Peter and Forgiveness (Matthew 18:21-35)

This sermon was preached on 3/4/2011

One of the hardest things to do in life is forgive a person who has sinned against us. As C.S. Lewis said, ‘Everyone says that forgiveness is a lovely idea until he has something to forgive.’ Why did Peter ask this question about forgiveness? In the preceding verses, Matthew records the teaching of Jesus about what one believer should do when another believers sins against him. Peter would have realised that Jesus’ teaching was revolutionary. Apparently it was generally accepted in Jewish practice that one could forgive another person three times. Peter had been ready to double that number, and even add another forgiving experience to the total. We can see him drawing near to Jesus, pleased that he has made some progress in spiritual understanding. Yet his words betray an obvious problem regarding forgiveness: a person does not count the number of times he truly forgives. Forgiveness is an aspect of love, and as Paul says in 1 Corinthians 13, ‘Love keeps no record of wrongs.’

Two biblical examples of forgiveness come to mind. The first is that of Joseph who forgave his brothers for their treatment of him; cruelly they had sold him as a slave to passing Midianites and made up a story about his death (Gen. 37:18-36); yet when he had an opportunity for revenge, Joseph freely forgave his brothers (Gen. 45). The second example is the Lord Jesus, and we could select many incidents from the accounts in the Gospels. Perhaps the best known incident is his response to the soldiers who maltreated him at the cross – he asked his Father to forgive the men who were crucifying him (Luke 23:34). Joseph forgave his brothers for their act of cruelty in selling him into slavery; Jesus forgave the soldiers although they had cruelly crucified him.

1. Are we always to forgive?

Although these examples seem clear-cut, perhaps a little consideration may give us more food for thought. Did Jesus forgive every person who had wronged him, such as Pilate or Herod? Of course, it may not be appropriate to use the responses of Jesus in this way. After all, he was not merely a good man, not merely a perfect man; he was also the Mediator, the God-man, always functioning as the Saviour. It is true that Jesus would not have wrong attitudes towards any person, but that is not the same as forgiveness.

Yet there are other examples that we can think about. The psalmist in Psalm 69:22-28, instead of forgiving his enemies, curses them: ‘Let their own table before them become a snare; and when they are at peace, let it become a trap. Let their eyes be darkened, so that they cannot see, and make their loins tremble continually. Pour out your indignation upon them, and let your burning anger overtake them. May their camp be a desolation; let no one dwell in their tents. For they persecute him whom you have struck down, and they recount the pain of those you have wounded. Add to them punishment upon punishment; may they have no acquittal from you. Let them be blotted out of the book of the living; let them not be enrolled among the righteous.’ Whatever else we can say about his response to enemies, it is clear that the psalmist does not pray for their forgiveness. And such a psalm is one of several called imprecatory psalms in which psalmists plead for divine judgement to come on opponents.

We can respond and say that was in the Old Testament period and perhaps the psalmist did not have the same light as New Testament believers. Such a distinction is unwarranted, yet even if it is accepted for the sake of argument, what do we make of Paul’s response to the evil that Alexander the coppersmith did? He writes in 2 Timothy 4:14: ‘Alexander the coppersmith did me much evil: the Lord reward him according to his works.’ These words are not words of forgiveness. Or perhaps even more surprising is the outlook of the martyred saints in heaven, recorded in Revelation 6:10: ‘O Sovereign Lord, holy and true, how long before you will judge and avenge our blood on those who dwell on the earth?’ Whatever we make of these examples, it is clear that forgiveness is not always the pronouncement that is made.

So how can we make sense of this? The first step is to recognise that there are at least four kinds of forgiveness.

2. Different kinds of forgiveness

The first kind of forgiveness is judicial forgiveness, which is given by God when a sinner believes in Jesus for the first time. A person comes to God in the name of Christ and requests the forgiveness of all his or her sins. When that pardon is given, all the sins of that person are forgiven. This takes place at the time of justification and they are accepted permanently in God’s sight. Peter, despite his inadequate understanding at that time of the work of Christ, had experienced this aspect of forgiveness.

