Forgiveness

God remains unforgiving to those described as unrepentant, who blaspheme against the Holy Spirit and who are themselves unforgiving. Being unforgiving and demonstrating true love are mutually exclusive.

The unforgiveness of God

Towards the unrepentant

Dt 29:18–21

Deuteronomy 29:18–21 (ESV) — 18 Beware lest there be among you a man or woman or clan or tribe whose heart is turning away today from the Lord our God to go and serve the gods of those nations. Beware lest there be among you a root bearing poisonous and bitter fruit, 19 one who, when he hears the words of this sworn covenant, blesses himself in his heart, saying, ‘I shall be safe, though I walk in the stubbornness of my heart.’ This will lead to the sweeping away of moist and dry alike. 20 The Lord will not be willing to forgive him, but rather the anger of the Lord and his jealousy will smoke against that man, and the curses written in this book will settle upon him, and the Lord will blot out his name from under heaven. 21 And the Lord will single him out from all the tribes of Israel for calamity, in accordance with all the curses of the covenant written in this Book of the Law.

See also Ex 23:21; Ex 34:7; Nu 14:18; Jos 24:19; 2 Ki 24:4; Is 30:12–14; Je 5:7; La 3:42; Ho 1:6; Lk 18:10–14; Heb 10:28–31

Exodus 23:21 (ESV) — 21 Pay careful attention to him and obey his voice; do not rebel against him, for he will not pardon your transgression, for my name is in him.

Exodus 34:7 (ESV) — 7 keeping steadfast love for thousands, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin, but who will by no means clear the guilty, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children and the children’s children, to the third and the fourth generation.”

Numbers 14:18 (ESV) — 18 ‘The Lord is slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love, forgiving iniquity and transgression, but he will by no means clear the guilty, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children, to the third and the fourth generation.’

Joshua 24:19 (ESV) — 19 But Joshua said to the people, “You are not able to serve the Lord, for he is a holy God. He is a jealous God; he will not forgive your transgressions or your sins.

2 Kings 24:4 (ESV) — 4 and also for the innocent blood that he had shed. For he filled Jerusalem with innocent blood, and the Lord would not pardon.

Isaiah 30:12–14 (ESV) — 12 Therefore thus says the Holy One of Israel, “Because you despise this word and trust in oppression and perverseness and rely on them, 13 therefore this iniquity shall be to you like a breach in a high wall, bulging out and about to collapse, whose breaking comes suddenly, in an instant; 14 and its breaking is like that of a potter’s vessel that is smashed so ruthlessly that among its fragments not a shard is found with which to take fire from the hearth, or to dip up water out of the cistern.”

Jeremiah 5:7 (ESV) — 7 “How can I pardon you? Your children have forsaken me and have sworn by those who are no gods. When I fed them to the full, they committed adultery and trooped to the houses of whores.

Lamentations 3:42 (ESV) — 42 “We have transgressed and rebelled, and you have not forgiven.

Hosea 1:6 (ESV) — 6 She conceived again and bore a daughter. And the Lord said to him, “Call her name No Mercy, for I will no more have mercy on the house of Israel, to forgive them at all.

Luke 18:10–14 (ESV) — 10 “Two men went up into the temple to pray, one a Pharisee and the other a tax collector. 11 The Pharisee, standing by himself, prayed thus: ‘God, I thank you that I am not like other men, extortioners, unjust, adulterers, or even like this tax collector. 12 I fast twice a week; I give tithes of all that I get.’ 13 But the tax collector, standing far off, would not even lift up his eyes to heaven, but beat his breast, saying, ‘God, be merciful to me, a sinner!’ 14 I tell you, this man went down to his house justified, rather than the other. For everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, but the one who humbles himself will be exalted.”

Hebrews 10:28–31 (ESV) — 28 Anyone who has set aside the law of Moses dies without mercy on the evidence of two or three witnesses. 29 How much worse punishment, do you think, will be deserved by the one who has trampled underfoot the Son of God, and has profaned the blood of the covenant by which he was sanctified, and has outraged the Spirit of grace? 30 For we know him who said, “Vengeance is mine; I will repay.” And again, “The Lord will judge his people.” 31 It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God.

Towards those whose hearts are hardened

Jos 11:20; Mt 13:13–15; Is 6:9–10; Jn 9:39–41; Jn 20:23

Joshua 11:20 (ESV) — 20 For it was the Lord’s doing to harden their hearts that they should come against Israel in battle, in order that they should be devoted to destruction and should receive no mercy but be destroyed, just as the Lord commanded Moses.

Matthew 13:13–15 (ESV) — 13 This is why I speak to them in parables, because seeing they do not see, and hearing they do not hear, nor do they understand. 14 Indeed, in their case the prophecy of Isaiah is fulfilled that says: “ ‘ “You will indeed hear but never understand, and you will indeed see but never perceive.” 15 For this people’s heart has grown dull, and with their ears they can barely hear, and their eyes they have closed, lest they should see with their eyes and hear with their ears and understand with their heart and turn, and I would heal them.’

