Freeing Forgiveness

Tom Shrader concludes a four-week series on relationships by examining forgiveness from Ephesians 4:32. He emphasizes that Christians forgive others because of how much God has forgiven them, not because it's merely the noble thing to do. The teaching provides practical steps for confronting sin and working toward forgiveness in damaged relationships.

“God's forgiven you this giant debt, and when I begin to deal with other people, that's what drives me towards trying to experience what God wants me to experience.”

— Tom Shrader

Series: Person to Person

Recorded: February 16, 2017

Duration: 38 min

Themes: forgiveness, relationships, guilt, grace, redemption, restoration, confrontation, healing, struggling with guilt, damaged relationships, need to forgive, confronting sin, relationship conflict, feeling condemned, broken trust, seeking reconciliation

Scripture: Ephesians 4:32, Ephesians 1:3-14, Ephesians 2:1-10, Ephesians 4:1, Ephesians 4:29-31, Isaiah 6, Matthew 5, Matthew 18, John 7:24, 1 Thessalonians 5:14, Psalm 78, Isaiah 63

Theological Themes: forgiveness theology, biblical forgiveness, ephesians exposition, pauline epistles, guilt and grace, christian ethics, relational theology, sanctification

Full Transcript

If you have Bibles, open them to the book of Ephesians. This is week four, and therefore the last week of a four-week series that we've called Person to Person. It's about improving relationships, and it flows at a strategic time in the study of the book of Ephesians.

Paul's Masterwork in Ephesians

If you took Paul's writing and talked to ten experts, asking them to give you Paul's opus, Paul's book, the definitive work, they would probably say the book of Romans. The book of Ephesians is kind of a cliff note of the book of Romans. The book of Ephesians is intense in its doctrine and provides a really important pattern for us. It talks about life-changing stuff: who God is, who I am, and how I respond to that.

This is very similar to the pattern we see in Isaiah 6, where Isaiah gets a view of God and sees God for who He really is. High lifted up, you know the scene—smoke, a train of His robe. When Isaiah understands who God is, immediately his response is, "Woe to me for I'm undone." That's what happens when all of a sudden I see God, not as I wish He was, or I want Him to be, or I've created Him to be, but I see God as He really is. All of a sudden, immediately I'm placed in my position. You have to respond to that.

Four Responses to Guilt

When somebody comes face to face with the fact that they're guilty, there are four ways to respond. One can be despair. That's kind of Judas. Judas comes face to face with his guilt, and if you think it through, what Judas did and what Peter did were not radically different. But Judas' response is he's overwhelmed. His guilt is so real to him, it's ever-present, he's in this place of utter despair and hopelessness, and that's it.

The second thing that you can do as you approach guilt is to begin to rationalize it away. Yeah, I'm guilty, but not that bad. I was one night in Muscatine, Iowa, in a bar, and I'd been there most of the day, talking to a guy. I'm having one of these very reflective moments, and I said, "My life has no value." He said, "Tom, that's not true." I said, "Yeah, it is. I have no value."

He said something that caught my attention and obviously stuck with me: "You have great value. You can always be used as a bad example." I said, "Really?" He said, "Yeah. I tell my wife all the time when my wife gets on me, I say to her, 'I'm not as bad as Tom. I don't do as bad as Tom.'" You can start that game with it, but then it only takes you so far.

The third response is you start moral realignment or religion. I'm going to clean my own act up. I'm going to get my act together. Sandy and I were having dinner last night. Her regiment is she works out every afternoon at four, then she comes home. I got a salad with some turkey on it. I said, "How was the gym?" She said, "You know, it was okay." I said, "Is it starting to thin out?" Because in her gym, like the beginning of the third week of January, they start a six-week challenge. That first day, it's pretty jammed in there. She said, "You know, there's not many people left from the challenge. And to be honest with you, they're kind of in the way. I wish they went faster."

