A fellow believer has sinned against you. What do you do? As a Chris­tian, you want to handle this in a bibli­cal manner, right? So, you turn to passages such as 1 Corinthians 13:4­7 and 1 Peter 4:8, and you figure that it’s best to overlook the matter. ― “Love covers a multitude of sins.” You determine that you are not going to allow the issue between you to become an obstacle in your relationship with this brother, and you let the matter drop. After all, you are far from perfect yourself, and you hope that others will be willing to overlook some of your own shortcomings.

We should be able to deal with the majority of slights against us in this manner. But what if the sin against you is too serious to overlook? Or what if the brother’s behavior against you continues to worsen, and allowing it to continue would be destructive for his spiritual well-being? It might become necessary to invoke Matthew 18:15-17.

This passage reveals specific and practical biblical teachings regarding dealing with those who sin against us personally.

If your brother sins against you, go and tell him his fault, between you and him alone ... But if he does not listen, take one or two others along with you ... If he refuses to listen to them, tell it to the church. And if he refuses to listen even to the church, let him be to you as a Gentile and a tax collector.

Reading this, it would be easy to fo­cus especially on the end of the proc­ess described in this passage. “If he refuses to listen even to the church, let him be to you as a Gentile and a tax collector.” This is a rather drastic step to take, but sadly it may be nec­essary at times. We want to make sure we are careful in our application of this, which requires thoughtful con­sideration.

However, if that is all we focus on, we would be missing an important truth. Because of course, the hope is that most situations would never reach that point. The hope is that by going to the brother one on one, you will resolve the situation just between the two of you, and you won’t have to move on to the following stages.

What Needs to Happen – from Both Sides⤒🔗

Now, if the situation is to be resolved at that first stage, a couple of things need to happen. First of all, obvi­ously, the sinning brother has to re­pent. He has to recognize that his behaviour was wrong, and he has to try to make amends.

But that’s not all. The person who was sinned against also has a re­sponsibility. He has to make sure he actually forgives the repentant brother.

This is so important. We can’t under­stand what it means to deal with those who sin against us without under­standing the importance of forgive­ness.

The apostle Peter recognized this, at least in part. After hearing about how we are to deal with those who sin against us, what does he ask? “Lord, how often will my brother sin against me, and I forgive him? As many as seven times?” He could have asked: what sort of sins are we talking about here? He could have asked: how long should I wait before bringing in a witness, or how do I bring this matter before the church? But he doesn’t raise these issues. Or at least, Scrip­ture does not reveal anything about him asking such questions. Rather, what is recorded in Matthew 18 is that Peter asks about forgiving his brother. This was actually quite perceptive on his part. The thing is, though, his question showed that he didn’t really understand what it means to forgive. He thought you could keep tabs on the number of times you should for­give the brother who sins against you. He might very well have thought that he was being big-hearted. The Jew­ish rabbis taught that you had to for­give your brother three times. Peter was willing to do much better than that. Seven times. That’s more than twice as much as necessary. Unfortunately though, he still wasn’t thinking big enough. Your brother asks forgiveness for sinning against you. How often do you forgive him? Seventy times seven, says Jesus. In other words, you don’t stop forgiving him! Jesus makes it clear that for­giving your brother is not about counting. It’s about having a forgiv­ing heart.

To elaborate on this, Jesus offers a parable, recorded in Matthew 18:23­ 34. It’s a striking and significant parable. Let’s consider it for a bit. We read of a man who owed his king ten thousand talents, an im­mensely huge sum. A laborer in those days could be expected to take about twenty years to earn one talent, and this man owed the king ten thousand times that much. The wages for 200,000 years of work! That this servant could have ever dug himself into that kind of hole is almost beyond belief. Obviously, there was no way he could ever pay off this debt.

This reminds us of how there is no way we can ever possibly pay the debt incurred by our sin. In fact, it’s much worse for us, because all the money in the universe couldn’t help us. It couldn’t even pay the debt for one sin; that’s how serious sin is in the eyes of God.

The fact of the matter is, each day we get ourselves further and further into debt as we continue to sin. You know, even if we were to stop sin­ning — which is impossible in this life — we would only then be able to be­gin giving God what is due to him. We couldn’t possibly pay back what we owed for prior sins.

