Darrell Ferguson

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Contents

PART 1: Reconciliation

Chapter 1: Importance, Urgency & Priority …………….. 2
Chapter 2: How to Reconcile …………………….……... 8
Chapter 3: Confrontation ……………………………… 18
Chapter 4: Three Principles of Communication ……….. 26
Chapter 5: Rebuke ………………………………..…… 34

PART 2: Forgiveness

Chapter 6: How to Forgive like God Forgives …...……. 39
Chapter 7: Jesus’ Teaching on Forgiveness …………… 56
Chapter 8: Questions about Forgiveness ………….…… 67
What about Forgiving Yourself?
What about Forgiving God?
When God Doesn’t Forgive, Must We?

Appendix A ….……………………………………….. 79
Reconciliation Worksheet
Confrontation Worksheet
Appendix B ….……………………………………….. 86
Repentance

PART 1

Reconciliation

CHAPTER 1

Importance, urgency & Priority

Importance
	Scripture places a huge premium on reconciliation of broken relationships – more than we naturally do. Our natural tendency when we have been hurt deeply - or repeatedly - or both, is to flee and prevent it from happening again. When we do that, we are placing the prevention of pain above the importance of people, which is a twisted value system. Relationships are far more important than avoidance of pain. 
Listen to how important it is to Jesus that we reconcile our broken relationships: 

MATTHEW 5:22  “But I tell you that anyone who is angry with his brother will be subject to judgment. Again, anyone who says to his brother, ‘Raca,’ is answerable to the Sanhedrin. But anyone who says, ‘You fool!’ will be in danger of the fire of hell.”

	John said the same thing:

1 JOHN 3:15  Anyone who hates his brother is a murderer, and you know that no murderer has eternal life in him.

Jesus and John are both saying this: People who hate their brother go to hell! The restoration of broken relationships is extremely important to God.	One of the most striking truths in the book of Ephesians is the importance of the unity of the Church to God. Unity and peace within the Church is of supreme value to Him for a number of reasons, not the least of which is the fact that the way we interact in the Church is how God displays the greatness of His wisdom to the rulers and authorities in the heavenly realms.

EPHESIANS 3:10  His intent was that now, through the church, the manifold wisdom of God should be made known to the rulers and authorities in the heavenly realms …

So there is really a lot at stake in this matter.

ROMANS 15:5-6  May the God who gives endurance and encouragement give you a spirit of unity among yourselves as you follow Christ Jesus, so that with one heart and mouth you may glorify the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. 

It is through our unity that we glorify Him. What is at stake is nothing less than the very glory of God.

Urgency
Not only is reconciliation important; it is also urgent. There are some things that are important, but they can wait until tomorrow. Not this.

MATTHEW 5:23-25  “Therefore, if you are offering your gift at the altar and there remember that your brother has something against you, leave your gift there in front of the altar. First go and be reconciled to your brother; then come and offer your gift. Settle matters quickly with your adversary who is taking you to court.”

It is urgent. It can’t wait. If there is something between you and a brother, God calls on you to take the initiative to “settle matters.” And it is to be done quickly. Not next month. Not tomorrow. Not today after church. Now. 
Nine times out of ten if you handle a problem right away, it is solved forever. People tend to be amazingly forgiving when you immediately humble yourself and seek reconciliation. But if you wait, it intensifies in ever-widening circles. Hearts harden, bitterness builds, emotions become inflamed. And then what could have been solved by just a few humble words may take months of arduous effort. 
I recently met with a pastor who said he once was talking to a close friend of his about someone who he felt should not be on the worship team because of some significant weaknesses. And the friend said, “Oh, I wish you hadn’t told me that.”
“Why? I thought we were close and could talk about those kinds of things?”
“I know, but now I think a little bit less of that guy. I think this is the kind of thing you should talk to that person about directly.”
“You’re right. I will.”
And so the next day this pastor gets a call from his friend: “How did it go when you talked to that guy?”
“Oh, I haven’t had a chance to give him a call yet.”
“Hold on a minute.”
So he puts the pastor on hold, and a second later comes back on and says, “Okay, we are now on a three-way call. You were telling me yesterday that you had some thoughts about this person. Now you can tell him what’s on your mind.” 
This pastor told me that story and then said, “I learned right then something about what it means to keep short accounts.” 
His friend had a good understanding of the heart of the Lord on this matter. Reconciliation is urgent. 
If you think of it, the picture Jesus paints about leaving your gift in front of the altar is a bit comical. There was only one altar in Israel. It was in the temple in Jerusalem. Jesus was speaking to people from Galilee – at least a three-day journey from Jerusalem. So there you are offering a gift, you suddenly remember someone is mad at you, and so instead of taking a few minutes to complete the sacrifice, you just leave the animal lying there. You make the journey to wherever your brother is (most likely Galilee for these people), and you set things right the best you can. Then you start heading back. Meanwhile, back at the altar, the line is really getting backed up as people are waiting for you to come finish your offering. By day five the smell of that animal is driving everyone out of the temple. 
For us it would be as if Jesus said, “If you’re out of town taking communion, and remember someone is mad at you, tell the people at that church to hold on, get on the first flight home, reconcile, fly back, then finish with the communion service.” I’m not sure it would have been possible to carry out what Jesus said in a literal way, but the point is clear. 

Higher Priority than Worship
Reconciliation is extremely urgent to God, and rises above even worship as a priority! God is not interested in so-called “worship” while a person is in unrepentant sin. And if you have not made an effort to reconcile a broken relationship, you are in unrepentant sin. If you are like most Christians, that doesn’t give you much time. Most Christians generally don’t go more than a few minutes without some kind of prayer, but prayer is a waste of time as long as you are harboring unrepentant sin in your heart.
If you know there is something you need to do that you’re not doing, or if you are planning some future sin, you are in a state of unrepentance. When that is the case God will not listen to your prayers.

PROVERBS 28:9  If anyone turns a deaf ear to the law, even his prayers are detestable.
PSALM 66:18  If I had cherished sin in my heart, the Lord would not have listened….
ISAIAH 58:4  Your fasting ends in quarreling and strife, and in striking each other with wicked fists. You cannot fast as you do today and expect your voice to be heard on high.

That is why 1 Peter 3:7 says, in effect, “Husbands, you had better be considerate as you live with your wives so that nothing will hinder your prayers.” If you have a fight with your spouse, don’t bother praying until you repent, and are willing to make an attempt to reconcile. Who knows how many Christian couples have been praying about their job situation, they’ve been praying for a house, praying about their finances, praying for their kids, etc., and those prayers are not being answered because they are harboring some bitterness, or because the husband is not being considerate, and there is no true repentance.
That is a problem in the church too. We pray for God to do great things through this church. We pray for souls to be saved, and for people to grow and for God to glorify Himself in magnificent ways through us. But then you get a few people in the church who are holding on to bitterness and anger and it short-circuits those prayers.

1 TIMOTHY 2:8  I want men everywhere to lift up holy hands in prayer, without anger or disputing.

Make sure the hands you lift up to God are holy, and make sure you are not harboring anger in your heart toward anyone, and make sure no dispute is going on between you and someone else. Otherwise your prayers are nothing but noise. Now watch out at this point, because Satan will try to con you into using this principle as an excuse not to worship. People think, Well, I’m still mad at him, so I guess I won’t take communion. Or I guess I’ll drop out of church for a while. Or, I’m in sin with this relationship, so I guess I’m in no position to pray, so I just won’t pray. None of those things are acceptable. 

MATTHEW 5:24b   “be reconciled to your brother; then come and offer your gift.”

The solution is not to stop worshiping. The solution is to repent and then continue worshiping. If you would rather give up worship than give up the sin, there is no reason to believe you are a Christian. Usually when we get into a fight we want to wait for just the right opportunity for reconciliation. Jesus says, “No. The moment you offend, seek to reconcile.” 
The only time you don’t seek immediate reconciliation is if the other person makes that impossible. If the other person is violent and irrational, so that even the most humble, gracious, loving attempt to reconcile will only make matters worse and escalate the situation, then it may be wise to allow the person to cool off. But usually that is not the case. The vast majority of the time a soft, humble answer will turn away wrath.
Now, you may need to wait a while (maybe a long while) before you confront the person about his sin. But even if you have to wait days or weeks or months for a good time to do that, in most cases you can still seek to reconcile immediately by humbling yourself and confessing the wrong on your side. 
Reconciliation is urgent because waiting can cause the problem to grow. Reconciliation is urgent because God will not accept your worship or listen to your prayers until you are willing to reconcile. And reconciliation is urgent for one other reason:

MATTHEW 5:25-26  “Settle matters quickly with your adversary who is taking you to court. Do it while you are still with him on the way, or he may hand you over to the judge, and the judge may hand you over to the officer, and you may be thrown into prison. I tell you the truth, you will not get out until you have paid the last penny.”

Jesus is not giving tips on how to handle the legal system. In the context Jesus is talking about the heavenly court, not an earthly one. What He is saying is, if you offend someone, that person can go to God with his complaint, and God may just give him justice by punishing you. You’d better run, and get to your brother before your brother takes it before the Judge in heaven, and you end up being chastised by God.
PROVERBS 6:3-5  … since you have fallen into your neighbor's hands: Go and humble yourself; press your plea with your neighbor! Allow no sleep to your eyes, no slumber to your eyelids. Free yourself….

Chapter 2

How to Reconcile

Reconciliation has to be genuine; it can’t just be a cease-fire. Jesus gave two commands. The first is in Matthew 5:24: “be reconciled to your brother.” This root of this word reconciled means “to change.” The idea is to change the relationship from where it is now to where it should be. The second command is in verse 25: “Settle matters quickly with your adversary.” To settle matters means to make friends. It is not just a matter of appeasing the person, or agreeing to act cordially around each other. God is not interested in us just hiding our sin. He wants full, genuine restoration of the relationship. How can that be achieved? 
Maybe you have a relationship that is broken and you are more than willing to reconcile, but you don’t know what to do. Maybe the rift between you is deep. There have been huge offenses, and a whole lot of pain. And it is way beyond the world’s shallow “kiss and make up” approach. It is way beyond just shaking hands and saying, “Let’s let bygones be bygones.” The bygones are not really bygone. There have been many hurts, and a history of hurts. And every time you try to patch things up, there’s another crisis. Our human efforts alone won’t be enough to repair a relationship like that. We need God’s Word. 
So what does God’s Word say that can help us? I think we can boil most of what Scripture says about this down to three steps:
1. Repent
2. Reconcile
3. Restore

STEP 1: Repent
The first priority is always to address the sin on your end. Is it possible that there is not any sin on your side of the conflict? Yes. That is rarely the case, but sometimes it happens. But it probably doesn’t happen nearly as often as we think. If your conscience is clear, and you don’t know of any sin in your heart, don’t go by that. Usually in a conflict we are blinded to our own sins. 
So your first priority is to find out if there is sin in your heart that you have not addressed. Never point out sin in someone else’s life while there is still unrepentant sin in your life. 

MATTHEW 7:1-5  “Do not judge, or you too will be judged. For in the same way you judge others, you will be judged, and with the measure you use, it will be measured to you. Why do you look at the speck of sawdust in your brother’s eye and pay no attention to the plank in your own eye? How can you say to your brother, ‘Let me take the speck out of your eye,’ when all the time there is a plank in your own eye? You hypocrite, first take the plank out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to remove the speck from your brother’s eye.”

Jesus was not saying that we must be perfect before confronting someone. Just because you have sin in your life doesn’t mean there is a log in your eye. If that is what it meant, no one could ever help anyone with anything, and we would have to cut Matthew 18 and the other church discipline passages out of the Bible and black out all the verses that call us to admonish and rebuke one another. The point is simply that we are not to be hypocrites. 
The only sin that needs to be confronted is unrepentant sin. And it is hypocrisy for a person who has some unrepentant sin (in any area) to rebuke another person for unrepentance. However, once you have repented over your sin, it is not hypocritical for you to confront someone else who is not repentant (even if you both struggle with the same sin). So find out if there is sin on your side of the conflict.
There are two great sources for that information. One is God, and the other is the person who is mad at you. When you are in a conflict, spend some time in prayer and ask God to open your eyes to blind spots and areas where you may have sinned … maybe in your tone of voice, or by insensitivity, or harshness. Ask the Lord to give you the humility to accept the truth about your sin and to not become defensive. 
Then, once you have done that, go to the person and ask if he suspects any sin on your part. (Make sure you bring a large pad of paper with you, and don’t be surprised if you end up with a longer list than you expected.) If some of the things the person tells you are off base, you can talk with him about that, but not now. That can come later. Doing it at this time can derail the whole process. Besides, you don’t even know for sure what is off base until you go home and pray about these things and give them some serious, honest consideration. 
And be careful about how many things you decide to work on changing at once. If there are ninety-eight things on the list, just prioritize the top three (the three your spouse believes are most important to God). Usually, if you take care of those, the other ninety-five tend to work themselves out. 
What if the person doesn’t know of any specific sins on my part? If you really want to know if sin on your part is contributing to the conflict, examine your desires. James 4 spells out exactly what causes fights and quarrels. 

The Cause of Conflicts

JAMES 4:1-5  What causes fights and quarrels among you? Don't they come from your desires that battle within you? You want something but don't get it. You kill and covet, but you cannot have what you want. You quarrel and fight. You do not have, because you do not ask God. When you ask, you do not receive, because you ask with wrong motives, that you may spend what you get on your pleasures. You adulterous people, don't you know that friendship with the world is hatred toward God? Anyone who chooses to be a friend of the world becomes an enemy of God. 

The reason we have quarrels is because of our desires that come from our adulterous lusts for what the world has to offer. You have those in your heart, and I have those in my heart. And when there is a broken relationship, my first priority is to search my own heart for those sinful lusts, and repent of them. Always ask yourself that first. Anytime you have a dispute, the very first reaction should be to shut out of your mind the other person’s sins, and ask yourself, Is there any desire in my heart that has contributed to this conflict? 
And remember, it is not the desire itself that is sin – it is only when we elevate the object of that desire to the point of being an idol. And you know you’ve done that when you will sin to get it, sin to keep it, or sin if you don’t get it. So, you have a desire for your kids to listen to you. That is a good desire. But if you sin when you don’t get it, it is become an idol. So the first thing you do when you get into a dispute is search your heart for out-of-control desires. You get in a fight with your wife, and you search your heart: What was it that I was desiring so much that I was willing to snap at my wife? You find yourself avoiding someone at church, and you realize that relationship is not what it ought to be, so you ask: Is there some desire in my heart that is driving this quarrel? Almost always, when there is a dispute, it is because of a selfish desire in my heart. And until that is dealt with, dealing with the other person should be a zero priority.
I have found this particular principle to be incredibly helpful in my own life. It used to be that when I started to become irritated, I noticed it and thought, I shouldn’t be getting irritated, but it seemed like it was out of my control. Since I learned this principle, though, I’ve been training myself – the very first moment I sense I’m getting a little irritated at someone – to ask myself, Which desire is trying to take over in my heart? It is amazing how often simply finding the answer to that question immediately eliminates the feelings of irritation. I’m trying to concentrate on something, for example, and one of my kids comes in asking a question, and I start to feel annoyed. That is when I stop and think, Okay, which desire is getting out of control in my heart? Oh, the desire for perfect silence at whatever moment I want it. That desire has now displaced God as my highest priority. 
Once I put it into words, suddenly that desire is not so important anymore, because it has been unmasked. When I put it into words, I’m able to see what an unreasonable desire it is, and how relatively unimportant it is. Certainly it is not so important that it is worth an ungodly response in my heart.
This principle from Scripture will help you deal with any ways you may have sinned in responding to others. First, identify which desires are driving the dispute, confess your sin to God and to the person, turn your back on that sin, and ask the person’s forgiveness. Jesus commanded that we be reconciled. If there is sin on your part, reconciliation begins with you: Confess your sin to the person, apologize, and ask forgiveness.

Apologizing 
Be very careful at this point about phony apologies. When you say you’re sorry, never follow that with the words but or if. “I’m sorry but” means “I’m not sorry.” “I’m sorry I yelled at you, but you just make me so mad sometimes.” That is an excuse, not an apology. You can’t apologize and make excuses at the same time, because if you think your behavior is excusable, why would you be sorry for it? 
And what does “I’m sorry if” mean? It means maybe I’m sorry; maybe I’m not (probably not). “I’m sorry if I got you angry.” That is not an apology. If you must keep speaking after the word sorry, the best thing to say next is just “I was wrong” or “I should have …” “Honey, I’m sorry I snapped at you. I was wrong. I should have thought more about what you were going through.” 
When confessing sin, it is very important to confess the sin of the heart and not just the action itself. If I snap at my wife, it is not enough to simply acknowledge that snapping at her was wrong. My words and tone of voice may have resulted from a number of different causes in my heart. It may be that the tone was completely inadvertent. There was no anger, no irritation, no selfishness, no judgmentalism, no impatience – only the purist of motives; and the way it sounded was due only to poor communication skill and insensitivity. If that is the case, I will confess that to her. In most cases, however, harsh words do come from a greater sin in the heart. And if that is not acknowledged, confessed and forsaken (turned away from), then there is no real repentance.
And once you’ve apologized, ask forgiveness. That can be a great indicator of whether you are really repentant. True repentance longs for forgiveness. An unrepentant heart will say, “I’m sorry,” but not “Will you forgive me?” Asking for forgiveness is too much of an admission of sinfulness. If you find it hard to ask forgiveness, that is a good sign that there is no repentance in your heart. 
So you’ve identified your sin, repented, and sought forgiveness. Now what? The sin on your side is taken care of – or maybe there was no sin on your part. What do you do now?

STEP 2: Reconcile
Suppose you have asked forgiveness, and the person says, “Sure, I forgive you,” but you can tell the relationship is not reconciled? It is as cold as ever. Now what? Now that my conscience is clear, is my job done? No, not if I’m going to follow God’s example. 

It is Always Your Responsibility

2 CORINTHIANS 5:18  All this is from God, who reconciled us to himself through Christ….

I was the one who was in the wrong, not God. And yet He took the initiative to reconcile. And it came at great cost to Him.

ROMANS 5:10  … we were reconciled to him through the death of his Son….

COLOSSIANS 1:22  … he has reconciled you by Christ's physical body through death….

Reconciliation will cost you. In many ways you must be willing to pay the price for their sin. You endure the consequences of their sin, cover over that, and show love. 
We are not to wait until the one who offended us makes everything right. Imagine if God required us to have a full understanding of our sinfulness before He would forgive us. Biblical reconciliation is never a situation where you come 50 percent and they come 50 percent and you meet in the middle. Reconciliation is always your responsibility. If we are going to be like God, we must take the initiative and not wait for the other person – even if that person is 100 percent at fault and you have done nothing wrong. The Lord never gives us the option of concerning ourselves with the other person’s responsibility in a conflict. If you’re concerned about who is at fault, compare Matthew 5 with Matthew 18.

