Real Forgiveness
Real Forgiveness
A Sermon
September 13, 2026
Laguna Niguel Presbyterian Church
INTRO: Relational Culture of God’s People
Welcome again to LNPC. Our teaching Scripture today comes from Matthew’s Gospel, chapter 18. You may remember that we are in a series here called “This is For Us, for Real”. We’re looking at the way that Matthew’s Gospel in chapter 18 and 20 and the letters of the New Testament all point to the relational quality of life we know as the church. Our guiding questions in this series are “What kind of community are we becoming?” or “In what ways are we a faithful vision of the community of Jesus?”
In Matthew 10, Jesus called together twelve followers and taught them how to be a community on a mission (10:1-42). In Matthew 16, Jesus said he would build his church on the rock of Peter’s confession (16:18). And in Mathew 18, Jesus teaches his disciples what it means to live in relationship to this people he calls church. We turn now to Jesus in Matthew 18, verses 21 to 35. I invite you to hear God’s word for you this morning:
READ: Matthew 18:21-35, NRSVUE
Why Not Forgive? (U)
What makes forgiveness so hard?
It was very hard to forgive someone who hurt my family. For more context, this person didn’t physically hurt my immediate family. This person psychologically hurt my extended family through years of irresponsible behavior, power plays, and legal sanctions. And for years, I harbored resentment toward this person. I wanted them to fail in life. I wanted them to suffer. Not horribly! Just enough for them to feel what I believed my extended family was feeling.
I don’t know your past or what you’ve experienced. The list maybe long and ugly. It may involve disrespect, disappointment, loss, betrayal, or abuse.
What I do know is that forgiveness can feel impossible.
There are all kinds of reasons not to forgive. (SLIDE 1) There is the need for revenge, or the need to maintain our pride. We can also excuse another person’s behavior, “They didn’t mean it. They can’t help it. Maybe I did something to deserve it”. We can even use God to avoid forgiveness, “God will get them back eventually”. Whatever the reason may be, in all cases, forgiveness is sidelined, benched, silenced.
According to research from the human flourishing program at Harvard University, 25% of people across 22 countries report rarely to never forgiving one who has hurt them.
As theologian Miroslav Volf wonders, “Why should we give the gift of forgiveness when every atom of our wounded bodies screams for justice or even revenge?”
Seventy-Seven Times?
In Matthew 18, Peter asks a question on behalf of all of us, “How many times should I forgive my brother or sister, up to seven times?” (SLIDE 2)
Peter probably thought he was being generous with his “seven times”. The rabbis taught that three times was sufficient for the forgiveness of the same sin. Seven was a number that represented fullness, echoing the seven days of the creation in Genesis. Peter thought that that seven-fold forgiveness was divine.
But Jesus ups the ante significantly, “Hardly. Try seventy-seven” or in many translations “seventy times seven”. (SLIDE 3) The point is not whether Jesus meant 77 or 490. The point is that there is NO limit to forgiveness. Peter thought he was asking about perfect forgiveness. Jesus says that our forgiveness must go beyond perfect.
Sometimes, Jesus is outrageous. We’ve already listed all the reasons forgiveness is hard. We’ve already said that every atom in our bodies can screams for justice and revenge. I’ve already said that I had a hard time forgiving someone who hurt my family. During that time, I was studying theology in pastor school. What did I do with Jesus’ words here? I sidelined them. They didn’t apply in this case. Besides, the one who hurt my family wasn’t repentant, never asked for forgiveness, never indicated that they thought what they were doing was wrong. Also, this person didn’t go to my church. This person’s wasn’t my Christian brother or sister
While I may have reasons to believe my case was special, Jesus had already taught about forgiveness in Matthew’s Gospel. In fact, he had taught the disciples a simple prayer they were to repeat verbatim. It went, “Our Father in Heaven, hallowed by your name. your kingdom come, your will be done on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread. Oh, and forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors…” (Mt. 6:9-12). Not only that, Jesus actually doubles down on this very prayer in Matthew’s Gospel by adding, “For if you forgive others their trespasses, your heavenly Father will also forgive you, but if you do not forgive others, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses” (Mt. 6:14-15, SLIDE 4).