Isaiah 6:9–10 (ESV) — 9 And he said, “Go, and say to this people: “ ‘Keep on hearing, but do not understand; keep on seeing, but do not perceive.’ 10 Make the heart of this people dull, and their ears heavy, and blind their eyes; lest they see with their eyes, and hear with their ears, and understand with their hearts, and turn and be healed.”

John 9:39–41 (ESV) — 39 Jesus said, “For judgment I came into this world, that those who do not see may see, and those who see may become blind.” 40 Some of the Pharisees near him heard these things, and said to him, “Are we also blind?” 41 Jesus said to them, “If you were blind, you would have no guilt; but now that you say, ‘We see,’ your guilt remains.

John 20:23 (ESV) — 23 If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven them; if you withhold forgiveness from any, it is withheld.”

Towards those who blaspheme against the Holy Spirit

Mt 12:31–32 Blasphemy against the Spirit probably involves attributing the authenticating miracles of Jesus Christ to the work of Satan rather than to the power of the Holy Spirit.

Matthew 12:31–32 (ESV) — 31 Therefore I tell you, every sin and blasphemy will be forgiven people, but the blasphemy against the Spirit will not be forgiven. 32 And whoever speaks a word against the Son of Man will be forgiven, but whoever speaks against the Holy Spirit will not be forgiven, either in this age or in the age to come.

See also Ne 4:5; Is 2:9

Nehemiah 4:5 (ESV) — 5 Do not cover their guilt, and let not their sin be blotted out from your sight, for they have provoked you to anger in the presence of the builders.

Isaiah 2:9 (ESV) — 9 So man is humbled, and each one is brought low— do not forgive them!

True love is forgiving

Ro 5:8; 1 Co 13:4–5

Romans 5:8 (ESV) — 8 but God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.

1 Corinthians 13:4–5 (ESV) — 4 Love is patient and kind; love does not envy or boast; it is not arrogant 5 or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful;

See also Ps 86:5; Ps 130:3–4; Da 9:9; Mic 7:18; Ac 13:38; Ro 15:7; 2 Co 2:5–11; Eph 4:32; Col 3:13

Psalm 86:5 (ESV) — 5 For you, O Lord, are good and forgiving, abounding in steadfast love to all who call upon you.

Psalm 130:3–4 (ESV) — 3 If you, O Lord, should mark iniquities, O Lord, who could stand? 4 But with you there is forgiveness, that you may be feared.

Daniel 9:9 (ESV) — 9 To the Lord our God belong mercy and forgiveness, for we have rebelled against him

Micah 7:18 (ESV) — 18 Who is a God like you, pardoning iniquity and passing over transgression for the remnant of his inheritance? He does not retain his anger forever, because he delights in steadfast love.

Acts 13:38 (ESV) — 38 Let it be known to you therefore, brothers, that through this man forgiveness of sins is proclaimed to you,

Romans 15:7 (ESV) — 7 Therefore welcome one another as Christ has welcomed you, for the glory of God.

2 Corinthians 2:5–11 (ESV) — 5 Now if anyone has caused pain, he has caused it not to me, but in some measure—not to put it too severely—to all of you. 6 For such a one, this punishment by the majority is enough, 7 so you should rather turn to forgive and comfort him, or he may be overwhelmed by excessive sorrow. 8 So I beg you to reaffirm your love for him. 9 For this is why I wrote, that I might test you and know whether you are obedient in everything. 10 Anyone whom you forgive, I also forgive. Indeed, what I have forgiven, if I have forgiven anything, has been for your sake in the presence of Christ, 11 so that we would not be outwitted by Satan; for we are not ignorant of his designs.

Ephesians 4:32 (ESV) — 32 Be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, as God in Christ forgave you.

Colossians 3:13 (ESV) — 13 bearing with one another and, if one has a complaint against another, forgiving each other; as the Lord has forgiven you, so you also must forgive.

Mayshack, J. L. (1979). 175 Sermon Outlines (p. 5). Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Book House.

Scripture Ref. LK 17:3-4

Scripture Ref. 7: 59-60

Scripture Ref. 6:37

“Father, forgive them; for they do not know what they are doing” (23:34a). As Howard Marshall points out, a criminal on the cross in the Roman Empire might confess his sins, but Jesus knows his own innocence.19 A criminal might curl se and spit on his executors as one final act of rebellion, but Jesus does something rather opposite. His heart goes out to these enemies and he prays to the Father for grace upon them because of their ignorance. What Jesus models here is radical compassion; though he was utterly wronged, his heart was turned to his crucifiers in love.