MATTHEW 5:23-24  … if you … remember that your brother has something against you … go and be reconciled…. 

In that one, you are at fault and the other person is the innocent party.

MATTHEW 18:15  If your brother sins against you, go and show him his fault….

First, Jesus said that if you are the one who sinned (your brother is the innocent party), it is your responsibility to take the initiative in seeking reconciliation. Then He says that if your brother is the one who sinned and you’re the innocent party, still, it is your responsibility to take the initiative in seeking reconciliation. Initiating reconciliation is always your responsibility. Your brother’s responsibility is not your concern; that is between him and God. As for you, it is always your responsibility to reconcile – even if the other guy’s complaint is bogus. 
Look what Jesus says he has against you in verse 23 – something. That is all it has to be – anything, legitimate or not. The issue here is anger. Ask yourself, is the person angry? If the answer is yes, then do what you can to reconcile. Our temptation is to think, She is mad; it is her problem. I’ll just read the paper and ignore her until it blows over. Jesus doesn’t give us that option.

Full Reconciliation Requires Repentance 
on Both Sides
On the one hand, you are responsible to initiate reconciliation. On the other hand, complete reconciliation is not possible unless both parties are willing to seek it. In 2 Corinthians 5:18 Paul tells us that God was doing the reconciling. That is true, but it is also true that two verses later, in verse 20, Paul says: “We implore you on Christ's behalf: Be reconciled to God.” 
Full reconciliation of a broken relationship involves two sides. Part of it you can do by yourself, and part of it requires the other person’s cooperation.
That is why Romans 12:18 says, “If it is possible, as far as it depends on you, live at peace with everyone.” 
So which aspects depend on you – that is, which aspects of reconciliation are possible from your side alone? The surrounding verses make that clear. Regardless of what the other person does, you can do every one of the things commanded in this passage:

 ROMANS 12:17-21  Do not repay anyone evil for evil. Be careful to do what is right in the eyes of everybody. If it is possible, as far as it depends on you, live at peace with everyone. Do not take revenge, my friends, but leave room for God's wrath, for it is written: “It is mine to avenge; I will repay,” says the Lord. On the contrary: “If your enemy is hungry, feed him; if he is thirsty, give him something to drink. In doing this, you will heap burning coals on his head.” Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good.

If the other person is not willing to reconcile, you can’t have a fully restored relationship, and there can’t be full forgiveness at the highest level. But even if the other person is unwilling, you still have several responsibilities:

   1.	Do not retaliate (vv. 17,19)
   2.	As much as possible do what is right in the eyes of everyone involved (v. 17)
   3.	Bring about as much peacefulness as possible (v. 18)
   4.	Instead of harboring a grudge or punishing the person, show him love and kindness (v. 20).
   5.	Seek to overcome his evil with good (v. 21)

When Paul says as far as it depends on you, those five things are what he is talking about. If you do all five of those, and the person still wants nothing to do with you, you can have a clear conscience. But we can never use their unwillingness as an excuse for us to harbor a grudge. We must be faithful to do what we can, including those five things. And the fifth one is especially important.

Overcome Evil with Good
Overcome his evil with good (Rom. 12:21). That one statement gives three key insights into how to deal with someone who is behaving as an enemy. When you are involved in a dispute or someone is unloving to you, there are three things to remember:

• You are commanded to win the fight. Notice the only command in the verse: overcome. Pull out your biggest guns, because you are commanded to win. Overwhelm your opponent. If he hits you with a peashooter, pull out a .38. If he fires a rifle shot, respond with a tank. If he gets a tank, drop a nuclear bomb. Don’t be content to lose. 

• Your opponent is not the other person. This enemy you are fighting and that you are commanded to overcome is not the person who is hurting you. It is not any person at all. Your opponent that you are to defeat is evil.

• The only weaponry you are permitted to use is “good.” We are not told to overcome by any means possible. We are told very specifically what weapon we are to use.

Those three principles make for some interesting warfare. The person hurts you, and the war has begun. You are never to fight against that person, but you do declare all out war on the evil. And you defeat it not by adding more evil of your own (our natural reaction), but by only using good. So he hurts you; you blast him with kindness. He doesn’t accept your kindness and fires off some more evil – time to pull out the big guns. Now you double and triple your kindness and acts of love. As much as he escalates evil, you escalate the good until the evil is annihilated, and you win your brother’s heart.
Don’t lose sight of that goal. The point is not to do phony acts of kindness just to make the person feel bad. You should have the genuine goal of winning his heart. And if you have mixed motives, you’re not using good as your only weapon. If the evil is the enemy, obviously you don’t want to be introducing more of the enemy onto the battlefield!

Love One Another
But what if I just don’t like the person? How can I make myself love him? That is hard, but it is essential. So many Scriptures call us to love one another with deep affection that there is no getting around that command. 
One of the best ways to generate love in your heart for someone is through praise. Shut out of your mind the blameworthy or ugly things about that person. Do not let yourself think about those things. Watch for things the person does right. Be on the lookout for traits of godliness, and things that are praiseworthy. Make it your goal to praise that person for something legitimate every time you see him. If you do that, and if you are willing to soften your heart toward the person, it will eventually spark genuine love.

So now you have repented of your sin, and you have done all that is in your power to reconcile the relationship – as much as it depends on you. But what about the other person’s sin? When can I address that? Don’t I need to point out to them what they have done wrong, so they don’t keep hurting me? 
The answer is yes and no. Yes, you may need to point out his wrong, but no, it is not to prevent him from hurting you. The only reason to point out someone else’s wrong is to prevent him from continuing to sin against God and restore him to the right path. That is step 3. In the next section you’ll find out how to know which offenses to overlook and which ones to confront. And you’ll see in detail what Scripture says about how to confront. 

Review question: What are the three steps to follow in a conflict?

1.	Repent of your own sin.
2.	Reconcile the relationship as much as possible from your end.
3.	Restore the other person to godliness.

CHAPTER 3

Confrontation

How to Begin

You may have so many broken relationships – or a few that are so badly broken – that you don’t even know where to begin to mend them. But you mustn’t allow yourself to become paralyzed at the enormity of the task. As with anything else in life, when you face a task that seems overwhelming, you have two choices: (1) allow yourself to become so overwhelmed that you do nothing, or (2) pick a place to start and begin chipping away, one piece at a time.
This is a matter of such importance to God that the first option is not valid for the Christian. So let’s pursue the second option.
In the last section we found that when there is a broken relationship, we need to take certain steps.

Step 1: Repent
Step 2: Reconcile
Step 3: Restore 

STEP 1: Repent
The first priority is always to address the sin on your end and repent. You ask the Lord and the other person if there is any sin on your part, and you search your heart for out of control desires in your heart that may be contributing. Then you confess those things and repent, and seek forgiveness.

STEP 2: Reconcile
Regardless of who is in the wrong or how much the other person is in the wrong, you do everything in your power to reconcile the relationship. Reconciliation is always your responsibility. You are to take the initiative to do all five things we saw in Romans 12 because we are called to love one another deeply, from the heart (1 Pet. 1:22).
So those are steps 1 and 2. At the end of this booklet there is a worksheet to help you as you go through the process. Once you have done all that, it may be time to move to step 3 and confront the other person about his sin.

The Purpose of Confrontation

STEP 3: Restore the Other Person
Notice the word I chose for step three: restore. One thing we learn from Scripture is that whenever we confront another person about his sin, the goal should be that person’s restoration.
A lot of people seem to think the three steps are repentance, reconciliation, revenge! They think the purpose of confronting someone about his sin is to chastise him and teach him a lesson.

MATTHEW 18:15  “If your brother sins against you, go and show him his fault, just between the two of you. If he listens to you, you have won your brother over.”

The goal is not to make him feel bad or teach him a lesson. The goal is to win him over.

GALATIANS 6:1  Brothers, if someone is caught in a sin, you who are spiritual should restore him gently.

If you still have traces of animosity in your heart toward the person, you’re not ready to confront him. Your attitude should be one of compassion and a desire for that person to be restored spiritually just like you were restored in step 1.

When to Overlook an Offense
Not all personal conflicts have the same solution. While all offenses should be forgiven, some problems require confrontation. And some offenses can and should be overlooked. So how do you decide when to confront and when to overlook something?
The answer to that question has absolutely nothing to do with whether you feel like overlooking the offense or confronting the person. What you feel like doing is not important. What is important is that you follow biblical principles.
Very often people use forgiveness as an excuse to avoid confrontation. They say, “I’ve forgiven the person, so I’ll just forget about it.” But Matthew 18 calls us to confront those who are in unrepentant sin. Even if things are fine between you and the person relationally, still, we are commanded to confront people about their sin. In fact, when things are fine between you, that is the ideal time to do it.
On the other hand, it is also possible to be too confrontational. Some people use Matthew 18 as an excuse to confront when they should overlook. There are people who have Matthew 18:15 underlined, highlighted, memorized, and posted as the screen saver on their computer: “If your brother sins against you, go and show him his fault” (those last four words are their favorite part). These people make a lifestyle out of rebuking people. 
So how do we find the right balance? A good rule of thumb is if an offense can be overlooked, and the person doesn’t need spiritual restoration, overlook it. There’s no need for a confrontation every time someone bumps you in the hallway. You do not need to point out every way you can think of that the person could have been more considerate.
The purpose of confrontation is the other person’s spiritual restoration. If the issue is so minor that the person is not really in need of spiritual restoration, we should do what we can to just overlook the offense.
Keep in mind, however, if something is too minor to confront, it is too minor to remember against that person. If you find yourself holding it against that person, you definitely need to reconcile.

Don’t be easily offended
It is always wrong to dwell on an offense. Thoughts about what someone has done to offend should be dismissed from the mind and replaced with thoughts of kindness and favor toward that person. If you are a person who harbors every little offense, you need to gain control over your thought life and replace angry thoughts with kind thoughts. 
Being easily offended is a symptom of pride. The prideful person imagines himself to be so important that he deserves a certain level of treatment, and anything that falls below that level will offend him. 

What about righteous anger?
Righteous anger is when you’re mad because someone has dishonored God. Selfish, sinful anger is when you’re mad because someone has hurt you. Anger for that reason is always selfish, sinful anger. 
Everyone has experienced this type of anger, but not everyone recognizes it as sin. If you are wondering what you can do about it, here’s what I do: I work to learn humility, so I don’t get offended at things done against me. But when my pride does rise up and I find myself offended at something, I work at replacing any angry thoughts with thoughts of kindness. 
In many cases, nothing more needs to be done. There are two cases, however, in which more must be done. 

When to Confront
First, confrontation is called for in a situation where there is unrepentant sin. Matthew 18:15-17 makes it clear that we are to confront those in sin in an effort to bring them to repentance. If a person is unrepentant, clearly he is in need of restoration.
Confrontation must never be done out of vindictiveness or revenge. The motive should never be to punish the person or teach him a lesson. The only motive should be to bring repentance and restoration for the sake of Christ, not ourselves. 
Second, confrontation is called for in a situation where the offense is so painful or so frequent that you find yourself continually failing in your effort to overlook it. Maybe the person is not committing any intentional sin, maybe he doesn’t even realize he is hurting you, but it is painful enough that it is worth talking to him about it.
But be careful. It is at the point of these confrontations that many relationships are shipwrecked. 

Guidelines for Bringing up a 
“Sticky” Issue

• Remove the log from your own eye. Before rebuking someone about his sin, actually ask that person: “Do you see any sin in my life that is not being dealt with?” Be sure to ask that question before you bring up anything against him.
And if his answer is yes, perhaps the confrontation should be postponed until whatever he identifies has been dealt with – not necessarily completely solved, but certainly repented of.
If you really want the person to listen to your rebuke, you will do this, because it is very hard to heed a rebuke from someone you know to be in unrepentant sin. But if he doesn’t know of anything at all against you, he will be much more likely to listen to your rebuke.
When you do confront the person, always begin by mentioning the sins you have repented of. Say, “I realize I have had sin in my heart and I have done this, this, and that; and I want you to know I have repented and asked God for forgiveness of those sins, and now I’m asking for your forgiveness.” Beginning that way will save this person the hassle of worrying about rebuking you, and it will help protect him from the temptation of justifying his sin by focusing on yours.

 • Examine your motives. It is easy to deceive yourself into thinking your motives are better than they really are. Before pointing out a problem to someone else, take a careful, honest inventory of what is in your own heart: Is this a response of anger? Is my motive really to do something I believe will be profitable to the person? Am I trying to get him to accommodate my desires or change for my benefit? Or is my one and only objective to bring about greater Christlikeness in both of us?
	 
• Make sure you are not assuming motives. It is always sin to assume bad motives or attitudes. 

MATTHEW 7:1  “Do not judge, or you too will be judged.”

Here, Jesus is not talking about judging actions. Scripture calls us repeatedly to judge actions. If the Bible calls an action a sin, it would be wrong for us to call it anything else. So, if it is not talking about actions, all that leaves are the hidden matters of the heart (motives, attitudes, intentions, feelings, thoughts, etc.)

1 CORINTHIANS 4:1-5  So then, men ought to regard us as servants of Christ and as those entrusted with the secret things of God. Now it is required that those who have been given a trust must prove faithful. I care very little if I am judged by you or by any human court; indeed, I do not even judge myself. My conscience is clear, but that does not make me innocent. It is the Lord who judges me. Therefore judge nothing before the appointed time; wait till the Lord comes. He will bring to light what is hidden in darkness and will expose the motives of men's hearts. At that time each will receive his praise from God. 

Many people imagine themselves such astute judges of people that they are actually able to see into people’s hearts. They say, “I know people, and I can just tell that this person had a bad motive.” Or, “I can tell by the look on his face what he is thinking.” 
No, you can’t. You may be able to tell what he might be thinking, but only God can see the heart. If you suspect a person has sinful thoughts of any kind, no matter how obvious you think it is, always ask whether that is the case before confronting the person. 

Wrong: “I noticed you had a bad attitude the other day when you did X.”

Better: “I noticed you did X the other day. Is it possible that you did that because of a wrong attitude?”

	Wrong: “You did X because ...”

Better: “What was your motive for doing X? Were you intending … ?”

Always accept the other person’s answer. And if there is a possibility of a good motive, offer that as one of the options, so the person knows you are willing to consider the possibility that there was a good motive. 

“When you suddenly hung up the phone without saying goodbye, was that because you were angry? Or did we just get cut off?” 

“When you didn’t answer me, were you mad, or did you just not hear what I said?” 

“When you gave me that look, did you intend it as a scowl, or was something else on your mind?”

This is especially true in relationships with women. Women tend to be astute observers and excellent interpreters of body language. While that is a good thing, it also makes many women susceptible to the temptation of assuming motives. Women often think their husbands are guilty of sin simply on the basis of what the wife has assumed to be in the husband’s heart.
Never assume motives. Always ask. And when you ask questions, it is crucial that the person does not have the sense you’re making an accusation. Make sure they are honest questions, not indictments. 
Always ask first about thoughts, attitudes, and motives, and believe whatever the person says. Assuming what cannot be seen is sinful judging, and it is always forbidden for the Christian. 
There are only two things you should ever rebuke a person for: (1) sinful actions you know for sure have happened, and (2) sinful thoughts the person has confessed. 
	While you’re asking questions, find out about the other facts involved. Rebuking someone before having all the facts can do great damage. Ask lots of questions and make sure you have a full understanding of the person’s point of view before confronting him about anything. 

PROVERBS 18:13  He who answers before listening — that is his folly and his shame.

When it first seems that we have all the facts, we rarely do. Keep asking questions and seek to understand. 

• Be wise and loving in your timing. Few things are more dependent on timing for success than a personal confrontation. At the wrong time it will do ten times more harm than good. At the right time it can restore a relationship, transform a person’s life and save him from disaster. 
Too often we justify poor timing by thinking, She needs to hear this. Perhaps she does, but does she have to hear it right now – at this particular moment – while feelings are still tender?

When Is the Best Time?
While we tend to procrastinate about confronting people in regard to offenses that do not directly affect us, we tend to be too eager to confront people about offenses that are making our lives miserable.
The worst time to confront someone is generally when emotions are running high. If you are in an argument, and your wife does something that is ungodly, it is usually neither wise nor beneficial to confront her at that moment. Wait until she is in good spirits, and enough time has elapsed so it is not such a sensitive issue, and bring it up then. There is a far higher likelihood that she will be receptive.
If you are in the process of restoring a broken relationship, that is not the time to be confronting the other person. If there are hurt feelings that need to heal, focus all your attention on never taking offense at anything.
If you fear the conversation may be explosive, ask the person ahead of time if he will agree to abide by three principles of Christian communication in Ephesians 4. If you’re afraid the confrontation might turn ugly, the suggestions in the next section can help.

Chapter 4

Three Principles of Communication

A good way to initiate a confrontational conversation is to say something like this: “Is it all right if I ask you about something that I’m concerned about? What I have to say may hurt your feelings. I don’t want it to, but it might. So can we agree right up front to follow three principles as we talk?”
These principles of good Christian communication are found in Ephesians 4:25-32.

1. Be Honest

EPHESIANS 4:25  Therefore each of you must put off falsehood and speak truthfully to his neighbor, for we are all members of one body. 

Before saying anything, ask yourself, Is it honest? Are you fudging the facts in your favor? Are you exaggerating the other person’s faults? 
“You never listen.” “You always leave things of the floor.” 
Those kinds of statements only cause the person to think about the exceptions. I picked up something off the floor once back in ’85.
The more precise you are in what you say, the more likely the person is to receive it. If you say, “At least four days out of seven you leave your socks on the floor for me to pick up,” a good response is much more likely than if you say, “You always leave your socks on the floor.” And a good response can lead to a much more profitable conversation.
For example, the response might be: “From my perspective it seems like it is more like an average of one out of seven.” Or “I agree with what you’re saying, but I thought four out of seven was actually pretty good for me.” Or “Yes, I know I do that. But I think of that kind of thing as part of your job as a homemaker.” When you are specific, you will tend to get an answer that will give you insight into the real problem.

2. Say Only Helpful Things

EPHESIANS 4:29  Do not let any unwholesome talk come out of your mouths, but only what is helpful for building others up according to their needs, that it may benefit those who listen. 

Attack the problem, not the person. Don’t say things just to blow off steam or to “vent.” Venting is sin. Make sure you say something only if you are confident it will be profitable for the other person or enhance intimacy. 

3. Be Kind

EPHESIANS 4:31-32  Get rid of all bitterness, rage and anger, brawling and slander, along with every form of malice. Be kind and compassionate to one another, forgiving each other, just as in Christ God forgave you. 

