Limited Forgiveness
A pastor’s son and his mom had been to a shopping mall and the boy had acted badly, wanting this and that, running off, etc. As they were driving home, he could sense her displeasure and said, “When we ask God to forgive us when we are bad, He does, doesn’t He?” His mother replied, “Yes, He does.” The boy continued, “And when He forgives us, He buries our sins in the deepest sea, doesn’t He?” The mom replied, “Yes, that’s what the Bible says.” The boy was silent for awhile and then said, “I’ve asked God to forgive me, but I bet when we get home, you’re going to go fishing for those sins, aren’t you?”
Too often, we do “go fishing” for other people’s sins that God has already buried.
Our Oneness in Christ
I was speaking at the Indiana State Prison. Only weeks earlier, Stephen Judy had been electrocuted there. An execution always creates a special tension in a prison, and I could sense it that day. It was in the air, in the voices of the guards, in the faces of the men.
After my talk, the warden walked us through the maze of cell blocks to that most dreaded of places—an isolated wing where five men awaited their final decree and death. Nancy Honeytree, the talented young gospel singer who is part of our team, was with me; several of our volunteers came along as well. Finally, we were ushered through two massive steel gates into the secure area. The inmates were allowed out of their cells, and we joined in a circle in the walkway while Nancy strummed the guitar and sang. It was a beautiful moment for those condemned men—and for us—as we closed by singing together “Amazing Grace.”
Two of the mean, I knew from their correspondence with me, were believers. One of them, James Brewer, had the most radiant expression during our visit, and he sang at the top of his lungs.
As we were shaking hands and saying good-bye, I noticed that Brewer walked back into his cell with one of our volunteers. The others began filing out, but this volunteer remained in Brewer’s cell; the two were standing shoulder to shoulder, together reading the Bible. I was expected in two hours in Indianapolis for a meeting with the governor, so I walked back into the cell. “We’ve got to go,” I called out, beckoning to our volunteer.
“Just a minute, please,” he replied. I shook my head and repeated, “Sorry, time’s up, the plane is waiting.”
“Please, please, this is very important,” the volunteer replied. “You see, I am Judge Clement. I sentenced this man to die. But now he is born again. He is my brother and we want a minute to pray together.”
I stood in the entrance to that solitary, dimly lit cell, frozen in place. Here were two men—one black, one white; one powerful, one powerless; one who had sentenced the other to die. Yet there they stood grasping a Bible together, Brewer smiling so genuinely, the judge so filled with love for the prisoner at his side.
Impossible in human terms! Brewer should despise this man, I thought. Only in Christ could this happen. The sight of those men standing together as brothers in that dingy cell will remain vivid in my mind forever.
The Scandal of the Cross
On the evening of April 25, 1958, a young Korean exchange student, a leader in student Christian affairs in the University of Pennsylvania, left his flat and went to the corner to post a letter to his parents in Pusan. Turning from the mailbox, he stepped into the path of eleven leather-jacketed teenage boys. Without a word, they attacked him, beating him with a blackjack, a lead pipe, and with their shoes and fists. Later, when the police found him in the gutter, he was dead. All Philadelphia cried out for vengeance. The district attorney secured legal authority to try the boys as adults so that those found guilty could be given the death penalty. Then a letter arrived from Korea that made everyone stop and think. It was signed by the parents and by twenty other relatives of the murdered boy. It read as follows:
“Our family has met together and we have decided to petition that the most generous treatment possible within the laws of your government be given to those who have committed this criminal action. In order to give evidence of our sincere hope contained in this petition, we have decided to save money to start a fund to be used for the religious, educational, vocational, and social guidance of the boys when they are released. We have dared to express our hope with a spirit received from the gospel of our Savior Jesus Christ who died for our sins.” –A. Leonard Griffith
Time for Forgiveness
Several years ago, after a vigorous brotherly and sisterly disagreement, our three children retired only to be aroused at two o’clock in the morning by a terrific thunderstorm. Hearing an unusual noise upstairs, I called to find out what was going on. A little voice answered, “We are all in the closet forgiving each other.” –Robert C. Tuttle
Forgiving and Forgetting
Several years ago, Coach Joe Paterno and his Penn State football team were playing for the national championship against Alabama in the Sugar Bowl. They probably would have won, but they had a touchdown called back because there was a twelfth man on the field. After the game, Paterno was asked to identify the player. “It’s only a game,” he said. “I have no intention of ever identifying the boy. He just made a mistake.”
