The Forgiveness of Sins
with Rev. Alex Lang
April 7, 2023
Good Friday is celebrated as a day where God forgives our sins. What we often fail to recognize is how this day is also about how Jesus inspires us to forgive each other.
The Scripture
Matthew 26:36-75
36 Then Jesus went with his disciples to a place called Gethsemane, and he said to them, “Sit here while I go over there and pray.” 37 He took Peter and the two sons of Zebedee along with him, and he began to be sorrowful and troubled. 38 Then he said to them, “My soul is overwhelmed with sorrow to the point of death. Stay here and keep watch with me.”
39 Going a little farther, he fell with his face to the ground and prayed, “My Father, if it is possible, may this cup be taken from me. Yet not as I will, but as you will.”
40 Then he returned to his disciples and found them sleeping. “Couldn’t you men keep watch with me for one hour?” he asked Peter. 41 “Watch and pray so that you will not fall into temptation. The spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak.”
42 He went away a second time and prayed, “My Father, if it is not possible for this cup to be taken away unless I drink it, may your will be done.”
43 When he came back, he again found them sleeping, because their eyes were heavy. 44 So he left them and went away once more and prayed the third time, saying the same thing.
45 Then he returned to the disciples and said to them, “Are you still sleeping and resting? Look, the hour has come, and the Son of Man is delivered into the hands of sinners. 46 Rise! Let us go! Here comes my betrayer!”
47 While he was still speaking, Judas, one of the Twelve, arrived. With him was a large crowd armed with swords and clubs, sent from the chief priests and the elders of the people. 48 Now the betrayer had arranged a signal with them: “The one I kiss is the man; arrest him.” 49 Going at once to Jesus, Judas said, “Greetings, Rabbi!” and kissed him.
50 Jesus replied, “Do what you came for, friend.”
Then the men stepped forward, seized Jesus and arrested him. 51 With that, one of Jesus’ companions reached for his sword, drew it out and struck the servant of the high priest, cutting off his ear.
52 “Put your sword back in its place,” Jesus said to him, “for all who draw the sword will die by the sword. 53 Do you think I cannot call on my Father, and he will at once put at my disposal more than twelve legions of angels? 54 But how then would the Scriptures be fulfilled that say it must happen in this way?”
55 In that hour Jesus said to the crowd, “Am I leading a rebellion, that you have come out with swords and clubs to capture me? Every day I sat in the temple courts teaching, and you did not arrest me. 56 But this has all taken place that the writings of the prophets might be fulfilled.” Then all the disciples deserted him and fled.
57 Those who had arrested Jesus took him to Caiaphas the high priest, where the teachers of the law and the elders had assembled. 58 But Peter followed him at a distance, right up to the courtyard of the high priest. He entered and sat down with the guards to see the outcome.
59 The chief priests and the whole Sanhedrin were looking for false evidence against Jesus so that they could put him to death. 60 But they did not find any, though many false witnesses came forward.
Finally two came forward 61 and declared, “This fellow said, ‘I am able to destroy the temple of God and rebuild it in three days.’”
62 Then the high priest stood up and said to Jesus, “Are you not going to answer? What is this testimony that these men are bringing against you?” 63 But Jesus remained silent.
The high priest said to him, “I charge you under oath by the living God: Tell us if you are the Messiah, the Son of God.”
64 “You have said so,” Jesus replied. “But I say to all of you: From now on you will see the Son of Man sitting at the right hand of the Mighty One and coming on the clouds of heaven.”
65 Then the high priest tore his clothes and said, “He has spoken blasphemy! Why do we need any more witnesses? Look, now you have heard the blasphemy. 66 What do you think?”
“He is worthy of death,” they answered.
67 Then they spit in his face and struck him with their fists. Others slapped him 68 and said, “Prophesy to us, Messiah. Who hit you?”
69 Now Peter was sitting out in the courtyard, and a servant girl came to him. “You also were with Jesus of Galilee,” she said.
70 But he denied it before them all. “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he said.
71 Then he went out to the gateway, where another servant girl saw him and said to the people there, “This fellow was with Jesus of Nazareth.”
