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Forgiven and Forgiving By Richard Wilson

Let's read together from the scriptures.
And the first is found in the 18th of Ezekiel,
Ezekiel chapter 18.
We'll read the whole of that chapter.
The theme of our service today is
forgiven and forgiving.
And I want to look at the subject of forgiveness
and the manner in which we are to forgive.
And I think there's a lot of misunderstanding about
what Christians are to do in forgiving.
We are not to contain sin in our forgiveness.
Neither are we to trade with our advantage above a wrongdoer.
And we are not to ignore evil, but we are to forgive it.
And it's only really a Christian that can forgive
in the manner that Christ forgave us.
And we need to be very careful how we conduct ourselves in this area
because malice is the very opposite of forgiveness.
We can hold malice.
And I just want to look at that particular verse
before we enter these passages.
It's in the context of grieve not the Spirit of God,
the Holy Spirit of God,
which has sealed you for the day of redemption.
Let bitterness, wrath, anger, clamor, and evil speaking
be put away from you with all malice.
And be kind to one another, tenderhearted,
forgiving one another, even as God in Christ forgave you.
So that's what we're looking at today.
So the first is a passage, how can forgiveness be possible?
Well, it is because God has forgiven His people.
And then we must be very careful not to fall into the trap
of our second reading, Matthew chapter 18,
which is about the unforgiving servant.
This will be the last of this series.
And I have a feeling that I know exactly where I want to go
next Lord's Day,
but it's yet to materialize and crystallize in my mind.
I want to do a series of studies in the signs of the times,
so some areas that will help us understand
the world that we live in.
And I pray that we might be able to see through
the many voices that are claiming to understand
the world that we live in, but we will see it biblically.
Today I think that we're looking at a very sensitive subject.
It's often very hard to know how to do what is required in this.
And we need to be those that realize that
although we might falter at times and we might find ourselves
struggling at times with relationships that we have had in the past
or are having at the moment,
these words do come to us as clear instructions to us.
These are part of a list of injunctions that the Apostle is giving us
to promote the unity of the Church.
And the most important aspect of the unity of the Church
is its holiness, the practice of holiness,
which we have seen as being this doctrine of putting off the old man
and putting the new man on.
And this process of dying to sin and living unto righteousness
is a basic principle of the Christian life.
We can do that now by living in the Spirit.
And the Spirit will allow us as we walk according to faith,
we will find power given to us by God Himself directly
to be able to live in this manner.
And so he says in the context of grieving not the Spirit,
Do not let all bitterness, wrath, anger, clamor, and evil speaking
be put away from you with all malice.
And be kind to one another, tender-hearted,
forgiving one another, even as God in Christ forgave you.
That is, if you're a Christian, that is where we have received
the most precious gift of being pardoned of all our sin.
Now, the Apostle is not interested in conduct as such.
He is interested in the conduct that is an expression
and reflection of our new life in Christ.
If we just had conduct that we had to conform to,
then we have a form of legalism that would be impossible for us to keep.
It would simply be an impossible ideal that may in some degree
be helpful to us, but not entirely achievable.
And so it is conduct that we are exercising that arises
from the new life that we have in our hearts
as a result of the internal work of regeneration,
receiving eternal life from God himself.
And so these practical expositions of how we are to live
in the Spirit of God and not grieving the Spirit of God
may appear to be injunctions that must be done in and of themselves.
No.
We are to see these things in and of ourselves.
We are to look to the place where it can be resolved and done.
As a result of the new life that God has given us,
we should see a reconstruction of our lives
where these ugly words and ugly spiritual practices
are done away with.
He doesn't say somehow that we are to revise these practices,
but they are to be done away with and to be put away.
We are to die to this kind of sin.
We are to place it with the rest of the flesh into the grave
and leave them there.
Now, you might say, well, now having a new life in Christ,
these sins constantly reoccur.
And I find myself as being a reoccurring offender.
But the process of sanctification as we walk by the Spirit
is we deal with these.
We identify them as sin.
We put them away when we see these specific sins.
And strangely enough, you will find the power of God enabling
you to put away these sins.
And it might be in the early days of sanctification
for a short time.
And then they arise again.
But the work of God is reconstructing your life
so that the reoccurrence of these things
become further and further apart in their occasion in your life
to the point where they are completely done away with.
I'm not looking for sinless perfection or anything
like that.
That's not what I'm saying here.