In the Church Councils Records of a 16th Century church Switzerland, it was reported that a when one man was asked to repeat the Lord's prayer, he pretended not to know it. He said that if he remembered it knew he would have to say it and forgive the merchant who cheated him. And he had no intention of doing that!
Like this man, I sometimes just don’t know what to do with Jesus. His teaching is too radical, too counter-cultural. It requires too much surrender, too much revision, too much strength I simply do not have. I want to be a forgiving person. I even know the power of forgiveness.
The Power of Forgiveness (W)
I know, for example, that unforgiveness hurts me. There are studies linking the act of forgiveness with psychological well-being. Forgiveness powerfully affects mental health and well-being. Forgiving provides a sense of purpose, life satisfaction, and hope. Conversely, a lack of forgiveness is linked to a higher degree of anxiety, depression, and despair.
As one preacher once put it, “A lack of forgiveness allows your enemy to live in your head rent free.” Or as one story goes, there was a former Prisoner of War who once asked another, “Have you forgiven your captors yet?” The other POW answered, “I will never do that.” So, he responded, “Then they still have you in prison, don't they?”
Tragedy in Lancaster
Here’s a startling story about forgiveness. In 2006, a man entered an Amish school in Pennsylvania and opened fire, killing 5 young girls and wounding five others before killing himself. This made the national news. The news also told the story of this same Amish community, before a watching world, openly stating that they forgave the killer. They went to visit the killer’s wife and children to comfort them. Some went to the killer’s funeral. Others set up a charitable fund to support the killer’s family. On hearing this, some were inspired. Others were outraged. How can we allow such a person to be forgiven? Don’t we have the right to be outraged? Doesn’t that skirt justice or even encourage future incidents?
It was later learned that the assailant had a daughter who had died at birth nine years earlier and he had never gotten over it. In fact, he had never forgiven God for that. The distress and divine resentment he carried over the years contributed to his twisted, violent act.
Stories like this are troubling but there is lots to mine here. We see the way a lack of forgiveness, in this case the forgiveness of a God who allows suffering, was detrimental to this man who carried out his deranged plot. In this story we also witness a community embodying the teaching of Jesus. We can’t know how painful it was or how much it cost to forgive like that.
Defining Forgiveness
Let’s define forgiveness. (SLIDE 5)
Forgiveness is not about reconciling a relationship. It is part of reconciliation, but forgiveness doesn’t require the repair of a relationship. It may be necessary for our own physical or psychological safety to maintain firm boundaries with someone who has wronged us.
Forgiveness also does not mean that we forget about a wrong done or fail to acknowledge a wrong done. Jesus has already taught us to point out the fault. Forgiveness requires us to name the wrong done.
Instead, forgiveness is a mental and spiritual release of a prisoner who deserves their imprisonment. You let the offender go free in your heart. Or, if you prefer the language of commerce, it is the cancelling of a great debt owed to you internally. Forgiveness means letting go of any need for vengeance or retribution in your heart and imagination. It means moving from the desire for an offender to suffer to, instead, desiring their good and wanting them to flourish.
Presbyterian minister Marjorie Thompson says, “Forgiveness involves excusing persons from the punitive consequences they deserve because of their behavior. The behavior remains condemned, but the offender is released from its effects as far as the forgiver is concerned.” (SLIDE 6)
Jesus tells Peter and the church to do this seventy times seven times over - to cultivate a disposition toward forgiveness, what researchers at the Flourishing Project call “Forgivingness”.
Jesus’ Story
If you are imagining today someone who has offended you and this sounds too impossible and too outrageous, then you are ready to hear the provocative story Jesus tells.
After Peter’s question and Jesus’ answer about the limitlessness of forgiveness, Jesus tells a story that is intentionally provocative. A slave owes a king ten thousand talents. Ten thousand talents is an incalculable sum. A talent in the ancient Near East was the highest monetary designation. According to once ancient source, 600 talents were collected across three geographical regions for the Roman tax in 4 BC. 10,000 talents would be a debt equivalent to billions of dollars today. Just as the slave’s debt was outrageous, so is the King’s response. After the servant pleads for mercy, the king goes from threatening the imprisonment of him and his family to cancelling his debt and letting him go scot-free.