72 He denied it again, with an oath: “I don’t know the man!”
73 After a little while, those standing there went up to Peter and said, “Surely you are one of them; your accent gives you away.”
74 Then he began to call down curses, and he swore to them, “I don’t know the man!”
Immediately a rooster crowed. 75 Then Peter remembered the word Jesus had spoken: “Before the rooster crows, you will disown me three times.” And he went outside and wept bitterly.
Matthew 27:11-56; 6:14-15
11 Meanwhile Jesus stood before the governor, and the governor asked him, “Are you the king of the Jews?”
“You have said so,” Jesus replied.
12 When he was accused by the chief priests and the elders, he gave no answer. 13 Then Pilate asked him, “Don’t you hear the testimony they are bringing against you?” 14 But Jesus made no reply, not even to a single charge—to the great amazement of the governor.
15 Now it was the governor’s custom at the festival to release a prisoner chosen by the crowd. 16 At that time they had a well-known prisoner whose name was Jesus Barabbas. 17 So when the crowd had gathered, Pilate asked them, “Which one do you want me to release to you: Jesus Barabbas, or Jesus who is called the Messiah?” 18 For he knew it was out of self-interest that they had handed Jesus over to him.
19 While Pilate was sitting on the judge’s seat, his wife sent him this message: “Don’t have anything to do with that innocent man, for I have suffered a great deal today in a dream because of him.”
20 But the chief priests and the elders persuaded the crowd to ask for Barabbas and to have Jesus executed.
21 “Which of the two do you want me to release to you?” asked the governor.
“Barabbas,” they answered.
22 “What shall I do, then, with Jesus who is called the Messiah?” Pilate asked.
They all answered, “Crucify him!”
23 “Why? What crime has he committed?” asked Pilate.
But they shouted all the louder, “Crucify him!”
24 When Pilate saw that he was getting nowhere, but that instead an uproar was starting, he took water and washed his hands in front of the crowd. “I am innocent of this man’s blood,” he said. “It is your responsibility!”
25 All the people answered, “His blood is on us and on our children!”
26 Then he released Barabbas to them. But he had Jesus flogged, and handed him over to be crucified.
27 Then the governor’s soldiers took Jesus into the Praetorium and gathered the whole company of soldiers around him. 28 They stripped him and put a scarlet robe on him, 29 and then twisted together a crown of thorns and set it on his head. They put a staff in his right hand. Then they knelt in front of him and mocked him. “Hail, king of the Jews!” they said. 30 They spit on him, and took the staff and struck him on the head again and again. 31 After they had mocked him, they took off the robe and put his own clothes on him. Then they led him away to crucify him.
32 As they were going out, they met a man from Cyrene, named Simon, and they forced him to carry the cross. 33 They came to a place called Golgotha (which means “the place of the skull”). 34 There they offered Jesus wine to drink, mixed with gall; but after tasting it, he refused to drink it. 35 When they had crucified him, they divided up his clothes by casting lots. 36 And sitting down, they kept watch over him there. 37 Above his head they placed the written charge against him: this is jesus, the king of the jews.
38 Two rebels were crucified with him, one on his right and one on his left. 39 Those who passed by hurled insults at him, shaking their heads 40 and saying, “You who are going to destroy the temple and build it in three days, save yourself! Come down from the cross, if you are the Son of God!” 41 In the same way the chief priests, the teachers of the law and the elders mocked him. 42 “He saved others,” they said, “but he can’t save himself! He’s the king of Israel! Let him come down now from the cross, and we will believe in him. 43 He trusts in God. Let God rescue him now if he wants him, for he said, ‘I am the Son of God.’” 44 In the same way the rebels who were crucified with him also heaped insults on him.
45 From noon until three in the afternoon darkness came over all the land. 46 About three in the afternoon Jesus cried out in a loud voice, “Eli, Eli, lema sabachthani?” (which means “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”).