Limited Forgiveness
I was assisting another pastor in a revival meeting when we visited a man who had been active in the church, but, due to a dispute with a fellow member, he had quit attending church. We reasoned with him at length about the need for forgiveness and returning to church. Reluctantly, he agreed, and we had prayer together. When we were leaving, he followed us to the car and said, “Now, I’ll forgive him, but all I want is for him to stay on his side of the road, and I’ll stay on mine.” –M. B. Webb
The Coors Triumph
On February 9, 1960, Adolph Coors III was kidnapped and held for ransom. Seven months later his body was found on a remote hillside. He had been shot to death. Adolph Coors IV, then fifteen years old, lost not only his father but his best friend. For years, young Coors hated Joseph Corbett, the man who was sentenced to life for the slaying.
Then in 1975, Ad Coors became a Christian. While he divested himself of his interest in the family beer business, he could not divest himself of the hatred that consumed him. Resentment seethed within him and blighted his growth in faith. He prayed to God for help because he realized how his hatred for Corbett was alienating him from God and other persons. The day came, however, when claiming the Spirit’s presence, Ad Coors visited the maximum security unit of Colorado’s Canon City penitentiary and tried to talk with Corbett. Corbett refused to see him. Coors left a Bible inscribed with this message: “I’m here to see you today and I’m sorry that we could not meet. As a Christian, I am summoned by our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ, to forgive. I do forgive you, and I ask you to forgive me for the hatred I’ve held in my heart for you.” Later Coors confessed, “I have a love for that man that only Jesus Christ could have put in my heart.”
The Crucial Word
Dwight Moody’s father died when Dwight was only four. A month later, Mrs. Moody gave birth to twins; she now had nine mouths to feed and no income. Merciless creditors dogged the widow, claiming everything they could get their hands on.
As if Mrs. Moody didn’t have enough troubles, her eldest boy later ran away from home. Certain that her son would return, Mrs. Moody placed a light for him in the window each night. Young Dwight was inspired by her faith and prayers. He wrote: “I can remember how eagerly she used to look for tidings of that boy; how she used to send us to the post office to see if there was a letter from him. Some night when the wind was very high, and the house would tremble at every gust, the voice of my mother was raised in prayer for that wanderer.”
Her prayers were answered. Her prodigal son did eventually return. Dwight remembered: “While my mother was sitting at the door, a stranger was seen coming toward the house, and when he came to the door, he stopped. My mother didn’t know her boy. He stood there with folded arms and a great beard flowing down his breast, his tears trickling down his face. When my mother saw those tears, she cried, ‘Oh, it’s my lost son!’ and entreated him to come in. But he stood still! ‘No, mother,’ he answered, ‘I will not come in until I hear first that you have forgiven me.’”
Mrs. Moody was only too willing to forgive. She rushed to the door, threw her arms around him, and there the prodigal found forgiveness.
Forgiveness and Forgottenness
Bruce Larson tells the true story of a Catholic priest living in the Philippines, a much-loved man of God who once carried a secret burden of long-past sin buried deep in his heart. He had committed that sin once, many years before, during his time in seminary. No one else knew of this sin. He had repented of it and he had suffered years of remorse for it, but he still had no peace, no inner joy, no sense of God’s forgiveness.
There was a woman in this priest’s parish who deeply loved God, and who claimed to have visions in which she spoke with Christ, and He with her. The priest, however, was skeptical of her claims, so to test her visions he said to her, “You say you actually speak directly with Christ in your visions. Let me ask you a favor. The next time you have one of these visions, I want you to ask Him what sin your priest committed while he was in seminary.”
The woman agreed and went home. When she returned to the church a few days later, the priest said, “Well, did Christ visit you in your dreams?”
She replied, “Yes, He did.”
“And did you ask Him what sin I committed in seminary?”
“Yes, I asked Him.”
“Well, what did He say?”
“He said, ‘I don’t remember.’”
This is what God wants you to know about the forgiveness He freely offers you. When your sins are forgiven, they are forgotten. The past—with its sins, hurts, brokenness, and self-recrimination—is gone, dead, crucified, remembered no more. What God forgives, He forgets.
