgiving spirit is still possible. And if that is all we can give, because they don’t want our forgiveness, then the Lord counts that — that forgiving spirit — as our forgiveness. We’ve done what we can do. We have shown that we are a forgiving person. You can love your enemy even while he remains your enemy if he chooses.

So then, if that’s what forgiveness is not, what is it? Forgiveness is wanting the good, not the ruin, of the one who wronged you, in spite of the wrong, and then acting for their good. You won’t let the wrong strangle your love. You won’t let their sin make you sin. You will lay it down and pray for their good and work for it.

Why Is Forgiveness Crucial?

Okay, with those clarifications in mind, why do I say forgiveness is so crucial?

1. We were greater enemies of God.

You as a Christian have been forgiven an offense against God that is millions of times greater than any human has offended or sinned against you. Ephesians 4:32 says, “Be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, as God in Christ forgave you.” The outrage of the way you have treated God in your sin and unbelief was so great that it cost God the death of his only divine Son to forgive you. In other words, your debt was infinite. Nobody who has wronged you has ever come close to wronging you as badly as you have wronged God. And yet we are forgiven. You and I, Christian, are forgiven.

What would it mean if we refuse to forgive? Here’s what it would mean. It would mean we think God is a fool to forgive us. “He’s acting like a fool, because I’m not going to act like that. I’m not going to be stupid and foolish like that. So, God must be foolish to forgive me since I’m not going to forgive.” That’s pretty serious. Let that sink in. That’s very serious to think God’s a fool or to act like he’s a fool.

2. Jesus died for his enemies.

Our friend in Brazil says that his unforgiving relatives say, “Even Jesus was harsh with his enemies. Why should I forgive my enemies?” One answer is that Jesus forgave his enemies. Hanging on the cross to purchase our forgiveness, he said, “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do” (Luke 23:34). Of course, he was harsh with the Pharisees and scribes, good grief. And the reason he was harsh with them is because they were so unforgiving. But while being harsh, he was on his way to die for them if they would only trust him. So, Jesus forgave his enemies.

3. Forgiven people forgive.

Jesus said that if we don’t forgive, we won’t be forgiven. Matthew 6:14–15: “If you forgive others their trespasses, your heavenly Father will also forgive you, but if you do not forgive others their trespasses, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses.”

And then he told a parable to emphasize this shocking reality. The king forgave a slave who owed him zillions. And that’s a pretty good translation because the amount is like twenty thousand years’ worth of wages. I mean, it is supposed to sound like zillions. He owed him zillions of dollars. Then the slave went out and wrung the neck of a fellow slave who owed him ten dollars. And the king said, “Throw him in prison till he pays everything,” which means forever (Matthew 18:23–35). Why? Because in relationship with God, forgiveness must go both ways. God gives and we receive. That slave did not receive the king’s forgiveness. He despised it, he mocked it, he scorned it, he trampled it in the dirt.

When you won’t forgive someone else his debt while claiming to love the God who forgave yours, it’s just pure hypocrisy. You’re acting like God was a fool for forgiving you. And so, if you keep on thinking God is a fool, you will perish and not be forgiven.

4. A great reward is coming.

When forgiveness seems hard, think about the reward. That’s what Jesus says in Matthew 5:11–12, “Blessed are you when others revile you and persecute you and utter all kinds of evil against you falsely on my account. Rejoice and be glad, for your reward is great in heaven.” So, when the hurt you have received seems so great that you can’t rejoice and forgive, Jesus says, “Remember your reward. Remember your reward. It will be very great.”

5. God will repay.

One more suggestion from Romans 12:19–20. One of the reasons we stumble over the command to forgive those who’ve hurt us is the sense that if we don’t punish them in some way, they’re going to get away with a great wrong; they’re going to get away with a real injustice. So, there’s a sense in which our very proper love for justice makes us hesitant to let the offense or the hurt go. We feel that if we let it go, justice will simply not be done, and that would be wrong, so we justify our vengeance.

“Nobody who has wronged you has ever come close to wronging you as badly as you have wronged God.”