47 When some of those standing there heard this, they said, “He’s calling Elijah.”
48 Immediately one of them ran and got a sponge. He filled it with wine vinegar, put it on a staff, and offered it to Jesus to drink. 49 The rest said, “Now leave him alone. Let’s see if Elijah comes to save him.”
50 And when Jesus had cried out again in a loud voice, he gave up his spirit.
51 At that moment the curtain of the temple was torn in two from top to bottom. The earth shook, the rocks split 52 and the tombs broke open. The bodies of many holy people who had died were raised to life. 53 They came out of the tombs after Jesus’ resurrection and went into the holy city and appeared to many people.
54 When the centurion and those with him who were guarding Jesus saw the earthquake and all that had happened, they were terrified, and exclaimed, “Surely he was the Son of God!”
55 Many women were there, watching from a distance. They had followed Jesus from Galilee to care for his needs. 56 Among them were Mary Magdalene, Mary the mother of James and Joseph, and the mother of Zebedee’s sons.
Matthew 6:14-15
14 For if you forgive other people when they sin against you, your heavenly Father will also forgive you. 15 But if you do not forgive others their sins, your Father will not forgive your sins.
Read the Full Text
During Lent, we’ve been doing a sermon series called Credo: The Apostle’s Creed Then and Now. Each week we’ve been examining a line from the Apostles’ Creed and asking the question: What did this line of the creed mean to the people who wrote it and what does it mean to us today? There are only two sermons left in this series—tonight and Easter Sunday.
The line of the Apostles’ Creed we are discussing tonight is a seemingly noncontroversial statement: I believe in the forgiveness of sins. Interestingly, I find this to be one of the most fascinating of all the statements in the entire Apostles’ Creed. Why does it need to be explicitly stated that are you expected to believe in the forgiveness of sins? Some of you might be thinking, “Well, isn’t that pretty obvious, Alex? Isn’t that what tonight is all about? Jesus dying for your sins?”
And I would agree with you. The traditional way that we understand the events of Good Friday is that Jesus’ death enables God to forgive our sins. But immediately, this raises some interesting questions in my mind because different Christians have different takes on how Jesus’ sacrifice allows for the forgiveness of sins.
Finish reading
So, for a number of Christians, they believe that God’s forgiveness is conditional and the primary condition for you to receive God’s forgiveness is that you have faith in Jesus. Once you declare your belief in Jesus, then, from that moment forward, you are rendered forgiven. Other Christians, like myself, say that God’s forgiveness is unconditional. The forgiveness God offers us through Jesus’ death applies to you whether you believe in Jesus or not. Unconditional forgiveness means you will be forgiven no matter what you believe.
But you know what I find to be fascinating is that Jesus disagrees with both of those interpretations. Jesus talks about forgiveness quite a bit in the gospels. Jesus makes several different types of statements, some of which are contradictory. So one of the first statements Jesus makes about forgiveness is found in the gospel of Mark when Jesus says, “Truly I tell you, people will be forgiven for their sins and whatever blasphemies they utter; but whoever blasphemes against the Holy Spirit can never have forgiveness, but is guilty of an eternal sin.” (Mk. 3:28-30)
So this statement aligns fairly closely with my interpretation of God’s forgiveness, which is that you’ll be forgiven no matter what you do. But don’t say anything bad about the Holy Spirit otherwise you’re guilty of an eternal sin. I don’t know what an eternal sin is, but it sounds bad. I think it means God will never forgive you. Based on this teaching from Jesus, God’s forgiveness has only one condition attached to it: you’re good to go, just don’t bad mouth the Holy Spirit.
But Jesus this is not Jesus’ only statement about forgiveness. Jesus has another take in Matthew, which contains a condition that I find even more interesting than the condition in Mark where Jesus says, “For if you forgive others their trespasses, your heavenly Father will also forgive you; but if you do not forgive others, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses.”
So what’s the condition? If you forgive other people, God will forgive you, but if you don’t forgive other people, God will not forgive you. Whew, that’s rough. In fact, it’s so rough that I find this to be a teaching that most Christians overlook. Because what’s the condition that most Christians impose? We talked about it a few minutes ago. The condition that most Christians impose is you have to believe in Jesus and once you believe in Jesus you’re good to go.
