Forgiveness is not a feeling

The Lord told this parable: the kingdom of heaven is like a certain king who wanted to settle accounts with his servants. And when he had begun to settle accounts, one was brought to him who owed him ten thousand talents. But as he was not able to pay, his master commanded that he be sold, with his wife and children and all that he had, and that payment be made. The servant therefore fell down before him, saying, ‘Master, have patience with me, and I will pay you all.’ Then the master of that servant was moved with compassion, released him, and forgave him the debt. But that servant went out and found one of his fellow servants who owed him a hundred denarii; and he laid hands on him and took him by the throat, saying, ‘Pay me what you owe!’ So his fellow servant fell down at his feet and begged him, saying, ‘Have patience with me, and I will pay you all.’ And he would not, but went and threw him into prison till he should pay the debt. So when his fellow servants saw what had been done, they were very grieved, and came and told their master all that had been done. Then his master, after he had called him, said to him, ‘You wicked servant! I forgave you all that debt because you begged me. Should you not also have had compassion on your fellow servant, just as I had pity on you?’ And his master was angry, and delivered him to the torturers until he should pay all that was due to him. “So My heavenly Father also will do to you if each of you, from his heart, does not forgive his brother his trespasses” (Matthew 18:23-35).

Glory be to God the Father, to the Son, and to the Holy Spirit. Amen.

A servant owes his master 10,000 talents – that’s like $1,000,000. “Have patience with me and I will pay you everything!” Yeah, no. There’s no way you’re going to pay that back. This is a debt that no one can pay.

So what does the master do? “The master of that servant was moved with compassion, released him, and forgave him the debt.” The king has cancelled the debt. You don’t owe anything. You are free!

The Lord tells us this parable this morning to teach us what we can expect from God the Father and what God expects from us.

What do we learn here about the God who hears our confessions and forgives our sins? For a start, we learn that the Father forgives because he is compassionate and wants to forgive. And he forgives because he can. Who can stop him?

You may have heard the idea that God cannot forgive sins unless somebody, somewhere, pays the penalty and is punished for our sins. In today’s parable, who is being punished to buy the servant’s freedom from his debt? Nobody. This is the King, and he has decided to cancel the servant’s debt. The servant is forgiven because the King delights in seeing his servants free.

When you bring your repentance to the Lord – your hands still dirty and your thoughts darkened by guilt and confusion and fear – does the Lord require you to clean yourself up, to pay your debts, to clean up your act and get it right, before he will accept your prayer for forgiveness? He does not.

Our weak, defeated cry for help reaches the Lord’s ears in a heartbeat, and “The master of that servant is moved with compassion and forgives him the debt.” Our Lord is not grading your performance; he is working to heal you from your infirmities of soul, to free you from the passions that compel you. And he is pleased with a soul that struggles.

I’ve been thinking this week on a word from Saint John of the Ladder:

Do not be surprised if you fall every day, and do not surrender. Stand your ground bravely. And you may be sure that your guardian angel will respect your endurance. A fresh, warm wound is easier to heal than those that are old, neglected, and festering, and that need extensive treatment, surgery, bandaging, and cauterization. Long neglect can render many wounds incurable. But all things are possible with God. (in The Ladder of Divine Ascent)

If we imagine a God that is surprised and angry at our failures and lawlessness, then we have believed a lie. The Lord shows us today a Father in heaven who delights to forgive his servants when they ask.

St. Gennadius of Constantinople wrote,

Do not say: ‘I have sinned much, and therefore I am not bold enough to fall down before God.’ Do not despair. Simply do not increase your sins in despair and, with the help of the All-merciful One, you will not be put to shame. For our Lord said, ‘he who comes to me I will not cast out’ (John 6:37). And so, be bold and believe that he is pure, and purifies those who draw near to Him. If you want to accomplish true repentance, show it with your deeds. If you have fallen into pride, show humility; if you have fallen into drunkenness, show sobriety; if you have fallen into defilement, show purity of life. For it is said, ‘Turn away from evil and do good’ (1 Peter 3:11)” (in The Golden Chain, 87-89).