And therefore, we need to understand them
as the inner constitutional change
in the light of the inner constitutional change
of the Christian.
And we see this technique that the apostle used.
He deals with the negative.
And then he puts the positive.
He won't bite.
He won't bleed either.
You want to get the vacuum cleaner now?
No, no, no, it's just like that.
So he deals with the negative so that we can see the light
or see these things in the light.
And then he applies the positive as the solution
to replace these things.
And we have had a new constitutional change
within our hearts where there is a new work of God.
So these horrible words or this picture of a mentality
or outlook of an inner life of those who are not Christians,
that's what we see here, that this inner spiritual condition
or the inner life, the soul condition of this aspect of living,
bitterness, wrath, anger, clamor, evil speaking, all malice,
all these things come from the old man,
our original condition before we are Christians.
These things were so predominant
and were often the things that really indicated
as diagnostic indicators that we were not really Christians
and that we could see them as being that.
We saw them but the real result of that was the inner heart condition
that we were dead in our sins and trespasses.
We couldn't help but see the occurrence of these things so often
and so profusely in our former non-Christian life.
Now, as we look at these things, he comes quite specifically.
The kind of things that do grieve the spirit are these very things.
And he says, bitterness, that is that spiritual,
the state of the spirit which denotes a sort of persistent sourness,
it is that sort of unloving condition that never sees good in others.
You know the kind of condition that you've got to set on a person
and all you can say is there is nothing good in that person at all.
Now, there's often very many good things in that person,
very many good things.
But we choose to demonize that person
because we are embittered against that person.
He has hurt us or we feel jealous or we feel offended
and we don't even like the ground that he stands on.
That kind of bitterness that has got to set against a person,
we are just sour toward that person.
Now, all of us have gone through that kind of experience in one way or another.
We've been very greatly hurt and bitterness has arisen
and we cannot see anything good in that person.
And that's how we have allowed ourselves to be overtaken by such a sin.
So, the old proverb that says,
all seems yellow in a jaundiced eye.
That's fairly true, all seems yellow in a jaundiced eye.
And Titus chapter 3 and verse 3 says a similar thing
that often should be quoted in relationship to this.
Titus 3 and verse 3, it says,
For we ourselves, who are also once foolish, disobedient,
deserving, deceived, serving various lusts and pleasures,
live in malice and envy, hateful and hating one another.
Now, that's another verse that sort of indicates
the kind of condition we can get into.
And who's the winner at this point?
It's not any of the parties involved
and certainly the glory of God is not promoted by such a spiritual state.
We are those that very easily find ourselves nursing our grievances.
And as we nurse our grievances, we dwell on them
and all we do is to become self-consumed by that bitterness.
And I think we've just got to say, no more.
I've got to move on from this.
I've got to let it in the past and just move on
and whenever any thoughts come concerning that person
or that situation that we've found ourselves in,
it's not just people that we can get involved in,
often it's experiences that produce this kind of bitterness.
We've just got to move on.
And we've just got to let it stay in the back and leave it with God.
Also he goes on and he says, this inner life of the former,
our former life or the life of the old man that is now in the grave,
is this kind of wrath and anger.
Now wrath leads to violent excitement and agitation.
In other words, it is of the mind and a kind of boiling over.
Anger is something I would like to describe slightly differently.
It's a condition of more settled regular state
of the condition of the mind.
The kind of thing that rises just above and just goes boom, like this.
You hardly see it coming up and then boom, this is like me.
So he uses these two words, doesn't he?
He uses these two words in this text, wrath and anger together.
Now I see those two things, this more shallow wrath that is there
that just is a very active thing that just flies off the handle.
But the anger that is deep-seated into the soul
tends to be also there as well.
So I might regard this kind of white heat of the heart as being the wrath
and that settled condition of the mind and spirit as being our anger.
Now we've got to put away that as well.
Now very often we find ourselves, how do I put away anger?
How do I walk away from it?
And it's often extremely difficult, this kind of condition that we have
and because we are possessed by our feelings
rather than be possessed by our mind.
Our mind has to realize this is what it is
and if I nurture this in my life I will find I will be consumed by this sin.
That's what sin does.
It consumes us and in the end we've simply got to walk away from it
and say no more and discipline ourselves not to get into that condition.
And we can do that by the Spirit of God.
By saying I will walk away, I need to have quiet time now,
I need to come away a little while and collect myself before I come back to it.
That's why my advice is when you've got to discipline a child with a rod,
never do it in the heat of the moment.
