Albert Martin:

“The one who forgives makes a solemn four-pronged promise. When you say to someone who has asked your forgiveness for a specific sin, ‘I forgive you,’ you are making this promise:

1. I will not knowingly remember this thing against you.

2. I will not speak of this thing to any others.

3. I will not raise it with you again.

4. I will not allow it to be a barrier in the restoration of our relationship.”

Mike Riccardi:

“Otherwise sound Bible teachers disagree on this point, namely, whether mutual forgiveness (sinner to sinner) is to be conditional (as is God’s forgiveness of us, conditioned upon genuine repentance) or unconditional (unlike God’s forgiveness of us).

I am one who takes the former position: that the Bible makes a distinction between the disposition or readiness to forgive (e.g., Ps 86:5) and forgiveness itself, and instructs us to always cultivate that disposition or readiness to forgive, such that there is never any bitterness or vengeance in the heart, and such that the moment that forgiveness is genuinely sought from us we grant it eagerly from the heart.

But at the same time, I believe the Bible teaches that the actual conferral of forgiveness, by definition, only happens when an offending party confesses and seeks forgiveness from an offended party. I base that on a couple of strands of biblical teaching.

1. The distinction between the readiness to forgive and forgiveness, as above.

2. The consistent teaching that God’s forgiveness of sinners (which is conditioned upon the sinner’s confession and repentance) is to be the pattern of our forgiveness of one another—not only explicitly in passages like Eph 4:32 and Col 3:13, but also indicated by the fact that the very same terms are used for God’s forgiveness of us and our forgiveness of one another. If God does not confer forgiveness upon any except those “who call upon” Him, but rather stands “ready to forgive” them (Ps 86:5), then this ought to be our practice as well.

3. Luke 17:3-4 seems to me to be the clearest passage in which this topic is dealt with, and Jesus’ instruction is explicitly conditional: Be on your guard! “If your brother sins, rebuke him; and *if he repents*, forgive him. And if he sins against you seven times a day, *and returns to you seven times, saying, ‘I repent*,’ forgive him.” Here, forgiveness is explicitly conditioned upon repentance. I simply cannot square the teaching of unconditional forgiveness with the “if-then” conditional statements in this passage.

But again, let me repeat: this does not mean I think we should cherish an unforgiving spirit or nurse resentment against someone who has sinned against us but who hasn’t come to seek our forgiveness. Both I (who think forgiveness is conditional) and the one who thinks forgiveness is unconditional believe that the Christian’s behavior should look exactly the same in this scenario—cultivating a cheerful disposition and readiness to forgive, eliminating any vengefulness or bitterness in their spirit against the other person, behaving happily and without rancor toward him even before he asks forgiveness. The only difference is in what we call that behavior (readiness to forgive vs. forgiveness itself); there’s no distinction in any behavior itself.”

Further Teaching on the theme of Forgiveness by Mike Riccardi:

https://www.sermonaudio.com/solo/gracelifepulpit/sermons/1215221814186635/

https://www.sermonaudio.com/solo/gracelifepulpit/sermons/122322199297507/

This excerpt is adapted from What Can I Do with My Guilt?
by R.C. Sproul

There is an important difference between guilt and guilt feelings. The distinction is between that which is objective and that which is subjective. Guilt is objective; it is determined by a real analysis of what a person has done with respect to law. When a person transgresses a law, that person incurs guilt. This is true in the ultimate sense with regard to the law of God. Whenever we break the law of God, we incur objective guilt. We may deny that the guilt is there. We may seek to excuse it or deal with it in other ways. Still, the reality is that we have the guilt.

However, guilt feelings may or may not correspond proportionately to one’s objective guilt. In fact, in most cases, if not all cases, they do not correspond proportionately. As painful as guilt feelings can be—and we’ve all experienced the rigors of unsettling guilt feelings—I don’t think any of us have ever experienced feelings of guilt in direct proportion to the actual guilt that we bear before God. I believe it is one of the mercies of God that He protects us from having to feel the full weight of the guilt that we actually have incurred in His sight.

