Skip to main content

Yeah, you may be right, but...

If a fellow believer hurts you, go and tell him—work it out between the two of you. If he listens, you’ve made a friend. If he won’t listen, take one or two others along so that the presence of witnesses will keep things honest, and try again. If he still won’t listen, tell the church. If he won’t listen to the church, you’ll have to start over from scratch, confront him with the need for repentance, and offer again God’s forgiving love. (Matthew 18:15)

Do you know what strikes me the most from this passage? The extreme obsession with 'pursuing' forgiveness and restoration. Let's get honest here - we rarely "go after" forgiveness like it was something to be pursued until we had resolution. If someone tells us to bug off and refuses our intentions to be restored, we may try again, but do we really have this type of tenacity to "offer again" that grace and love time and time again? If you follow this passage, you might just find yourself in a 'cycle' of going, offering, and being rejected - repeatedly! But...God tells us to not give up - instead we are to keep it up!

That's some serious obedience there, my friends. Get rejected once and you may return again to see if it was just a fluke, but get rejected time and time again and you don't want to 'go again'. Why? You see no point in it, do you? The one who has something against you refuses to 'give in', let alone forgive. Most individuals would just walk away from that relationship and see it as 'permanently damaged' by whatever it was that caused the riff in the first place. God's plan is that we never 'walk away', but that we return time and time again - remembering his grace goes way beyond the offense - it goes to the heart.

I am not going to debate this whole take a few witnesses or the church leaders with you in this passage. I really just want us to see that God values relationships - he sees the importance in restoration. Why? We need each other - we need what the other adds to the relationship - even when what they add is OUR growth experience. It isn't about the other person - it is about us. Forgiveness isn't for the wimpy. It takes some tenacity to 'go again' to someone who doesn't seem to want to admit they need it! It also means we have to take some time with Jesus to get over the 'pride' we exhibit from time to time when we don't want to go to the other individual to offer forgiveness.

That is how we grow through the experience - we lay down our pride, time and time again. In time, we learn what Jesus wants here - to value the relationship more than we value 'being right' all the time. If you have ever sought forgiveness when you knew you were 'right' in the matter, you know how hard that can be, but the value of the relationship was so much more important than 'being right' will ever be. Just sayin!
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Thanks for leaving a comment if this message has spoken to your heart.

Popular posts from this blog

What did obedience cost Mary and Joseph?

As we have looked at the birth of Christ, we have considered the fact he was born of a virgin, with an earthly father so willing to honor God with his life that he married a woman who was already pregnant.  In that day and time, a very taboo thing.  We also saw how the mother of Christ was chosen by God and given the dramatic news that she would carry the Son of God.  Imagine her awe, but also see her tremendous amount of fear as she would have received this announcement, knowing all she knew about the time in which she lived about how a woman out of wedlock showing up pregnant would be treated.  We also explored the lowly birth of Jesus in a stable of sorts, surrounded by animals, visited by shepherds, and then honored by magi from afar.  The announcement of his birth was by angels - start to finish.  Mary heard from an angel (a messenger from God), while Joseph was set at ease by a messenger from God on another occasion - assuring him the thing he was about to do in marrying Mary wa
Post a Comment
Read more

A brilliant display indeed

Love from the center of who you are ; don’t fake it. Run for dear life from evil; hold on for dear life to good. Be good friends who love deeply ; practice playing second fiddle. Don’t burn out; keep yourselves fueled and aflame. Be alert servants of the Master, cheerfully expectant. Don’t quit in hard times; pray all the harder. (Romans 12:9-12) Integrity and Intensity don't seem to fit together all that well, but they are uniquely interwoven traits which actually complement each other. "Love from the center of who you are; don't fake it." God asks for us to have some intensity (fervor) in how we love (from the center of who we are), but he also expects us to have integrity in our love as he asks us to be real in our love (don't fake it). They are indeed integral to each other. At first, we may only think of integrity as honesty - some adherence to a moral code within. I believe there is a little more to integrity than meets the eye. In the most literal sense,
Post a Comment
Read more

Do me a favor

If you’ve gotten anything at all out of following Christ, if his love has made any difference in your life, if being in a community of the Spirit means anything to you, if you have a heart, if you care—then do me a favor: Agree with each other, love each other, be deep-spirited friends. Don’t push your way to the front; don’t sweet-talk your way to the top. Put yourself aside, and help others get ahead. Don’t be obsessed with getting your own advantage. Forget yourselves long enough to lend a helping hand. (Philippians 2:1-4) Has God's love made ANY difference in your life? What is that difference? Most of us will likely say that our lives were changed for the good, while others will say there was a dramatic change. Some left behind lifestyles marked by all manner of outward sin - like drug addiction, alcoholism, prostitution, or even thievery. There are many that will admit the things they left behind were just a bit subtler - what we can call inward sin - things like jealousy,
Post a Comment
Read more