Walter Brueggemann offers a profound reflection on these words from the cross that captures well Luke’s theology of forgiveness. Brueggemann explains how the executors are busy at work in the way of violence, but Jesus quietly exercises a ministry of “suffering love.”20 He notes that there is no immediate answer from heaven when Jesus asks the Father to forgive.

The answer that leaps to forgiveness is at Easter. God’s forgiveness at Easter makes it the decisive moment in the history of the world. In Easter God has no vengeance, no grudge, no retaliation, only a reach into the hate and death of the world to make all things new. We live in the wake of that sweeping action. So when you hear in the liturgy, “Christ is risen; he is risen indeed,” mark that as an answer to this prayer, as forgiveness. The world is forgiven. The men of hate and violence are forgiven. The greedy, cruel executioners are forgiven. The pattern of death is broken. This is not a Friday moment, but it is a Sunday answer to the Friday prayer.

Reference: Walter Brueggemann is a American Protestant of the Old Testament. He is a Old Testament Scholar and is very Influential and still now for the Last few Decades.

The Subversiveness of Christian Forgiveness

Forgiveness does not come easy for anyone in any culture. Still, the power of Christian forgiveness in the earliest church is rather striking when we consider the competitive nature of the first-century world. Because honor and public recognition were such central values in Jesus’ world (among Jews as well as Gentiles), letting go of being wronged was not especially prized. In fact, according to Greek and Roman cultural standards, retaliation and retribution were promoted. Aristotle, for example, comments, “It is noble to avenge oneself on one’s enemies and not to come to terms with them: for retaliation is just … and not to put up with defeat is courage” (Rhet. 1367a).22 The rationale behind this is aptly explicated by David Cohen: “vengeance is positively valued and triply motivated. Men take vengeance because they fear shame and desire to preserve and enhance their honor as well as because of the pleasure which its contemplation and exaction bring. They also take vengeance because in such societies it is the only way to deter others from harming them.”23

It is in such a world that Jesus promoted forgiveness and a gracious response to wrongdoing. In the words of David Aune, “the forgiveness petition goes on the offensive by proposing preemptive forgiveness, no matter what the offense.”24 Along these lines—of forgiveness and clemency standing in the face of competition and revenge—I cannot help remembering the stirring words of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

Why should we love our enemies? The first reason is fairly obvious. Returning hate for hate multiplies hate, adding deeper darkness to a night already devoid of stars. Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that. Hate multiplies hate, violence multiplies violence, and toughness multiplies toughness in a descending spiral of destruction. So when Jesus says, “Love your enemies” [Matt 5:44], he is setting forth a profound and ultimately inescapable admonition. Have we not come to such an impasse in the modern world that we must love our enemies—or else? The chain reaction of evil—hate begetting hate, wars producing more wars—must be broken, or we shall be plunged into the dark abyss of annihilation.25

Martin Luther King (1929–1968). American clergyman, activist and prominent leader in the African-American civil rights movement born in Atlanta (USA). March 1964. (Credit: Marion S. Trikosko/Wikimedia Commons, LOC-image)

Forgive and Forget?

It was Shakespeare’s King Lear who said “Forget and forgive,” but most people think that this phrase is inspired by the Bible. Perhaps there is a connection to Jeremiah 31:34, where the Lord says about Israel in view of a promised new covenant, “I will forgive their iniquity and remember their sin no more.” But does God really forget? Can anyone “forget” a wrong? And should they?

Metropolitan Kallistos Ware offers wise counsel on the tricky matter of forgiveness. When it comes to small squabbles, trivial matters, Ware says, “allow them to slip quietly away into oblivion.”26 Don’t hold on to bitterness for such things. But what about those weightier matters? Ware says that one cannot forget such wrongs, and indeed we should not forget them, at the very least because we wish for these wrongs not to happen again to ourselves and to others. So, Ware says, we must remember, but the trick is how we remember: “We are not to remember in a spirit of hatred and recrimination, or for the sake of revenge.” We must learn to heal our memories, recall with mourning, and remember with love. [Chewing] [Enduring the Burden of Daily Forbearance]

Forgiveness and mercy lie at the very heart of Christianity. To be Christian is to receive the grace, mercy, and forgiveness of God through Jesus Christ by faith. The year 2016 was a presidential election year in the United States with a tight race between Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton. Throughout his campaign, Trump claimed to represent and defend Christianity, yet he repeated publicly that he never asks God for forgiveness. “I like to be good,” he said. “I don’t like to ask for forgiveness. And I am good. I don’t do a lot of things that are bad.”1 When asked about what he does when he makes a bad choice, Trump responded, “I just go on and try to do a better job from there. I don’t think [I have ever asked God for forgiveness]. If I think I do something wrong, I think, I just try and make it right. I don’t bring God into that picture. I don’t.”2

In the book of Jonah, the reader is privy to an interesting case study in the wondrously strange mercy of God. Jonah, God’s prophet, is sent to Nineveh to warn the (pagan) Ninevites of God’s wrath such that they might repent and be spared. As the story goes, Jonah disobeys God and heads in the opposite direction to Tarshish. After a somewhat humorous series of providential events that leads Jonah to Nineveh, the reluctant prophet delivers God’s message and the Ninevites repent and are spared.