Just as there are objective and subjective aspects of guilt, so there are objective and subjective aspects of forgiveness. First of all, forgiveness itself is objective. The only cure for real guilt is real forgiveness based on real repentance and real faith. However, we may have real and true forgiveness before God and yet not feel forgiven. Likewise, we may feel forgiven when we are not forgiven. That makes the issue of forgiveness very sticky.

We tend to trust our feelings to tell us what state we are in before God. Someone recently told me about a friend of hers who lives her Christian life on the basis of experience. I think that’s a very dangerous thing, because it’s like saying, “I determine truth by my subjective responses and feelings to it.” I would much prefer that her friend tried to live the Christian life on the basis of Scripture, because Scripture is objective truth that transcends the immediacy of a person’s experience.

Ultimately, the only source of real forgiveness is God. Thankfully, God is quick to forgive. In fact, one of the few absolute promises that God makes to us is that, if we confess our sins to Him, He will most seriously and surely forgive those sins (1 John 1:9).

Many years ago, I went to see my pastor to tell him about a struggle I was having with guilt. After I told him my problem, he opened the Bible to 1 John 1:8 and asked me to read this verse out loud. It says, “If we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us.” In this verse, the apostle John is addressing the scenario we discussed earlier, in which a person who has real guilt attempts to deny or excuse it. John is saying that if we deny our guilt, we are simply fooling ourselves. We all sin. Therefore, we all contract guilt. If we refuse to accept that, we are engaged in perhaps the worst kind of deception, namely, self-deception.

But when I read that passage, my pastor said to me: “That’s not your problem, because you’ve just told me why you came here. You came to tell me that you had a problem with sin.” Continue reading →

Article by Nick Batzig (original source GA in 1989. I was 12 years old. One of the first things that I distinctly remember about that beautiful, little secluded Island was the fact that we could walk into a store, write our name on a ledger and walk out with just about whatever we wanted in the store. I remember my dad and mom talking about needing to pay off their account at the hardware store every month. The owners and my parents both wanted to keep “short accounts.” It was a peculiar and fascinating experience for a boy who moved there from a major city in which that would have never happened. The population of the Island was small enough at that time for store owners to feel as if they could offer that service. Needless to say, it didn’t last long. Within a year or two, you could no longer do so. It is somewhat tragic that this practice isn’t part of our culture anymore, because it serves as an illustration of an important aspect of our spiritual life. In the Christian life, we are–as the Puritans used to say–to “keep short accounts with God and men.”

So, what do short accounts look like in the Christian life? Here are a few thoughts:

1. Confess Your Sins. Believers are people who confess their sin. That is part and parcel of what it means to be a Christian. If a man or woman, boy or girl, never confesses their sin, they reveal that they do not believe that they are sinners in need of a Savior. A true believer is one who has learned, by the work of the Holy Spirit, to say, “Will you please forgive me?” This is true in the vertical dimension of our relationship with God, first and foremost; and, it is true in the horizontal relationships we have with others. If we don’t confess our sin, we evidence that we are not sincere in our profession of faith in Christ. We must first confess our sins to the Lord. We learn this from Psalm 51, where David prays, “Against You and You only have I sinned” (Ps. 51:4). Even though David had sinned against Uriah, Bathsheba, both of their families, his family and all of Israel, he viewed his sin, first and foremost, as that which he committed against the Lord. It was sin because he broke God’s law. We too must first go to the Lord and then to others. When we go to others, but not to the Lord, we functionally act like the man or woman who goes to the priest in the confessional but not to God in heaven.

