Back-Pocket (Un)Forgiveness and Holy, Gracious Fire

First of all, thank you, friends, for your patience while this writer flew the coop to spend time with some cherished friends in the Balkans. Sites were seen, tables gathered ‘round, delectables savored, hands worked, homes and families poured into, prayers prayed, and songs sung. Even a few cherries were picked and some jam made. And my heart is full.

The net sum of my last article is that the Lord is doing a new thing in my life and in my/His writing. This arrival home marks an intersection—a shift in focus and assignment for the next season, though the specifics are not yet fully clear.

In the last article, I described an idea I referred to as  “the frontier ‘out there’ and the frontier within.”[1] To put it concisely:

While God’s Spirit is moving across the earth (with/in the witness of the Body of Christ), applying his gracious fire to all, beckoning, gleaning, sifting, and refining a responsive remnant from every tribe and tongue on earth for his coming kingdom; He is simultaneously moving through the interior lives of his children, employing his gracious fire in our hearts, minds, and bodies, as persons and members of the Body of Christ, sifting, refining, purifying, to prepare us for the day of our union with our Bridegroom-King.

^... until we all attain to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to mature manhood, to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ, so that we may no longer be children, tossed to and fro by the waves and carried about by every wind of doctrine, by human cunning, by craftiness in deceitful schemes.

Ephesians 4:13-14

We are experiencing the gracious fire of God in the world around us, in our families and church families, and in our inner beings, for the same purpose—to make ready the Bride for the coming of the Bride-groom King. I perceive that the next season of writing is to be a reflection of the Spirit working to bring preparedness to the partially-tamed frontier of a person’s interior life for the age to come.

I previously shared with you the short story of the breaking off of the lock on my “old, inner lockbox of lost things” at a table with my mighty-warrior-sister-friends near Lake Michigan.[2] I’m able to share with you today the first thing to come out of the box (drum roll, please)...

Unforgiveness... (Bdump-bump.)

I’m tempted to question whether it was just weed-whacked from around the box, but I think not. It isn’t the kind of sentimental, old treasure I was anticipating seeing come out first, but not surprising either. See, the lockbox came to be bolted shut in the first place (with a one-way slot to insert more things over time) as the result of my experience of grievous sin done to me, intermixed with my own grievous sin, in years long past. As for so many others, the potential for unforgiveness has been high.

Don’t get me wrong. It’s not that I’ve never dealt with the things of the past. To contrary, I’ve mucked through it all. I’ve confessed and confessed and confessed some more; Forgiven and forgiven and forgiven even more as the layers have come off. The issue that popped out of my box has to do with the way I’ve forgiven.

(To be clear, I’m not talking about reconciliation (restoring harmed relationships with people). I’m talking about the cancelling of another person’s debt-of-offense before God at a heart level, irrespective of whether there is direct relationship or reconciliation prescribed.

One of my mighty-warrior-sister-friends recently shared a recorded teaching presented by R. T. Kendall at Radiant Church in Kentucky.[3] He was speaking on Jacob’s (renamed Israel) son, Joseph, and his remarkable forgiveness of his brothers after they violently tore him away from his father, family, and home and sold him into slavery in Egypt, where he was wrongfully convicted of a serious crime and sentenced to a long, unjust imprisonment before God’s plan for Joseph and his family finally came to fruition.[4] In a story of his own dark experience of unjust treatment, Kendall relayed the advice that was given to him by a wise friend: “You must totally forgive them. Until you totally forgive them, you will be in chains. Release them and you will be released.”

He had my attention with that statement. He followed it with seven ways (based on Joseph’s actions) that a person can know whether you have “totally forgiven someone.” They are:

1.        Tell nobody what they did.

2.        Don’t let them be afraid of you.

3.        Don’t let them feel guilty. (Joseph declared that it was God who enacted the plan to move and place Joseph for his purposes.)

4.        Let them save face.

5.        Protect them from their darkest secret.

6.        Forgiveness is a life sentence. Keep it up!

7.        Really, truly bless them.[5]

To be honest, the man had me cornered at point #1, and the Holy Spirit immediately let me know that this was the next step in the trail of breadcrumbs he’s been laying out for me to follow for the past two months.[6] Serving as salve, the speaker pointed out that Joseph forgave in this way because he was a changed man. All that the Lord had taken him through to that point had served to transform his youthful arrogance into mature humility.