That's the moral realignment. You sense there's a problem, and you sense you're going to do something about it. It could be why some of you are here today. You came to this point in your life where you go, "Things are screwed up. I need to do something." Maybe the person you're with or somebody else told you, "There's this thing on Thursday morning. You ought to try that." You're going, "How bad can it be? I can do anything for 45 minutes. I'll endure it, I'll sit through it." So it's religion. The idea is, I'll do enough of it, and I'll be okay.

The Only True Solution

What the Bible tells us is the only real, true solution to your guilt problem is Jesus. That's what Paul's giving us here in the book of Ephesians. He drops some pretty heavy thoughts on you pretty fast.

Look at the words in chapter 1, verse 4: He chose us. Chapter 1, verse 5: He predestined us. Chapter 1, verse 7: He redeemed us. Verse 11: He predestined us. Verse 13: He sealed us. Those are some heavy theological truths about God, about us as Christians, about how we got into this relationship with Him.

There's a phrase, it's Paul's favorite phrase, and I'm sure I've circled it some: in verse 3, "in Christ." Verse 4, "in Him." Verse 10, "in Him." Verse 11, "in Christ." Verse 13, "in Him." In verse 13 again, "in Him." He's saying this: that as a follower of Christ, I'm in this right relationship with God. I'm in Him. I'm covered with Him.

Our Condition Before God

He begins in chapter 2 to lay out our condition, and you know it, you've heard it. We were dead. We were sons of disobedience. Verse 3, by nature children of wrath. In verse 4 of chapter 2, those first two words—you've got a little box drawn around them or they're yellowed or highlighted—"But God." But God moved. He's unpacking what He talked about. God chose us. God predestined us. God determined us. God redeemed us. God saved us.

So chapter 2, verses 8, 9, 10—you ought to own those. If you're going out to get a tattoo today, that'd be a good tattoo: "For by grace you've been saved through faith, that not of yourself, but it's a gift of God. It's not a result of works." So that whole moral realignment thing does not lead me to salvation. It's God's grace, His unmerited favor. The fact before the foundations of the earth, He determined that He was going to save you or deliver you. So now I'm a follower of Christ.

I'm in Him. That's not the end of the story. That's the beginning of the story. Look at chapter 4, verse 1: "therefore" — and that therefore is there because all of chapters 1, 2, and 3 are true — "therefore I, a prisoner of the Lord, implore you to walk in a manner worthy of the calling with which you've been called."

Here's what he says, and it's important for us to understand it. It feels to me like we don't talk about this as much as we used to. It's this reality: if you're a Christian, you ought to look like it. I ought to see it. That's what Jesus says in Matthew 5: "You let your light shine in such a way that people see your good works and glorify your Father who is in heaven." I ought to see it.

There Should Be a Visible Difference

I'd argue there's just a physical difference. This illustration will date me. I'm one day watching the Phil Donahue show, and he's got on a lady who had a troubled life. I don't know what all her problems were — she had a couple of kids, she gave the kids up — and now she had her life together. So they're going to reunite her with these two kids, but it's not Jerry Springer. They're not going to throw chairs at each other; it's going to be this reunion.

He said, "Are you ready for this?" She said, "I'm ready," and out come these two young men. I'm watching this with Susan, and they walk out, and they hug, and they sit down — hadn't said anything yet. I said to Susan, "The guy in the blue sweater's a Christian."

So they talked to the first guy, and he said, "You know, I'm pretty angry," and all this stuff. They get to the blue sweater guy, and he said, "You know what, here's what I know: my mom had a really tough life, and I've had a tough life, and we've all had a tough life, because we all sinned, but Jesus saved me." Now, you could see it. I know it sounds really weird, but you could see it in the way he walked out there.

I ought to be able to see you. This week in Redemption Churches, we're in Acts chapter 4, and they're talking about Peter and John. They're on trial before the Jewish leaders, and they said they recognized them as uneducated, but they saw that they had been with Jesus. Well, if you can't preach that, you're in the wrong business, because you just apply that. All you got to do is ask the people at the office, the people at the golf course, the people at the gym, the people in your family: Do they see that you've been with Jesus? There's to be something distinct and different about it.

