THURSDAY
Today we come to another one of Jesus’ teachings on forgiveness. In Luke 17 Jesus is speaking to his disciples and tells them how they are to respond to a brother or sister in the church sinning against them.
Luke 17:3–4 3 So watch yourselves. If your brother or sister sins against you, rebuke them; and if they repent, forgive them. 4 Even if they sin against you seven times in a day and seven times come back to you saying ‘I repent,’ you must forgive them.”
First of all, Jesus tells the disciples to pay attention to themselves. I see this so often. When we are offended or sinned against, our natural inclination is always to put our attention on the other person instead of examining what our response is doing to our own inner life. As we’ve seen forgiveness is a big deal to Jesus because he knows the corrosive nature of bitterness, anger and resentment to our souls and our relationships.
Jesus here teaches that sin against you, not necessarily all sin generally, should be confronted. He doesn’t advocate a “doormat” mentality on the part of his disciples. Here, the offended party is to rebuke the offender. In the ideal scenario the offender would repent and the response of the offended party is to forgive. This is a massive point that coincides with our pursuit of justice as well. We don’t pursue vengeance, but in love for the offender and for potentially other victims, we are obligated to rebuke those who have sinned against us.
Then, similar to what we have been seeing the last couple of days in the teaching of Jesus, our forgiveness to one another in the church is to be limitless. Jesus here says, “you must forgive them.” The verb “forgive” here is in the future so it could also be translated “you will forgive them”. This implies, again, the necessity of genuine disciples forgiveness of one another.
It’s important to note in this context and in Matthew 18 Jesus is talking about a situation in which a fellow believer repents for their sin. In such instances we must forgive. Prior to the passage we read in Matthew 18 Jesus spells out a disciplinary action to take for someone who does not repent, ie. someone who does not acknowledge their sin. In those instances we should still forgive for the health and wellbeing of our souls but out of love for the offending party discipline should be enacted to help them identify their sin and repent of it.
After hearing this challenging task the apostles recognize the extreme difficulty of doing this. So they petition Jesus to increase their faith.
Luke 17:5 5 The apostles said to the Lord, “Increase our faith!”
Jesus’ reply is a little shocking at first. But it makes sense.
Luke 17:6 6 He replied, “If you have faith as small as a mustard seed, you can say to this mulberry tree, ‘Be uprooted and planted in the sea,’ and it will obey you.
Mustard seeds were small. Mulberry trees had massive root networks and could live up to 600 years. Uprooting one of those would be incredibly difficult. This is, of course, a hyperbolic example. Jesus isn’t expecting Christians to go around commanding trees to be thrown in to the sea. Jesus is teaching them that their faith is sufficient to forgive like this. They have faith that God has forgiven them and that is enough. As R.C. Sproul writes on thie, “The slightest bit of faith is all that is required to forgive people, because if we understand anything about Christianity, we should understand forgiveness, because we are by definition forgiven people.” Now, for those who have even a small amount of faith, giving forgiveness to another is a matter of the will. This he will describe with the following parable.
Luke 17:7-10 7 “Suppose one of you has a servant plowing or looking after the sheep. Will he say to the servant when he comes in from the field, ‘Come along now and sit down to eat’? 8 Won’t he rather say, ‘Prepare my supper, get yourself ready and wait on me while I eat and drink; after that you may eat and drink’? 9 Will he thank the servant because he did what he was told to do? 10 So you also, when you have done everything you were told to do, should say, ‘We are unworthy servants; we have only done our duty.’ ”
The point of this short parable is that a servant isn’t shown special honor for doing what is a baseline expectation. In the context of forgiveness then, it is simply the duty of Christians to forgive one another. That is to be expected. We shouldn’t be expecting any special rewards or be boasting about forgiving others. Forgiveness should be as common for Christians as a barista who makes a good cup of coffee or a baker who makes a good loaf of bread. This is what we do.
Reflection
Forgiveness is difficult but it is a baseline responsibility of all Christians. Repent of harboring any unforgiveness towards a brother or sister in Christ. Repent of viewing forgiveness as optional. As we did yesterday, pray and resolve yourself to being the type of person who freely and readily forgives.