But the problem with that way of thinking is that God has told us precisely that justice will be done, and that he will do it. He will do it far better than we could ever do it. Here’s what he says in Romans 12:19–21: “Beloved, never avenge yourselves, but leave it to the wrath of God.” Now, that leaving to God to deal with it is part of what goes into forgiveness — you leave it. Paul goes on, “For it is written, ‘Vengeance is mine, I will repay, says the Lord.’ To the contrary, ‘if your enemy is hungry, feed him; if he is thirsty, give him something to drink; for by so doing you will heap burning coals on his head.’ Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good.”

Now, the amazing thing about this promise — “I will repay” — is that it is true for all the wrongs unbelievers do against us and all the wrongs believers do against us. If others wrong us and never turn to Christ and remain unbelievers till they die, they will go to hell, and all the wrongs that they have ever done will be duly repaid — indeed, repaid more terribly than anything we could ever do here. So, we don’t need to do it. We don’t need payback.

If those who wrong us are true Christians or become Christians in their lifetimes, then the wrong that they did to us — with all their other sins — was punished in the suffering of Christ. Christ bore the punishment for the sins they committed against us. Let me say that sentence again, because I just think it would have such a vast impact on the way we treat each other: Christ bore the punishment for the sins they committed against us.

Think what that means if we are unwilling to forgive their wrong against us. It means we are acting as if the sufferings of Christ were not enough. We are making light of the horrors he endured to bear the guilt of that wrong committed against us. We do not want to be found in that horrible attitude. We don’t. That’s a dangerous attitude to think that Christ’s sufferings are inadequate.

So, dear friend in Brazil, I will pray for your family and for you — that they would see the seriousness of what’s at stake in not forgiving, and that you would seek to be a beautiful example to them of what forgiveness looks like. I will pray for you. I hope you will for me as well.

Audio Transcript

Well, if you listened Friday, we looked at 1 Peter 3:8. There Peter calls Christians to strive toward “unity of mind.” But we also saw that this “unity of mind” is not uniformity. We don’t all think identically, which means that Christian unity must hold together by love, not simply by uniform thinking. Without this critical heart of love, unity simply cannot happen.

And speaking of love, and how love unifies, just a little later Peter goes on to say, in the same letter, that love “covers a multitude of sins.” Our love covers sins. Peter makes that point in 1 Peter 4:8. But what does this mean? Two listeners want to know. Dustin in Atlanta asks, “Pastor John, how does love cover over a multitude of sins? What sins? Whose sins does it cover — mine, or the person or people I’m loving?” Similarly, Alan in Brisbane, Australia, asks, “Pastor John, what is Peter driving at in this text? Are we covering over our own inclination to sin by loving, or covering over others’ sins by not reacting to them — that is, forgiving them rather than taking revenge?” Pastor John, what would you say to Dustin and Alan?

Here’s 1 Peter 4:7–8: “The end of all things is at hand; therefore be self-controlled and sober-minded for the sake of your prayers. Above all, keep loving one another earnestly” — and here comes that key phrase — “since love covers a multitude of sins.” So let’s begin by observing a few Old Testament texts that lie behind Peter’s language of covering a multitude of sins.

Old Testament Backdrop

For example, here’s the closest parallel — Proverbs 10:12: “Hatred stirs up strife, but love covers all offenses.” That’s really close to what Peter says, that “love covers all offenses.” You can see how close the parallel is to Peter’s “love covers a multitude of sins.” So what does this proverb mean? The contrast is between hatred and love. What hatred does is stir up strife, and what love does is cover offenses. The opposite of covering offenses is to stir up strife.

I take the strife to mean what happens when you don’t cover offenses, but rather when you try to uncover as many as you can. You’re on the lookout for people’s flaws and failures and imperfections. You draw attention to them, and you stir up conflict by pointing out as many of a person’s flaws as you can. That’s what hate does, according to Proverbs.

The opposite of this would be that you’re not eager to draw attention to people’s flaws or failures. You’re not eager to create corporate blame and conflict. Instead, love seeks to deal with flaws and failures and sins another way, more quietly.