The Right Order: Love First, Response Second

Now, make sure you get the order. I'm not acting differently to gain God's approval. I already have God's approval. God already loves me.

Valentine's Day — so Valentine's Day, everybody does something different. I have a friend; he and his wife go to Walgreens, and he picks out a card, and she picks out a card, and they exchange cards, and they say, "If I was going to buy a card, this is the card I'd buy for you," and they read it, and they put it back. Everybody thinks that's great. Guys, before you think that's cool and clever, you need to make sure that the lady that you're married to is okay with that. Not every lady's okay with that, and even if she is okay with it, that's going to make that card even bigger.

Here's what I do on Valentine's Day. I go and I get cards, and I do this stupid thing. One year, I don't know how many years ago, I bought a card, and I just — I mean, it was red — so I bought it, and signed it, and "I love you," and drew a heart, an arrow. So I gave it — I don't even remember if it was Sandy or Sue, one of them. I gave the card, and that sounds so bad, but it wasn't. I gave the card, and I think it was Sandy, and she said, "This is interesting," and I thought, "I should have read that." It said something like, "I know we've had our hard times. I know..." I mean, something weird.

So I go now, and I found this year four cards that were unbelievable. The guy in Kansas City had captured my heartbeat perfectly. So I get these cards, and I write them, sign them, draw little arrows and hearts, and underline the "you" part and "forever" and all that. Then we go to bed, and then I know sometime in the night, I'm going to get up and go to the bathroom. So I get up and go to the bathroom, and I get the cards, and I go and I put one on her computer. Then there's a coffee drawer — she gets up before me and has coffee, so she's going to pull this out — so I put a card in there. I go out in the garage, I put a card there, put one by her toothbrush. There's just all this "I love you" stuff.

God Doesn't Stutter When He Says "I Love You"

Well, I don't remember — we've talked about it — I don't know how we decided to get married. We just, it just morphed. We kept talking about it, and I don't think I ever said, "Well, will you marry me?" Or I don't think she — I'm pretty sure she didn't say, "Will you marry me?" Somehow we decided. But somewhere in there was that awkward, "you want to say I love you, but you're not really sure." Those of you that haven't been through this, you can't even relate to it.

The second time is so much different than the first time. The first time is, "Oh," and "I tingle," and "if we have kids, you think they'll have a nose like you, and where will they go to school?" The second time, you're going, "Do you have good insurance? I'm going to run a credit report." It's a little more clinical. But there's always that "who's going to say I love you first?"

God doesn't stutter. He goes, "I love you. Now, you figure out how you're gonna respond — if you're going to say I love you back or not." He says "I love you," and you come in repentance and faith. The whole point — chapter 4, verse 29, long introduction — is that affects the way we live, and it affects our relationships.

Four Key Areas of Transformation

So we talked about four things. We talked about mastering your mouth, that our speech is to be wholesome, constructive.

I've really underlined Ephesians 4:29. I think it's something I can do in chapels and different settings because the speech is so universal, and the idea of building somebody up according to their needs - that's lost in our day and age. Since we don't have dialogue, I want to build you up according to what I think you need, not what you really need. I don't know what you need unless you tell me.

Verse 30 was about authority, and we quoted from Psalm 78 and Isaiah 63, where He says, "Don't grieve the Holy Spirit of God." How do we grieve the Holy Spirit of God? We grieve the Spirit of God when we rebel against God's direct - this was the big point that day - God's direct or delegated authority. So if I, as a husband, do not love Sandy, it's not that I'm offending Sandy - I'm in rebellion against God. If I rebel against God's delegated authority of government, I'm rebelling against God. Now I know there are all sorts of nuances and other discussions, but that's the general principle.

Verse 31, we looked at last week. "Let all," and then there's a list of things, and there's a progression. Bitterness - it's inward. We use words like brooding, smoldering. Something happens, a little root of bitterness begins to grow, and then it becomes wrath and anger and clamor and slander. It explodes around you, and we talked about taming your temper.

