209 - Pursuing Peace: Conflict Resolution, Reconciliation, Forgiveness, and Love Part 3 - Forgiveness is NOT an Option [C]

Hebrews Lesson 209
September 2, 2010

^NKJ Proverbs 3:5 Trust in the LORD with all your heart, And lean not on your own understanding;

^NKJ Proverbs 3:6 In all your ways acknowledge Him, And He shall direct your paths.

We're in Hebrews 12:14ff where the topic is to pursue peace. Tonight I'm focusing on the aspect of peace. As I pointed out in previous classes, there are 4 ideas that are related in the pursuit of peace. One is love, the second is grace, the third is reconciliation, the forth is forgiveness. In terms of our life as believers, forgiveness toward others is not an option. That's really clear from a number of things that our Lord taught and as we get into the New Testament. 

^NKJ Hebrews 12:14 Pursue peace with all people, and holiness…

Holiness or sanctification or what we would call (so it has a lot more sense for us) our spiritual life. Sanctification has to do with being set apart to the service of God. So part of being set apart to the service of God entails pursuing peace; and part of that of course is exercising forgiveness towards others. 

This is the same idea that's echoed in 1 Thessalonians 5:15 that we are to seek after that which is good for one another. That means this is command. It's not an option. It's mandated in every arena of life. I want to review where we've come from in terms of 4 points.

1. First of all, I developed the idea that peace was related to love, grace, reconciliation and forgiveness. The foundation of the Christian life is understanding. It's going to differ. As a baby you have a very limited understanding of the love of your parents for a child, for an infant. But there's a baby's understanding of love. As you grow, there's a child's understanding of love, an adolescent's understanding of love and a mature person's understanding of love. But we understand the love of God that we are recipients of God's love and the beneficiaries of God's love at salvation because God loved the world in such a way. John 3:16 says that He gave His unique Son that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life. Romans 5:8: God demonstrated His love toward us in that while we were still sinners (while we were still in a state of enmity, a state of hostility, a state of rebellion); Christ died for us. It has nothing to do with who and what we are; but everything to do with what God is and His character. That is the important issue in understanding the pursuit of peace and forgiveness.

Love then is expressed towards an undeserving object in terms of the word grace, which means unmerited or undeserved kindness. I want to emphasize that because often what we hear is undeserved kindness. Somebody needs to be kind to us. It is undeserved kindness. You know we just don't hear the undeserved part. We just hear the second part. But it is really undeservedkindness. We don't deserve it. It's unmerited. In fact we deserve just the opposite.

So when that gets applied in terms of human relationships it gets pretty difficult. We think that somehow we can just skate by by not having anything to do with the person who has offended us or has seriously abused us or hurt us or defrauded us in some way. Reconciliation means that there is a basis for bringing those who are in personal conflict and are completely polarized back together. That's what reconciliation means. That's not easy. In a lot of cases that won't work, but it shouldn't be our fault that it doesn't work. Then forgiveness. You can't have reconciliation without forgiveness; and there has to be real genuine biblical forgiveness that can only be a product of God the Holy Spirit. So in the first point I developed these ideas of love, grace, reconciliation, forgiveness and how they're related to pursuing peace with others.

2. Second, I looked at aspects of both love and grace in terms of the fact that when we're talking about pursuing peace they can only be understood as the ultimate reference point in God's character. So there's love and grace as part of God's character and then its demonstration at the cross. The more we think about the cross and the more we probe what God has done in relation to rebellious, obnoxious, antagonistic sinners we come to understand the fact that there is nothing that has ever occurred to us, no one has ever treated as harshly as we have treated God. No one has ever treated us with less respect than we have treated God. No one has ever gone against us or betrayed us the same way that that we have betrayed God. That's the essence of being a fallen creatures and a sinner. So when we stop and we say, "I just can't forgive them," that has a lot of implications in terms of our own failure to really understand who God is and what happened at the cross and with the giving of His Son, the Lord Jesus Christ. 

3. Third, I looked at Matthew 7:3-4 the last couple of lessons looking at the fact that the key element in pursuing peace is genuine humility toward us. We have to be humble enough to recognize and to examine ourselves to face the reality of our contribution to the conflict. Now depending on the conflict, depending on the situation we will have contributed to the conflict in varying degrees. I think it's important to recognize that there's always the person who is hypersensitive in terms of their own conscience and they're so willing, so eager to have reconciliation that on the one hand they will rush into the reconciliation process and assume blame and responsibility that goes beyond their actual level of responsibility because they just want reconciliation to occur and not to have a conflict and for there to be a right, peaceful relationship. 