The second kind of forgiveness is ongoing forgiveness from God, which happens throughout the life of a believer. There is a vertical forgiveness which is received from God when the believer makes a prayer of confession of sin (1 John 1:9), and which Jesus stipulated should be a constant aspect of our prayers. If we don’t ask God for pardon when we sin, we will suffer spiritual consequences. Peter too knew his need for such forgiveness.

The third kind of forgiveness occurs when a Christian reveals a spirit of forgiveness towards unbelievers who have been cruel to him. One example of this is Stephen who asked God not to lay the sin of murder against those who were putting him to death. (Of course, his concern was for their eternal destiny and not a desire for human governments to ignore wrong actions.) Yet although he had a spirit of forgiveness, Stephen was not able to pardon them in the sense that God could. So while he was willing to forgive them, Stephen knew that it was more important for them to receive God’s forgiveness.

It is obvious that Stephen’s response differs from that of the psalmist in Psalm 69 and from that of Paul concerning Alexander the coppersmith. How can this difference be explained? Some argue that there are situations in which forgiveness is optional, and that forgiveness need not be given until the person repents. Or it could be that the opponents of the psalmist and Paul were long-term enemies of God’s kingdom and they had divine guidance to assess the final spiritual state of their opponents.

The fourth kind of forgiveness is family forgiveness, a horizontal forgiveness which is bestowed by one believer on another. This type of forgiveness is mentioned several times in the New Testament (Ephesians 4:32: And be ye kind one to another, tender-hearted, forgiving one another, even as God for Christ's sake hath forgiven you; Colossians 3:13: ‘Forbearing one another, and forgiving one another, if any man have a quarrel against any: even as Christ forgave you, so also do ye.’ It is worth noting that Paul does not used the verb ‘forgive’, which would describe a response to a particular wrong. Instead he uses the adjectival form, forgiving, which describes their ongoing attitude. Paul realised that a healthy church is a forgiving church!

Another important set of verses in this regard is Luke 17:3-4: ‘Pay attention to yourselves! If your brother sins, rebuke him, and if he repents, forgive him, and if he sins against you seven times in the day, and turns to you seven times, saying, “I repent,” you must forgive him.’ In these verses, Jesus makes it very clear that forgiveness will needed many times a day.

It is this fourth kind of forgiveness that is being described in our text about Peter and I would suggest that it is important that we keep the context in mind because it is possible to negate the teaching of this text by taking into it incidents that occur in the other situations where forgiveness is offered. The context is about the problem of a brother who sins against another believer and how the offended believer should react. Peter was well aware that it would be possible for a person to persist in causing great offence and hurt even after they have supposedly repented of their sins. This means that Peter is learning that it is not sufficient for a believer to live his life by focussing only on his relationship with God.

Take a believer who sins against another believer. The sinning believer possesses the first type of forgiveness because he was pardoned at his conversion. Perhaps he has asked God for the second type of forgiveness and expects to receive it from the Lord. Is the sinning believer’s response sufficient? No, because he has to confess his sin to the one he has offended. If I admit my sin to God but have no intention of confessing it to my brother, then I have not really confessed it to God either.

3. The Model of Forgiveness

Jesus tells Peter a parable to illustrate forgiveness. A forgiven servant refused to forgive another servant and was punished by his king as a result. He was punished for not showing mercy to his fellow-servant. It is important to recognise that the parable is not teaching that a true believer can be lost after he has been forgiven. Nevertheless it contains important lessons for us to note.

The king represents God who is marked by the two features of justice and mercy. The first servant depicts a legalist (there were many such in Israel at the time who would pray and ask God for help) with an unchanged heart (he does not possess compassion). Instead of reaching out to help those who were indebted to him, he proceeds to demand his rights from them. The second servant depicts a true believer who asks the false believer for mercy and does not receive it.

There are three lessons that stand out from this parable, and Peter would have taken them to heart. One lesson is that Christ’s disciples are to be like their heavenly Father who forgives each of them the inestimable debt of sin that they owed to him and could never pay. Just as the amount forgiven by the king could not be calculated, neither can the debt owed to God by each believer because of his sins. It is essential that a Christian remembers he is a forgiven sinner, that he received a free pardon from God. Doing so will keep him or her from pride regarding himself and from showing lack of pity to others.

