What went wrong with the accused murderer? Those who have known him are telling their stories which the media are saturating us with. More importantly, what is to be our attitude as Christians towards him? Someone has sprayed on the wall of the Hobart Hospital, "An eye for an eye." Is that to be our attitude? Certainly, society will never trust him again outside a locked institution. My prayer has been that he might be able to come to a deep repentance for what he has done. After all, Jesus died for him too. As he was dying, Jesus prayed, "Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do." And to the criminal dying alongside him, he said, "I promise you that today you will be in Paradise with me."
The Port Arthur tragedy has affected people in many different ways. On Thursday night I had a long STD call from a couple for whom it has brought back fresh their own family trauma of several months ago when family members were murdered, followed by a suicide. The murderer dead, but the family pain and anger flaring up afresh against him. Where were the three dead children now? and how can the living find peace?
Jesus strongly taught the necessity of forgiveness. It was part of the model prayer he gave us, "And forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us" (rendered in the Good News Bible - "Forgive us the wrongs we have done, as we forgive the wrongs others have done to us").
But we have a problem. Some sins (especially ours!) are not so bad and can be forgiven. But other sins are so bad as to be unforgivable. That's not what the Bible teaches, of course! All sins are serious and deserving of death, and all, except one, can be forgiven. That one is the sin against the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit works within us to bring us to repentance. It is possible so to have resisted and rejected his promptings that repentance is no longer possible. Jesus gave that warning to the "morally good" of his day.
So when we talk about forgiveness, we need to grasp the seriousness of sin - all sin, including our own - and to realise that, in forgiveness, the debt has been cancelled, the creditor has taken the debt on himself.
Reflect on the parable of the unforgiving servant (Matthew 18.21-35). Until the debt was forgiven, the servant was held responsible and accountable for it. But what happened to the debt when it was forgiven? Did it somehow mysteriously disappear? No - it was debited against the king's account. The king accepted the loss. It was no longer the servant's debt but the king's loss.
The Christian doctrine of forgiveness focuses on the work of Christ on the Cross. As we consider the Cross we see the Son of God bearing the costly consequences of our sins. Some eight centuries before, the prophet Isaiah had written, "But he endured the suffering that should have been ours, the pain that we should have borne. All the while we thought that his suffering was punishment sent by God. But because of our sins he was wounded, beaten for the evil we did. We are healed by the punishment he suffered, made whole by the blows he received. All of us were like sheep that were lost, each of us going his own way. But the Lord made the punishment fall on him, the punishment all of us deserved." (Isaiah 53.4-6)
The Cross of Christ represents the cost of our forgiveness. To accept God's forgiveness of our sins in Christ is to acknowledge that our debt has been paid by Another.
But Jesus emphasised very strongly that receiving divine forgiveness commits us to be willing to forgive others.
We hear him in the Beatitudes - "Happy are those who are merciful to others; God will be merciful to them!" (Matthew 5.7). After giving the model prayer, Jesus says to them, "If you forgive others the wrongs they have done to you, your Father in heaven will also forgive you. But if you do not forgive others, then your Father will not forgive the wrongs you have done" (Matthew 6.14-15). Those are rather strong words.
Peter's question in today's reading was how many times he had to go on forgiving his brother - seven times seemed suitably generous. I always find it curious to think of rough, abrasive Peter asking this in relation to his gentler approachable brother, Andrew! Jesus' answer - "seventy times seven" - was not meant to put an upper limit on our forgiving. Instead, it was to indicate that forgiving is to be a way of life. By four hundred and ninety times (if you want to take it literally) forgiving should be a well-established habit. But why forgive? Because we have been forgiven - forgiven immensely more than we are ever called upon to forgive others.
The story ends with the king very angry and ordering the servant to jail "to be punished until he should pay back the whole amount." The amount owed was so exaggeratedly large that his final release would be quite out of the question. Now hear the sober conclusion of Jesus - "That is how my Father in heaven will treat every one of you unless you forgive your brother from your heart" (v.35).
Whenever we are unwilling to forgive, we are asserting ourselves better than another. Yet the cost we bear is so slight in comparison to what God bears when, in response to our petition, he forgives us what we owe him.
We must add a couple of important observations. There are people in authority (like the king in the story) who, for the good of the society, have to exercise authority and discipline. Parents and teachers have important responsibilities here. And there are matters that must be brought to justice in the law courts. In Tasmania there does have to be trial and judgment - Jesus was not releasing these people from their obligations. Even as we pray for a change of heart, we recognise that the perpetrator of such crimes should never be released - for his own sake and the sake of the community.
Yet in a community's "call for blood" we recognise something both poisonous and dangerous released into our midst. We need to come again to the Lord for our own forgiveness and renewal.
In our praying, be open with God - he already knows all about us. Have the attitude of David in Psalm 139.23-24 - "Examine me, O God, and know my mind; test me, and discover my thoughts. Find out if there is any evil in me and guide me in the everlasting way."
Be assured and comforted. The debt has been paid. "If we confess our sins to God, he will keep his promise and do what is right: he will forgive us our sins and purify us from all our wrongdoing" (1 John 1.9).
Be willing to forgive others. We can't afford to carry hurts and grudges throughout our lives. Do we want to be forgiven? Then forgive!
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