But Jesus doesn’t agree with this. For Jesus, forgiveness isn’t granted because you believe in him. No, for Jesus it’s a simple equation: If you want to be forgiven by God, then you have to forgive the people in your life who have harmed you. Now why does Jesus impose this particular condition on forgiveness? Well, I think it’s because Jesus understands something fundamental about human nature: everyone wants to be forgiven for what they’ve done, but everyone also wants to retain the right to not forgive the people who have hurt them.
Indeed, I find that Christians are fantastic at selling the merits of God’s forgiveness, but those same Christians are often very bad at forgiving others who have hurt them. And when I’ve had the opportunity to ask why they can’t forgive, the reason I often hear is: “You don’t know what they did. You don’t understand how it impacted my life or the lives of the people I love.” And after explaining to me what happened, they usually end with this statement: “What they did was unforgivable!”
Unforgiveable. Let’s talk about that for second. What does that mean, unforgivable? It means there’s absolutely no way that you will ever be able to find the forgiveness in your heart for what that person did to you. And I’ve heard people say this phrase in all different types of situations and circumstances. Sometimes, I can understand where they’re coming from. Other times it’s hard for me to wrap my mind around why that circumstance rises to level of being unforgivable.
I want to tell you a story about a circumstance that I feel rises to the level of being unforgiveable. Something where I put myself in their shoes and think, “Yeah, I would find that to be unforgiveable.” This story takes place in the late 1960s. Hector Black moved with his family to Atlanta, Georgia to be a part of the Civil Rights Movement.
A number of the headquarters of various civil rights organizations are located in Atlanta. So Hector, his wife Susie, and his three daughters, who were all white, moved into a house in a poor black neighborhood. As soon as they moved in, kids were always coming over to the house to play. One of those kids was named Patricia and she was eight years old.
Patricia bonded with the oldest girl and became a constant fixture in the house. Her mother was an alcoholic and often they had no place to sleep so they’d come over to the house when their mother was evicted and they’d spend the night with them. Two and a half years later, when it came time for Hector’s family to leave, Patricia asked if she could come with them. Hector and Suzie said, “Yes.”
They moved to rural Georgia where Patricia blossomed. She graduated with highest honors from Fisk University and got a degree in library science. Patricia eventually moved back to Atlanta and started working in the public library with children like herself, children who had been unloved and uncared for.
One night in November, she came home late from work. She didn’t know it at the time, but Ivan Simpson, a crack addict, had broken into her house. He was grabbing some of her valuables that he could pawn to pay for his habit. When he heard her come home, he hid in a closet. When Patricia opened the closet door, she fell backwards out of fear. Ivan jumped up and tied her hands behind her back.
Patricia was very calm through all of this and told him to get help for his drug habit. She told him where there was food in the refrigerator. He asked about the sewing dummies that were in the house, and she told him that Hectors wife, Suzie, had taught her how to sew and she made bridal gowns for extra income.
Ivan left, bought crack, smoked it and then returned to the house. Patricia was still bound on the floor. Ivan asked for sex and Patricia said, “You’ll have to kill me first,” which he did. Ivan was caught almost immediately and when word got back to the family about what had happened, all of them were devastated. Hector is a Quaker and doesn’t believe in violence, but when he heard what happened, all he wanted to do was kill Ivan. He wanted to inflict pain upon the man who had taken his precious daughter.
However, as the months and years went by, Hectors anger subsided. Eventually, there was a hearing in Atlanta, the final hearing in Ivan’s case where he would be sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole. Hector’s family came to the hearing and were given an opportunity to say how the crime had affected them. Patricia’s cousin got up and said, “I hate you, Ivan Simpson. I hate you because you took my beloved cousin away from me. I hate you because you’ll see the dawn and she’ll never see the dawn again. And I hate you because my taxes are going to feed you.”