The Challenge of Forgiveness

Well today, we talk about forgiveness. Today kind of pulls together, in a way, this whole series. If you live for any length of time, and I can look around the room and see you have, if you live for any length of time, you have people that have done you dirty.

So you read Ephesians chapter 4 verse 32: "Be kind and compassionate to one another," and you hear, "Okay, be nice, hold the door, say thank you." Here's where it gets tough: "forgiving each other." Now the minute you hear that, my guess is somebody, or a picture of them, pops into your mind. It's a boss, it's a kid. I wrote at the top: ex-anything - ex-spouse, ex-partner, ex-friend, some coach.

I was talking to somebody, and he was saying his wife had lost her friend in December, and I said, "Oh wow, I just thought it was a good thing. I didn't know that - that's tragic. She wasn't very old." He said, "No, she didn't die. She lost her as a friend." And I said, "What happened?" I said, "No, I don't want to know. I shouldn't know. I don't need to know to talk about it as gossip." But I'm pretty sure by the way he said it, that there are hard feelings there.

Taking Initiative: The First Step

Well, what do you do when you get into this whole area of forgiveness? So I'm going to give you some concrete steps. In Matthew 18, Jesus - so that alone gets your attention - Jesus says, "If a brother sins against you, go and show him his fault just between the two of you." If somebody sins against you, you don't sit and wait for them to take the initiative. You go to them.

Now, that rarely happens. That requires courage and trust. It's easier to be offended and hold it against you. I don't know how many times in the last 30 years somebody's come to me and said, "You really hurt me. I think you sinned against me." And I want to say - I wrote down almost every - I don't even know what that means. Almost every case, I had no idea what I did.

And the discussion, as far as you can emotionally handle it, is over pretty quickly. Because they'll say, "Well, you did this." And I'll go, "I am really sorry. I didn't understand that. I didn't know that. That wasn't my intention." Or "I really did mean it. I'm glad I hurt you. That's what I planned on. I'm sorry." I mean, whatever the discussion is, you take the initiative.

Making Right Judgments

So see how it ties into last week - you've got to figure out, what's the cause of this? Stop judging, John 7:24. "Stop judging by mere appearances. Make the right judgment." It's very dangerous to start reading motive into something. "What was your motive in that? What was His heart intent?" I don't know. All I can deal with at that point is the action. I don't know if you meant it to hurt me or not.

When you take the initiative and you talk to a person, here's what you've got to do. You've got to figure out, in terms of resolution, the right course. 1 Thessalonians 5:14: "We urge you, brethren, warn those who are idle, encourage the timid, help the weak, be patient with everyone."

Understanding Different Personalities

In this whole idea of dealing with forgiveness, we need to understand that people are radically different. I have two daughters. Sarah, who's very much like me. Haley, who's very much like her mother. When I'm dealing with sin in Sarah's life or discipline, you have to be firm with her. You go, "Sarah, get in here. Sarah? Sarah, get in here. Sarah?" And she'd say, "Hey, hey, hey, don't have a cow. Don't have a cow." "A cow? Come here a minute. I'll show you a cow."

Where Haley, you go, "Haley, you need to," and she'd be right next to you. So when you're dealing with somebody in sin and emotion, you can crush her. If I treat Sarah the way I treat Haley, she'll just run right over me. If I treat Haley the way I treat Sarah, I'll crush her spirit.

Sarah was about four, and we were at Grace Community Church in Tempe, and I'm teaching a Sunday school class on parenting. We're all done, and we're out in the main street of the church. Those of you that know the campus, right in front of the Davidson Center, the old chapel. And we had come in separate cars, just because I was teaching. So I said, "Haley, you go with your mom. Sarah, you come with me." So Haley just grabbed Susan's hand, and Sarah said, "No."