Conditional Forgiveness
A man lay on his deathbed, harassed by fear because he had harbored hatred against another. He sent for the individual with whom he had had a disagreement years before; he then made overtures of peace. The two of them shook hands in friendship. But as the visitor left the room, the sick man roused himself and said, “Remember, if I get over this, the old quarrel stands.” –G. Ray Jordan
Conscious Act of Forgetting
Clara Barton was never known to hold resentment against anyone. One time a friend recalled to her a cruel thing that had happened to her some years previously, but Clara seemed not to remember the incident. “Don’t you remember the wrong that was done you?” the friend asked Clara. She answered calmly, “No, I distinctly remember forgetting that.”
Forgiven and Gone
Corrie ten Boom, in her book, Tramp for the Lord, had these words to say regarding forgiveness:
“It was 1947. I had come from Holland to defeated Germany with the message that God forgives. It was the truth they needed most to hear in that bitter, bombed-out land, and I gave them my favorite mental picture. Maybe because the sea is never far from a Hollander’s mind, I like to think that that’s where forgiven sins are thrown. ‘When we confess our sins,’ I said, ‘God casts them into the deepest ocean, gone forever. Then God places a sign out there that says, No Fishing Allowed!’”
The Deep Need to Forgive
When Leonardo da Vinci was painting “The Last Supper,” he became angry with a man and lashed out at him. He even threatened him. Then he went back to his fresco and tried to paint the face of Jesus. He couldn’t, for there was too much evil stirring inside him. The lack of peace forced him to put down his brushes, go find the man, and ask his forgiveness. Only then did he have the inner calm needed to paint the face of his Master.
Active Forgiveness
A small boy at a summer camp received a large package of cookies in the mail from his mother. He ate a few, then placed the remainder under his bed. The next day, after lunch, he went to his tent to get a cookie. The box was gone.
That afternoon a camp counselor, who had been told of the theft, saw another boy sitting behind a tree eating the stolen cookies. He said to himself, “That young man must be taught not to steal.”
He returned to the group and sought out the boy whose cookies had been stolen. He said, “Billy, I know who stole your cookies. Will you help me teach him a lesson?” The puzzled boy replied, “Well, yes—but aren’t you going to punish him?”
The counselor explained, “No, that would only make him resent and hate you. No, I want you to call your mother and ask her to send you another box of cookies.”
The boy did as the counselor asked, and a few days later received another box of cookies in the mail.
The counselor said, “Now, the boy who stole your cookies is down by the lake. Go down there and share your cookies with him.”
The boy protested, “But he’s the thief.”
“I know. But try it—see what happens.”
Half an hour later the camp counselor saw the two come up the hill, arm and arm. The boy who had stolen the cookies was earnestly trying to get the other to accept his jackknife in payment for the stolen cookies, and the victim was just as earnestly refusing the gift from his new friend, saying that a few old cookies weren’t that important anyway.
The Great Hunger for Forgiveness
The story is told in Spain of a father and his teenage son who had a relationship that had become strained. So the son ran away from home. His father, however, began a journey in search of his rebellious son. Finally, in Madrid, in a last desperate effort to find him, the father put an ad in the newspaper. The ad read: “Dear Paco, meet me in front of the newspaper office at noon. All is forgiven. I love you. Your father.”
The next day at noon in front of the newspaper office 800 “Pacos” showed up. They were all seeking forgiveness and love from their fathers.
A Glorious Mixture
Years after her concentration camp experiences in Nazi Germany, Corrie ten Boom met face to face one of the most cruel and heartless German guards that she had ever contacted. He had humiliated and degraded her and her sister. He had jeered and visually raped them as they stood in the delousing shower. Now he stood before her with hand outstretched and said, “Will you forgive me?” She writes: “I stood there with coldness clutching at my heart, but I know that the will can function regardless of the temperature of the heart. I prayed, Jesus, help me! Woodenly, mechanically I thrust my hand into the one stretched out to me and I experienced an incredible thing. The current started in my shoulder, raced down into my arms, and sprang into our clutched hands. Then this warm reconciliation seemed to flood my whole being, bringing tears to my eyes. ‘I forgive you, brother,’ I cried with my whole heart. For a long moment, we grasped each other’s hands, the former guard, the former prisoner. I have never known the love of God so intensely as I did in that moment!” To forgive is to set a prisoner free and discover the prisoner was you.