And then it was Hectors turn. He reiterated how much everyone loved Patricia. He said, “She was not our daughter by any claim of birth, but she was our daughter by every claim of love.” And at the end of his statement, he said, “I don’t hate you, Ivan Simpson, but I hate, with all my soul, what you did to my daughter.” And then Hector turned around and faced Ivan. They locked eyes and the very last thing Hector said was, “I wish for all of us who have been so wounded by this crime, that we might find God’s peace and I wish this for you also Ivan Simpson.”
As they were leading Ivan away to serve his sentence, Ivan asked to come to the microphone and with the tears streaming down his cheeks, he said, “I’m so sorry for the pain I have caused.” That night, after the hearing, Hector couldn’t sleep. He realized that Ivan was asking Hector for his forgiveness. And in that moment, Hector knew he had forgiven Ivan. Hector felt a great burden lifted from himself. But it’s what happened next that Hector never expected, but I want you to hear that directly from him.
I find that story to be so powerful. If anyone had a reason to not forgive, it was Hector Black. What Ivan did to Patricia definitely rises to the level of being unforgivable. But I keep thinking about his friend’s words, “Hate is like a poison you take, expecting the other person to die.” When someone harms you, very often our natural instinct is to carry around the hurt.
We carry it like this heavy luggage that we refuse to let go of everywhere we walk. And just like heavy luggage, the longer we carry it, the heavier it becomes and the more it weighs you down. So this event that could have happened months, years or even decades in the past, continues to dictate your life in the present. Just like the woman who Hector Black talked about in his support group whose brother was murdered 15 years earlier. For her, it might as well have happened yesterday.
And I don’t know if you’ve ever thought about, why do we do this? Why are so many people unwilling to forgive? Why do we want to hold onto the heavy baggage of the hurt that happened so long ago? Well, there’s a lot of different reasons. Some people feel that offering forgiveness will mean that the memory of what happened will fade away and, kind of like, the motto of 9/11, they say, “I will never forget.”
For others, they think forgiveness means that you’re saying what that person did was okay. And I want to say, I don’t think that’s true. Forgiveness doesn’t wipe away the wrong, it simply says, “I’m not going to allow the hurt from this moment in the past to define who I am in the present. You hurt me, I forgive that hurt, now I’m going to move on with my life.”
But do you the know reason why I think people really have trouble forgiving? I’ve noticed in my time as a pastor that the people who have the greatest trouble forgiving the wrongs inflicted on them are the same people who have the greatest trouble forgiving themselves. They don’t see themselves as being worthy of forgiveness, which is why they struggle to forgive others.
And I will admit, for long time I was one of those people. Particularly when I was young, I was so consumed by the abuse of my mother that it consumed me. My hate for her motivated me and I felt like if I forgave my mother, then it would just erase everything she had done. But in holding onto that hate, I was becoming consumed by anger. It was turning me into a shell of my former self.
And then I read the scripture where Peter asks Jesus, “Lord, if another member of the church sins against me, how often should I forgive? As many as seven times?” Jesus said to him, “Not seven times, but, I tell you, seventy-seven times.” You are to forgive over and over and over again. Why? Because you don’t deserve to carry the weight of their mistakes for the rest of your life.
Do you know what happened when I finally forgave my mother? Just like with Hector Black and Ivan, I was able to see my mother as a human again. In fact, I was able to love her again and it brought redemption to a very broken relationship. When you learn how to forgive, you learn how to live your life without carrying around all that baggage, and as a result, it opens your heart to love. When you engage in forgiveness, you create a cycle where the world can experience restoration.
This is why Jesus says in Matthew’s gospel that if you want to be forgiven by God, you have to forgive others. God forgiving you is only half of the equation. Without your forgiveness, the world will never experience restoration. And what does that forgiveness look like? Well, it looks like a son loving his mother, even after a lot of abuse. It looks like a father giving a hug to his daughter’s murderer, even when that seems impossible. It looks like a world where unconditional love reigns supreme and is able to heal the wounds of our past. That’s what forgiveness does and that’s why tonight isn’t just about God forgiving you, it’s about you forgiving each other. Amen.