The words that came to mind thinking about this were “back-pocket forgiveness,” or back-pocket (UN)forgiveness, to be more accurate. Several common iterations of this self-preserving strategy sprang out of that.  “I forgive you, but I reserve the right to (fill in the blank).”

I forgive you, but I reserve the right to bring the offense back up if you displease me.

I forgive you, but I reserve the right to use your sin to minimize or justify mine.

I forgive you, but I reserve the right to persistently focus on your ongoing sin to avoid consciousness and/or acknowledge of my ongoing sin.

I forgive you, but I reserve the right to withhold (love, respect, joy, peace, fill in the blank) from you.

I forgive you, but I reserve the right to tell the story of what happened when it serves me, shields me, benefits me, or appears to exonerate me.

I forgive you, but I expect you to do life on my terms.

The list could stretch out for miles. I’m not going to share what my personal unforgiveness profile looks like, but I am here to confess that there’s not a sector of my life that hasn’t been touched by this sin-issue—marriage, family, friends, community, and local and global church-family—not because I’m exceedingly more sinful than the person next to me, but because allowing unforgiveness to go undetected and/or unchecked gives the opportunistic powers of evil a foothold in our lives, to take advantage and multiply the destructive impact.[7] But that’s another conversation for another day.

I’ve done a lot of flipping through the pages in my Bible of late, to refresh myself on what God has to say about unforgiveness (and it’s a lot). But I find myself pausing on the story of the ungrateful servant.

Then Peter came up and said to him, “Lord, how often will my brother sin against me, and I forgive him? As many as seven times?” Jesus said to him, “I do not say to you seven times, but seventy-seven times.

 “Therefore the kingdom of heaven may be compared to a king who wished to settle accounts with his servants. When he began to settle, one was brought to him who owed him ten thousand talents. And since he could not pay, his master ordered him to be sold, with his wife and children and all that he had, and payment to be made. So the servant fell on his knees, imploring him, ‘Have patience with me, and I will pay you everything.’ And out of pity for him, the master of that servant released him and forgave him the debt. But when that same servant went out, he found one of his fellow servants who owed him a hundred denarii, and seizing him, he began to choke him, saying, ‘Pay what you owe.’ So his fellow servant fell down and pleaded with him, ‘Have patience with me, and I will pay you.’ He refused and went and put him in prison until he should pay the debt. When his fellow servants saw what had taken place, they were greatly distressed, and they went and reported to their master all that had taken place. Then his master summoned him and said to him, ‘You wicked servant! I forgave you all that debt because you pleaded with me. And should not you have had mercy on your fellow servant, as I had mercy on you?’ And in anger his master delivered him to the jailers, until he should pay all his debt. So also my heavenly Father will do to every one of you, if you do not forgive your brother from your heart.”

           Matthew 18:21-35

This parable has never hit so hard as in the unprecedented state of disunity we’re living in right now, both inside and outside the Church. Its message is clear and leaves no room for a cheap-grace response. God is God, and we are his servants (and children) by grace, through faith. God will settle accounts, even with his redeemed.[8] We all owe him an unpayable debt that would cost us everything and still not make good. We, the redeemed, cried out for mercy and God canceled our debt. On a human level, our fellow servants have, of course, incurred various debts on our accounts, and we on theirs.

This is an intersection of decision. If we don’t cancel the debts-of-offense of our fellow servants, forgiving them from our hearts, “So also [Jesus’s] heavenly Father will do to every one of you [deliver us to spiritual prison pay our own debts] , if you do not forgive you brother from your heart.”

Jesus is talking to Peter and the disciples here. This is a hard teaching and it’s not just a one-off.

 For if you forgive others their trespasses, your heavenly Father will also forgive you, but if you do not forgive others their trespasses, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses.

           Jesus, Matthew 6:12-15

Why do you pass judgment on your brother? Or you, why do you despise your brother? For we will all stand before the judgment seat of God; for it is written,

“As I live, says the Lord, every knee shall bow to me,    and every tongue shall confess to God.”

So then each of us will give an account of himself to God.

        Paul, Roman 14:10-12

I don’t believe Jesus is delivering a fire-and-brimstone message or trying to threaten his disciples, or us. He’s issuing a serious warning out of love. If we allow ourselves to forget/minimize/justify the bottomless nature of our own sin and the unpayable debt that we’ve been forgiven, and if that selective amnesia causes us to become people who “choke” our spiritual siblings for a pittance that we feel is owed to us, Jesus leaves no room for argument—we are putting ourselves in danger of judgment outside of forgiveness.