Of course, you’re not ignorant that some sins must be dealt with publicly — as in the case, say, of sexual abuse or some kind of violence. But you also know that there are hundreds of things that people say and do that are offensive, or selfish, or prideful, or off-color, and they need to be dealt with quietly and kindly. I think this is what Paul was getting at in Galatians 6:1, where he said, “Brothers, if anyone is caught in any transgression, you who are spiritual should restore him in a spirit of gentleness. Keep watch on yourself, lest you too be tempted.”

In other words, you don’t blow a trumpet and try to placard the person’s transgression all over the community. You do your best to bring about repentance quietly, personally. Or if there are reasons that it’s not your place to confront the person, you simply give the person slack, and you hope and you pray that the kindness that you show by overlooking the sin would have a good effect in due time.

Two Ways to ‘Cover’

So cover offenses can have two meanings. One is to simply “let it go; overlook it,” and that’s referred to in Proverbs 19:11: “Good sense makes one slow to anger, and it is his glory to overlook an offense.” That’s one meaning of cover — to overlook. You see it, but love inclines you not to take offense, be angered, or be hurt, but to hope that your endurance of the injury (perhaps against you), your forgiveness, and your patience will bear fruit in change.

The other meaning is that, under that cover of patience, you may be quietly and actively dealing with the person in one-on-one ways that quietly and actively seek repentance. We shouldn’t jump to the conclusion that when “love covers a multitude of sins,” it’s not talking to anybody. Love wants peace, not conflict. Love wants holiness, not sin. Love wants the good of the sinning person, not public vengeance.

“To ‘cover’ is to work toward forgiveness.”

And in both of these meanings of cover — the “overlook” one and the “quietly deal with the sinner” one — there is a forgiving spirit at work. We see that in Psalm 32:1: “Blessed is the one whose transgression is forgiven, whose sin is covered.” In this verse, cover parallels forgive. To cover is to work toward forgiveness, where the sin doesn’t break the relationship anymore.

Now, back to 1 Peter 4:7–8: “The end of all things is at hand; therefore be self-controlled and sober-minded for the sake of your prayers. Above all, keep loving one another earnestly, since love covers a multitude of sins.” So against the Old Testament background, as well as the New Testament parallels that we’ll see in just a minute, the sins that are being covered here are the sins of fellow Christians. Not your own sins, and not those outside the church, but the failures of Christians to live up to the biblical path of righteousness.

Parallels in Paul

And with that in mind, we start to see this work of love all over the New Testament. That covering idea is everywhere. For example, in 1 Corinthians 13:5, it says, “Love is patient and kind. It does not keep an account of wrongs.” That’s the New American Standard Bible, and it’s good. Isn’t “not keeping account of wrongs” the same as saying that “love covers wrongs”? Love doesn’t keep an account of them.

Or Paul goes on in 1 Corinthians 13:5 and says, “[Love] is not irritable.” That’s like “overlook.” It’s like “covering.” Isn’t that the same as saying that “love covers irritations”?

Then he says, “Love bears all things . . . endures all things” (1 Corinthians 13:7). Well, “bears and endures” means that love doesn’t throw your flaw and your failure back in your face. It bears it. It endures it. That’s covering it, rather than waving a flag over it and saying, “Hey, everybody, look what I found. Jim is a loser — he offended me. Mary is a hypocrite — she hurt me.” That’s not bearing and enduring. It’s not covering.

We also see this covering work in Colossians 3:13, where Paul says to believers, “[Bear] with one another and, if one has a complaint against another, [forgive] one another; as the Lord has forgiven you.” So enduring, forgiving, means that people have offended me, hurt me, irritated me, and I choose not to retaliate. Instead, I cover the offense of the hurt or the irritation.

Covered by Christ

The closest parallel in the New Testament to 1 Peter 4:8, which sheds even more light on what’s going on with this covering, is James 5:19–20: “My brothers, if anyone among you wanders from the truth . . .” So you’ve got a believer who’s straying off, about to make shipwreck of faith. James continues: “If anyone among you wanders from the truth and someone brings him back . . .” You go after your brother. You quietly plead, and deal, and pray, and share, and you win him. Finally, he ends by saying, “. . . let him know that whoever brings back a sinner from his wandering will save his soul from death and cover a multitude of sins.”

“As we cover the sins of those who offend us, we are offering them an expression of Christ’s covering by his blood.”