There should be no anger in your voice or your mannerisms, and your goal should be for your words to fit perfectly the description in verse 32.
If you have a history of heated arguments with this person, you may want to agree ahead of time to give each other some sort of signal if you notice a violation of one of those principles. 
For example, you might say, “If I say something that seems angry or is not kind, or if it is not edifying to you, or if it is not really honest, will you please raise your hand? And would you like me to raise my hand if you do any of those things?”
If you have established a pattern of sinful communication in this relationship, you might have to spend the first half hour just raising hands. If that kind of thing happens, that is okay. It is better to take the time to establish godly communication than it is to address whatever topic you’re trying to talk about.

If You’ve Tried All of the Above without 
Success …
	What if you’ve done your best to take all three of these steps, but the relationship is still not restored. There’s too much disagreement; you can’t seem to have a constructive conversation; and your efforts toward reconciliation lead nowhere. Now what do you do?
If you have gone through steps 1 through 3 and there’s still a problem, then move on to one last step.

STEP 4: Recruit Help
There are some circumstances when you can have two wonderful, godly, righteous people who just rub each other the wrong way, are at an impasse, and can’t seem to see eye to eye. In those cases you need help from an outside source.

PHILIPPIANS 4:2-3  I plead with Euodia and I plead with Syntyche to agree with each other in the Lord. Yes, and I ask you, loyal yokefellow, help these women who have contended at my side in the cause of the gospel, along with Clement and the rest of my fellow workers, whose names are in the book of life. 

None of these people are mentioned anywhere else in the Bible, so all of what we know of this situation comes from these two verses. But if we think carefully about what is written, there is plenty here to teach us.

• Both women were godly. Notice verse 3: Both women contended at his side in the cause of the gospel. When the Apostle Paul selected someone to labor at his side for the gospel, he didn’t accept just anyone.
Remember in Acts 15, when Barnabas wanted to bring John Mark to help them on their missionary journey and Paul said, “No, he can’t come. He is not faithful enough.” (This was John Mark – the one who wrote the Gospel of Mark!) So Paul could be pretty picky. He wouldn’t work with Mark in Acts 15, but he would work with Euodia. And when Syntyche filled out her application he accepted it. 
Both women were spiritual, faithful, godly women working toward the same goals. That is important to remember in a dispute. This person you are opposed to in the church is a treasure. He is an ally. He is on your side in this war we are in, where the world has us so vastly outnumbered. This person is part of the tiny, tiny fraction of people in this world who agree with you on the essentials of the faith – the most important matters there are.

• The two women were not in agreement, and that was a bad thing. 

• The fact that they were at odds was a serious enough problem that Paul felt the need to address them by name. Can you imagine all the people in all the churches Paul wrote to that had disagreements? It is not often Paul singles someone out by name. Evidently these women were a threat to the unity of the church. Maybe they were spiritual leaders in the church, and because of their position of influence it was especially important that they be in agreement.
Paul is emphatic. Instead of saying “I plead with Euodia and Syntyche,” he repeats the plea, addressing it to each of them individually. He begged Euodia and then he begged Syntyche, and then he asked someone else to help them agree.

• Paul places them on equal footing, which means neither of them could have been in serious error. Obviously it wasn’t an argument over the deity of Christ or salvation by grace or the resurrection or some other essential issue. If that were the case Paul would have simply rebuked the heretic. 

• Paul is unconcerned about which of them is right. It is unlikely they both had exactly the same amount of error. Surely one of them was handling the whole thing in a little more godly way than the other one. Yet Paul gives absolutely no hint of which one. He has no concern about that.
Given that these were godly women, I imagine that Syntyche on several occasions went out of her way to try to make things right with Euodia. And there’s no doubt in my mind that Euodia did the same. But the fact remained that they still didn’t manage to get the job of reconciliation done.

• The solution is not to agree to disagree, but to agree. Usually in a situation like this it is not just one simple issue. I seriously doubt this whole thing was over the fact that Syntyche thought the deaconess meetings should be on Friday nights, and Euodia insisted on Sunday afternoons. 
In my experience, in situations like this, you can usually resolve any one of the disagreements pretty easily. The problem is not over a single disagreement. The problem is that for each disagreement that is resolved, three more arise. They are just on different pages all the time. Every time you turn around they are butting heads again. 
When Paul tells them to agree, literally he says, “I plead with you to have the same mind.” The nas translates that “to live in harmony.” You don’t have to agree about every detail. But we do need to be of the same mind. It should be clear to everyone that you are on the same team, and that you are for that other person.
If you ask Kurt (a fellow pastor at Creekside), he would probably tell you there are times that he and I disagree on ways to do things. And I disagree with him on some points of doctrine. But I hope it is obvious that Kurt and I are of the same mind. We are going the same direction, pulling the same plow, serving the same master, and working toward the same goals. I am all for Kurt. I want that to be clear in my speech, my mannerisms, my public conversation, and my private conversation. If someone were to secretly tape-record me talking to my wife about Kurt and play it for the church, I would want the reaction of the church to be Wow, Darrell is really on Kurt’s team. That is how we need to be as a church – and that goes not just for the leaders but for every single person. 
Some of you are Euodia and Syntyche. I plead with you, for the sake of the church that the Lord Jesus Christ died for, focus your attention on the essentials – the important things you are in full agreement on. 
We are in a war here, and these are your comrades. You are supposed to have their back. We are never going to win this thing if our soldiers are constantly getting into wrestling matches with each other, or if some of them won’t fight in the same foxhole as certain other soldiers.
In basketball, when someone takes a shot, all eyes are looking up at the ball, and everyone starts jockeying for position to get the rebound. And it is not uncommon for two guys from the same team to end up wrestling each other for the ball (you don’t have time to look at who the other person is). And when that happens, often they will wrestle it right out of each other’s hands and into the hands of the other team. When you see two players from your team fighting each other for the ball, you yell, “Same team!” There are those in the church who need someone to walk up behind them and yell, “Hey – same team!”

• They needed a third party to help them. Paul did not leave these women to work it out on their own. Most of the passages in Scripture about reconciliation just tell us to do it on our own. But in this case they needed help. They needed to go to step 4.
When you both have your eye on some ball you’re trying to get, sometimes you lose sight of the fact that the one you’re fighting is on the same team. When that happens, you need a third party to point it out. You need someone to remind you about all the important areas of common ground you share. This is one benefit a third party can provide.
Another benefit is that a third party can be objective. If I am in a dispute with someone, it is hard for me to see the things I am doing wrong. If someone else (that we both respect) points out my error to me, I am much more likely to receive it than if the rebuke comes from the person I am at odds with.
The mediation of disputes is supposed to be a ministry of the church. From 1 Corinthians 6 we know we are not to sue one another. It is a well-known principle that Christians are forbidden in Scripture from going to court against other Christians. 
It is interesting that while the Church has tended to make a big deal about the prohibition in that chapter, we have not been nearly as careful about practicing the alternative Paul offers to lawsuits. We all know that we are not to go to the secular courts with our disputes. But what are we to do with them instead?

1 CORINTHIANS 6:1  If any of you has a dispute with another, dare he take it before the ungodly for judgment instead of before the saints? 

	What are you supposed to do when you have a dispute you can’t resolve? Take it before the saints.

1 CORINTHIANS 6:2-3  Do you not know that the saints will judge the world? And if you are to judge the world, are you not competent to judge trivial cases? Do you not know that we will judge angels? How much more the things of this life! 

1 CORINTHIANS 6:5-6  I say this to shame you. Is it possible that there is nobody among you wise enough to judge a dispute between believers? But instead, one brother goes to law against another — and this in front of unbelievers! 

It is not enough to merely refrain from legal action. The flip side of that is that when we have an irresolvable dispute we should take it before the saints to be adjudicated. That is clear in the text, and yet think of how rarely this is done except for marriage counseling.
When people get into what they regard as an intolerable situation with their marriage, they often seek marriage counseling. That is as it should be according to 1 Corinthians 6. The world goes to divorce court; we go to biblical counselors. But while pastors get a lot of calls for marriage counseling, we almost never get calls from people who want to set up an appointment for friendship counseling.
People in a marriage know they can’t just leave each other, so they have to work it out. So why do you suppose we don’t get very many people calling about friendship counseling? Probably because when two friends can’t get along, instead of finding a way to work it out, they just “get a divorce.” They agree to part ways and leave the whole problem unresolved.
But Paul did not write to Philippi and say, “Make sure you keep Euodia and Syntyche away from each other.” He did not say, “Just don’t put them on the same committee.” He said, “Help them agree in the Lord.” This is to be a ministry in the church. And like every other ministry, it should be both formal and informal.
If you can’t get along with your spouse, or with a friend, or you have a dispute with someone in the church, just say, “Look, let’s find someone in the church we both respect and ask for their input.” That is the attitude of wisdom. And if it is an especially complex issue, you might decide you need to meet with a pastor or a deacon.

• The third party could not be Paul. They needed a third party, but the third party was the one Paul calls his “loyal yokefellow.” Paul didn’t just resolve the whole issue himself in the letter. Evidently it was too complex (or maybe it was too personal) for Paul to be able to resolve in a letter. It must have been one of those situations that was complicated and required someone who had the time to work through the various issues one by one. So Paul calls upon someone he knows in that church who had the ability to do that.

Remember that nothing less than the glory of God is at stake. Maybe there is someone in the church with whom your relationship has deteriorated to the point that you notice everything they do wrong and very little they do right. When that person’s name is mentioned, negative thoughts come into your mind, and when you talk about that person to others, even when you try to keep it positive, negative things tend to leak out. Maybe you are able to keep from verbalizing it, but you know in your heart that you are mostly critical of that person. If you find yourself in this type of situation, remember these words:

ROMANS 14:1-4  Accept him whose faith is weak, without passing judgment on disputable matters. … God has accepted him. Who are you to judge someone else’s servant? To his own master he stands or falls. And he will stand, for the Lord is able to make him stand. 

When you find yourself being critical, ask, “Who am I to judge another man’s servant?” It is not your job to evaluate how everyone else is doing as a servant with regard to disputable matters.

1 Peter 1:22  Love one another deeply, from the heart.

This verse is talking about that very person you find it hard to get along with.

EPHESIANS 4:2-3 Be completely humble and gentle; be patient, bearing with one another in love. Make every effort to keep the unity of the Spirit through the bond of peace. 

If you can’t find a way to do that, get help from someone else in the church. Don’t stop until every trace of animosity is gone.
If you need to confront someone, there’s a worksheet at the end of this book that will remind you of the main points of this section. 

Review question: What are the three rules of communication from Ephesians 4? Learn them by memory.

1.	Be honest
2.	Say only what is helpful
3.	Be kind

CHAPTER 5

Rebuke

How to Handle It When
You Are Rebuked

Now that you know how to rebuke someone else in a biblical way, you also need to know how to prepare yourself to respond in a godly way whenever you receive a rebuke.

Realize the Value of Rebuke
When you are the one being confronted by someone else, how should you respond? First, you need to realize that the person rebuking you probably doesn’t know all the principles you’ve learned. If you’re unwilling to receive rebuke unless the other person does it properly, you will almost never profit from it. That would be foolish.
Rebuke is a very valuable thing. If you can’t take rebuke, you can pretty much forget about making any progress in your Christian life. So it is essential to learn to accept and profit from rebuke even when it is given in a sinful way.

PROVERBS 9:8-9  Do not rebuke a mocker or he will hate you; rebuke a wise man and he will love you. Instruct a wise man and he will be wiser still….

Do you tend to despise people who rebuke you? If so, you are a mocker. You are a fool. A wise man loves those who rebuke him, because he is wise enough to see the value of what he is getting.

PROVERBS 25:12  Like an earring of gold or an ornament of fine gold is a wise man's rebuke to a listening ear. 

The fool can’t see that value. All he can see is the pain.

PROVERBS 19:25  Flog a mocker, and the simple will learn prudence; rebuke a discerning man, and he will gain knowledge. 

If you can’t take rebuke and correction from people, then the only way you’ll be able to learn is through flogging. God will have to teach you all your lessons through suffering. You’re doing yourself a huge favor if you can learn those lessons from rebuke instead.
People often wonder why they have to go through so much suffering. In some cases it may be because they have not been receptive to rebuke. Suffering is the only way for them to learn humility. If they would just become willing to learn the easy way, God would not have to teach them the hard way.

PROVERBS 17:10  A rebuke impresses a man of discernment more than a hundred lashes a fool. 

PROVERBS 15:31  He who listens to a life-giving rebuke will be at home among the wise. 

PROVERBS 27:5  Better is open rebuke than hidden love.

Notice rebuke and love are parallel in that verse. They are the same thing.

PROVERBS 24:26  An honest answer is like a kiss on the lips. 

The most loving people are the ones who will be honest with you.

ECCLESIASTES 7:5  It is better to heed a wise man's rebuke than to listen to the song of fools. 

Four Principles 
of Receiving Rebuke

When someone criticizes you, respond with wisdom. From the verses above we can glean four basic principles.

1. Heed the Rebuke
Rebuke is supremely valuable – especially from the wise. The greater the wisdom of the person who rebukes you, the more you should heed the rebuke.
But beware of thinking that if someone rebukes you, that in itself makes him a fool. Even if the person is a fool, there is still some value in the rebuke. Don’t blow it off every time someone you don’t respect rebukes you. He may not have the wisdom to rebuke you for the core problem, and he may not have the communication skill to say it in the right way, but still you should pay careful attention. I’ve found that often when foolish people rebuke me, if I think about it honestly enough, I usually find there is some truth to what they are saying. Anytime you are corrected by anyone, it is wise to give the matter serious thought.

2. Don’t Get Mad
When you receive rebuke, nine times out of ten you will be tempted to become angry. Fight that. Anger will destroy everything God is trying to do at that moment. Strive for humility. Resist the temptation to focus on that person’s flaws. (Who is she to be talking? She is guilty of … or She has a log in her eye!) Don’t worry about her sins. They are the least of your concerns right now.
When someone rebukes me, the natural reaction of my flesh is to immediately think, This is all about him, and begin to analyze the situation: Why is he saying this? Is he doing it right? Is he being sensitive to me? What are the flaws in his presentation and argument? What sins may be in his heart? What has he done wrong in the past? The last thing on my mind is my own heart, and what part of the rebuke might be valid.
If someone confronts you about something, once you have fully evaluated his rebuke over several days of honest prayer and reflection and asking other people, and once you have identified any portion of the rebuke that may be valid, and you’ve repented of those things and made restitution, only then should you worry about whether you need to talk to him about some fault he has.
Be very careful how you respond to the pain of being rebuked. Usually it will cause some mix of anger and sadness. It is easy to justify a wrong response by saying, “I’m not mad at you for rebuking me. I’m just angry at myself.” Or “I’m behaving in a grouchy, ungodly way because I’m angry at myself.”
Being angry with yourself doesn’t excuse anything. Being angry with yourself is not repentance. True repentance pushes you toward restitution and reconciliation – not toward wallowing in past failure. If you are treating the person who rebuked you in an unloving way – even if it is because you are angry with yourself – that is sin. People tend to use anger with themselves as a substitute for repentance, because it is so much easier.

3. Don’t Be Defeated
Often when we are rebuked we are tempted to throw up our hands and give up. Someone lets us know how we have failed, and we think to ourselves, I guess I can’t do anything right. I try, but everything I do ends up being bad. I give up.

PROVERBS 24:16 … for though a righteous man falls seven times, he rises again, but the wicked are brought down by calamity. 

One of the most important factors in the success of the Christian life is learning to recover from failure. If you have failed, all is not lost. Your week is not shot. Your day is not shot. It can still be redeemed. Don’t give up. Even if you have fallen half a dozen times already today –you’re still not as bad as the righteous man in Proverbs 24. Respond properly, and God will restore you.

4. Respond in Humility 
The biggest problem we have in this matter of broken relationships is pride. That is always the root of the problem on both sides. Pride is usually what causes us to do things that offend others in the first place. And pride is what causes us to be offended. Pride is what makes us get angry. Pride is what keeps us from confronting in the manner we should. Pride is what blinds us to the log in our own eye. And pride is what makes it so hard for us to receive rebuke graciously.
The solution to pride is humility, but learning humility is a monumental task. 
When we studied Philippians 2 we did sixteen sermons on the topic of humility, and then when we studied Ephesians 4 we did six more (in the Walking in Unity series). Listening to those twenty hours of teaching will help you know how to begin to learn humility, but for now, remember one basic principle: Learning humility involves lowering the threshold of things that offend you, which means lowering your threshold of self-importance.
You can measure your threshold of self-importance by what makes you angry. Are you offended when you arrive somewhere and no one rolls out a red carpet? No. Do you get angry if you travel somewhere and the people who invited you don’t put you up in the most expensive hotel in the city? Those things don’t make you mad, because you don’t consider yourself so important as to deserve those things.
But if you keep sliding down the scale, eventually you’ll hit a point where you cross the threshold of how important you think you are. It is easy to tell whenever that threshold is crossed, because that is where you start getting mad.
If I go to the grocery store and have to wait ninety seconds in line, that doesn’t make me mad, because I don’t imagine that I’m so important that I should never have to wait ninety seconds. But what if I have to wait fifteen minutes in line? If that makes me angry, then I know where my threshold of self-importance is.
The goal of the Christian life is to push that threshold of self-importance all the way down to zero. That is humility. I want to become as blind as possible to how I’m treated.
But, you might think, am I not important? Don’t I have some value? Yes – you are of tremendous value. You are in the image of God! You are very, very important – just not as important as anyone else.

PHILIPPIANS 2:3  Do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit, but in humility consider others better than yourselves.

When I obey that verse, no offense against me can make me mad. If I’m the least important person in the room, what can anyone do to offend me? 

Review Question: What are the four basic principles of receiving a rebuke?
1.	Heed the rebuke.
2.	Don’t get mad.
3.	Don’t be defeated.
4.	Respond in humility.

PART 2

Forgiveness

CHAPTER 6

COLOSSIANS 3:12  Therefore, as God's chosen people, holy and dearly loved, clothe yourselves with compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness and patience. 13  Bear with each other and forgive whatever grievances you may have against one another. Forgive as the Lord forgave you. 

If you are like most people, you have a love/hate relationship with forgiveness and mercy. When you are on the receiving end, you think it is the highest of all virtues. If you have ever received full, immediate, genuine forgiveness for some grave offense, sometimes it is hard to believe it is even happening. But when you are the offended party, forgiveness no longer seems to be a high virtue at all. It can seem like a gross violation of justice. It seems wrong. 
Few issues in the Christian life are more important than forgiveness, if for no other reason than this:

MATTHEW 6:15  “But if you do not forgive men their sins, your Father will not forgive your sins.” 