When I first read the life of Saint Silouan I was amazed at an episode where, as a young novice, he went to his confessor and said, “I am plagued with thoughts of fornication and impurity.” His spiritual father told him, “You can’t prevent such thoughts from coming to you, but when they do, cut them off like a diseased limb and turn to Christ. Turn from these thoughts to the good God who loves mankind.” And Silouan basically said, “Oh, good idea, I’ll do that from now on.” And did so for the rest of his life.

Now, I am paraphrasing pretty heavily, but what I learned from this account is that the mind attacked by unclean thoughts, or the heart darkened by sins and transgressions, is never far from the God who “demonstrates his own love for us: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us” (Romans 5:8).

The prophet says in 2 Chronicles, “The eyes of the Lord run to and fro throughout the whole earth, seeking to support the one whose heart belongs to him.” (2 Chronicles 16:9).

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In a few minutes we’re going to pray, “Our Father who art in the heavens… forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors.”

This prayer ought to make us sober and watchful, because it also means: “As we do not forgive our debtors: Do not forgive us.” With the measure you use to forgive others, God will pour out forgiveness on you.

The servant in the parable was free. The debt was cancelled. Thank God! He ought to be grateful and share his joy with everyone. But, what does he do? He meets another servant who owes him a dollar. He beats him and strangles him. “Pay me what you owe me!”

His master calls him back and says, “’I forgave you all that debt because you begged me. Should you not also have had compassion on your fellow servant, just as I had pity on you?’ And his master was angry, and delivered him to the torturers until he should pay all that was due to him. ‘So My heavenly Father also will do to you if each of you, from his heart, does not forgive his brother his trespasses.’”

Forgive us our debts in exactly the way that we forgive our debtors. In the Lord’s Prayer, your modern English Bible might say something like, “Forgive our sins as we forgive those who sin against us.” But the word Christ uses here bluntly means what you owe, and people who owe you. It’s the same in Greek, and Russian: “Ostavi nam dolgi naša, yakože i my ostavljajem dolžnikom našim.”

Our English word ought is an old-fashioned form of the word to owe. We know we ought to acknowledge our King with at least a moment’s prayer in the morning, and we ought to give at least a little in almsgiving, and we ought to turn off TV and internet material that blackens our soul – that word ought means mean this is something we owe as a duty to God. But usually we say “I ought to” and we follow that with: But. We ought to, we have a duty to do it, but we’re not going to do it.

Meanwhile that word duty also comes from the root word of debt.

What do we owe the Lord? “He has shown thee, O man, what is good; and what does the Lord require of thee? but to do justice, and to love mercy, and to walk humbly with thy God?” (Micah 6:8). “Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thine heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy might” (Deuteronomy 6:8) and “thou shall love thy neighbor as thyself” (Leviticus 19:18).  Those are basic minimum requirements given by the Lord.

How are we doing at lining our lives up with those requirements? We owe a debt of gratitude, but we complain. We owe kindness and patience, but we whine and we’re impatient. We owe a fulfillment of the commandments of God, but we are far from fulfilling our vows.

We fall short. We fall down. We come back again and again, every day, “I did it again. I said it again. I made room in my thoughts for that thing you hate, Lord; I welcomed it.” And yet “The master of that servant is moved with compassion and forgives him the debt.”

Saint Theodore the Studite says,

David was a prophet and, when he fell into the crime of adultery and murder, he did not give up, but after he had swiftly had recourse to repentance, he received the grace of prophecy once again. Manasseh perverted Israel for fifty two years, but when he repented, he too found salvation. The prince of the Apostles, after his denial, by the medicine of tears took up again the burden of the apostolic ministry… Our good Master cries out each day, “Come to me all you that toil and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest” (Matthew 11:28).

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Forgiving someone else’s sins against us requires us to say “That was sin.”

Forgiveness is not making an excuse, or understanding why they did it, or rationalizing that it’s not such a big deal. What they did was wrong, it stinks, it was a betrayal, and if they hadn’t done anything wrong, then we wouldn’t have anything to forgive.