God’s Achievement
Forgiveness is man’s deepest need and God’s highest achievement. –Horace Bushnell
You Can’t Buy Forgiveness
A little boy came to the Washington Monument and noticed a guard standing by it. The little boy looked up at the guard and said, “I want to buy it.” The guard stooped down and says, “How much do you have?” The boy reached into his pocket and pulled out a quarter. The guard said, “That’s not enough.” The boy replied, “I thought you would say that.” So he pulled out nine cents more. The guard looked down at the boy and said, “You need to understand three things. First, thirty-four cents is not enough. In fact, $34 million is not enough to buy the Washington Monument. Second, the Washington Monument is not for sale. And third, if you are an American citizen, the Washington Monument already belongs to you.”
We need to understand three things about forgiveness. First, we can not earn it. Second, it is not for sale. And third, if we accept Christ, we already have it.
Love and the Enemy
We found ourselves on the same track with several carloads of Japanese wounded after we were freed from the Kwai prison camp. These unfortunates were on their own without medical care. No longer fit for action in Burma, they had been packed into railway cars which were being returned to Bangkok.
They were in a shocking state. I have never seen men filthier. Uniforms were encrusted with mud, blood, and excrement. Their wounds, sorely inflamed and full of pus, crawled with maggots. The maggots, however, in eating the putrefying flesh, probably prevented gangrene.
It was apparent why the Japanese were so cruel to their prisoners. If they didn’t care for their own, why should they care for us?
The wounded looked at us forlornly as they say with their heads resting against the carriages, waiting for death. They had been discarded as expendable, the refuse of way. These were the enemy. They were more cowed and defeated that we had ever been.
Without a word, most of the officers in my section unbuckled their packs, took out part of their ration and a rag or two, and, with water canteens in their hands, went over to the Japanese train.
Our guards tried to prevent us, bawling, “No goodka! No goodke!” But we ignored them and knelt down by the enemy to give water and food, to clean and bind up their wounds. Grateful cries of “Aragatto!” (Thank you) followed us when we left.
I regarded my comrades with wonder. Eighteen months ago they would have joined readily in the destruction of our captors had they fallen into their hands. Now these same officers were dressing the enemy’s wounds.
We had experienced a moment of grace, there in those bloodstained railway cars. God had broken through the barriers of our prejudice and had given us the will to obey His command, “Thou shalt love.” –Ernest Gordon
Forgiveness Is Freedom
My six-year-old used one of those super adhesive glues on an airplane he was building. In less than three minutes, his right index finger was bonded to a shiny blue wing of his DC-10. He tried to free it. He tugged it, pulled it, waved it frantically; but he couldn’t budge his finger free. Soon, we located a solvent that did the job and ended our little crisis.
Last night, I remembered that scene when I visited a new family in our neighborhood. The father of the family introduced his children:
“This is Pete. He’s the clumsy one of the lot. That’s Kathy coming in with mud on her shoes. She’s the sloppy one. As always, Mike’s last. He’ll be late for his own funeral, I promise you.”
The dad did a thorough job of gluing his children to their faults and mistakes.
People do it to us and to those we love all the time. They remind us of our failures, our errors, our sins, and they won’t let us live them down. Like my son trying frantically to free his finger from the plane, there are people who try, sometimes desperately, to free themselves from their past. They would love a chance to begin again.
When we don’t let people forget their past, when we don’t forgive, we glue them to their mistakes and refuse to see them as more than something they have done. However, when we forgive, we gently pry the doer of the hurtful deed from the deed itself, and we say that the past is just that—past–over and done with.
God does what we are unable to do or what those around us don’t want to do or are unable to do for us. When we accept his forgiveness, He separates us from our sins. “As far as the east is from the west,” the psalmist says, which means as far as you can imagine, that offense will be wiped away, blotted out.
The good news—the very good news—of the gospel is that we don’t have to remain in bondage, glued to our sins. The healing power of God is ours for the asking, promising freedom and the loving embrace of a Father Who forgets our past and clothes us for a new life.