MATTHEW 18:34-35  “In anger his master turned him over to the jailers to be tortured, until he should pay back all he owed.
	“This is how my heavenly Father will treat each of you unless you forgive your brother from your heart.”

What exactly is forgiveness? How do you do it? When do you need to forgive? What role does repentance play? What effect does forgiveness have? How does God’s forgiveness work? What if you have tried to forgive and can’t seem to? Do you ever have to forgive yourself? Does forgiveness mean removing the consequences of sin? Should we confess our sins and ask forgiveness even though as believers all our sin is covered? What about Jesus’ repeated comments about the fact that if you don’t forgive, you will not be forgiven? Does our salvation hinge on our ability to forgive? Those are some of the questions we will address in this series.
In studying Colossians 3 we learn the various aspects of love. First, let’s look at the general disposition we are to have toward one another from the positive side.

COLOSSIANS 3:12  Therefore, as God's chosen people, holy and dearly loved, clothe yourselves with compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness and patience. 

As we will see, the word patience is used to describe how love responds to an injury. 
Paul goes on in verse 13 to expand on the meaning and implications of patience. 

COLOSSIANS 3:13  Bear with each other and forgive whatever grievances you may have against one another. Forgive as the Lord forgave you. 

Patience

The Greek word for patience in Colossians 3:12 is makrothumia (longsuffering, willingness to suffer a long time, an ability to outlast pain). This word deals primarily with people. (It can refer to willingness to suffer difficult circumstances for a long time without complaining, but here it is clearly in the context of patience with people.) It is a willingness to endure something at the hands of another person for a long time without getting angry, retaliating, or punishing that person. 
When someone does something wrong to you, there is a period of time between when you become aware of what has happened and when you act. Patience is when that period of time is long. People have the mistaken idea that if you are a patient person, you don’t mind putting up with someone who is annoying or hurting you. And if you believe that, you probably think you can’t be patient, because you are suffering. But patience is not the lack of suffering. Patience is not being unaware of your suffering; rather, it is the willingness to suffer a long time. Some languages don’t have a word for this concept, so it has to be translated using idioms. One is “to have a waiting heart.” Another is “to keep your heart seated.” 
Paul often describes the saints as being holy, loving, Christlike, etc. But he also realizes that until the second coming of Christ, the saints are also a group of people that can be difficult to live with and who require patience to get along with. “To live above with the saints we love, Oh, that will be glory! But to live below with the saints we know, now that is another story.” 
How long? It is sort of as if there were a command: Run fast.
How fast? Just clock how fast you can run now, and then work at beating your time. Examine how long you can suffer without complaint now, and work to improve.
The Greeks considered this a character weakness. To them, the ability to retaliate was a virtue. People in our culture are the same way. They also look down their noses at this beautiful virtue. They call it codependency or low self-esteem.

God’s Patience Is an Example for Us
God is patient. In fact He is so patient that we get used to it, and it doesn’t seem like patience. We just expect nothing to happen when we sin. We do the same thing with people. If someone is very patient, we tend to think things just don’t bother them, or hurtful things don’t hurt them. Sometimes a guy will speak harshly about his wife in her presence and say, “It doesn’t bother her.” He thinks that because she never gets angry. She doesn’t say anything. She doesn’t appear upset in any way. She responds with kindness and love. But the truth is it does hurt – sometimes very deeply. And she doesn’t react not because it is painless, but because she is patient. It is the same way with God. He is so patient, we fall into thinking that He is not all that bothered by sin.
Luke 13 describes an event illustrating that people often interpret blessing as approval when it may be nothing more than patience.

LUKE 13:1-2  Now there were some present at that time who told Jesus about the Galileans whose blood Pilate had mixed with their sacrifices. Jesus answered, “Do you think that these Galileans were worse sinners than all the other Galileans because they suffered this way?”

They figured since the Galileans had died that way, God must have been displeased with them. What’s more, they thought, Since nothing like that has happened to us, God must be pleased with us.

LUKE 13:3-5  “I tell you, no! But unless you repent, you too will all perish. Or those eighteen who died when the tower in Siloam fell on them – do you think they were more guilty than all the others living in Jerusalem? I tell you, no! But unless you repent, you too will all perish.”

Don’t always interpret blessing as approval. If you’re in sin, it is nothing more than patience, and someday it will run out.

LUKE 13:6-9  Then he told this parable: “A man had a fig tree, planted in his vineyard, and he went to look for fruit on it, but did not find any. So he said to the man who took care of the vineyard, ‘For three years now I've been coming to look for fruit on this fig tree and haven't found any. Cut it down! Why should it use up the soil?’ 
	“ ‘Sir,’ the man replied, ‘leave it alone for one more year, and I'll dig around it and fertilize it. If it bears fruit next year, fine! If not, then cut it down.’ ”

That is it. The parable ends right there – with the story unfinished. That was by design. We want to know what happens. Does the tree bear fruit the next year and escape being cut down? Or does it remain as it is and become firewood? 
No answer is given, because the tree represented the people Jesus was talking to. His message was, “You think that because things are going well for you, everything is fine between you and God. But the truth is, He is on the verge of destroying you for your fruitlessness and sin, and it is only because of His extraordinary patience that He has decided to wait and give you one more year.” 
In Scripture we watch God suffer long for hundreds of years at a time! In fact, that is why the second coming of Christ has been delayed for so long. 

2 PETER 3:7-9  … the present heavens and earth are reserved for fire, being kept for the day of judgment and destruction of ungodly men. But do not forget this one thing, dear friends: With the Lord a day is like a thousand years, and a thousand years are like a day. The Lord is not slow in keeping his promise, as some understand slowness. He is patient with you, not wanting anyone to perish, but everyone to come to repentance. 

Verse 8 has been abused far more than it has been correctly interpreted in context. It is not talking about the days of creation; it is talking about God’s patience with sinners. If you want to apply verse 8 as it was intended, do not use it to develop a theory about evolution. Use it to teach about the patience of God. 
Learn from His example. Some of you have put up with terrible mistreatment from your boss for ten years. If you learned to love your boss like God loves you, someone might say, “How can you stand it?” and you would respond, “To me, ten years is like a day. Waiting ten years for him to change, being patient with him for ten years – it is like a day.” Some of you expected your spouse to change after three months of marriage. Now it is twenty-five years, and you’re still waiting. If you love like God loves you, you can say, “For me, twenty-five years is like a day.”
Robert Ingersoll was a famous atheist in the nineteenth century. In the middle of giving a lecture he took out his watch and said, “I’ll give God five minutes to strike me dead for the things I’ve said.” He wasn’t struck dead, and went on mocking God. Someone related this incident to Theodore Parker who responded, “And did the gentleman think he could exhaust the patience of an eternal God in just five minutes?”

Bear with Each Other

Patience is the last aspect of love listed in Colossians 3:12, but it is so important that Paul launches in to an explanation of what it means. The terms bear with and forgive in verse 13 are both participles (correctly translated in the nas as bearing with and forgiving). They describe patience. 
In order to become patient, we learn from this verse that there are two aspects that must be considered: first, the moment of the offense and second, the time interval after the offense. The first requires bearing with, and the second requires forgiving.

COLOSSIANS 3:13a   Bearing with each other …

This term means “to put up with.” The root word originally meant “to hold oneself.” It refers to either standing tall and taking a blow (holding yourself up) or restraining yourself (with each other used as an ablative: holding yourselves back from each other). The idea is that if someone does something annoying, you put up with it. 
There are two angles from which to attack the problem of having a short fuse and lacking patience. First, don’t be so easily offended; and second, when you are offended, be slow to anger.

1. Don’t Be Easily Offended
Many things make us angry that really shouldn’t. Pride becomes angry whenever it is violated, and almost everything violates pride. If you are prideful, you will get angry at people who make honest mistakes, kids who make messes, people who cut in front of you in traffic, phone solicitors, barking dogs, crying babies, lost car keys, people who don’t show enough interest in you, people who show too much interest in you, people who are very different from you, people who are too much like you.
None of those things should make you angry. They shouldn’t require forgiveness because they shouldn’t even be noticed. Those things are so unimportant and incidental that they have no business taking up any of our thoughts – and they certainly have no business controlling our emotions. When we become angry over things like that it is because we have the notion, I’m so important, nothing inconvenient should ever happen to me. 
If you struggle with this type of anger, the solution is not to learn how to forgive so much as it is for you to do something about the pride in your life. Listen to or read through the Philippians series on humility.

2. Be Slow to Anger When You Are Offended
There are other, more serious things that do need attention. They are not petty, and they need to be addressed. They bother you and they should bother you, because they bother God.
This is where patience comes in. Patience is the period between the time of the offense and the response. It is a delay that cuts the person some slack. 

      • 	In many instances, during that gap of time the person will realize he was wrong and correct himself.
      • 	If not, the time gap allows the chance to observe patterns of behavior, which are much more important that isolated events. (Sometimes you see someone behave harshly, and it upsets you. But then you watch the person for a few months and see that normally he is gentle; the one event was an anomaly.)
      • 	The time gap gives you a chance to put the offense in perspective. Maybe it bothered you so much at the time because you had a bad headache and you were tired. Now that you look back on it, it was no big deal.
     • 	The time gap also gives you a chance to see the larger perspective in that person’s life. Maybe he is got a much more serious problem that you need to confront. If so, you’ll be glad you didn’t waste any of your influence picking at the insignificant thing that bothered you at first.
      • 	The time gap will give you a chance to pray for the person.
      • 	It will give you time to sort through your emotions so you can think clearly about the situation.
      • 	It will protect you from doing and saying things you will regret.
      • 	It will allow you a chance to gather wisdom regarding the issue and seek godly counsel. 

Much good can come from being sluggish in your reaction to people’s failings. Remind yourself of God’s slowness to anger, and work at inserting that time gap between being hurt and responding. Make allowances for people’s weaknesses and shortcomings. That is part of loving your neighbor as you love yourself. You make allowances for your own shortcomings without even thinking about it. 
How do you become more patient? There are two obstacles you have to overcome, two steps you need to follow.
As we have seen, step 1 has to do with how you respond at the moment someone does something you don’t like. You bear with the person. When someone does something that bothers you, postpone any reaction. 
Let’s assume you have done that, there has been a time gap, and you have assessed the situation. If you determine that you have a real grievance against the person – they really have hurt you – now it is time to move on to step 2.

Forgive Whatever Grievances
You May Have 

What Forgiveness Is Not
There are some myths about forgiveness that need to be cleared up.

Forgiveness it is not forgetting. You can’t make yourself forget something. If you could, it would be foolish to forget the pain you have suffered. That pain had a purpose. What you have gone through has been for a reason. Don’t ever forget that. 
What about the Bible verses that say God will not remember our sins against us? Not remembering and forgetting are two different things. You can’t chose to forget, but you can choose not to call something to your memory and rehearse it. The temptation to think about how you have been wronged is like the temptation to lust – it must be continually put out of your mind.

Forgiveness is not the elimination of pain. “I thought I forgave, but I still feel the pain.” True forgiveness will increase the pain. 

Forgiveness is not elimination of the temptation to be angry. People think, I’m still tempted to get angry every day – I must not have really forgiven. Not true. That temptation is just like any other temptation – there is no magical formula to make it disappear forever.

What Forgiveness Is
When someone crosses (hurts or injures) you, the natural reaction is to resort to some type of punishment (silent treatment, gossip, recalling the offense in your mind, etc.). Forgiveness is simply letting the person off the hook with you – canceling what they owe you, releasing them from their obligation. Do not punish them. God said, “Vengeance is Mine.” Don’t ever take into your hands what belongs only to Him.
Forgiveness is a decision not to hold it against the person, a decision not to bring it up in conversation, a decision to not let yourself think about it, a decision not to punish the person. When you hold on to anger and “forgive” the next day, that is not forgiveness (because you punished them for awhile). It is like saying, “After you finish making payments to me, then I will forgive the debt.”

Forgiveness is being willing to absorb the loss. It is important that you understand that the only way to cancel a debt is to absorb the loss yourself. We watch Jesus in the gospels tell a paralytic lowered through the ceiling, “Your sins are forgiven,” and we think that is so wonderful. But the part of that that doesn’t meet the eye is the fact that for Christ to do that would cost Him dearly. Jesus knew that every time He said, “Your sins are forgiven,” all that guilt and punishment the person deserved was placed on His account. Every sin Jesus forgave was like another blow Jesus would have to take upon Himself on the cross. Next time you are tempted to sin against God and think It is okay – I’ll just ask forgiveness afterward, remember that every time God forgives you it costs Him something. He has to absorb the loss.
Some people refuse to forgive because they are still living with the consequences of someone else’s sin against them. A decision to accept those consequences is part of absorbing the loss. Husbands and wives are slow to forgive each other, because they think, He is making my life almost unbearable. How can I forgive that? Even if I do, my life will be just as painful as before. Of course it will. Forgiveness is the willingness to absorb that loss – the loss of a pain-free life. Forgiveness is the willingness to say, I will live this way, with this much pain inflicted by you, and I will do so without making you pay in any way.

Forgiveness is free. The word often used to mean forgive in the Greek is ajfivhmi (to let go, cancel, remit, leave, forgive, to let go unpunished, to release from obligation, to acquit). But a different word is used in Colossians 3:13. It is cari,zomai,,,,, a form of cari,j (charis: grace or gift). It includes all the same ideas of canceling a debt, but it also emphasizes the gracious nature of forgiveness. The idea is not only to forgive, but to be lavish about it. Do it graciously, freely, generously, eagerly, speedily, from the heart – with no strings attached. By definition, forgiveness must cost the other person nothing. If you think you are being forgiving by letting someone who has offended you off cheap, you are mistaken. Forgiveness is letting them off scot-free. 
Think about it – how much does God’s forgiveness cost you? What does the Scripture say?

ROMANS 4:3-8  “Abraham believed God, and it was credited to him as righteousness.” 
	Now when a man works, his wages are not credited to him as a gift, but as an obligation. However, to the man who does not work but trusts God who justifies the wicked, his faith is credited as righteousness. David says the same thing when he speaks of the blessedness of the man to whom God credits righteousness apart from works: “Blessed are they whose transgressions are forgiven, whose sins are covered. Blessed is the man whose sin the Lord will never count against him.”

How free is God’s forgiveness? It costs nothing. (Reconciliation is another matter.) A person who wants to be forgiven by God and tries to earn it can’t even have it. It is totally free, because Christ paid the price already in full. The more you try to earn it or pay for it, the more you degrade and slander Christ’s work on the cross as insufficient. 

GALATIANS 2:21  I do not set aside the grace of God, for if righteousness could be gained through the law, Christ died for nothing! 

In order for forgiveness to be forgiveness, it must be free. If you make the person pay at all, that is not forgiveness. If you make the person go for an afternoon feeling terrible before you forgive, that is not forgiveness. Sometimes people say, “He doesn’t deserve to be forgiven.” Of course; that is the point! That is what forgiveness is – giving grace that a person doesn’t deserve. If he deserved it, you wouldn’t be giving forgiveness; you would simply be dispensing justice. 
You can forgive freely without violating justice because Christ paid the full penalty for that person’s sin on the cross. So if you make a person pay – if you think you have to punish him in some way before “forgiving” – you are mocking and slandering Christ’s work on the cross. The whole reason you can forgive is because Christ has already borne the penalty for that sin. So when you try to punish the person, you are saying to Him, in effect, “You didn’t suffer enough on the cross to cover this. Your offering was insufficient. All that pain and agony may have been enough to satisfy God’s wrath, but not mine. I have a higher sense of justice. When you said, ‘It is finished,’ You were mistaken.” 
Unforgiveness is blasphemy. Christ paid for all sins. Absolutely nothing remains. Forgiveness cancels the debt entirely. 
There are all kinds of ways we fail to realize this. Sometimes, we want to compensate ourselves, thinking I deserve this indulgence because of how I’ve been wronged. Such an attitude demonstrates a low view of Christ’s payment for that sin.

Forgiveness is repetitive. The word forgive in Colossians 3:13 is present, not aorist. It is not an action that occurs at one point in time and then is complete. Rather, forgiveness is an ongoing, continual thing. 
You may have been wronged in a serious way and thought you had forgiven the person, but later the old resentment and grudges come back. Then someone tells you that you never truly forgave in the first place. That kind of statement leads people to think “true” forgiveness is some elusive, almost mystical, magical event that in a moment of time fixes the whole problem. People think forgiveness is a complicated psychological process that ends in a one-time act that permanently rids us of any further resentment or ill feelings. 
That belief does not come from the Bible. Scripture presents forgiveness in a much simpler way.

MARK11:25  And when you stand praying, if you hold anything against anyone, forgive him [stop holding it against him], so that your Father in heaven may forgive you your sins. 

Here forgiveness is, very simply, not holding a grievance against someone. This means forgiveness must take place each time we are faced with the temptation to dwell on thoughts about the wrongdoing. 
If someone sins against you one time, you will have to forgive hundreds of times – as many times as you remember it. Forgiveness is not some magical event that makes the memory go away. It is just a decision not to think about it. 
So you may truly forgive someone, and the next minute have to forgive him all over again. Each time you are tempted to review resentful thoughts toward someone, you must forgive again. The temptation to hold a grudge must be battled time and time again until the memory fades. As I pointed out previously, it is a battle of the thought life, very similar to the battle against lustful thoughts.
But how do we win battles like this? What is our course of action when we sense ourselves sinking back into a private gossip session in our minds? 

EPHESIANS 4:32  Be kind and compassionate to one another, forgiving each other, just as in Christ God forgave you.

First, to win the battle, these resentful thoughts must be replaced each time with thoughts of kindness and compassion. Second, we need to remember the extent to which we have been forgiven by God. We will look at that later.

Who Needs to Be Forgiven?

One Another
Colossians 3:12-13 says to forgive whatever grievances you may have against “one another.” This is a little different than if it said “others.” “One another” is a two-way idea. The idea is that you forgive others, and others forgive you. You make allowances for the other person’s weaknesses and failings and offenses, but at the same time he or she has to make allowances for your weaknesses and offenses – offenses you don’t even realize you are causing.
Sometimes we develop sort of a martyr complex when we forgive. We think I’m being so big, and so gracious, and so self-sacrificial … because we are overlooking some little thing, and in the meantime many people around us are overlooking a fault in our life that is ten times the size of the thing we are forgiving. It may help you to know that at any given moment there are several people overlooking and covering over faults of yours that you don’t even realize. There’s something wrong with everyone else that you need to overlook, but there’s also something wrong with you that the rest of us need to overlook. Remember this the next time you have to overlook someone else’s faults.

 “Yourselves”
One time Paul uses the normal word for “one another,” but the second time he uses the word yourselves:

COLOSSIANS 3:13 Bear with one another, and forgive yourselves (lit. trans.) ….