A few weeks ago when the Potamitis booksellers were here, Dionysios emphasized this to some of us. The Lord warns us, “Do not condemn, so that you will not be condemned. For with the judgment you judge, you will be judged; and with the measure you use, it will be measured back to you” (Matthew 7:1,2).

“But why do you judge your brother? Or why do you show contempt for your brother? For we shall all stand before the judgment seat of Christ” (Romans 14:10).

Now, our English Bibles don’t always make something clear: the word here means to condemn, to pass a sentence, to name someone guilty and send them off to hell.

“Do not judge,” or more accurately “do not condemn,” means, do not take the place of God the righteous Judge and name anyone a worse sinner than you or me. That’s just pride making us superior. “Glad I’m not like that publican over there!” (cf. Luke 18:9-14).

Satan is the one the Bible names “the accuser of the brethren” (Revelation 12:19) so that job is filled, you can’t have it.

But, while we are not called to name anyone contemptible or reprobate, what we are called to do is recognize sin.

The same Lord who commanded “Do not condemn” instructs us: “Stop judging by mere appearances, and make a right judgment.” (John 7:24).

And Saint Paul instructs us to “Hate what is evil; cling to what is good” (Romans 12:9).

You and I can hate adultery, lying, addictions and deceptions and everything that destroys and corrupts the likeness of God in human beings. We need to learn to love what God loves and hate what God hates.

There’s a prayer to add to your daily words with the Lord: “Grant me to love what You love, and hate what You hate.”

And what our God hates is what ruins and harms and disfigures his image of purity and holiness and mercy in human beings and in the societies we choose to build.

We have commands from Christ to discern, distinguish, evaluate teachers and influencers by the fruit they produce. Judge righteous judgment with a pure heart: “Be wise as serpents, and innocent as doves” (Matthew 10:16). While naming heresies and sins that endanger us and the ones we love, we have to guard our hearts against the passion of accusation of human beings Christ died to save.

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How much did that servant owe to his king? Millions. He owed more than anyone could ever pay.

He says “Just be patient, and I’ll pay you everything!” But the king knows better. So the king wipes out the debt. The servant owes nothing. He is forgiven! He is free.

In this lies forgiveness. We do not say that they have never sinned against us: If they didn’t owe us anything, then we wouldn’t need to forgive. Be honest, they did us wrong.

But Christ taught us to forgive exactly as the father forgives our debts. Exactly as the king forgives his servant: He wipes out our debts and we are free.

Every time a thought reminds me of a sin committed against me, I silently say this:

“I forgive you. I cancel your debt. You don’t owe me anything. I release you. I bless you in the name of the Lord. Lord, bless him! And, through his prayers, save me, the sinner. Lord Jesus Christ, have mercy on me.”

Forgiveness is an act of our will, and Christ never commanded us to feel different about the ones who have sinned against us. Ever waited at a train crossing, thinking this train will never end? The engines at the front went by ages ago. We won’t see the last car for a long time. Your decision to exercise your will and cancel that person’s debt to you is the train engine. Don’t waste your time expecting the caboose, your feelings, to catch up – it’s going to be a while. Have I used the expression “a long obedience in the same direction” yet this morning? There it is.

My first spiritual father, about forty years ago, taught me to recognize evil memories and thoughts of sins against me and Stop. Tell that person, silently in your heart, or out loud if you’re alone: I have decided to cancel your debt. You don’t owe me. Nobody owes me anything. I bless you in the name of the Lord!”

I practiced that discipline for years. No, honestly, for more than a decade. And then one day I realized that when I heard those names, the ones who had done me wrong, there was no knot in my chest. No pain in my belly. I was at peace toward those people. I still have so many sins and passions to struggle against, but this one thing I know: I have been released from memories of wrongs against me that poisoned my heart since childhood. In canceling their debt, in releasing them, I was released and gained freedom to remember years and situations without being betrayed all over again in my memories.

The discipline of canceling another’s debts works.

Feelings do not change overnight. But eventually, you will be free from the anger and pain caused by the other person’s sin. Do you want peace? Forgive everyone. In the age to come you will have no enemies. Forgive them now and enter into paradise.

To the glory of God the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Amen.