Yes, there is God’s immense grace and patience at work,[9] moving us along and enabling us to come to a right place of humility before God and before our spiritual siblings. But, in the face of intractable arrogance and pride, help comes in the form of gracious fire that will go to the necessary lengths to remind us of the depths of our own depravity and capacity to sin and the heat of the judgment-fire we’ve been spared.[10]

(Recently, an unrelated situation caused me to revisit a particular book on spiritual warfare for reference. Interestingly, Marcus Warner, author of What Every Believer Should Know About Spiritual Warfare,[11] has some relevant things to say about unforgiveness. In his biblical and practical experience, he considers unforgiveness to be among the five most common ways we give the demonic powers of darkness permission/ground to have sway in/through our lives.[12])

Another question naturally arises for the times we’re living in: How far does Jesus’ parable-message reach? The Body of Christ is a very large, global family. We have the tech-capability to interact with one another on a global scale. We have a cyber-window in the palms of our hands that enables us to observe, make judgments about, influence, and contribute to conversations and situations that we delude ourselves to think we know any more than next-to-nothing about that is true.

In the process, we exert the spiritual impact of forgiveness, or unforgiveness, upon pockets and categories of people amongst whom our brothers and sisters are scattered. I daresay, most of us are not even cognizant of who, or the many unlikely places where, our spiritual siblings are.

It’s the nature of internet life that we perceive ourselves as relatively impotent in the mega-battles that are taking place in the name of Christianity. But I believe that Jesus would sternly warn us to be mindful of the relational and spiritual impact of our online interactions with/toward our fellow servants, even if simply by the act of clicking and sharing.

I believe he would also contend with us over our increasing comfort with, and issuance of, judgment and unforgiveness toward brothers and sisters from a national and global distance, this being used by the demonic powers of darkness against them, and against us, in the spiritual realm.

I stand first in line to receive this caution and reproof, before anyone else who reads these words.

Ironically, I reach the end of this discussion in a state of encouragement, because when the rubber hits the road, Jesus bid us come and die with him so that we might have life with him.[13] He set the example, and issued the directive for us to follow him on his way to the cross. He died so that others might live. Each of us, in some form, in our own God-destined way, are called to die so that others within our sphere of influence might live. I feel as though something that needed to die in me has done so, so that others in my sphere of influence might live.

By the time Jesus takes his seat on the throne in Jerusalem, we will be made ready. I think we can agree that, from where we stand now, it’s going to be an exceedingly difficult time of preparation. But I see no other possible response than to be profoundly grateful for the oh-so-gracious God-fire that is tenderly burning off all that is in us that must be left behind when we enter the age to come, the restoration of all creation.

Maranatha.

I [Paul] therefore, a prisoner for the Lord, urge you to walk in a manner worthy of the calling to which you have been called, with all humility and gentleness, with patience, bearing with one another in love, eager to maintain the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace. There is one body and one Spirit—just as [we] were called to the one hope that belongs to [our] call— one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of all, who is over all and through all and in all.

        Ephesians 4:4-6

[1] https://www.oneleggedsojourner.com/post/changes-the-frontier-out-there-and-the-frontier-within

[2] https://www.oneleggedsojourner.com/post/changes-the-frontier-out-there-and-the-frontier-within

[3] R.T. Kendall is an author, speaker, and theologian who pastored Westminster Chapel for 25 years. To view the full sermon presented at Radiant Church, go to https://www.youtube.com/live/Kzii_xkmpdk

[4] Genesis 45:1-8; for the whole story of Joseph, read Genesis 37, 39-50.

[5] For the full sermon, go to https://www.youtube.com/live/Kzii_xkmpdk

[6] Read the full story at https://www.oneleggedsojourner.com/post/changes-the-frontier-out-there-and-the-frontier-within

[7] Ephesians 4:26-27

[8] Romans 14:10; 2 Corinthians 5:10; 1 Peter 4:17

[9] 1 Timothy 1:15-16

[10] Romans 2:1-11; 1 Peter 4:12-19

[11] Marcus Warner is president of Deeper Walk International, former pastor, college professor, and author.

[12] Warner, Marcus. Deeper Walk International. 2009, 2020. “What Every Believer Should Know About Spiritual Warfare,” second edition, pp 21-22. Four other common ways that demons gain permission to a place in our lives, Warner states, are 1) unconfessed sin, 2) various forms of intentional or inadvertent participation in the Occult (p 73), 3) accepted demonic lies, and 4) un-renounced permissions given in our lineage.

[13] Luke 9:21-26