So far, the story is full of stunning hyperbole. And now, the kicker. This same servant finds another servant who owes him a hundred denarii. This is a decent debt, but astronomically less than 10,000 talents. It would take six thousand denarii to equal a single talent, so we’re talking 600,000 times less than this servant’s debt to the king.
The second servant pleads for mercy just as the first servant has done, but instead of cancelling the debt he gets violent. He begins to choke the servant. Other servants who casually observed this incident are outraged and report it to the king. And the story ends with the King confronting this servant with an indicting question “You wicked servant! Should you not have had mercy on your fellow slave, as I had mercy on you?”
We too are outraged by the first servant’s response to the second. It’s like, “Don’t you get it? You were spared several lifetimes of debt! Of course you forgive the lesser debt! Of course you realize that since you were shown overwhelming amounts of mercy, ridiculous and outrageous amounts of grace, you can extend that mercy toward a meager debt by comparison.
Of course you do. Ah… (realization)… this is about me. This is about us…
Divine Forgiveness (Y)
Forgiveness is good for us, but it is not easy. Every fiber of our being screams out for justice and revenge. It feels impossible to release a captive or cancel a debt or desire the good of someone anyone who has wronged us, our family, or our people.
What we need is the experience of the limitless and extravagant mercy of a forgiving God. It is no exaggeration to say that we are in desperate need of divine forgiveness.
As Christians, we affirm that every human being is created good, in the image of God. We also affirm that every human being has fallen short of God’s glory and disregarded God’s ways. In the words of one daily prayer, we have “wandered from God’s ways, wasted God’s gifts, and forgotten God’s love”. Our goodness is imprisoned by sin. Our failure to love God and neighbor has racked up an enormous debt.
The gospel tells us that Christ’s death on the Cross sets us free from sin. Christ’s death cancels our debt. We are the servant in Jesus’ story who owe an incalculable debt to a king who has outlandishly cancelled this debt in Christ. Scripture says that God has blotted out our sin, covered our sin, and removed our sin as far as the East is from the West. When we internalize the vertical power of the cross, how much God has forgiven us, the horizontal dimension, our disposition toward fellow human beings begins to change. We can live forgiven and forgiving. (SLIDE 7)
REACH
We can become forgiving, seventy-seven times over but it is a journey. Depending on the offense, we may need to undergo a process of forgiveness every day for years to achieve anything close to forgivingness.
One framework for forgiveness is called R.E.A.C.H. (SLIDE 8) The REACH process involves five steps. First, we Recall the Pain and hurt. We name it. Depending on the level of trauma, it may be much better and safer to do this WITH someone who can create space for it –a therapist, spiritual director, pastor, or trusted guide.
Next, we empathize with the offender. We try to understand what they felt and where they are coming from. The Amish community was given a glimpse into their offender’s pain – the loss of his own daughter and his lack of divine forgiveness. This could have allowed them to empathize with the offender. Next, we explore the idea forgiveness is an altruistic gift. Forgiveness is a gift we can give, and its source is goodness, beauty, and healing that comes from an altruistic (self-giving) God. Next, we involve our volition - our will. We commit to forgiving. We seek to follow Jesus whatever it takes. Lastly, we hold on to forgiveness through difficult times. There will be bumps on the road. There will be detours on the journey. We’ll need to repeat the process. We’ll need to continually and abundantly forgive, perhaps seventy times seven times over.
Charge
Jesus envisioned a forgiven and forgiving people. Are we becoming a more forgiving community? Do people experience God’s forgiveness and interpersonal forgiveness as they experience our community life? That is the aim of the church. Jesus calls it “the kingdom of heaven”. So, let’s go on this journey of forgiveness, again and again, seventy times seven times over. Let’s take this outrageous, radical, counter-cultural Jesus seriously and in so doing, become a sign of his kingdom.