Now don’t misunderstand that. The word yourselves is not an individual term. It is not talking about an individual forgiving himself. It is a corporate word. The meaning is the same as “one another,” but it adds a unifying concept. It reminds us that we are a body. 
Think about your own body. If one part has a weakness, don’t the other parts make allowances? If you sprain your right leg, does your left leg kick it and demand that it get its act together? No. Your body limps, and your left leg bears all the weight for as long as it takes. Your hands wrap it or ice it, and your whole body makes sacrifices and concessions – changing whatever plans you may have had to go skiing or hiking – all without meting out any punishment on the weak foot. 

Believers
“One another” and “yourselves” refer to believers. We should forgive everyone, but especially believers. It is the way the world knows we are His disciples. What is it about our love that is astonishing to the world? Is it because we socialize with each other? Is it because we have group activities and potlucks? Is it because we have fun at retreats together? No – they do those kinds of things with their friends too. It is the eagerness with which we forgive that will show them the supernatural nature of our love. It is the way you respond when for some reason you don’t get invited to the social event, and you overlook that. You assume the best.
It is when you go to the potluck and no one helps you clean up, and you refuse to take notice of it. It is when you go on a retreat and the people next door are loud while you are trying to sleep, and you simply absorb the loss.
In 2 Corinthians 2 we learn that the devil developed a scheme to destroy the church. But Paul became aware of it and headed it off. The scheme was to get Paul so irritated at the people that he would refuse to forgive.

2 CORINTHIANS 2:10  If you forgive anyone, I also forgive him. And what I have forgiven … I have forgiven in the sight of Christ for your sake, in order that Satan might not outwit us. For we are not unaware of his schemes.

If you don’t think Satan is doing that same kind of scheming in our church, you’re kidding yourself. That is why Ephesians 6:11 says, Put on the full armor of God so that you can take your stand against the devil's schemes. When you react against an offense you fall right into the devil’s trap. From the moment someone hurts you until the moment you forgive, Satan rules in your life.

What Needs to Be Forgiven?

COLOSSIANS 3:13b  whatever grievances you may have against one another.

A grievance is a ground for blame. There will be times when people in the church are worthy of blame. Keep in mind, however, that it is the duty of love to minimize that blame as much as possible. 
Don’t ever assume bad motives. If actions are bad, you call a spade a spade. But as a human being, you are not able to discern motives (not even your own)! 

1 CORINTHIANS 4:4-5  My conscience is clear, but that does not make me innocent. It is the Lord who judges me. Therefore judge nothing before the appointed time; wait till the Lord comes. He will bring to light what is hidden in darkness and will expose the motives of men’s hearts.

Another thing to keep in mind is that it doesn’t have to necessarily be a sin in order for you to have to forgive. It just has to be something they did that caused you some heartache or inconvenience. For example, maybe we are on a hike together, and I sprain my ankle. You end up having to spend half a day helping me hobble back to the trailhead, and your hike is ruined. I have not done anything immoral or sinful, but I am responsible for ruining your day nonetheless. Something like that calls for forgiveness – obviously (the only other option is for you to get angry over it). 
What kinds of things need to be forgiven? Anything that may cause you anger. One of the greatest impediments to forgiveness is that we’re slow to admit it when we’re angry. We know we shouldn’t be, so we pretend we are not. We punish the person through gossip, but we couch the gossip in spiritual terms. “I’m seeking prayer support.” (In the South you can say almost anything about a person as long as you say, “bless his heart”: “She is the laziest woman in the church, bless her heart.” Some people are in the doghouse with you, but you won’t forgive them because you won’t even admit there’s a problem. I’m not holding any kind of grudge against him. Oh, really? Are not you mostly irritated at that person? Is not most of what comes out of your mouth about that person negative? Are not virtually all your thoughts about that person negative? Don’t you find that you notice all the bad things he does, but rarely notice any good things? 
Search your heart for residual animosity toward people so you can admit that it is there. Then you can obey God’s word and forgive whatever grievances you may have.

COLOSSIANS 3:13c  Forgive as the Lord forgave you.

How God Has Forgiven You?
Every sin against you involves a greater sin against God. If someone steals something from you, they have done a tiny wrong against you compared to what they have done against God. And if God has offered forgiveness to them freely, who are you to withhold forgiveness? 	
But God doesn’t forgive the sins of unbelievers. Yes, He does. In a temporal sense, he forgives almost all their sins. We’ll look further at the way God forgives next time, but for now remember the Bible doesn’t say, “Withhold forgiveness in cases where God withholds it.” In fact, it never says to withhold it at all. It just says to always offer it. 
So don’t be fooled by those people who say you may not be ready to forgive. Forgiveness should be instantaneous. If you hold a grudge for thirty seconds, that is thirty seconds of willful rebellion against God. It is thirty seconds of damage done to your soul. It is thirty strikes against the kingdom of God.  
Don’t use delay tactics. Saying “I need to sleep on it” or “I need to think it over” is not an option! If you started your stopwatch each time you sin, what do you think would be the average time interval between the sin and punishment from God? (For 99.9 percent of your sins, you’d use a calendar rather than a stopwatch!)

Christ’s Example of Forgiveness 
God pursued forgiveness for us. That is remarkable. You’d think it would be the offending party who would pursue forgiveness, and the offended party who would resist. But in our case it was the other way around. 
He went to great pains to pursue it. It was the whole reason God sent His Son. It was the whole reason Jesus died. It was what He was praying for even on the cross. 
Jesus endured the cross for us. What do you suppose was running through His mind during that ordeal? Vengeance? No. Justice? No. Was He focused on relief? Just a few more hours and it will all be over. No. Was He applying the power of positive thinking? Well, at least they didn’t break any bones or At least it is not raining. No. 
What was He thinking while those people were mocking Him, beating Him, spitting on Him, inflicting as much humiliation and pain on Him as they knew how? Look at what He says:

LUKE 23:34  “Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing.”

God not only was willing to forgive you, but He pursued reconciliation with you. We are to be the same way. When people sin against you, don’t make them pursue forgiveness and reconciliation. You do it. 

MATTHEW 5:23-24  “Therefore, if you are offering your gift at the altar and there remember that your brother has something against you, leave your gift there in front of the altar. First go and be reconciled to your brother; then come and offer your gift.”

Here it is not that you have a grudge but that someone else has one against you. 

Don’t just apologize; go and repent. The root meaning of apologize is “to make a defense,” which is what most apologies end up being. Instead of saying, “I’m sorry I did that, but …” it is better to say, “I’m sorry I did that. I was wrong. I realize it hurt you in this way …” Make sure you understand how you have hurt the person. That makes it much easier for the person to forgive you – especially if she is a woman. 
Note: It is not acceptable for you to withhold forgiveness until the person understands how much you have been hurt. Are not you glad God didn’t do that? (This idea is discussed in more detail beginning on page 53.) 
	Have you noticed that when you are mad at someone, it is your responsibility to forgive; and when someone is mad at you, it is your responsibility to seek forgiveness? You are never justified in waiting for the other person to make the first move.

Does the person have to repent as well? No, you are always to unilaterally forgive. 

MARK 11:25  “And when you stand praying, if you hold anything against anyone, forgive him, so that your Father in heaven may forgive you your sins.”

Forgive him right there, on the spot, while you are praying. 
It is true that God requires repentance for ultimate, eternal, judicial forgiveness, because He is a Father and a Judge. But there is a forgiveness that comes from God automatically. God is patient with you no matter what your attitude is. He is slow to anger no matter what your attitude is. He withholds punishment to an astonishing degree for everyone at all times.
How often do you see someone immediately blasted into hell at his first sin? Are you required to forgive all sin immediately, regardless of repentance? Yes. There’s absolutely no question about it. Are you ever justified in holding a grudge? No, never. Do you bear the full weight of responsibility for full reconciliation of the relationship? No. That requires repentance. 

ROMANS 12:18  If it is possible, as far as it depends on you, live at peace with everyone. 

Some people make reconciliation impossible, and that is not your fault. Pray for the person and pray about the relationship. Then leave it in God’s hands.

CHAPTER 7

Jesus’ Teaching on Forgiveness

MATTHEW 18:21-35  Then Peter came to Jesus and asked, “Lord, how many times shall I forgive my brother when he sins against me? Up to seven times?”
	Jesus answered, “I tell you, not seven times, but seventy-seven times.
	“Therefore, the kingdom of heaven is like a king who wanted to settle accounts with his servants. As he began the settlement, a man who owed him ten thousand talents was brought to him. Since he was not able to pay, the master ordered that he and his wife and his children and all that he had be sold to repay the debt. 
	“The servant fell on his knees before him. ‘Be patient with me,’ he begged, ‘and I will pay back everything.’ The servant's master took pity on him, canceled the debt and let him go. 
	“But when that servant went out, he found one of his fellow servants who owed him a hundred denarii. He grabbed him and began to choke him. ‘Pay back what you owe me!’ he demanded.
	“His fellow servant fell to his knees and begged him, ‘Be patient with me, and I will pay you back.’ 
	“But he refused. Instead, he went off and had the man thrown into prison until he could pay the debt. When the other servants saw what had happened, they were greatly distressed and went and told their master everything that had happened. 
	“Then the master called the servant in. ‘You wicked servant,’ he said, ‘I canceled all that debt of yours because you begged me to. Shouldn't you have had mercy on your fellow servant just as I had on you?’ In anger his master turned him over to the jailers to be tortured, until he should pay back all he owed. 
	“This is how my heavenly Father will treat each of you unless you forgive your brother from your heart.”

Seventy Times Seven
In Jesus’ day the rabbis usually taught that forgiveness was optional. They did acknowledge that Scripture did encourage forgiveness in some cases, but they set a limit of three times for the same offense. (They found that number in Amos 2:6, which states that God will not forgive Israel because of four sins). 
Peter had learned some things from Jesus. He seemed to intuitively sense that the standard would be way beyond what the rabbis called for. He intuitively knew that Jesus would call for frequent forgiveness. 

MATTHEW 18:21 Then Peter came to Jesus and asked, “Lord, how many times shall I forgive my brother when he sins against me? Up to seven times?”

Peter cranks it up to more than double the going rate for forgiveness for religious people.

MATTHEW 18:22 Jesus answered, “I tell you, not seven times, but seventy-seven times.”

Some say that should be translated “seventy times seven,” which would be 490 times. Others say Jesus is just taking an already large number and multiplying it by ten times the number of completeness, which comes out to infinity. And that is probably most likely what Jesus has in mind. But even if we go with the smallest number – seventy-seven, that is a lot of times for someone to sin against you.
Since 1 Corinthians 13:5 says love keeps no record of wrongs, you have no way of knowing when the person gets to seventy-seven anyway. You’re not keeping track. If you are keeping track, then the sin problem is in your heart, not theirs. (That doesn’t mean you can’t remember it happened. Of course you remember it happened. What it means is you don’t remember it against the person. You don’t hold it against the person in your mind.) So Jesus’ answer is, “No, Peter – not frequent forgiveness. Forever forgiveness!”
Seventy-seven may be a reference to Genesis 4, where Lamech bragged to his wives, “I have killed a man for wounding me, a young man for injuring me. If Cain is avenged seven times, then Lamech seventy-seven times” (Gen. 4:23). He considered seventy-seven times to be the measure of revenge. But Jesus says, “No, that is the measure of forgiveness.” We should return good for evil in the same abundant measure that in our sinfulness we are inclined to return evil for evil.
That goes against everything in us. Our natural inclination is to think, If I don’t keep a record of wrongs, if I don’t remind her of what she has done wrong in the past, she’ll forget! The problem will be perpetuated. I’ll be taken advantage of. Thoughts like that show a lack of trust. God can’t handle that person’s sin problem, so I need to. I need to monitor the situation so that if the Holy Spirit fails in His work of sanctification, I can step in with some type of punishment or retribution. 
That kind of thinking betrays a lack of faith. It takes faith to freely forgive, trusting the Lord to deal with the other person in the way that is best. That is why when Jesus taught in Luke 17:3-5, 
“If your brother … sins against you seven times in a day, and seven times comes back to you and says, ‘I repent,’ forgive him,” the apostles’ response was, “Lord, increase our faith!” 
	Next time you think, If I forgive, he’ll never learn his lesson, ask yourself where in the Bible we are told to train each other through punishment. Show me the Bible verse that says, “Wives, punish your husbands so they will learn their lesson.” Where does the Bible say, “Make the person pay – otherwise he’ll never be conformed to the image of Christ”?
Take a lesson from the disciples’ great response. When you’re confronted with God’s infinitely high standard of forgiveness, instead of saying, “That is ridiculous! I have my rights!” or “This is abuse. I don’t have to put up with this,” or “No one is going to talk to me that way,” or “You just don’t understand my situation,” the best response is to pray, “Lord, increase my faith so I can trust You that this is the best way.”
The key to changing your attitude so that you become willing to forgive from the heart is found in the parable of the unmerciful servant in Matthew 18.
	When interpreting parables, notice any surprising elements in an otherwise normal story. Almost every part of this parable is like that.

     •	The guy owes the king 60 million day’s wages. If he worked six days a week and gave 100 percent of his income toward the debt, and there were no interest, in order to pay off the debt he would only have to keep that up for 200,000 years.
     • 	The king suddenly forgives the entire debt even though the guy didn’t ask for that. Why?
     •	The heartless treatment of the first servant toward the second servant, right after being forgiven so much is a shock.
     •	The fact that this extremely merciful king would have this guy tortured for the rest of his life is more than you might expect.
     •	The last verse, “This is how my heavenly Father will treat each of you unless you forgive your brother from your heart” (Matt. 18:35), has puzzled interpreters for 2000 years.

MATTHEW 18:23-24  “Therefore, the kingdom of heaven is like a king who wanted to settle accounts with his servants. As he began the settlement, a man who owed him ten thousand talents was brought to him.”

A talent is about a million dollars (see notes from the parable of the talents). So he owed $1,000 million ($10 trillion). This is some debt. He owed more money than there was currency in circulation! Besides, the word for 10,000 is murios (from which we get myriad). It was the highest number in the language. It is sometimes translated “countless.” On top of that, it is the indefinite plural. It is the highest denomination in the culture, and it is the highest number in their language, plural – “countless millions.”
Commentators have puzzled over how a person could get this far in debt. Most conclude that this was a provincial governor who was responsible for collecting taxes. But it is silly to speculate about how the debt was incurred – this is not even a true story. Jesus makes up this story about a guy who has a huge debt, and the fact that it is more astronomical than any debt a person could possibly incur in normal life is the whole point. 
If we look closely, however, we will see that Jesus does reveal how the debt was incurred. You see, there is one other way a person could get this far in debt. Verse 27 refers to the amount owed as a loan. The commentators say, “Is not it remarkable that the king graciously regarded this embezzlement as a loan!” How about just assuming it actually was a loan, since Jesus calls it a loan? It is significant that it was loan, and soon you’ll see why.

MATTHEW 18:25  “Since he was not able to pay, the master ordered that he and his wife and his children and all that he had be sold to repay the debt.”

The picture is of punishment for sin. The most expensive slave would have sold for one talent at the very most. So this would be like recovering a dollar or two from someone who owes you $10,000. That is what hell is. It is all we can pay, and yet it is not anywhere near sufficient to compensate for the debt we owe God because of our sin. The glory we have stolen from God cannot be repaid. The pain we have inflicted upon Him cannot be reversed no matter how much we are punished. We have sinned against an infinitely holy, infinitely pure God, who is infinitely worthy of obedience. The slightest sin against a God like that is an infinite offense, and not even an eternity in hell can pay for it. In fact, I sometimes wonder: If every single human being went to hell, would Jesus still have had to die to satisfy justice?
	The servant in this parable is in the most dire circumstance imaginable. 

MATTHEW 18:26  “The servant fell on his knees before him. ‘Be patient with me,’ he begged, ‘and I will pay back everything.’”

This is a critical part of understanding the parable. The man refuses to even begin to acknowledge the size of the debt.

MATTHEW 18:27  “The servant's master took pity on him, canceled the [loan] and let him go.”

Keep this in mind, because often you’ll be tempted to withhold forgiveness until a person acknowledges how severely they have hurt you. If you are thinking, I don’t want revenge – but I can’t forgive until he understands how much it hurt me – you are not forgiving as you have been forgiven. 
Some commentators suggest the scenario of the master taking pity on the servant with the massive debt is a picture of salvation, but I’m not so sure. You don’t become a Christian by asking God for patience until you can pay all that you owe. You become a Christian when you realize the debt is so huge you could never begin to pay it and you cry out not for patience, but for mercy and forgiveness.
Also, the forgiveness of this servant was very short-lived (it didn’t even last one day before it was revoked) and was contingent upon a certain behavior.
	So I think that rather than this being a picture of salvation and apostasy, it is a picture of an unbeliever.

MATTHEW 18:28  “But when that servant went out, he found one of his fellow servants who owed him a hundred denarii.”

The niv footnote about this amount is wrong. If you skip ahead to chapter 20 you see that a denarius was a fair wage for a day’s work. So if we think of a day laborer working twelve hours at $10 an hour, a hundred days’ wages is $12,000. This is significant. In comparison with what he had been forgiven, this debt is minuscule. That is the only thing, however, that makes it minuscule. Otherwise it would be huge. 
That is how people’s sins against you are. Yes, you need to forgive when someone makes an inconsiderate remark. But you must also forgive when someone rapes you, or kills a loved one, or divorces you. 
Jesus acknowledges that those are huge, enormous debts. But in comparison, they are so small that they become forgivable. You will never have success in forgiving those kinds of things until you have an appreciation for how much you have been forgiven. That is another reason that it is important for us to study God’s law.

MATTHEW 18:28b   “He grabbed him and began to choke him. ‘Pay back what you owe me!' he demanded.”

Why the choking? This is a parable – Jesus can make up whatever details He wants. Why does He have the guy choke the second servant? Wouldn’t the story be more gripping if he was friendly about his unforgiveness, and then was still judged for failing to forgive? 
It might be gripping, but what Jesus is trying to do is emphasize a very crucial element of His lesson. The problem with this guy runs deeper than unforgiveness. It is lack of a compassionate heart. The issue is mercy. If you have a compassionate, merciful heart, forgiveness will be automatic. The issue of whether or not you will forgive is settled long before the offense. You are either a merciful person or you are not. Your response when someone sins against you reveals your heart.
Think of the person who is at the bottom of your list right now – the person you never seem to have anything good to say about, the person who is always on your nerves. When you think of that person, your first thought is always negative. You are not merciful toward that person. Your heart is not tender toward that person, is it? Your attitude toward that person is hardly forgiving. You always seem to notice what he does wrong, but you rarely notice anything he does right. And if you voiced aloud all your thoughts about that person, you would be guilty of gossip, at the very least.
	Jesus wants you to look into the mirror of this parable and see yourself. Look what you are doing. You’re choking that poor person! You’re slamming him into prison. You’re not showing any mercy. Even after you have been forgiven so much just today, you’re being cold-hearted, hard-hearted, and cruel toward that person.