Jonah becomes angry at God’s graciousness towards these non-Israelites, and he pouts: “O LORD! Is not this what I said while I was still in my own country? That is why I fled to Tarshish at the beginning; for I knew that you are a gracious God and merciful, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love, and ready to relent from punishing” (Jonah 4:2). Note the echoes of Exodus 34:6–7 here. We will never really know if Jonah changed his mind about the Ninevites, but the book of Jonah ends their conversation with this question from God: “Should I not be concerned about Nineveh, that great city, in which there are more than a hundred and twenty thousand persons who do not know their right hand from their left, and also many animals?” (4:11). This cliffhanger was meant to push Israel (some no doubt sympathetic with Jonah) in the direction of sharing divine compassion, mercy, and forgiveness. This, indeed, is the perfect backdrop for looking at the LP. [Forgiveness in Early Judaism]

What is forgiveness? Stephen Westerholm succinctly defines biblical forgiveness as “the act by which an offended party removes an offense from further consideration, thereby establishing a basis for harmonious relations with the offender.”8 The Greek noun aphēsis and verb aphiēmi represent the most common ways that “forgiveness” appears in the New Testament. This word group carries the idea of letting go or releasing from some constraint; in the case of “forgiveness” it means releasing from a debt or obligation. Notice the way aphesis is used in the famous Luke 4:18–19 “Nazareth Manifesto” where Jesus proclaims (quoting Isaiah), “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to bring good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim release (aphēsis) to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.” Orthodox theologian Metropolitan Callisto Ware uses similar captivity/freedom imagery to describe Christian forgiveness: “Forgiveness means release from a prison in which all doors are locked on the inside.”9 Those who are unforgiving, Ware explains, “grasp, retain, and hold fast.” Alternatively “the forgiving let go.”10

Reference: Stephen Westerholm Is a Professor of Early Christianity in the Department of Religious Studies at McMaster University, Canada where he has taught since 1984.

aphesis meaning The lost of a unstressed vowel at the Beginning of a word ( of a around to form round)

The mercy of God is one of God’s communicable attributes, an attribute that humans can emulate in their relationships with each other. Throughout the Bible, God’s mercy is pictured not only as God’s disposition but as his action on behalf of an undeserving people. The Bible often pairs other divine attributes with “mercy”: compassion, grace, faithfulness, kindness.

Mercy is a relational expression of God’s character and flows from his attributes of goodness and love. It is a vital aspect of God’s grace-based covenant relationship with his people. God’s mercy is evident whenever he delays punishment, even when his people are lost in sin and not aware of the relational consequences this sin entails (Exod 34:6–7; Ezek 33:10–11). When the circumstances of God’s people are dire—due to impending conflict, physical and spiritual persecution, or other types of suffering—those who fear God appeal precisely to his merciful character. They pray with an expectation that he will willingly and powerfully act as he has in the past (Dan 9:17–19; Pss 25:6–7; 51:1–2). Over and over again in Scripture, God demonstrates his mercy by saving, redeeming, and restoring his people.

Because mercy is a communicable attribute of God, the Bible also declares that God’s people should have the same disposition toward others, and that his people should act on their behalf (Eph 2:1–10). In the New Testament, Jesus condemns the Pharisees for their lack of mercy, and he accentuates the importance of mercy coupled with action through his teaching (Matt 23:23–24; see also the parable of the good Samaritan in Luke 19:25–37). Jesus not only teaches about God’s mercy; he embodies it. In his role as the Son of David, he demonstrates that he is the physical revelation of God’s mercy (Matt 9:27–31).

Bibliography

Gupta, Nijay K. The Lord’s Prayer. Edited by Leslie Andres. Smyth & Helwys Bible Commentary. Macon, GA: Smyth & Helwys Publishing, Incorporated, 2017.

Grudem, Wayne A. Systematic Theology: An Introduction to Biblical Doctrine. Leicester, England; Grand Rapids, MI: Inter-Varsity Press; Zondervan Pub. House, 2004.

Barbieri, Louis A., Jr. “Matthew.” In The Bible Knowledge Commentary: An Exposition of the Scriptures, edited by J. F. Walvoord and R. B. Zuck, 2:62. Wheaton, IL: Victor Books, 1985.

In Conclusion we as Christians have a Responsible, To be receptive and Listen to the Heart Beat of God His Heart is Love, compassion, forgiveness, which he Has shown us unwavering our commitment to him is Love, Compassion, forgiveness, for all Humanity in these trying Times.

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