The second lesson is that the evidence of a change in a disciple’s heart is that he is willing to forgive the offences that a fellow-servant has committed against him. An unchanged heart does not benefit from any grace that is shown to it. It remains selfish and determined to keep what it can get. Such a person reveals self-righteousness instead of grace. I’m sure Peter was astounded when he grasped the meaning of this indictment of those whose religion is merely outward.

The third lesson is connected to the reason why Christians can be unforgiving is that they reduce their sins against God to the level of being trivial and enlarge the small offences against them to the level of their sinning against God. A spiritually-healthy Christian will always think that his own sin is far worse than the sins of others. We can easily work out where we are in a spiritual sense by comparing how we estimate our own sins and how we grade the sins of others? A humble disciple is conscious of his defects and confesses his need of Christ, and eventually Peter would realise this more and more.

4. The Motives for Forgiveness

Two important motives have already been mentioned: (1) we have been forgiven great sins and (2) we want to be like God, and he forgives the sins of those who repent.

A third motive is that we do not wish to grieve the Holy Spirit. When another Christian confesses his sins to us, we are to read his or her action as the evidence of the Spirit’s work in their heart. Their confession is a beautiful sight, one to admire.

What about the person who has committed the same sin repeatedly and comes time after time to confess it? This was the question that Peter asked. In such a situation we may be prone to dismiss the repentance as insincere. Yet such an assessment is fraught with spiritual danger because we could be dismissing the work of the Spirit.

Often the Spirit, for reasons known to himself, does not deliver immediately or quickly a person from particular faults. A person may have a hasty temper, which grieves him and disturbs others. He sins several times a day, and each time the Spirit leads him to repentance. On the other hand, here is a believer who does not lose his temper, and instead of thanking God for keeping him he is pleased with his response and self-control. Which of these two believers is grieving the Spirit? Repentance, even repeated repentance, is to be valued because it is a sign that God is at work.

5. The Manner of Forgiveness

Jesus makes clear in Luke 17:3-4 that we must forgive a brother every time he repents of his sin. This means that we should always be ready to forgive and that we should desire the consequence of forgiveness, which is reconciliation. It is difficult to understand why a believer should opt for a state of tension instead of a state of peace. If sinned against, we have to rebuke the other, and if he repents we are to immediately forgive him and live in peace with him. If he doesn’t repent, then we have to follow the process Jesus describes in the preceding verses about telling the church (Matt. 18:15-20).

Peter learned very important lessons about brotherly forgiveness. First, he learned that Christian living is not merely a slight improvement on other religious outlooks. It was not enough that his outlook be superior to that of the Jewish religion. Instead, it had to be totally different.

Second, he learned that Christian forgiveness towards one another in the church is to be continual and generous provided the offender repents of his sin. Even when he does not repent, the other believer must do all that he can to bring him to repentance. And if the offender does not repent, the other Christian cannot have a spiteful attitude against him.

Third, he learned that Christian forgiveness is necessary in order for reconciliation to be achieved. When an offender repents, the offended person must forgive him or else he becomes guilty of preventing reconciliation.

Fourth, he learned that Christian forgiveness can be costly. I recall a powerful incident in the life of Corrie ten Boom where she tells how she later came across, in one of her meetings, one of the German guards who had been cruel to her sister and her in the concentration camp but who had found forgiveness in Christ. When she saw him she felt resentment and hatred in her heart. He asked her for forgiveness. She struggled to give it and had to pray to Jesus to enable her to forgive the ex-guard. She said that into her heart came a love for this man that overwhelmed her.

Fifth, Peter learned that Christian forgiveness is Christlike, as Paul stated in Colossians 3:13. A believer must always act as Jesus would have done against personal offences. In a sense, this is what Christian witness is all about, showing to others the beautiful character of Jesus. Jesus forgives freely and fully, and does not bring the matter up again. He did not say to Peter, ‘This is the fourteenth time you have let me down.’ Instead whenever Peter confessed his faults, Jesus forgave him and restored him.