MATTHEW 18:29  “His fellow servant fell to his knees and begged him, ‘Be patient with me, and I will pay you back.’ ”

The unmerciful servant hears the identical words he himself had just spoken. Again, look into the mirror and see yourself. See yourself walking through your house mumbling a little prayer, “Please forgive me for that, Lord” – asking for mercy for a sin you just committed that deserved an eternity in hell, and then moments later rolling the memory of some offense around in your mind like a piece of candy on your tongue – showing no mercy, thinking bitter thoughts, magnifying the offense instead of covering it.
Can’t you hear those words you uttered just a little while ago – “Please have mercy on me, Lord”? Or are you like this first servant, who didn’t ever really consider how massive was his debt?
	
MATTHEW 18:30  “But he refused. Instead, he went off and had the man thrown into prison until he could pay the debt.”

In debtors’ prisons people worked for a pittance – so little that it was a last resort – which went to those whom they owed. You sent someone there only if the person was unwilling to pay anything, in order to get what little you could out of him. Or, like this master, you might send someone there out of pure spite – merely for punishment. 
This is not the activity of a Christian. Jesus said the merciful and the merciful alone will be shown mercy. Keep in mind, these two servants were “fellow servants.” Both worked for the king. At that time it was illegal, not to mention dumb, to arrest – because of a debt – someone who worked for the king.

MATTHEW 18:31  “When the other servants saw what had happened, they were greatly distressed and went and told their master everything that had happened.”

The other servants were distressed, saddened. Why? Was it because they saw the first servant’s actions as morally repugnant? In most cases, it is not unreasonable to refuse to forgive a $10,000 to $20,000 debt. 
The reason they were so bothered was because of what had just happened. The problem wasn’t that the debt was small; it wasn’t. The problem was that the debt was minuscule in comparison with what the man himself had just been forgiven. 
When you think about it, you see that this problem stemmed from the fact that the first servant never came to grips with how large his initial debt really was. That is why he didn’t have enough residual gratitude to forgive someone else.

MATTHEW 18:32-33  “Then the master called the servant in. ‘You wicked servant,’ he said, ‘I canceled all that debt of yours because you begged me to. Shouldn’t you have had mercy on your fellow servant just as I had on you?’ ”

The phrase “Shouldn’t you have …” is stronger in the Greek; it is more like “Wasn’t it necessary … ”
Note that he doesn’t say, “Shouldn’t you have canceled the debt?” The concern is not so much the action of canceling the debt, but having an attitude of mercy. The first servant was unwilling to think about the situation from the other servant’s perspective.
	Think about the person who is in the doghouse with you. Think about what it is like to be in that doghouse. If you think about that, and you think It must be miserable, and a smile crosses your face, you have an unmerciful heart.
	Don’t turn this into some sort of legalistic, external rule. God is not concerned with merely getting you to mouth the words, “I forgive you.” He wants you to have a heart of compassion and mercy.
	In the next verse we see an amazing thing: Forgiveness revoked. 

MATTHEW 18:34  “In anger his master turned him over to the jailers to be tortured, until he should pay back all he owed.”

It is interesting that he didn’t just put him in prison, but Jesus adds that he had him tortured – and not just for a day or two, but until he could pay the entire multi-gazillion dollar debt, which was never.
Torture was not a normal part of imprisonment for debt. In fact, it wasn’t even legal in Israel. The pagans might have someone tortured to get the person or a friend to come up with the money that was owed. This mention of torture is just part of the scenery of the parable and obviously does not apply directly to God. The point that does apply is the fierce anger and the severity of the punishment.
People like this pitiable, unmerciful servant are like the men Peter describes in 2 Peter 2:20-21: They are worse off at the end than they were at the beginning. It would have been better for them not to have known the way of righteousness….
	In the book The Case for Faith, by Lee Strobel, most of the chapters are excellent, but the one on hell is very weak. He says there is no torture in hell. But here Jesus uses torture as a temporal illustration of the eternal reality in hell. That means what happens in hell is analogous to torture … only worse.
	And the reason for the torture is his anger. The fact that he was so merciful and compassionate before and so furiously angry now tells us something about this king. He would forgive mishandled money, but not mishandled mercy. 

JAMES 2:13a … judgment without mercy will be shown to anyone who has not been merciful….

The parable ends with this shocking conclusion:

MATTHEW 18:35  “This is how my heavenly Father will treat each of you unless you forgive your brother from your heart.”

I hope you take that seriously. It is pretty clear. Jesus is saying that if you are unmerciful, you can expect to have to pay your entire debt to God in hell for eternity. You can’t win God’s forgiveness, but you can lose it. You can’t do anything to earn it, because it comes graciously. But you can forfeit it.
	Chrysostom commented on this, saying, “What grief has someone caused you that compares to the grief you will cause yourself if you fail to forgive, and are then subjected to the unforgiveness of God?”
	In Matthew 5, in the Beatitudes, Jesus said, Blessed are the merciful. Here He says, “Unblessed are the unmerciful.” This is a concept that Jesus taught often. 

MATTHEW 6:12-15  “Forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors. … For if you forgive men when they sin against you, your heavenly Father will also forgive you. But if you do not forgive men their sins, your Father will not forgive your sins.”
 
MARK 11:25  “And when you stand praying, if you hold anything against anyone, forgive him, so that your Father in heaven may forgive you your sins.”

LUKE 6:37  “Do not judge, and you will not be judged. Do not condemn, and you will not be condemned. Forgive, and you will be forgiven.”

LUKE 11:2-4  He said to them, “When you pray, say: ‘… Forgive us our sins, for we also forgive everyone who sins against us.’ ”

MATTHEW 18:34-35  “In anger his master turned him over to the jailers to be tortured, until he should pay back all he owed. This is how my heavenly Father will treat each of you unless you forgive your brother from your heart.”

We are to forgive because we have been forgiven. We are to forgive to a degree commensurate with what we have been forgiven. We are to forgive as freely as we have been forgiven. And we are to forgive in order to be forgiven in the future.
	People often wonder, How can I have assurance of salvation? To get it, they try to look back to their conversion to see if it was genuine. That is the wrong approach. Assurance of salvation comes by examining your life since your conversion. And one of the most often repeated tests of true salvation is mercy. Jesus couldn’t have been more clear: If you are not a merciful, forgiving person, do not expect to go to heaven when you die.
	One thing we learn from this parable is that you can’t be unforgiving if you realize how much you yourself have been forgiven. It is obvious from the way the first servant reacts to being owed a relatively small debt that while he is choking that second servant, he has absolutely no appreciation for the forgiveness he just received. 
A true believer, in contrast, does have a sense of having been forgiven a great debt, and the humility that produces enables the believer to forgive. That is why Christians are capable of superhuman acts of forgiveness. 
So think about this: In this parable, who does the master represent? God. And who is the first servant in this parable? You. And who is the second servant? Anyone you need to forgive.

This Principle in Practice
On Monday, December 1, 1997, 15-year-old Melissa Jenkins got up and went to school. That morning Melissa did what she did every day when she arrived at school. She went to the hallway outside the administration office where she met about a dozen other Christians to pray together. Classes were going to start in a couple minutes, so someone closed in prayer. Just after the final “amen,” before anyone had even begun to move toward going to class, at that moment Melissa was shocked to hear gunshots … and screams. A 14-year-old freshman had walked up with an automatic pistol and begun firing into the prayer circle, calmly shooting the Christians one by one. Three were killed. Five others seriously wounded. As Melissa watched in horror as her brothers and sisters in Christ were literally executed at close range, she suddenly felt the sting of a bullet ripping into her own flesh. The bullet didn’t just graze her skin; it tore right through the middle of her body and hit her spinal cord. Lying in a hospital bed a few days later she was told the damage was severe. She would be a paraplegic the rest of her life.
Guess what she did after she heard this news … she sent a message to the boy who had deliberately done this to her: “Tell him I forgive him.” Christians are capable of superhuman acts of forgiveness.

CHAPTER 8

Questions About Forgiveness

What About Forgiving Yourself?
This is not a biblical concept. It comes from the fact that people still feel rotten even after having been forgiven. The reason they talk about forgiving themselves is they want to be rid of that rotten feeling. But forgiveness doesn’t eliminate that feeling. That feeling is the natural result of facing reality: You are the kind of person who would do that kind of thing, and you did it. Your only consolation comes from thinking through a greater reality: You are on the way to becoming a better person.

What About Forgiving God?
This question implies there was some offense, which is a blasphemous thought. It also implies that God is somehow accountable to us – another blasphemous thought. If you have feelings like that, the solution is not for you to forgive God; it is for you to come to know the true God. If you think God has done something wrong, you have absolutely no idea who God is.

When God Doesn’t Forgive, Must We?
As an excuse not to forgive, some people try to argue that since there are circumstances in which God does not forgive, we do not need to forgive in those circumstances. They maintain that God wouldn’t require a higher standard of us than His own standard. 
Is this true? Let’s examine what God requires in order to forgive.

What Does God Require in Order to Forgive?

•He requires confession.

1 JOHN 1:9  If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive our sins and cleanse us from all unrighteousness.

•He requires repentance. God will not forgive a rebellious person.

MARK 1:4  John came … preaching a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins. 

ACTS 2:38  Peter replied, “Repent and be baptized, every one of you, in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins.”

ACTS 8:22  “Repent …and pray to the Lord. Perhaps he will forgive you….”

DEUTERONOMY 29:18-20  Make sure there is no man or woman, clan or tribe … whose heart turns away from the Lord our God.… When such a person … invokes a blessing on himself and therefore thinks, “I will be safe, even though I persist in going my own way” … the Lord will never be willing to forgive him…. 

(See also Josh. 24:19 and Jer. 5:7.)

•He requires faith.

ACTS 10:43  … everyone who believes in him receives forgiveness of sins through his name. 

•He requires us to forgive. 
He won’t forgive us if we won’t forgive others.

Since God has these requirements does that mean there are times we are justified in not forgiving? Not necessarily. The command is to forgive as you have been forgiven. Nothing in the Bible says, “Don’t forgive in the cases where God doesn’t forgive.” In fact, nothing in the Bible says “don’t forgive” for any reason. Some things are the prerogative of God and do not belong to us.
When our son was a toddler, there was a time when our two older daughters assumed that if he didn’t do what they said, they could spank him. Obviously, it would have been inappropriate for them to spank their brother. There are instances in which I as a parent can’t overlook a wrong because it requires correction. But there is never an instance in which my kids cannot overlook one another’s wrongs. From this analogy we learn something about how we should relate to our brothers and sisters in Christ.
Similar reasoning applies to other aspects of love. We are to be kind as God is kind. Someone might think, God withholds kindness from those in hell. But the Bible doesn’t say we are allowed to withhold kindness in the cases where God withholds it. It says we are to show kindness as God has shown kindness to us. It gives only the positive side. 

LUKE 17:3-4  “If your brother sins, rebuke him, and if he repents, forgive him. If he sins against you seven times in a day, and seven times comes back to you and says, ‘I repent,’ forgive him.” 

What about this passage? Does it imply that you don’t have to forgive unless the person repents? No, for two reasons. First, it doesn’t say to withhold forgiveness if he doesn’t repent; rather, to forgive if he does say “I repent.” Second, I think the point Jesus is making is that you should forgive even when the person’s repentance is bogus. Think of the scenario – the guy does the same thing seven times in one day! It is possible to be truly repentant and then fall into the same sin again, but seven times in one day? 
I think the picture here is of repentance that is not genuine – or at least doesn’t appear to be genuine (which is the point anyway). When someone keeps on offending you, and they won’t take what they are doing seriously, you still forgive. 
You are to forgive every sin immediately, regardless of the other person’s attitude, but that doesn’t necessarily mean there will be full reconciliation of the relationship. That requires two people. Some people make reconciliation impossible. That is why Romans 12:18 says, If it is possible, as far as it depends on you, live at peace with everyone. If the other person is unwilling to allow reconciliation, you are not responsible for that. You are, however, responsible for not holding a grudge and not punishing the other person or withholding love in any way.
There’s another thing to keep in mind. When the Bible talks about God’s forgiveness, it is important to understand that God forgives on two levels: eternal and temporal.

MATTHEW 12:32  Anyone who speaks a word against the Son of Man will be forgiven, but anyone who speaks against the Holy Spirit will not be forgiven, either in this age or in the age to come. 

Two Kinds of Forgiveness

There is temporal forgiveness in this age, and eternal forgiveness in the age to come. That one little piece of knowledge will be a great help to you in understanding the statements of Scripture about God’s forgiveness. Remember this – sometimes God will give temporal forgiveness and not eternal, and sometimes He will give eternal and not temporal.

Temporal Forgiveness without Eternal
There is a sense in which God temporarily forgives every person his debt. Instead of smashing us into hell the split second we first sin, He is patient with us. That is true for every person you see walking around. Not everyone realizes his debt to God, and not everyone cries out for mercy. But there is a sense in which everyone wants God to be patient and give more time. And He does.
Just like we found in the parable of the talents – every person is a steward of the life he has been given. God puts you on this earth and graciously gives you a job, a calling, a way to serve Him in a meaningful way. If you choose to ignore this truth and live your life as if it belonged to you, you have stolen from God.

NUMBERS 14:11-12  The Lord said to Moses, “How long will these people treat me with contempt? How long will they refuse to believe in me, in spite of all the miraculous signs I have performed among them? I will strike them down with a plague and destroy them.…”

Then Moses pleaded with God to show mercy for the sake of His own name.

NUMBERS 14:17-19  “Now may the Lord's strength be displayed, just as you have declared [then Moses quotes back to God what God had revealed to him about God’s character]: ‘The Lord is slow to anger, abounding in love and forgiving sin and rebellion. Yet he does not leave the guilty unpunished….’
	“In accordance with your great love, forgive the sin of these people, just as you have pardoned them from the time they left Egypt until now.”

Here “forgiveness” is nothing more than God relenting from destroying them. Moses is not talking about a one-time permanent personal redemption for all the individuals; he is talking about God deciding not to destroy them on the spot for specific sins. 

NUMBERS 14:20-23  The Lord replied, “I have forgiven them, as you asked. Nevertheless, as surely as I live and as surely as the glory of the Lord fills the whole earth, not one of the men who saw my glory and the miraculous signs I performed in Egypt and in the desert but who disobeyed me and tested me ten times – not one of them will ever see the land I promised on oath to their forefathers. No one who has treated me with contempt will ever see it.”

So He forgives again, but in the same breath says they will not enter the land flowing with milk and honey. This forgiveness is simply the overlooking of a specific sin – not the total redemption we think of when we think of being saved.

JOSHUA 24:19b-20  “He will not forgive your rebellion and your sins. If you forsake the Lord and serve foreign gods, he will turn and bring disaster on you and make an end of you, after he has been good to you.”

Again, forgiveness here is simply a decision not to destroy them for a specific sin. Forgiveness in the age to come is ultimate salvation – heaven. So what is forgiveness in this age? I believe that it is not salvation, but it is the decision God makes not to destroy or not to bring upon a person dire consequences for a specific sin in this life.

LUKE 23:33-34  When they came to the place called the Skull, there they crucified him, along with the criminals – one on his right, the other on his left. Jesus said, “Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing.”

Was Jesus praying for all those people to go to heaven, even though they were rejecting Him? Jesus had already said no one can come to the Father except through Him. Jesus knew no one could ever be saved who rejected Him. I believe Jesus, at that moment, knew the infinite anger and wrath God the Father must have had as He watched the crucifixion. I shudder to think of what may have happened had Jesus not interceded at that point. It would have been perfectly appropriate at that moment for God to not only make the sky go black, but to rain down hundred-pound hailstones, smashing every one of those people to bits. But what happened to them instead? Nothing.
When Adam ate the fruit, God sent him out of the Garden and cursed the earth. When people of the ancient world became evil in their thoughts, God sent a flood and drowned them all. When the people of Sodom and Gomorrah became perverse, God sent fire and brimstone and burned them to ashes.
When Nadab and Abihu offered unauthorized offerings in the temple, God struck them dead. When 450 prophets of Baal worshiped that false god, God had every one of them slaughtered with the sword. When some young men decided to mock God’s servant Elisha, God sent two bears to devour them. 
When Ananias and Sapphira lied about their gift, God killed them both on the spot. And when people in the Corinthian church desecrated the communion time with their selfishness, God made some of them sick and others He killed.
But when God’s own covenant people brutally beat His own Son, rejected Him, mocked Him, whipped Him, spit at Him, humiliated Him, and killed Him with the most painful death they could think of – all the time saying "Let his blood be on our head!" (Matt. 27:25) – God did nothing. Those people did that and then walked away. They kept breathing. Their hearts didn’t stop beating. They remained healthy. I believe that was the answer to Jesus’ prayer. 

Eternal Forgiveness without Temporal
Does Jesus’ sacrifice cover all our sins – even unknown sins? Yes (Num. 15:22-26). And yet Jesus taught us to pray, “Our Father … forgive us our sins” (Luke 11:4). Clearly this is a prayer believers are to pray. Throughout the Psalms we read of redeemed people crying out to God for forgiveness (Pss. 6, 25, 32, 38, 51, 102, 130, 143).

PSALM 6:1-2  O Lord, do not rebuke me in your anger or discipline me in your wrath. Be merciful to me, Lord….

PSALM 25:7  Remember not the sins of my youth and my rebellious ways; according to your love remember me, for you are good, O Lord.
	         11   For the sake of your name, O Lord, forgive my iniquity, though it is great. 
	     18  Look upon my affliction and my distress and take away all my sins. 

1 JOHN 1:9  If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness.

The phrase “if we confess” is in the present tense. It is not “If we have confessed.”
James 5 and 1 Corinthians 11 are examples of believers suffering temporal consequences for sin. We understand that a person who is a believer has eternal forgiveness. Yet we still pray for temporal forgiveness. Why? Because there are two problems that need to be addressed when someone sins: guilt and loss of intimacy. Every time we sin, we incur guilt, which means we are deserving of punishment, and we move away from closeness to God. Our eternal punishment has been taken care of, but there is still temporal punishment that the Lord uses to correct us. So whenever we sin, we are in need of two things: temporal forgiveness and reconciliation.
There are temporal consequences – even punishments for sin – in this life, even for the believer. 