The Struggle Within
A young soldier was going off to fight in World War II against the Japanese. As his father put him on the train and waved good-bye, he turned with bitter tears and said, “If my son is killed, I hope every Jap in the world is killed!” Yet the fact that the father was a Christian made it difficult to feel that way in reality. He had a fierce struggle with himself and finally realized that it was not Christian to hate, whether his son lived or died. He declared rather, “I will not hate. I refuse to be destroyed by hate!”
A year later, the son was killed. Soon life insurance money arrived. The father did not really need the ten thousand dollars, so he sent it to the Southern Baptist Foreign Mission Board and designated it for missions to the Japanese.
How could the father do that? Only by the miracle of Calvary. Only God can change bitterness and hate into love.
Forgiveness Is
Forgiveness is the windblown bud which blooms in placid beauty at Verdun.
Forgiveness is the tiny slate-gray sparrow which has built its nest of twigs and string among the shards of glass upon the wall of shame.
Forgiveness is the child who laughs in merry ecstasy beneath the toothed fence that closes DaNang.
Forgiveness is the fragrance of the violet which still clings fast to the heel that crushed it.
Forgiveness is the broken dreams which hides itself within the corner of the mind oft called forgetfulness, so that it will not bring pain to the dreamer.
Forgiveness is the reed which stands up straight and green when nature’s mighty rampage halts, full spent.
Forgiveness is a God Who will not leave us after all we’ve done. –George Roemisch
The Great Privilege
“Forgiveness to the injured doth belong.” These are the words of the poet, John Dryden. Simon Wiesenthal, a prisoner and survivor of the Nazi concentration camps, tells the story of a Nazi who made him listen while he confessed the atrocities he had committed. The SS trooper, tormented by guilt, begged Wiesenthal, as a Jew, to forgive him. Wiesenthal turned and walked away. Later, he wrote, “Forgetting is something that time alone takes care of, but forgiveness is an act of volition, and only the sufferer is qualified to make decision.” Wiesenthal wondered, had he done the right thing in refusing to forgive the SS troops. Reflection: What do you think? Are there some crimes that simply cannot be forgiven?
The Transforming Look
A man came back to work in a place from which he had been fired several months previously. His work was superior. A fellow worker remembered how inconsistent he had been in the past and asked, “What happened to make such a difference in you?” The man told this story: When I was in college, I was part of a fraternity initiation committee. We placed the new members in the middle of a long stretch of a country road. I was to drive my car at as great a speed as possible straight at them. The challenge was for them to stand firm until a signal was given to jump out of the way. It was a dark night. I had reached one hundred miles an hour and saw their looks of terror in the headlights. The signal was given and everyone jumped clear—except on boy. I left college after that. I later married and have two children. The look on that boy’s face as I passed over him at a hundred miles an hour stayed in my mind all the time. I became hopelessly inconsistent, moody, and finally became a problem drinker. My wife had to work to being in the only income we had. I was drinking at home one morning when someone rang the doorbell. I opened to find myself facing a woman who seemed strangely familiar. She sat down in our living room and told me she was the mother of the boy I had killed years before. She said that she had hated me and spent agonizing nights rehearsing ways to get revenge. I then listened as she told me of the love and forgiveness that had come when she gave her heart to Christ. She said, “I have come to let you know that I forgive you and I want you to forgive me.” I looked into her eyes that morning and I saw deep in her eyes the permission to be the kind of man I might have been had I never killed that boy. That forgiveness changed my whole life.
General Lee and Forgiveness
In Charles Bracelen Flood’s book, Lee: The Last Years, he tells of a time after the Civil War when Robert E. Lee visited a Kentucky woman who took him to the remains of a grand old tree in front of her home. There she cried bitterly that its limbs and trunk had been destroyed by Union artillery fire. She waited for Lee to condemn the North or at least sympathize with her loss. Lee paused, and then said, “Cut it down, my dear madam, and forget it.”
The Testimony Did Not Die
In Loving God, Charles Colson tells of a quiet act of forgiveness that began a chain of events that still survives. Deep in one of Siberia’s prison camps, a Jew by the name of Dr. Boris Kornfeld was imprisoned. As a medical doctor, he worked in surgery and otherwise helped both the staff and the prisoners. He met a Christian, whose name is unknown, whose quiet faith and his frequent reciting of the Lord’s Prayer moved Dr. Kornfeld.