Send the child to his bedroom first, quieten down,
then go into the bedroom and give it a whack.
Not out of anger but not out of a sense of a calm spirit
because what you are doing there is something for the good of the child
and correcting that child and make him realize the sin
that has caused this event to take place.
Correction is needed there.
But any anger and swearing and pulling people's spirits down
and tearing people's hearts out of them through bad words
is only going to destroy the very spirit that your child has.
But a good clean spank on the backside
corrects them because it molds the will of the child
and tells it to do what it must do.
Whereas the spirit of the child is very sensitive
and got to be very carefully handled.
Now you will never achieve that out of an angry spirit.
You will have to come down and see the quietness of the situation
settle before you do this.
Now then he goes on and he says this kind of clamor,
that's got to be put away.
What is clamor?
It's a kind of brawling.
A kind that includes shouting and violent speech.
It's a kind of wrestling and fighting for the sake of fighting.
That kind of spirit that is always looking for that Irish type of spirit,
that always looks for a fight.
Another kind of spirit.
Now that kind of brawling and clamor
will never achieve the purposes of God.
That fighting spirit, that argumentative spirit,
that is, there is a general loss of control.
But worse still, we lead to that kind of evil speaking.
That kind of evil speaking,
that means that cool, deliberate saying of things that harm others.
You know, the kind of malicious, soul destroying kind of language
that may not be swearing but just tears the heart out of people
and dispirits them.
And that kind of evil speaking is a kind of blasphemy
because you are so destroying the very spirit of the image of God in a man
that you are defacing that person with such kind of character assassination.
Now if we speak evil against God, that is blasphemy.
This kind of speaking evil against our brothers and sisters
is a kind of blasphemy against them.
And we've got to be very careful of it.
What you speak can be the most harmful thing that we can engage upon it.
We've got to just really take care of that.
And it includes the enjoyment that links with slander.
Very often we get in these talk-fests about people.
The pastor can be destroyed over the dinner table very easily.
Our friends can be destroyed in their image of us
through our opinions of people.
Such slander is evil speaking.
And then he goes on and he just adds, as it were,
we are to put these things away.
We are not to try and modify them.
We are not to try and reform them.
We are simply to walk away from them, put them away,
put them into the grave, deal with them,
let these things lie behind us.
And one thing we do now is to move forward.
We move on from where these things were.
We leave them and we repent of them and turn about.
But he goes on, he says, and he makes this statement,
with all malice.
Now, malice is that wicked desire which, with respect to others,
is determined, the termination of harm for them.
And as we look at this, it's probably the exact opposite
to what I might call the unforgiving spirit.
Malice is the kind of determination to do harm
to those who have become our enemies
for the sake of doing harm.
That's what we call it.
They've done things to us.
We are going to get our own back.
Come what may, we're going to get our own back.
And we need to be very careful of that kind of spirit
because it'll come back and bite us hard.
And we will be the losers in the end,
even though we might not be the wrongdoers.
We will be so eaten up by it,
we'll become those that are grieving the spirit.
And to grieve the spirit, we cannot have the blessing of God
in the fullest measure we should have.
So this should be, this can be among Christians.
And if we are doing any of these things among Christians,
we are grieving the Holy Spirit of God.
And the reason often why we're not getting the blessings
that we should be from our Christian lives
is that some of these spiritual characteristics
are too easily evident within our lives.
The Spirit of God who is holy cannot coexist
with this kind of spiritual condition
that you are imposing upon yourself
because you are choosing to do so.
Let us be careful at such an attitude.
And yet we find that God gives us a way
in which this can be dealt with.
As old Thomas Chalmers, the old man of God of Scotland said,
the expulsive power of a new affection,
it's an old-fashioned term he used to use,
this expulsive power of a new affection.
He says now, he used to use the old illustration
that the old trees would only get rid of their winter leaves
by the new sprouts coming under those leaves
and the leaves would drop off
because the new sprout was coming up
to push the old leaf away.
You see, it is the power of our new life
that we have in Christ that gives us the strength
to be able to put off these old things
and put on the spiritual attitudes
that are going to be in harmony with the Spirit of God.
So when you see the old leaves getting old
on the trees outside, the deciduous trees
I'm thinking of mostly,
that you don't send your children out
to go and pluck all those leaves off.
That will never happen.
But as the new power and the new life of God
becomes more and more evident within your life,
that expulsive power of new life
will lead to new affections in Christ Jesus.