2. Confess Your Sins Particularly. The Westminster Confession of Faith has an intriguing statement about this in its chapter on repentance, where we read, “Men ought not to content themselves with a general repentance, but it is every man’s duty to endeavor to repent of his particular sins, particularly” (WCF 15.5). In short, we must never conclude that it is sufficient to confess that we are generally sinners or that we have generally sinned. When we confess our sin to God and men, we are to confess our sins specifically. We are to own the guilt of the particular sins that we have done. We are to examine our actions against the Law of God (i.e. the Ten Commandments) and confess the particular ways in which we have broken His law. My wife and I try to teach our boys to do this when they have sinned against one another. We teach them not to say, “I’m sorry.” Instead, we seek to teach them to say, “Will you please forgive me for doing x, y or z.” We also try to do so in our marriage. It is good for husbands to ask their wives to forgive them for sinful anger, for lack of gentleness, for lack of understanding, for pride, for laziness, for indifference, etc. Likewise, it is good for a wife to ask her husband to forgive her for all the ways that she has specifically failed to obey the Lord in her relation to him. Likewise, members of the church need to learn to confess particular sins to one another. When one member of the church has sinned against another, he or she needs to go to the offended party and seek out their forgiveness for what they have specifically done wrong. Sadly, this occurs quite infrequently in the family, in marriages and in the church.

3. Confess Your Sins Quickly. One of the sure signs that there is something out of alignment in your soul is that you do not go to the Lord and confess your sins as soon as you recognize that you have sinned against Him. Pride keeps us from uninhibited confession of sin. The same is true with regard to our relation to others. Like the disciples in the Garden, our flesh would rather sleep than engage in the spiritual work of prayer…especially when we have sinned. The Apostle Paul warned believers not to “let the sun go down” on sinful anger, because Satan will most certainly get a foothold in our relationships when we do so. We must learn to confess our sins quickly. Continue reading →

Matthew 18:15 “If your brother sins against you, between you and him alone. If he listens to you, you have gained your brother. 16 But if he does not listen, take one or two others along with you, that every charge may be established by the evidence of two or three witnesses. 17 If he refuses to listen to them, tell it to the church. And if he refuses to listen even to the church, let him be to you as a Gentile and a tax collector. 18 Truly, I say to you, whatever you bind on earth shall be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven. 19 Again I say to you, if two of you agree on earth about anything they ask, it will be done for them by my Father in heaven. 20 For where two or three are gathered in my name, there am I among them.”

21 Then Peter came up and said to him, “Lord, how often will my brother sin against me, and I forgive him? As many as seven times?” 22 Jesus said to him, “I do not say to you seven times, but seventy-seven times.

In this excerpt from his teaching series The Parables of Jesus, R.C. Sproul reminds us what true forgiveness looks like.

Transcript

This begins (Matthew 18:15-22) by saying if your brother sins against you, go to him alone, privately—tell him about it. If the person repents, you’ve won your brother. If he refuses to repent then you go with one or two other witnesses. And if they still refuse to repent, then you go and bring the proceedings of the church. And if they still refuse to repent, then they are to be to you as a heathen. That is, this is the recipe for excommunication.

There is only one sin for which anybody is ever excommunicated in the body of Christ, and that sin is impenitence for the sin that brought you under discipline in the first place.

There are multitudes of sins that could cause the church to become involved seeking your repentance. But only if you persist in impenitence can it lead actually to being cut off from the body of Christ. So I mentioned that this is the context in which Peter raises the question, so that if somebody sins against Peter, and he goes and sees that person, and the person repents and Peter forgives him, then Peter is asking the question, “How many times do I have to do this? Seven times?”

Jesus said to him, “I do not say to you seven, but up to seventy times seven.” As many as it takes! In other words, when I forgive somebody who has sinned against me, what does it mean to forgive them? If I say “I forgive you,” that’s a very weighty pronouncement. When God forgives you, He holds that sin against you no more. And if you sin again against Him and He forgives you again, He doesn’t say, “That’s two…” because the first one has already been wiped away.

And that’s what we don’t do. Somebody sins against us, asks for our forgiveness, we give our forgiveness, they do it again and we say, “That’s two…” which reveals that we didn’t really forgive them the first time. Because if we really grant forgiveness, we are saying, “I remember this against you no more.”