One day, while repairing a guard’s artery which had been cut in a knifing, he seriously considered suturing it in such a way that he would bleed to death a little while later. Then, appalled by the hatred and violence he saw in his own heart, he found himself repeating the words of the nameless prisoner: “Forgive us our sins as we forgive those who sin against us.”
Shortly after that prayer, Dr. Kornfeld began to refuse to go along with some of the standard practices of the prison camp, including one day turning in an orderly who had stolen food from a dying patient. After that, he knew his life was in danger, so he began to spend as much time as possible in the relative safety of the hospital.
One afternoon, he examined a patient who had just been operated on for cancer of the intestines, a man whose eyes and face reflected a depth of spiritual misery and emptiness that moved Kornfeld. So the doctor began to talk to the patient, telling him the entire story, an incredible confession of secret faith.
That night, someone snuck in and smashed Dr. Kornfeld’s head while he was asleep—he died a few hours later.
But Kornfeld’s testimony did not die. For the patient who had heard his confession, became, as a result, a Christian. And he survived that prison camp and went on to tell the world what he had learned there. The patient was the great writer—Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn.
Transient Forgiveness
Two little brothers, Harry and James, had finished supper and were playing until bedtime. Somehow, Harry hit James with a stick, and tears and bitter words followed. Charges and accusations were still being exchanged as mother prepared them for bed. The mother instructed, “Now, James, before you go to bed you’re going to have to forgive your brother.” James was thoughtful for a few moments, and then he replied, “Well, OK, I’ll forgive him tonight, but if I don’t die in the night, he’d better look out in the morning.”
A Cure for Hatred
A woman testified to the transformation in her life that had resulted through her experience in conversion. She declared, “I’m so glad I got religion. I have an uncle I used to hate so much I vowed I’d never go to his funeral. But now, why, I’d be happy to go to it any time.”
Breaking the Bridge
He who cannot forgive others breaks the bridge over which he must pass himself. –George Herbert
Completing the Act of Forgiveness
After the year 1830, a man named George Wilson killed a government employee who caught him in the act of robbing the mails. He was tried and sentenced to be hanged. However, President Andrew Jackson sent him a pardon. But Wilson did a strange thing. He refused to accept the pardon, and no one knew what to do. So the case was carried to the Supreme Court.
Chief Justice Marshall, perhaps one of the greatest justices ever, wrote the court’s opinion. In it he said, “A pardon is a slip of paper, the value of which is determined by the acceptance of the person to be pardoned. If it is refused, it is no pardon. George Wilson must be hanged.” And so he was.
Radical, Forgiving Love
During the Korean War, a South Korean Christian civilian was arrested by the Communists and ordered shot. But when the young Communist leader learned that the prisoner was in charge of an orphanage, caring for small children, he decided to spare him and kill his son instead. So they took his nineteen-year-old son and shot him right there in front of the Christian man. Later, the fortunes of war changed and that same young Communist leader was captured by the UN forces, tried, and condemned to death. But before the sentence could be carried out, the Christian whose boy had been killed came and pleaded for the life of the killer. He declared that this Communist was young, that he really did not know what he was doing. The Christian said, “Give him to me and I will train him.” The UN forces granted the request and the father took the murderer of his boy into his own home and cared for him. And today, that young man, formerly a Communist, is a Christian pastor, serving Christ. This is the power of forgiving love that can only be described as superabundant, the kind of love the dying Stephen reflected in the Book of Acts.
Love Is Everywhere
After eighteen months in the ministry, a pastor went to his file cabinet to pull out the “Love” file. He discovered he didn’t have one. Impossible! It must be misfiled. He searched among Faith and Fasting, between Healing and Heaven. Perhaps it was sandwiched by Christology and Christian Ed. After all, these have to do with Love, don’t they? But it wasn’t there, nor was it found after Money or ahead of Missions.
When he stopped to reflect, the Holy Spirit solved the mystery. The Love file was scattered, yet not misfiled. Parts of it were found under Patience, Kindness, Humility, Trust, Hope, Loyalty, and Perseverance. But the pastor found the greatest part of the Love file, squarely-centered and deeply-seated, in Forgiveness.
The Degree of Forgiveness
We pardon in the degree that we love. –Francois De La Rochefoucauld