So the way of getting rid of the defective,
the defects of cultivated,
and cultivate new virtue
is to cultivate our relationship with Christ himself,
to draw from the means of grace,
to drink deeply into the word of God,
to act obediently to that word,
our move by faith,
and to see the vision of God accomplished within us,
then all these other things,
when you see the better thing,
the old things simply will fall off
in place of the new.
And so we are to be kind
to one another.
That is, to possess a cultivation
of that quiet and deliberate spirit of personality
that has an attitude towards life
and the life of others
that is always going to move toward their best
rather than looking for the worst,
they're looking for the best in that person.
And as you do that,
kindness will expel a bitterness.
It will expel the kind of wrath and evil speaking
because you are thinking in terms of the wellbeing
rather than on the hurt
that you may have, that has incurred.
And so to be useful and to be helpful to others
is to cultivate a spirit of benevolence to others,
an attitude that will look for the best interests.
We're not going to dismiss the failings of others.
We're not going to,
it's not even a call to be unrealistic with others
because there are things
that we will be able to trust people with
and we're not making judgements in those people's lives.
We're just simply saying
that's where they're not there at the moment
and therefore we're not going to go along that path at all
with them at the moment.
But where we can go along in their path,
we're going to look to the best interests of that person.
Now that needs to be something
that needs to be cultivated in our lives.
The new life of tenderness
that is replacing that kind of hard-hearted,
callous condition of the malice,
and evil speaking,
wrath and anger and clamor, that kind of thing.
Tender-heartedness, you might say,
well, that's a soft way of handling these problems.
That's a way that we're only going to be exploited
if we use this kind of spiritual things
we'll say to ourselves.
But look what it does.
It restores your spirit
and you don't know what's going to happen
as your attitude changes to people
that might have tremendous angst with you
for one reason or another.
But if you are tender-hearted,
in other words, you are not looking after your own interests
but you are looking after the interests of others
and we expel that hard-hearted set spirit against people
and a callous condition of past feelings
so that you are beginning to resolve those issues.
That tender sprig of new life of tenderness
will do more good than a whole world full of callousness,
evil speaking, malice, and all those other things
you speak there of.
They are like the dead leaf
rather than a new sprout on the tree.
And so forgiving one another
is something that we need to look at carefully.
Forgiving one another as God
in Christ has forgiven you.
Now this is not saying that we are to refuse to see
any wrong in people at all.
That's not what we are talking about here.
There are those, that's kind of Christianity that says
we are to just sort of forget
and not see the situation as it really is.
That is make-believe living.
We are not to be like that at all.
When wrong is done to you and others
you exercise forgiveness.
Now, if I just come aside a little bit
and just see what this is all about.
Very often we find that we confuse the word forgiveness
with being reconciled with a situation.
Very often we can't be reconciled.
In a situation because the situation continues.
The other thing too to remember about forgiveness
is that forgiveness is given
when it's requested.
We are not forgiven of our sins until we come to Christ
and say God have mercy upon us.
And surrender your life to God.
And so there's a sense in which forgiveness is not free
until there is a ready spirit to come
and see the evil for what it is.
Now what if the situation can never be reconciled?
Of course if you can find somebody that comes to you
and say look would you please forgive me for this?
It's very easy to be reconciled then
if you're not still holding a grudge against the person.
Some of the biggest challenges to a church
is when somebody's been disciplined for some grievous sin,
some heinous sin within the congregation.
And they've had to be put out of the church
on the basis of this grievous sin.
And then it's been repented of, the life has been restored
and that person comes back into the church
and he's made to look like a pork chop in a Jewish synagogue.
And it's just absolutely, he's made to feel very uncomfortable
and completely unforgiven.
And somehow it's held over his head as a bludgeon
to destroy any sense of recovery
and reconciliation within the church.
That's often the greatest challenge to the church.
The greatest challenge these days often
is to exercise such discipline,
not to accept evil within the church.
But even the greater challenge to the church
is when it has been resolved
and there is good foundation for forgiveness,
then are we ready to forgive
or still hold that over the head of others?
Now if we are prone to doing that,
we need to be very, very careful
because that will grieve the spirit within that church,
within your family, within your relationships.
And yet you say, well, are we to condone sin?
Very often people are saying,
you must forgive this person
even though he continues in this sin
and he has no intention in his heart
to repent of the sin at all.
And it's just destroying everything that's going on
in your life and the life that is around him and so on.