HEBREWS 12:5-11  And you have forgotten that word of encouragement that addresses you as sons: “My son, do not make light of the Lord's discipline, and do not lose heart when he rebukes you, because the Lord disciplines those he loves, and he punishes everyone he accepts as a son.” 
	Endure hardship as discipline; God is treating you as sons. For what son is not disciplined by his father? If you are not disciplined (and everyone undergoes discipline), then you are illegitimate children and not true sons. Moreover, we have all had human fathers who disciplined us and we respected them for it. How much more should we submit to the Father of our spirits and live! Our fathers disciplined us for a little while as they thought best; but God disciplines us for our good, that we may share in his holiness. No discipline seems pleasant at the time, but painful. Later on, however, it produces a harvest of righteousness and peace for those who have been trained by it. 

The word punishes in verse 6 is literally whips. It is the same word used to describe Jesus’ flogging at His crucifixion.
Did you know that sometimes in response to your sin God might give you a good flogging in this life – even though you have eternal forgiveness? One reason we ask forgiveness for our sins as believers, even though we already have eternal forgiveness, is to restore the intimacy of the relationship. We long for that full reconciliation of the relationship that is broken when we rebel against God. 
Another reason to do it is to ask the Lord to forego temporal punishment. This is kind of like when your kids disobey and say, “I know what I did was wrong, and I’m sorry. I know you said I would be punished if I did that, but could I please have another chance?” Often God will respond to that. So we confess our sins.

What Is Confession?

Confession is not just admitting a sin. When you confess your sins, that doesn’t mean you just cite them – rattle off a list. The word confess literally means “to agree.” The idea is that you align your perspective about that sin with God’s. You think about sin the way He thinks about it. You despise it.
It also involves acknowledging that God is just and correct in judging sin, like David did when he repented of the sin with Bathsheba. When he wrote Psalm 51, he knew that God had said the baby would die, yet he doesn’t say a word about that in the prayer. Instead he says, “you are proved right when you speak and justified when you judge” (Ps. 51:4).
 
Supernatural Forgiveness

I read of a drug addict who was holding up a market and shot and killed an innocent boy who happened to be in the store. The father went to the prison just to tell that man that he forgave him. That is a man who understands something of the size of the debt he has been forgiven. That is why the Psalmist said, “Bless the Lord, O my soul, and forget not all His benefits, who forgives all your sins....” (Ps. 103:2,3).
In light of what Christ suffered for us, for a Christian to be willingly unforgiving is unthinkable. To refuse to forgive even when a person has repented is such egregious rebellion against the character of God that if you refuse to forgive, it is very questionable whether you are saved.
Jesus spoke so often of the necessity for us to forgive one another in His sermons, conversations, and prayers that you would have to be willfully blind to miss the point. Remember, for example, the parable of the unmerciful servant. Some parables are hard to understand, but this one couldn’t be clearer. It has three points: (1) the boundless grace of God, (2) the absurdity of spurning that grace, and (3) the staggering, fearsome fate awaiting those who do. It is the third point that Jesus emphasizes.
	Dianne Bristol was a 20-year-old woman selling encyclopedias door to door in San Diego when she disappeared. Micheal Keyes kidnapped her, raped her, and then strangled her to death. Her mother later said that when they got the news, “It was like a knife into the depths of our souls.” The judge who sentenced Keyes to life said he was “cunning, calculating, and callous, the most vicious killer I have encountered in my career.” The parents drove two thousand miles to see him, and when they arrived they spoke not only to him but also to the other inmates and said, “We love this special person from the bottom of our hearts. We harbor no hatred and no revenge,” and they hugged him. Keyes was astonished and bewildered at this response. Christians are capable of supernatural feats of forgiveness because of how much they themselves have been forgiven.
	
Don’t Subvert Justice or Short-Circuit 
Church Discipline

You can only forgive sins committed against you. If someone murders your loved one, you can choose not to hold a grudge, but you can’t forgive that person’s debt to society. It is not up to you whether he should go to the electric chair. A great example of this is David with Shimei in 2 Samuel 16:5-8. (See John MacArthur, The Freedom and Power of Forgiveness, 125-27.)
It is the same with the church. We’re not at liberty to short-circuit church discipline in the case of a sin that harms the church. (See MacArthur, 128-130, 134, 141-60.) What kinds of things do we put up with? Anything that is too minor to confront. If it is something serious – if a person is living in unrepentant sin, we need to confront the person. But if it is something too minor to confront – an annoying habit, a general lack of some virtue, immaturity, a funny look they gave you, etc., if it is not worth confronting, then we must put up with it. Those are the only two options. 
Most people don’t want to confront sin, but at the same time, they are not willing to bear with the person … so instead they gossip about him, look down on him, etc. Scripture doesn’t give us that option. Either it is something worth addressing, or it is nothing worth remembering.

COLOSSIANS 3:12-13 Therefore, as God's chosen people, holy and dearly loved, clothe yourselves with compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness and patience. Bear with each other and forgive whatever grievances you may have against one another. Forgive as the Lord forgave you. 

It can be hard to carry out all these things at once:
 
     •	trying to be compassionate when compassion is called for
     •	trying to show kindness when an act of kindness is necessary
     •	making an effort to maintain humility the whole time
     •	remembering to be gentle when gentleness is needed
     •	applying the virtue of patience with people when you are being pushed into anger
     •	bearing with people
     •	forgiving 

All that is a lot to manage. How can you keep it all straight? How can you make sure you exhibit each of those in the right balance and in the right contexts? 

COLOSSIANS 3:14 And over all these virtues put on love, which binds (them all) together in perfection. 

If you try to artificially perform all these things, it will never happen. But if you simply love the person, it will all fall into place. The point is not so much to ask yourself exactly what response is called for in a specific circumstance as it is to genuinely love people. If you do that, you’ll find that for the most part you will tend to do all these things in the right contexts.

COLOSSIANS 3:15 Let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts….

The church is to be a peaceful place; it should not be a place of strife. Various denominations have debated what is the best form of church government. Should you have elder rule or congregational rule or some type of hierarchical rule? I vote for this form – the “peace of Christ” rule. The word rule literally means “umpire” or “referee.” What rules in the church? The peace of Christ. All the corporate activities of the church must be guided by peace, and all the individual activities must be guided by peace. 
Ask yourself: Are you creating strife in the church or are your actions governed by that which maintains peaceful relationships? Do you think so little of Christ’s precious bride that you’d be willing to put her in poor health by spreading discontent, gossiping, undermining people’s ministries, pitting people against each other? Or are you committed to the peace of Christ?
Human wisdom would tell you that confrontation and rebuke about sin is antithetical to peace. But we know from Scripture that those two things go together beautifully. Any discussion of peace in Scripture always comes in the context of righteousness. You bring about peace by confronting sin.

      •	Right before Jesus says, “Blessed are the peacemakers,” He says “Blessed are the pure in heart.”
      • 	You need to pursue holiness so you can have peace. Make every effort to live in peace with all men and to be holy; without holiness no one will see the Lord. See to it that no one misses the grace of God and that no bitter root grows up to cause trouble and defile many. See that no one is sexually immoral, or is godless … (Heb. 12:14). 
      • 	Purity comes before peace. But the wisdom that comes from heaven is first of all pure; then peace-loving… Peacemakers who sow in peace raise a harvest of righteousness (James 3:17-18).
      • 	In order to have peace with God, righteousness is required. The fruit of righteousness will be peace; the effect of righteousness will be quietness and confidence forever (Isa. 32:17). 

But if I confront sin, that will bring more conflict. Shouldn’t I just sweep it under the rug and focus on what they are doing that is good? Jesus said, “Blessed are the peacemakers” not “Blessed are the trucemakers.” Cold war is not peace. In fact, the United States more or less devastated the USSR by winning the cold war. Cold war is real war – especially in the church.
What specifically is the peace of Christ? Just before the crucifixion, Jesus said in John 14:27, “Peace I leave with you; my peace I give you. I do not give to you as the world gives. Do not let your hearts be troubled and do not be afraid.” The peace of Christ is a kind of peace that far surpasses the truces the world tries to call peace.
The meaning of the Greek word for peace is closely connected to the common Hebrew greeting shalom. The idea is of the calmness of heart that comes as a result of total well-being. When all is well in your world, you tend not to get into many fights. So inner peace, and peace with God, results in peaceful relationships. The promise of well-being that Christ gave us should so dominate our thinking that our lives and our interactions with one another are governed by peace. When I’m worried that you are taking away from my well-being, I will be at odds with you. But the more I am conscious of the fact that Christ is taking care of my well-being, and that all that really matters is well with me, then that leaves me with nothing to fight with you about.
	How does that happen? How do we put that concept into action?
It has to come out from within each of us. Paul gives us a command:

COLOSSIANS 3:15a   Let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts….

This is not a system or structure we can set up through an amendment to our church constitution. It will happen only when it is a heart attitude from each member. It will happen when each one of us has as the office manager of our heart the big boss by the name of peace.
	In the last part of the same verse Paul gives a motive:

COLOSSIANS 3:15b   since as members of one body you were called to peace. 

The very fact that you were all called to be members of a single body means that obviously you were called to peace. God did not intend that you all come together and function as a spastic, uncoordinated body that is in conflict with itself. Just as you need to have self-control over your body, so we as a body need to function together harmoniously. We as a body need to be self-controlled. The church is the sphere of redemption. It is the place where men and women are reconciled to God and to one another. And so to be called to belong to the body of Christ means to be called to peace.
	Now that he has addressed the issue of peace within the church, in the rest of verses 15-16 Paul gives a call to worship. This call to worship begins not with the Psalms and hymns, but here with the command to be thankful. 
It is fitting that Paul should give the command about peace before he talks about worship: He understands that the last thing God wants is so-called worship offered from a bunch of people who are not at peace with one another. As we found in chapter one, Jesus taught that peaceful relationships are a higher priority even than worship! (Mt.5:23,24) 
Never try to worship while harboring bitterness against someone. That must be taken care of before you worship. Churches tend to name rooms according to the activity that takes place in that room … fellowship hall, worship center, prayer room, baptismal area. Not once have I walked through a church and seen a room off the sanctuary called “reconciliation room.” Perhaps that wouldn’t be a bad idea.

Appendix A

Reconciliation Worksheet

Are you willing to do all you can to reconcile this relationship?
 
    a.	Yes
    b.	No
    c.	Not sure

If you did not answer “yes,” read through the sections on Importance, Urgency, and Higher Priority than Worship (pp. 2-5). 

STEP 1: Repent

Ask the Lord to open your eyes to any sin there may be in your heart that may be contributing to this conflict. List the sins that come to mind:

 1. ___________________________
 2. ___________________________
 3. ___________________________
 4. ___________________________
 5. ___________________________
 6. ___________________________
 7. ___________________________
 8. ___________________________
 9. ___________________________
10. ___________________________

Now confess these to the other person (if appropriate) and ask if he or she suspects any other sins. List all the sins the person mentions, and put a check mark beside all the ones you agree are valid:

 1. ___________________________
 2. ___________________________
 3. ___________________________
 4. ___________________________
 5. ___________________________
 6. ___________________________
 7. ___________________________
 8. ___________________________
 9. ___________________________
10. ___________________________

Next, search your heart for which desires rose to a level of too much importance in your heart, resulting in the above sins. List each desire:
 1. ___________________________
 2. ___________________________
 3. ___________________________
 4. ___________________________
 5. ___________________________
 6. ___________________________
 7. ___________________________
 8. ___________________________
 9. ___________________________
10. ___________________________

Now repent before God of any idolatrous desires, and ask the other person’s forgiveness for any remaining sin you have not yet asked forgiveness for.

STEP 2: Reconcile

Before the other person does anything, make sure you fulfill your responsibilities. 

ROMANS 12:18  If it is possible, as far as it depends on you, live at peace with everyone.

The part that is possible and that depends on you is described in the surrounding verses:

ROMANS 12:17-21  Do not repay anyone evil for evil. Be careful to do what is right in the eyes of everybody. If it is possible, as far as it depends on you, live at peace with everyone. Do not take revenge, my friends, but leave room for God's wrath, for it is written: “It is mine to avenge; I will repay,” says the Lord. On the contrary: “If your enemy is hungry, feed him; if he is thirsty, give him something to drink. In doing this, you will heap burning coals on his head.” Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good.

If the other person is not willing to reconcile, you can’t have a fully restored relationship, and there can’t be full forgiveness at the highest level. But even if the other person is unwilling, you still have several responsibilities:

   1.	Do not retaliate (vv. 17,19)
   2.	As much as possible do what is right in the eyes of everyone involved (v. 17)
   3.	Bring about as much peacefulness as possible (v. 18)
   4.	Instead of harboring a grudge or punishing the person, show him love and kindness (v. 20).
   5.	Seek to overcome his evil with good (v. 21).

1 PETER 1:22  Now that you have purified yourselves by obeying the truth so that you have sincere love for your brothers, love one another deeply, from the heart.

COLOSSIANS 3:12-14 Therefore, as God's chosen people, holy and dearly loved, clothe yourselves with compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness and patience. Bear with each other and forgive whatever grievances you may have against one another. Forgive as the Lord forgave you. And over all these virtues put on love, which binds them all together in perfect unity.

As you consider these passages, in which ways do you feel you need to improve in your responsibility to love this person?
 1. ___________________________
 2. ___________________________
 3. ___________________________
 4. ___________________________
 5. ___________________________
 6. ___________________________
 7. ___________________________
 8. ___________________________
 9. ___________________________
10. ___________________________

Confrontation Worksheet

Be careful! Remember – the glory of God is at stake. 

ROMANS 15:5-6 May … God … give you a spirit of unity among yourselves as you follow Christ Jesus, so that with one heart and mouth you may glorify the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. 

What is your reason for rebuking this person?
    a.	to get him to stop hurting me
    b.	to teach him a lesson
    c.	to restore him to the path of godliness

If you answered a or b, take some time to eliminate wrong motives. The goal should be c.

Is this something that can be overlooked? If the issue is so minor that the person is not really in need of spiritual restoration, we should do what we can to just overlook the offense. A rule of thumb is to overlook all offences except:

    a.	Offenses that reveal sin in the other person’s heart for which he needs to repent
    b.	Offenses that are so painful or so frequent that you find yourself continually failing in your responsibility to overlook the offense. 

Guidelines for Bringing up
a “Sticky” Issue

1. Remove the log of unrepentance from your own eye.

2. Examine your motives.

      • Is this a response of anger? 
      • Is my motive really to do something I believe will be profitable to the person?
      • Am I trying to get him to accommodate my desires or change for my benefit? 
      •	Or is my one and only objective to achieve greater Christlikeness in both him and me?

3. Make sure you are not assuming motives. 

If you suspect something bad in the heart, ask, and then accept the answer.

Wrong: “I noticed you had a bad attitude the other day when you did X.”

Better: “I noticed you did X the other day. Is it possible that you did that because of a wrong attitude?”

	Wrong: “You did X because ...”

Better: “What was your motive for doing X? Were you intending … ?”

There are only two things you should ever rebuke a person for:
    a.	sinful actions you know for sure have happened
    b.	sinful thoughts that the person has confessed

4. Be wise and loving in your timing.

The worst time to confront someone is generally the time when emotions are running high. 

5. Abide by the rules of communication.

If you fear the conversation may be explosive, ask the person ahead of time if he will agree to abide by three rules of Christian communication in Ephesians 4, listed below.

Three Rules of Communication
Ephesians 4:25-32

A. Be honest (don’t exaggerate). 

EPHESIANS 4:25  Therefore each of you must put off falsehood and speak truthfully to his neighbor, for we are all members of one body. 

B. Say only helpful things. 

EPHESIANS 4:29  Do not let any unwholesome talk come out of your mouths, but only what is helpful for building others up according to their needs, that it may benefit those who listen. 

Attack the problem, not the person. “Venting” is sin. Make sure you say something only if you are confident it will be profitable for the other person.

C. Be kind.

EPHESIANS 4:31-32  Get rid of all bitterness, rage and anger, brawling and slander, along with every form of malice. Be kind and compassionate to one another, forgiving each other, just as in Christ God forgave you. 

There should be no anger in your voice or your mannerisms, and your goal should be for your words to fit perfectly the description in verse 32.
If you have a history of heated arguments with this person, you may want to agree ahead of time to ask each other to give a signal to you if they notice you violating one of those principles. 
For example: “If I say something that seems angry or is not kind, or if it is not edifying to you, or if it is not really honest, will you please just raise your hand?”
“And would you like me to raise my hand if you do one of those things?”
If you have established a pattern of sinful communication in this relationship, you might have to spend the first half hour just raising your hands.
After you have gone through steps 1 and 2 (the Reconciliation Worksheet) and step 3 (this Confrontation Worksheet), if the relationship is still not fully restored, find a godly third party to help (step 4).

Appendix B

Repentance

Importance

The importance of repentance can hardly be overstated. It is always a matter of salvation or damnation. There is no salvation without repentance. Where there is no repentance, there is no hope of forgiveness of sins, knowing God, or going to heaven.
	In Luke 13 Jesus said to the people, unless you repent, you too will all perish. (Lk.13:3,5)
Acts 2:38 Peter replied, "Repent and be baptized, every one of you…for the forgiveness of your sins. 
 Acts 3:19 Repent, then, and turn to God, so that your sins may be wiped out, that times of refreshing may come from the Lord,
No one is exempt anywhere in the world. Acts 17:30 God…commands all people everywhere to repent.
God will only forgive those who truly repent – no exceptions (Lk.24:47)

2 Peter 3:9 The Lord…is patient with you, not wanting anyone to perish, but everyone to come to repentance. Those are the only two options – perish in hell, or repent.
Repentance is so important that when the Bible summarizes Jesus’ message, it does so by saying this: Jesus preached "Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is near." (Mt.4:17, Mk.1:15). When Jesus sent out His disciples He said, “Go out and tell people to repent for the forgiveness of sins.” (Mk.6:12, Lk.24:47, Acts 2:38). In fact, in Lk.5:32 Jesus said the whole reason He left Heaven and came into this world was to call…sinners to repentance. That is why there will be more rejoicing in heaven over one sinner who repents than over ninety-nine righteous persons who do not need to repent.  (Luke 15:7) So even if someone prays the “sinner’s prayer” and means it, if he doesn’t repent, he is lost.
When Jesus addressed the things the problems in the churches in Revelation 2,3, His solution was the same every time, no matter what their problems were.
To the backsliding church in Ephesus He says Repent! And…If you do not repent, I will come to you and remove your lampstand from its place. To the church in Pergamum that tolerated false teachers in their midst He says: Repent! And if you do not repent I will soon come to you and will fight against them with the sword of my mouth. And to the church in Thyatira that had the same sin He says of the false teacher, I have given her time to repent…but she is unwilling. So I will cast her on a bed of suffering, and I will make those who commit adultery with her suffer intensely, unless they repent. To the church in Sardis whose deeds He found incomplete He says, Wake up! …and repent.  But if you do not … I will come like a thief. To the worthless, lukewarm church in Laodicea that was spiritually wretched, pitiful, poor, blind and naked He says, be earnest, and repent. Without exception, Christ’s solution to the evil in every church is always the same – repent.