I said, "Haley, you go with your mom. Sarah, you come with me." "No." All right, we got a problem here. We've got to figure out what we're going to do. And I'm of the conviction that the kid picks the place and time, and you've got to deal with it. She picked a bad place - right there. So I said, "All right, Sarah, this is it. You come with me." "No." So I don't want to debate this with you. I spanked

her. Not very hard, I spanked her. But she's crying. I said, come with me. Now her jaw's set. No. Well, now a crowd is gathering. Cause everyone's gonna go, didn't he just talk about parenting? Let's see how this shakes out. So I said, listen, buddy, come with me. No. Oh, I spank, and now it's the snot, cry, gross. And I said, you come with me. Give me your hand. And she finally begrudgingly grabbed my hand, and off we went.

When you're dealing with this sin in people, and how you're going to confront it, you need to be extraordinarily sensitive to what was the action. You need to take the initiative. You need to go to them. You need to, and I choose this word, and there's probably a better word, and so you can fill it in in your notes. You need to confront them. That sounds so harsh, but you need to let them see and feel your pain. This is what you did. And some of this is black and white. Some of it is experiential. I don't know, but you need to go to them, and you need to understand that the solution to it is going to vary from person to person to person, and how you approach them, and how you talk with them.

The Way to Forgiveness: Understanding the Cause

I wrote a section on the way to forgiveness, and it was what's the cause, what's the course? So it's similar to last week, is you may have just an honest, I didn't get it, unaware of the expectation. It wasn't really sin at all. It's just you had an expectation of somebody's behavior.

I remember one time I said, and I'm not equating this to sin, I said, I want to make sure we had some custodial help, and I said, I want to make sure this room is clean. So when I came back, we had taken all the junk and stacked it in the corner. Well, that isn't clean. That's all the junk in a corner. That was my fault. I said, clean, I didn't define it. So you may not have sin, you may just have miscommunication.

You may have somebody who literally doesn't know God's standard. This story I'm going to tell you is true, which I shouldn't have to say that, I assume you know it, but I say it because it's almost unbelievable to me. I was teaching down in Tucson, and I had this guy that came up, he was new to the study, and I knew his name, I didn't know him, and he came up, and he's all decked out, he's got on the golf slacks and his shirt, and his hair's right, and he's got enough jewelry that it makes a statement, but it's not offensive, and he's got it all figured out. He said, can we have breakfast next week? And I said, sure.

So we meet him, he comes up in his red Corvette, takes two parking places, comes in, sits down, and I said, how's it going? He said, you know, that's why I'm here. I'm kind of, what you're talking about makes sense to me, but I don't really get it. My life is, I don't know, it's pretty good. And I said, well, tell me about it. And he talks about business and what's going on. And I said, are you married? He said, no, I have a girlfriend. And he said, she's really great. I mean, she's a, you know, she's wonderful. She's very pretty, and very smart, and has a good job, and she keeps a clean house, she's a good cook. I said, oh, wow. I mean, you guys spent a lot, and he said, wow, we're living together, yeah.

I said, it's got to be really hard, I would think, if she's, because I'm going to guess she's a female version of you, so she's really cool. Must be really hard to live with her and not sleep with her, isn't it? And he said, well, no, I mean, we're sleeping together. Is that wrong? And I said, are you kidding me here? And he said, no. Is that wrong? He said, I've never heard that before. First girl I ever slept with, my dad set the whole deal up. I've never heard this before.

Now, to this day, I find that an intriguing defense, but I'm suspicious. But there are people, take it out of that realm, who go, I didn't know God had this standard for business or finance. So at that point, it's a matter of education.

When Sin is Clear Rebellion

The third thing that you have is you have somebody that's just flat in rebellion. And in that case, you need to confront the sin. It's another illustration. It's another sex one. It seems like the sex ones, I mean, because people go, how come you use so many of the sex ones? Well, because it's hard to prove pride. This is a little easier.