Now this is not a call to condone evil.
We must see evil realistically
and therefore we must be very careful
in saying I forgive you when there has been no attempt,
no recognition even of the person
moving away from such evil or reviling from it.
That is doing more harm in that person's life
when you allow them to think
that are you soft Christians
will allow me to shoot this person, that person.
You'll allow me to speak the way that I wish to speak
because you're a forgiving person.
That's what Christianity is all about.
They've completely misunderstood forgiveness.
We can exercise mercy even in the sight of such evil
but we can't forgive somebody
to the point where we are containing sin.
Now what's the solution to that?
I believe the solution is in the words,
even as God in Christ forgave you.
When were you forgiven?
When were you pardoned of your sin?
When you first became converted.
Were you pardoned of your sin before then?
Not in your sweet Nelly.
You were never pardoned of your sin then.
You were destined to hell.
You were under the judgment of God
and you were in the state of total reprobation
in that condition.
God did not forgive sins
before there was a change of attitude toward evil.
Now what if that person still shan't deal with the evil?
Some of us have got that sort of situation.
The thing we can do is to develop the kind of spirit
that enters into that person's life.
He says, if I didn't have the Holy Spirit of God,
if I didn't have the salvation of God,
there would I be also.
In that I would understand.
And in understanding we can exercise a kind of love
in Christ that does not condone evil,
but is able to hand it over to God
and not bear that burden ourselves.
We can be reconciled before God ourselves,
even though the evil doer is not reconciled with God
in any way, shape or form.
Because if we hold that kind of unforgiving spirit,
the thing that will be in place of it
will in the end be malice.
And therefore we've got to let go
that hurt that resulted from the evil
that has been perpetrated against you so unwrongly
that we've got to let go of that
and hand it to our Savior and say,
Lord, I cannot bear this kind of load.
And He receives it.
And the justice of that whole situation
is in the hands of God, not in your hands.
Vengeance is mine, says the Lord.
It is not ours.
And we are not to take justice in our own hands
and vengeance in our own hands.
If we do that, we will act in a calamitous,
malicious manner.
We've got to hand over that to God,
and we've got to come apart from that situation
and separate us from such evil.
And that is the solution, I believe, to the issue.
Certainly when that person comes to you and says,
I know I'm weak in the faith.
I know that there is things about my life
that absolutely are absolutely wrong,
but I want to begin to clean it up.
Then we might go through the process of that person
coming to us 70 times seven,
dealing with certain problems in his or hers life.
That must be forgiven every time he comes back
and asks forgiveness.
We may not entrust ourselves to that person immediately,
but as a pattern of true repentance builds up,
then that trust can be restored
and reconciliation can be established.
It may not be the same as it was before,
but it can be established in effective means.
So my friends, as we look at this,
look at these things that are going to grieve
the spirit, the kind of things that grieve the spirit
of God in our lives.
And if we grieve the spirit of God
with the very source of all blessing,
we are a great loser in that.
All bitterness and wrath and anger,
glamor and evil speaking, we are to put away with.
We do that by the new life that we have in Christ.
We are not allowed malice, malicious spirit to rise,
but we are to be kind to one another,
tender hearted, forgiving one another
as God in Christ forgave you.
One of the clearest signs of a person walking
in the spirit of God is he is able to forgive
because he has been forgiven.
Remember the unrighteous steward
who had been forgiven so much
and yet when he had his brother beside him
who had owed him so little by comparison,
treated him in an unforgiving manner,
he was then the loser.
The person who had been forgiven so much became the loser.
And he didn't add to his win that he had received
from his master, but his master had to commit him
in the same manner as he committed the lesser debt.
And the extraordinary thing in that passage,
I'll just look it up, that it says
that the very forgiveness that he received
was taken from him.
And his master was angry and delivered him to the torturers
until he should pay all that is due to him.
Now he's put in a position where it was impossible
for him now to ever pay back such a debt.
So my heavenly father also will do to you
if you are from his heart does not forgive
his brother his trespasses.
Okay, so we're not, we could have a forgiving spirit
and leave it with the Lord and we may not ever
be reconciled, but we can, when we are reconciled,
if we have a forgiving spirit, a tender-hearted spirit
that is ready to forgive at the end of the day,
that is ready to forgive at the first opportunity
we can in reconciliation, then reconciliation is possible.
So I'll leave that with you.
Forgiven, as we have been forgiven, we can be forgiving
because we know how to do it, we've experienced it.