In other words, when we mercifully pursue a wayward brother or sister and win them back to the path of faith and obedience, they are saved from making shipwreck of their faith. And when they take their place under the blood of Jesus, all their sins are not only covered by our own patience and endurance and forgiveness, but they’re also covered by the blood of Jesus, which is why James says that you will save their souls.

So I think it is fair to say, as we cover the sins of those who offend us, rather than retaliating, we are offering them an expression of Christ’s covering by his blood, so that if they rest their faith in Christ because of our kindness, our covering, they will experience the ultimate kindness and the ultimate covering of the forgiveness of sins in Christ.

Audio Transcript

How do we parent through family crisis? In today’s scenario, a husband and wife are at odds. Son is pitted against father. Daughter is pitted against her mother. Even the daughter-in-law sides with the daughter against mom. And all the compounded animosity toward the mother weighs heavy on the father, until it all appears that a man’s worst enemies are inside his own home. So when a family breaks apart like this, what is a man to do?

This scenario is what makes the seventh chapter of Micah so bleak. It’s the worst of times. The culture is fracturing apart due to sin. No one can trust anyone. Closer to home, families are falling into crisis. It is a time, warns Micah, to “put no trust in a neighbor; have no confidence in a friend; guard the doors of your mouth from her who lies in your arms [from a wife, that is]; for the son treats the father with contempt, the daughter rises up against her mother, the daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law; a man’s enemies are the men of his own house” (Micah 7:5–6).

Considering the pain of such chaos in society and in the home, Micah models two things in verse 9. He honestly reckons with himself, and he lays hold of his hope in God. “I will bear the indignation of the Lord because I have sinned against him, until he pleads my cause and executes judgment for me. He will bring me out to the light; I shall look upon his vindication” (Micah 7:9).

Here’s Pastor John, in a 2010 sermon, explaining this text’s relevance for the broken family today.

What makes verse 9 at the beginning so stunning — “I will bear the indignation of the Lord because I have sinned” — is because he says it in the vortex of being sinned against. You know that this is one of the hardest things in the world, don’t you — being sinned against by friends, family, coworkers? It is impossible without the Holy Spirit.

Own Your Offenses

So Micah knows he’s being sinned against. He knows some of the accusations against him are wrong. He is going to be vindicated in something, and he knows that God is for him and not against him. God will bring him out into the light, out of darkness. He will vindicate him. So Micah is bold in his confidence in his assertion — amazingly bold. Nevertheless, what he draws attention to, to explain the Lord’s indignation, is his own sin: “I will bear the indignation of the Lord because I have sinned against him.”

“The posture of parenting with hope in the worst of times is the posture of brokenhearted boldness.”

I’m arguing that the posture for parenting with hope in the worst of times is a brokenhearted boldness, and I’m asking first, Why is Micah brokenhearted? And the center of the answer, the core of the answer, is not their sin against him, but his sin against God. That’s the core of his answer. And that’s the core of parenting. If it doesn’t happen, nothing else is going to go right — nothing. Wives and husbands, here is where it begins, or here it starts over. The posture of parenting with hope in the worst of times is the posture of brokenhearted boldness. And the brokenheartedness is first, centrally, because of his own sin.

That is a great battle that we face, and we can only find it by God’s grace. I pray for you. God grant that all of us would be given the miracle, by the Holy Spirit, of the kind of humility that, in the midst of being sinned against, we own our sin against God. That’s a healing miracle, the kind of thing that could give hope where you thought there was none.

When you stand before God on the judgment day to give an account, guess what? He will not give you one minute to itemize the sins against you — not one. For several reasons:

He has a book; he doesn’t need your help.
You’d get it wrong; your memory is not good enough.
You’d use it for self-justification.

You don’t get one minute at the last day to talk about anybody else’s sin — none. It’s just your own.

Brokenhearted Boldness

So how do you parent in the worst of times with hope? How do you parent with hope when the family is divided two to three? You look to the Lord, you cry to the Lord (Micah 7:7), and then you cry to him with two deep, Spirit-wrought, word-informed convictions. Are you getting there? Only God can get you there. Preaching helps, but only God can get you there.