What is it?  
Repentance is not just sorrow or regret over sin. You can feel bad enough about your sin to kill yourself, and yet still not be repentant.  Nor is it simply admitting you are not perfect or making a resolution to do better.  Everyone does that – usually with little result.
The word “repentance” can be traced way back to its origins in the Old Testament. There are two components of repentance: sorrow and turning.  In the Greek translation of the Old Testament the word for “repentance” (metanoeo – the word used in the New Testament for repentance) translates both Hebrew words SHOOV (to turn or return) and NAHAM (to be sorrowful, to regret).  When a person finally admits the direction of his life is moving away from God, and he becomes sorrowful and contrite and broken before God, and then reverses the direction of his life toward God, that is repentance.
    Repentance involves the whole person – your thoughts, attitudes, motives, emotions, actions, etc.  Isa.55:7  Let the wicked forsake his way and the evil man his thoughts.  Let him turn to the LORD, and he will have mercy on him. It involves a change in both your thoughts and your way (your direction – your path in life). It is a redirection of the will.  It is not a resolution, but a whole new path in life.
Luke 15 is a chapter where Jesus describes God’s exuberant joy that He experiences when a sinner repents.  This chapter is very valuable for understanding what repentance is, because Jesus actually describes the process that goes on in the mind of the Prodigal son.
He had taken his father’s money, left home, and blown it all on wild living. Then in v.17 Jesus describes his repentance in several steps:

1. When he came to his senses
Step one is to come to your senses. That phrase means to wake up to what is really going on.  When we are in sin we are in a fantasy world.  We are detached from reality in our own little dream world thinking “I can keep going down this path and still be OK.” Or “I’ll be able to recover easily enough” or “This is not really sin.” The first step in repentance is to wake up to the real world: “I am walking away from God, and unless something drastic happens, nothing is going to change.”

2. he said, 'How many of my father's hired men have food to spare, and here I am starving to death! 
Part of acknowledging reality is coming to grips with the destruction your sin is causing.

3. I will set out and go back to my father 
Now that is crux of the issue. He does not say, “Look at my budget. I’ve got to cut back on the prostitutes” or “From now on, I’m going to try hard not to be so wild in my living.”   None of that was the real issue. The real issue is he had walked away from his father, and the solution was to go back to his father. If your repentance is nothing but reforming of behavior it is not repentance. Repentance is turning from sin to God. 

4. and say to him: Father, I have sinned against heaven and against you. 
Repentance requires confession. Admitting that what you were doing really was sin – not just against people but also against God.

5. I am no longer worthy to be called your son 
Another crucial component of true repentance is humility and a sense of unworthiness.  True repentance never says, “OK God, I’ve jumped through Your hoops, now it is time for you to restore me.”  It never demands anything of God – only begs.

6. make me like one of your hired men.'
True repentance comes with a desperation to be restored to God on any terms. The prodigal was more than willing to come back on any terms his father stipulated.  He did not say, “OK father, here’s my offer.  I will come back if I get my old bedroom and you provide a chariot…”  Sometimes you call someone to repent and turn to God and he says, “I’m not sure I’ll enjoy life if I do that.”  That person is not repentant. 

How to Spot it: The marks of genuine repentance

The Lord has commanded us to carry out church discipline.  And in the church discipline process, we are to keep going through the steps until the person repents.  So we have to know what repentance looks like (since we can see into people’s hearts, yet it is our job to determine whether or not a person has repented).

Acts 26:20 I preached that they should repent and turn to God and prove their repentance by their deeds.
Luke 3:8-14 Produce fruit in keeping with repentance... 10 "What should we do then?" the crowd asked. 11 John answered, "The man with two tunics should share with him who has none, and the one who has food should do the same." 
12 Tax collectors also came to be baptized. "Teacher," they asked, "what should we do?" 13 "Don't collect any more than you are required to," he told them. 
14 Then some soldiers asked him, "And what should we do?" He replied, "Don't extort money and don't accuse people falsely-be content with your pay." 
Each of those passages makes it clear that true repentance is something that can be observed by other people.

Sorrow
Isa.1:16-17 points out nine things that were involved with ancient Israel’s repentance (notice the progression from the inside to the outside): 
wash and make yourselves clean. Take your evil deeds out of my sight!  Stop doing wrong, 17 learn to do right!  Seek justice, encourage the oppressed.  Defend the cause of the fatherless, plead the case of the widow. 
It starts in the heart but also has a pronounced effect on words, attitudes and actions. This is a very important passage on understanding the role of the emotions in repentance. Repentance is not just sorrow, but does involve sorrow.  Paul explained the role of sorrow in repentance in 2 Corinthians 1.

5 For when we came into Macedonia, this body of ours had no rest, but we were harassed at every turn-conflicts on the outside, fears within. 
On the outside people were beating them up, throwing them in prison, whipping them, etc. And worse than that on the inside was the fear that comes from the anticipation of all that (which is always worse).
This caused massive depression.
2 Cor.1:8  We were under great pressure, far beyond our ability to endure, so that we despaired even of life. 

But then God came and comforted them. And you’ll never guess how He did it. He comforted Paul by sending news about someone else’s sorrow.

6 But God, who comforts the downcast, comforted us by the coming of Titus, 7 and not only by his coming but also by the comfort you had given him. He told us about your longing for me, your deep sorrow, your zeal for me (loyalty), so that my joy was greater than ever. 
What were they so sorrowful about, and why did that transform Paul from the deepest depression to his greatest joy ever?  (If Paul lived in our day he probably would be put on medication for manic depressive disorder!) Paul goes on to explain, and in v.8 we find out what caused the Corinthians’ sorrow: it was his last letter to them in which he rebuked them for their sin.
This is pertinent for our study because Paul describes their repentance. The sin they were repenting of is exactly the same sin Smyrna was rebuked for – failure to carry out church discipline.

8 Even if I caused you sorrow by my letter, I do not regret it. Though I did regret it-I see that my letter hurt you, but only for a little while- 9 yet now I am happy, not because you were made sorry, but because your sorrow led you to repentance.

Paul is saying, On the one hand it broke my heart to have to hurt you, but on the other hand, hearing about your sorrow has transformed my depression to ecstatic joy, not because I want you to be sorrowful, but because of the result that sorrow had!

9 For you became sorrowful as God intended and so did not suffer loss in any way by us. 10 Godly sorrow brings repentance that leads to salvation and leaves no regret, but worldly sorrow brings death. 

There is a kind of sorrow that reverses the direction of a person’s life, and there is a kind of sorrow that does not. When you confront someone over a sin, of course he will be sad. But that, in itself, doesn’t mean anything. The question is which kind of sadness will it be? And there is only one way to find out. Since we can not see into people’s hearts, and yet we are responsible to determine whether or not a person is repentant, all we can do is observe behavior.

Godly sorrow brings repentance 

Notice it does not say godly sorrow equals repentance. It brings repentance.

that leads to salvation and leaves no regret

This is an ironic juxtaposition of terms. Godly sorrow brings about a kind of regret that results in the elimination of regret. Your regret over past sins leads you to do what is right, and you never regret that. 
It seems like it would go without saying that true repentance and salvation would leave no regret, but it doesn’t.  We need to be reminded of that constantly. Think of it – has there ever been a time in your life when you regretted some righteousness in your life?  Never! And yet, even after years and years of doing righteous things and never regretting it, and sinning and always regretting it, still we get to a crossroads where we have to decide between righteousness and sin and we think, “Hmmmm which way should I go?” Repent – it will be hard.  You will have to give up that sin that is so precious to you.  But you will never regret it. 

but worldly sorrow brings death. 

This is the part that so many people do not understand. People think if they are sorry for their sin; that is repentance.  That is not repentance. It is just sorrow. Everyone feels that. It is natural to feel sorrow over sin.  Whether you are a believer or not, it is not a pleasant thing to realize there is evil in you. 
But worldly sorrow will try to alleviate those feelings of sorrow through any means possible other than repentance. Some people will try to drown those feelings out by immersing themselves in pleasure. They figure, “I feel bad, the antidote to that must be pleasure…” so off they go into partying, drinking, porn, overeating, over sleeping, constant recreation or travel, entertainment, immorality, drugs, etc. Other people experience sorrow for their sin and address the problem by just sticking their head in the sand and figuring that if they don’t think about it, the guilt will go away. So they just try to occupy their mind with something else. Some people try to escape through religion. Other people try to escape through making up for what they did wrong. (Judas) And then there are the people who try everything and still can’t escape, and so they turn to suicide (Judas again). 
If you feel bad about your sin, do not confuse that with repentance. It is not even half the battle. Satan can use that sorrow over sin to destroy you just as easily as he can use the sin itself.
But the Corinthians did not have worldly sorrow. They had godly sorrow which brought repentance.

The Fruits of Repentance

v.11 See what this godly sorrow has produced in you…

1. what earnestness (spoudan)  Haste, earnest effort

True repentance is radical. If you confront someone on a sin, and then ask, “Are you willing to repent?” and he says, “Oh sure!  Why not?  Hey, by the way, did you see game last night….” That is probably not repentance.  
Suppose you find out someone is watching pornography on a cable TV channel, and you rebuke him, and tell him he needs to cancel his cable.  He agrees. Then you ask him a few days later, “Did you cancel?”  “Welllll, not really.”  
“Not really?”
“Well…I’ve already paid through the end of the month….”
If you ask him if he agrees that it is sin and that he needs to change he will say, “Oh sure.” But there is no godly sorrow, because there is no haste to make changes – no earnest effort.
We intuitively know this when it comes to the “big” sins, but we have a tough time applying it in what we think of as saller issues. This week I got a call from a friend who, in a very gentle, loving way, rebuked me about a sin in my heart. It was the sin of lacking the compassion of Christ for the suffering. At first I was a little defensive, but after just sitting and listening for several minutes, I realized this was a valid rebuke. So then the conversation ended, and the moment I hung up I was right back to work (studying this very word in this passage for a sermon).
I didn’t want to let anything interrupt my study. I thought I don’t have time to sit around and think about that sin in my life – I’m too busy trying to study so I can teach the church about how to be serious about repentance.” I had to study almost all of v.11 before it penetrated my thick heart that I was ignoring the very truth I was trying to study! 

2. eagerness to clear yourselves (apologian) This word means to make a defense. 
	The NIV probably captures the idea in this context. It is not that they wanted to make excuses or shirk their responsibility; but they wanted to actually have a clean slate. Repentance never makes excuses about the past. But it does focus on being upright right now.  
When someone becomes aware of his sin, from that moment it is like a black mark on his soul. If he has any longing for righteousness, that will be distressing to him. He will want to be rid of it.
So if you confront someone with a sin, and he agrees, but seems to be content to have it continue to be part of him – that is probably not real repentance.

3. what indignation (aganaktesis)This word just means to be mad at someone.

Many commentators take it to mean they were mad at themselves for sinning, but it seems to be to be a concept that is foreign to Scripture. I can’t think of any time in the Bible when we are told we should be angry with ourselves over sin. Many times God rebukes people for not responding the right way in sin (with contrition and humility), but when has God ever rebuked someone for failing to get mad at himself?
In fact, it could be argued that that goes more with worldly sorrow than with godly sorrow. Self-loathing and anger at self usually do not lead to anything good. Instead they lead self-destruction.
The sin the Corinthians are repenting of is the sin of tolerance – apathy about sin in their midst. That which they should have reacted strongly against, brought no reaction at all. But now they have repented from that apathy, and they are indignant about that sin. So the anger is not at themselves. It is anger at the unrepentant sinner in their midst.

4. what alarm  (phobon) Lit: fear  

	Their repentance also produced in them fear. This is fear of God.  Real repentance makes a person take the warnings about judgment seriously – so he actually has a real effect on you.

5. what longing (epipothasin) 

Back in v.7 we see that this longing was a longing to be reconciled with Paul (and included in that is coming back into a right relationship with the Gospel.) Paul was the one who delivered God’s Word to them, and they had been rejecting it. And now in repentance they were turning back to embracing that one who brought them God’s Word.  
You can spot true repentance by a longing to be restored to godly people. Unbelievers and unrepentant sinners hate being around righteous people. They can stand it only if they can succeed in dragging those righteous people down to a level of being profane (not profane in the sense of swearing – profane in the sense of being mundane, earthly, temporal – anything but that which is holy.) A lot of people get sad about their sin, but you can tell if repentance has come if they develop a longing to be around holy people who talk about holy things. Those in darkness hate the light because it exposes their sin.  But if we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus, his Son, purifies us from all sin.  (1 John 1:7)
And it works the other direction as well. If we have been cleansed of our sin through true repentance, we will seek to be in the light and we will desire fellowship with righteous, holy people. 
 
6. what concern (zelon) This is the word zeal.  

The idea here is very close to that of indignation. The zealous person is the person who has a passion for God’s name, and gets really riled when it is dishonored.  
One thing I have noticed is the biggest haters of a given sin tend to be the people who have repented of that sin. If you want to find someone who is passionate against some cult, find a Christian who was deceived by that cult for years, and then was saved out of that. If you want to find someone on a crusade against drunkenness, just find a Christian who was involved with that sin and who has repented of it. There is something about true repentance that brings a strong resentment over that sin you are repenting from (because you know first hand how destructive it is – you know from experience how evil it is and the harm it does).
So when someone claims to have repented, and yet his favorite thing to do is hang around people who are still in that sin, that is not real repentance. Real repentance results in zeal for God’s honor.
 
7. what readiness to see justice done (ekdikesin) The word is not a word that has to do with readiness.  It just means to carry out justice (by punishing).

They finally punished the unrepentant offender. Their sin was an unwillingness to punish this man, and so the most essential mark of true repentance is a willingness to do it. That is pretty basic.  If you don’t have a willingness to give up your sin, you have not repented.
How do you know if someone has repented?  See if he is taking steps away from that sin. That is not to say if a person commits that same sin again that his repentance wasn’t genuine. A person can truly repent, become zealous against that sin, turn back to God, immerse himself into the fellowship, and do all those things… but then in a moment of weakness fall to that same sin.
But if you don’t see these things in his life, you know it is not repentance.  

Summary 

How can you tell if someone has repented (or if you have repented)?

1. Is there a hasty, earnest effort to turn around?
2. Is there an insistent drive to be clean before God right now? 
3. Is there a strong distaste for that sin?
4. Is there a healthy fear of God – taking His commands and the threat of chastisement seriously?
5. Is there a longing to be restored to godly people?
6. Is there a strong zeal for God’s honor?
7. Is there an unreserved, unqualified, unequivocal willingness to give up the sin?

Paul knew they had truly repented, because they had all that.

11 At every point you have proved yourselves to be innocent in this matter. 

How could they prove themselves innocent in the matter?  Were they not guilty of the sin? They were! Obviously – otherwise they would not have needed to repent. So they were guilty, and now they are innocent. How? Because repentance brings forgiveness. Their guilt was transferred to Christ.
Once you have repented and turned back to the Lord, and your intimacy with Him has been restored, you don’t have to live with oppressive, feelings of regret and sorrow anymore.

How can you Produce Repentance in Your Heart?

1. Pray for it. Repentance is an act of your will, but it is also sovereignly granted by God.  

Acts 5:31 God exalted him to his own right hand as Prince and Savior that he might give repentance and forgiveness of sins to Israel.
Acts 11:18 When they heard this, they had no further objections and praised God, saying, "So then, God has granted even the Gentiles repentance unto life."
Ro.2:4 Or do you show contempt for the riches of his kindness, tolerance and patience, not realizing that God's kindness leads you toward repentance?
2 Tim.2:25 Those who oppose him he must gently instruct, in the hope that God will grant them repentance leading them to a knowledge of the truth,

Step one is to pray and ask God to break your heart over your sin, and to grant you repentance.

2. Learn to look at every good thing in your life as God’s kindness, tolerance and patience
If you are living in unrepentant sin, God has not promised to bless you. But blessing come your way nevertheless?  Why is that?

Ro.2:4 do you show contempt for the riches of his kindness, tolerance and patience, not realizing that God's kindness leads you toward repentance?

If you are living in sin, and you wake up in the morning and you are healthy – you do not have the flu or cancer or anything, you need to see that as kindness from God specifically targeted at causing you to repent. 

3. Immerse yourself in God’s Word with a submissive attitude.

1 Cor.14:24-25 But if an unbeliever or someone who does not understand comes in while everybody is prophesying, he will be convinced by all that he is a sinner and will be judged by all, and the secrets of his heart will be laid bare. So he will fall down and worship God, exclaiming, "God is really among you!"

We still have those prophecies preserved today in written form – the New Testament (2 Pe.1:19-21).  So when the Gospel is proclaimed, and it brings repentance, here is what it looks like: 
First, a person is “convinced that he is a sinner.” That is all one word.  It is the same word in Mt.18 used to describe step one (NIV – show him his fault). It means to expose guilt – to make it clear that there is no question whatsoever as to whether or not there is real guilt. This puts not only the sin but the fact that I am guilty right out on the table in clear daylight, so that there is no arguing it.

and will be judged 

This word means to thoroughly examine. The truth of God’s Word probes every nook and cranny of one’s heart, and leaves no stone unturned. 
So the repentant sinner never says, “You don’t know the whole story God. There are mitigating factors…” Maybe we do not know the whole story, but God’s Word researches your heart and turns up the whole story. The rest of the story never nullifies what the Bible says.

v. 25 and the secrets of his heart will be laid bare.  (lit. the deep things of his heart will be made manifest) 

Those things that are way down deep inside your heart – the subtle motives and things you are hardly aware of.  The ugly things you have stuffed way, way down so no one will ever see them again, including yourself - God’s Word has a way of pulling those thing up, and laying them right out in the open daylight.
A person has some ugliness in his heart, and it is so ugly he just doesn’t want to deal with it, so he files it somewhere down in the deepest recesses of his being. But at the beginning of the repentance process, God’s Word dredges those things up and puts them right in front of his face and forces him to deal with them. 
And the next phrase shows how they are to be dealt with:

So he will fall down and worship God 

Falling down in worship is a mark of humility before God.  No more secrets, no more excuses, no more hiding - the garbage of my heart is now right here lying all over the table. It is intolerably repulsive and disgusting, and I am desperate to be rid of it.
And at the same time it is obvious that I do not have the power to do anything about it, because these things are part of who I am, and all that is left is to collapse before God in repentance.  
So if you want a more repentant heart, lay down all your defenses, and then expose yourself to the Word of God, and allow it to convict you of sin.