However, we can’t even do that much. It’s like we are constantly running a righteousness deficit, with never a balanced budget in sight, and the debt keeps getting bigger and bigger.

Being Forgiven Means Forgiving←⤒🔗

Now, in the parable, the servant begs for mercy. He even makes so bold a claim as to promise to pay back what was owed, which was clearly impossible.

The king takes pity. He forgives the debt. The servant was free to go. He didn’t even have to try to pay back what he owed.

The parable then goes on to talk about how this servant, who had been forgiven of so much, was himself un­willing to forgive a fellow servant who owed him a debt of a hundred denarii. A denarius was about a day’s wage for a laborer. Think about it: the earn­ings of a few months compared to the earnings of 200,000 years. No com­parison whatsoever.

It’s mindboggling how the first servant could be so dense as to not be forgiv­ing, when he himself had been for­given of so much. Needless to say, when the king hears about this he gets rather upset and sends him off to jail until he paid off all his debt, which of course he would never be able to do.

The lesson of this parable is plainly stated in Matthew 18:35 — “So also my heavenly Father will do to every one of you, if you do not forgive your brother from your heart.” We must forgive our brothers. How can we expect to be forgiven when we have bitter hearts, always holding a grudge, refusing to be reconciled?

Now, does this mean that God waits for us to forgive others before he is willing to forgive us? Is God’s forgiv­ing us dependent on our forgiving oth­ers, so that we earn forgiveness by being forgiving?

If this were the case, we would be in trouble. Being dead in sin, it is quite impossible for us to have a forgiving heart in and of our own strength. Thankfully, God sends his Spirit to work in the hearts of those who have been forgiven through the shed blood of Christ and raised with him to new life. He is the one who works in us a forgiving spirit.

When God works his grace in us, he softens our hardened hearts, giving us hearts that seek to do his will. This sort of action will leave evidence. If we truly know what it is to be forgiven, it will be evident that we want to forgive. God’s grace will cause us to want to forgive.

Not a Natural Response←⤒🔗

For sure, being forgiving will still not be easy. It requires love instead of hatred. It requires gentleness instead of malevolence, peacefulness instead of revenge. Plus, it means we have to recognize that we are just as sinful as our neighbor, and we need the grace of God just as much as those who sin against us.

It’s hard to remember this. When someone injures us in any kind of way, forgiveness is not the first thing that comes to mind. Malice and a desire for revenge are more likely go­ing to be the emotions we feel. But forgiving is what God calls us to do. Does this mean we then end up sim­ply ignoring every wrong done to us? No. Forgiveness means treating a person as if they had not sinned against us, but we can’t do this if that person refuses to repent.

However, this should not stop us each from having a forgiving heart. We long to see the offending person repent, so that we can forgive him. We take necessary action against him, not out of concern for our own pride, or out of hostile anger, or a desire for revenge. Rather, we do it for the good of the one who has sinned against us.

So often we’re inclined to excuse our malice-filled hearts, imagining that we are justified in our righteous indignation. By sinning against us, that person has disobeyed the Bi­ble, and so it’s perfectly understand­able that we are ticked off. But this is not the attitude of a forgiving heart. In fact, focusing with anger and pride on how the other person broke God’s law, we end up break­ing it ourselves. Obedience re­quires forgiving as much as we can. The next time you have a hard time forgiving someone, remember this: that person may have sinned against you, but by not forgiving him, you are sinning against God. By not being forgiving, you are dem­onstrating profound ingratitude for the forgiveness that Jesus Christ accomplished on the cross, just as the unmerciful servant, by refusing to forgive his fellow servant, showed ingratitude for the forgiveness his king had bestowed on him. Remember also this: nothing any­one has ever done to you is as wicked as what each and every one of us has done to God with our sin. Any debt that anyone has incurred against you by sinning against you, any such debt will never, ever be nearly as severe as the debt you have incurred against God because of your sin.

How can we not have forgiving hearts, knowing how much we have been forgiven, and knowing the price God paid so we could be for­given?