I’m trying to build into your life right now, as parents or parents to-be or single people, two deep convictions, governing convictions, emotionally effective convictions — two of them: brokenhearted boldness.

First conviction: my sin is my biggest problem. My sin is our marriage problem. My sin is my parenting problem. My sin is my work problem. My sin is the church’s problem. And I don’t deserve anything from God. We are not and never will be perfect parents. We have sinned. Call it anything you want to soften it.

We’re not foolish. We’re not naive. We know we’ve been sinned against. Wives have sinned against us. Children sin against us. Pastors sin against us. We know that. That’s just not the core of our issue. God will not call me to account for anybody’s sin against me — none. He will call me to account for one thing: How have I responded? Have I been a sinner? And I have. Only the Holy Spirit can make us feel this guilt as we should deep down. So that’s the first conviction I’m praying to God would work in our hearts.

Second conviction: there is no God like our God. I want you to be so deeply convinced that he pardons iniquity. He passes over transgression. He relents from anger. He delights in steadfast love. I want you to be just as deeply convinced of that as that you are a sinner.

Great Sinner, Glad Savior

Do you see how these work together? This is so important. You need to get the next sixty seconds. I have a deep, deep sense of conviction from my own sin in the midst of being sinned against. I’m emotionally governed here by my own failures, and I’m being humbled by that. That’s a miracle. And over here is a massive, strong, unshakable conviction: this God that rules the world pardons iniquity.

Do you see how they work together? The first one causes me to be more amazed at the pardon, but unless I’m confident in the pardon, I’m going to lie to myself. I’m going to short-circuit this conviction. I will not let it go to the bottom — I can’t because it’s devastating. It’s just too devastating, unless I got this fixed. Do you get how they work together? It won’t work. You can’t have a God that you’re super excited about because of his pardon if you don’t consider your own sinfulness. And you can’t go here unless you’ve got a God who’s super excited in his pardon.

And you might say that won’t work, but I’m saying it’s a miracle. It’s a miracle. I can’t explain the Christian life. I can’t explain the new birth. I can’t explain conviction of sin. I can’t explain how God shows up and does two things that depend on each other at the same time. But he does. Most of you have tasted it. You have. You need to go deeper. But almost all of you in this room, I would guess, have tasted what I’m talking about.

So those two deep convictions, brokenhearted boldness, are what I mean by parenting with hope in the worst of times. Usually, we don’t even know: “Was it mainly me, or mainly them? I can’t even figure this out.” We don’t even know. In that vortex, we own what we know: “I’m a sinner, and he’s a great Savior.”

Shaped by the Cross

So how do you close? You close by saying, “Okay, we’re Christians, and we know now that from this side of the cross, if I look at where God bought my pardon, both of these are intensified.” Aren’t they intensified, not lessened? You don’t really know how grievous your sin is until you watch Jesus die for it. You don’t. You can’t. You just can’t know how bad it is. You can’t feel how bad it is. The whole point of how gory the cross is is how gory my sin is. That’s the whole point. You just can’t know.

“You don’t really know how grievous your sin is until you watch Jesus die for it. You don’t. You can’t.”

Therefore, Christians have an edge on guilt. We’re better at it, hopefully. We should be the guiltiest people on the planet. We should be more devastated than anybody. We’ve seen the glory of the cross. And the confidence level in our hearts that he passes over this horror should rise with every scream from his mouth on the cross. So on this side of the cross, what changes is this: Now we see the price that was paid. It intensifies how wretched I am, and it intensifies how utterly committed our covenant God is to pay for it and draw us into his family in spite of it. It’s just incredible.

And for Micah, Jesus was just a prophecy. Do you remember it? I’ll read it to you.

But you, O Bethlehem Ephrathah,     who are too little to be among the clans of Judah,from you shall come forth for me     one who is to be ruler in Israel,whose coming forth is from of old,     from ancient days. . . .And he shall stand and shepherd his flock in the strength of the Lord,     in the majesty of the name of the Lord his God. (Micah 5:2, 4)

That shepherd laid down his life for the sheep, and now we see in that the greatest clarity of our sin and God’s commitment to rescue us from it. Christ took our judgment.