So I got a guy and he said, I want, will you have coffee with or lunch or whatever we were having with my girlfriend and me? And I said, sure. He said, I want you to meet her and she's new to this. So we meet and she just was screaming. I don't want to be with you. So we sit down and we're talking and I said, are you doing all right? She said, I don't want to be here. I don't want to be in this conversation. I said, okay, but you're here. She goes, well, I really like him and this is important to him.

She said, can I ask you something? And I said, yeah. And she said, he's got me coming to these Bible studies and reading the Bible. And I said, well, that seems like a good thing. And she said, well, it seems to say in the Bible that we shouldn't sleep together until we're married. And I said, yeah, I think that's in there. And she said with him, now, now he's really regretting setting up a marriage and setting up this conference. She said, we're sleeping together three or four times a week.

Well, I said, the only way to stop that is to marry him. But no, I'm just teasing. That was good. But I looked at him and he said, I feel terrible about this. And I said, I do too. The response to this is that God forgives that. I moved grace to that and grace shouldn't be interpreted as God doesn't care, but God's forgiven that.

The Challenge of Forgiving the Absent

When I'm dealing with forgiveness, when somebody that's sinned against you, there's always that, I don't know if I can. You have a lot of people that you meet with. They go, I'm so mad at my dad. I'm so mad at my mom. I'm so mad at my ex boss. And I'll go, have you told him? Well, he's dead. Okay. Well, then you're not going to be able to close this loop. Well, I don't know how to forgive him. Look at the verse. You forgive him

just as in Christ, God forgave you. That's the whole key. I really do think that in this series, mastering your mouth, I'm not that good. Accepting authority, I'm good if I'm the one in authority. Taming your temper, I'm good at it. Freeing forgiveness, I'm really good at this because I get that last part.

I don't have to think very hard to get a picture of what a human being is and what a miserable wretch I am. What a sinner I am. And go back to the illustration from 20 minutes ago. God said, "I love you first. I love you when." These are big concepts for us.

The Security of God's Love

I'm not on probation in this relationship with God. God's not loving me and I'm not His kid, but if I mess up, boom, it's conditional. My relationship with Him is not transactional. It's not "if I do this, He loves me." It's "He loves me and now live like it."

When you start to grasp that, that's the whole parable of the man who forgave the other man's huge debt and then he had a slave that had a small debt against him and he couldn't forgive it. God's forgiven you this giant debt. There used to be a plaque in the back of our chapel at church that said, "When I consider that I deserve hell, anything else is a pretty good day."

When I consider that I deserve hell, punishment, that God wasn't required to forgive me, but He did, that when I begin to deal with other people, that's what drives me towards trying to experience what God wants me to experience. That's what drives me towards trying to experience and forgive them.

Forgiveness in Practice

It's going to play itself out differently. That doesn't mean all of a sudden you've had a strained relationship with a parent and now you're going to have them over every day like it's Christmas. It doesn't mean everything's going to be okay. There's going to be healthy parameters around behavior, but I'm going to deal with forgiveness. I'm not walking around holding a grudge. The whole motive is you treat them like God treated you.

That's why doctrine is so important. He's not saying go and forgive because that's the noble thing to do. He's saying no, you forgive because of Ephesians 1, 2, and 3 and all those truths and now it affects the way you deal with everyone else.

So you're going to have little dinky things to great big huge things that you need to deal with. You become the ultimate forgiver because you understand how much God has forgiven you and you bring that into every one of these relationships.

Practical Application

Now the beauty of this series I think has been in all four of these lessons, these are things that you can put into work by noon today. Your mouth, your temper, authorities, forgiveness, you can go and you can concretely move these into your life. It's going to change the way you live.

Walking around with a grudge and not forgiving is likely not hurting the other person as much as it's hurting you, destroying you. So we're going to pick up right there next week. I say right there, start a new series. Not sure what it is but we'll look at it next week.

Let's pray. Father, thank you for this truth. Thank you that you have forgiven us and God now we become supreme forgivers. We can master our mouth, we can tame our temper, not on our own but we have Your Spirit in us. Father, thank you that You loved us first and You love us forever. Pray that to You in Christ's name, amen.