Second Sunday of Easter

Second Sunday of Easter
April 11, 2010

To Forgive Or Not To Forgive
John 20:23

Grace and peace to you from God our Father and from the Lord Jesus Christ.

Dear friends of Jesus,

On the first Easter evening Jesus appeared to His friends to assure them that He indeed was alive. Because He died and rose, all of His friends have the guarantee that their sins are forgiven. His death is actual payment to God that pays for our sins; His resurrection is the confirmation that the payment was accepted.

In addition to this joyful news, He gave this command to all of His friends:

If you forgive anyone his sins, they are forgiven; if you do not forgive them, they are not forgiven. (John 20:23)

Is Jesus talking to you? Are you His friend? Absolutely! He made you His friend through your Baptism, which washed away your sins. And as Jesus' friends, you belong to a church that takes Jesus' words seriously. Jesus gave His church some special jobs to do. One of them has to do with the forgiveness of sins. Sometimes we'll forgive someone's sin. Other times we won't be able to forgive them. How do we know when to do which?

Derek is 25 years old. (Please note that Derek could be 55 or 85 or 15.) He was confirmed here when he was 14. During his confirmation he promised to take God's Word seriously, including God's Third Commandment to honor God by coming to church regularly to hear about Jesus. For several years no one has seen Derek in church. So we know that Derek is sinning against God by not taking His Word seriously.

As a church we have three options:
(1)out of indifference or fear, ignore Derek's sin;
(2)out of spite, talk about Derek's sin, but do nothing;
(3)or out of love, find Derek and rebuke him.

Too often we ignore sin or gossip about it. Not so often do we do the hard thing and rebuke sin wherever it shows up.

We are pretty good at rebuking our children's mischief. Our motive for warning our children is love. They need boundaries and lines that they can't cross. This is for their own good.

But why is mischief against God so different? I think we are mostly terrified that when we rebuke clear cases of sin by others, they will rage out at us and accuse us of being judgmental. (Being judgmental is the only dirty word left in our culture.) They will claim that their outrage is based on the Bible and they'll probably quote the one verse of Scripture they know, namely Matthew 7:1.

Do not judge, or you too will be judged.

But when you keep reading what Jesus is saying and you see this verse in context, you'll realize that to use this verse as some sort of get-out-of-jail-free card is ridiculous.

For in the same way you judge others, you will be judged, and with the measure you use, it will be measured to you... first take the plank out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to remove the speck from your brother's eye. (Matthew 7:2,5)

What is Jesus doing here? He's rebuking sinners!! He's judging them! He's telling them to stop being smug self-righteous lovers of sin. And Jesus is clear that we are to remove the speck from your brother's eye. (Here the word “speck” means sin and the word “brother” means the people in your life.)

The devil's trick is make everyone think that any sort of judging is automatically judgmental. That is a lie, and a very good one. Jesus commands us to judge out of love and that is what we do. Rebuking sin does not make you a hypocrite, because even though you are indeed a terrible sinner, Jesus has forgiven you with His death on the cross and confirmed this forgiveness with His empty tomb!

Back to Derek. We want him to cling to the forgiveness that Jesus won for us on the cross. So out of love we find him and listen to him. He tells us that he still wants to be a member, but he doesn't have any interest in church. Although he doesn't work on Sundays, he tells us that he isn't going to gather around God's Word and Sacraments on Sunday morning.

In this made-up example, we absolutely positively cannot forgive him because we care about him. If we tell him that what he is doing is okay, then we've stamped his ticket to hell. By refusing to call sin what it is is the devil's job. Our job is to call sin what it is. If we don't, we are doing the work of the devil.

In the months and years ahead, your elders and I will continue to do God's work. When someone hasn't been to God's house for a long time, we'll try to find them and ask them what's wrong. Perhaps there is a legitimate reason for their situation. We will help them.

But if there is no good reason for them to stay away from church, then in a respectful tone I have to tell them that they are sinning and they are not forgiven as long as they refuse to repent and continue in their sin. If they continue to despise God's Word and worshiping Him, we must discipline that person and in the end we may have to end their membership in our church.

All of these steps are meant to wake them up. We want them to see how seriously we take their sin, so that they will wake up and take their sin seriously and repent and then we will joyfully forgive them and no longer remember their sin. We want them to turn away from the hell's road and return to the narrow road to heaven, as Jesus says:

Enter through the narrow gate. For wide is the gate and broad is the road that leads to destruction, and many enter through it. But small is the gate and narrow the road that leads to life, and only a few find it. (Matthew 7:13-14)

This is the road to life that Jesus earned for us on the cross. Often our cross is suffering the hate of those we rebuke and sometime the hatred of their friends and families. But we suffer for Jesus out of love for Him and for them, for we want them to be with us in the presence of Jesus, not for 40 days, not for 3 years, but for ever and ever.

Peace be with you!

Amen.