“Forgiveness is Life-Changing”

Our husband-wife Associate Pastor team Kent and Alison Shane (they job share the one and one-half time position) have been on a sabbatical leave this past summer. (Photo at right is by Carolyn J. Yaschur of the Kitsap Sun.)

I missed Pastor Kent’s return to the pulpit a week ago, but I was glad to be back two days ago to hear Pastor Alison’s sermon.

I can sort of sum up her comments in a sentence: Forgiveness is life-changing.

I base this conclusion on her comments on Christ’s parable on forgiveness in Matthew chapter 18. First, Peter asks how many times we should be expected to forgive? Jesus’ answer was so large a number that the intent was obvious.

To further clarify, Christ told the parable of the king who wished to settle accounts with his slaves. One slave owed the king an enormous amount that was impossible to repay by any standard of the time. The king was moved by the slave’s pleas, and granted not the asked for additional time to pay, but full forgiveness of the monstrous debt.

That same slave was owed a smaller debt that was easily payable, and the debtor came to him and asked for more time to pay. Forgetting what had been just granted him, he had the second slave thrown in jail until the debt could be repaid.

So the one who was forgiven an unpayable debt in turn had his debtor incarcerated for a far lesser amount owed him. This slave, according to Jesus, was wicked, had not learned his lesson and was given a worse punishment.

The point of this parable – and the sermon – is not at all about how many times we should forgive. What we should learn is that forgiveness changes us, and that was the point that Pastor Alison was making. In a similar way that we have been forgiven (which we could not accomplish on our own), we should now forgive.

And in the process God uses the change to make us more effective agents of His grace. Thanks be to God.