The problem with that is that if the other person in the conflict has caused the conflict is not honest and is not brought to that point in their own spiritual growth to honestly face their responsibility, then what the hyper sensitive person has done is basically given them a pass. Instead of resolving the issue that has this caused breach and caused the conflict, it simply set things up for its repetition. So when a person is too eager in the pursuit of peace and was willing to let bygones be bygones and "Let's just all smooth things out without there ever being necessarily an admission of guilt on the part of the other person" (a recognition of their contribution to the problem), then it doesn't really bring things to conclusion. It simply generates more problems.

So as I pointed out there are two problems to sort of watch out for here. One is the acceptance of responsibility where none exists, and that is the problem with the hyper sensitive conscience that just perpetuates the problem. Then the other is the person who gets caught up in self-justification and self-deception out of arrogance and isn't willing to recognize the level or the degree to which they contribute to the conflict. So you can have either of these going on in which case if a resolution occurs where either of these is present it's not a real resolution. It's just a fraud; it's a counterfeit, and then the next thing you know, there's going to be another problem, another conflict. That happens in all kinds of relationships and in all kinds of situations. So we have to follow that principle of Matthew 7:34 in terms of humility, being willing to examine ourselves and take the log out of our own eye before we start focusing on the other person's problem which in the passage is looking at the grain of sand in their eye.

4. Then the fourth thing we've looked at is the passage in Ephesians 4:32–5:2 which points out that the pattern that we always have to look is God. He is the role model and we have to constantly go to God and not to human beings. There are some people we see that model this well but they will not always model it well. When we see them model it wrong, that often is used as "See I just can't do it." The pattern is always to look to God, not to man. God is our role model. 

As we go look at this I want to go to back to that passage so you might want to turn back there in your Bible for a few moments this evening as we go back to Ephesians 4:32 just to add a few more comments to this. Last time I pointed out that there's a whole series of commands that take place in this section most of which are present imperatives, which indicate this is supposed to be the standard operating procedure, the standard behavior for the Christian way of life. This is what God expects from all of us all the time. I went back to about verse 18 or 19 or 17 and I started walking through all the different commands that we have all the way down to 5:18 which is the command to be filled by means of the Spirit. There is just one mandate after another: all these commands for the Christian life. In the middle of this we have this section from 4:32 to 5:2 that gets separated in our reading and sometimes in teaching because there's a chapter division there. And sometimes they're some other things that come between the chapters and we lose sight of the fact that this is all one contiguous explanation. 

^NKJ Ephesians 4:32 And be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, just as God in Christ forgave you.

^NKJ Ephesians 5:1 Therefore be imitators of God as dear children.

^NKJ Ephesians 5:2 And walk in love, as Christ also has loved us and given Himself for us, an offering and a sacrifice to God for a sweet-smelling aroma.

Now I've underlined the "be" in verse 32 and 5:1 because both passages start with the same Greek verb ginomai, which means to become something you weren't before. It emphasizes change; it emphasizes spiritual growth. It emphasizes moving from being a self centered, self absorbed, arrogant, carnal sinner to being someone who grows in maturity, who imitates God and sees godliness. That's what godliness really is: manifesting God's characteristics and traits in our own spiritual life. The command is a present imperative indicating that this is to be a standard operating procedure in our life. We are to be kind to one another; and therefore be imitators of God as dear children. This is the process of spiritual growth and spiritual advance. 

Now in that first phrase "be kind to one another", the word that's translated kind is the Greek word chrestos, which means that which causes no discomfort or pain. So when we're dealing with forgiving one another, the mandate is to be kind to one another. And how are we kind to one another? Well, charizomai that's there that's translated "forgiving one another" is a participle; and it's a participle of means. We're kind to one another by forgiving one another. We're not kind to one another by going over and cutting the grass or helping to wash the car or helping people out with this problem or that problem. What Paul is saying is that you're kind to one another by forgiving one another. So chrestos has the idea of not causing discomfort, not causing, not making issues out of things that shouldn't be issues. There are some things you do make issues out of that are supposed to be made issues out of. So chrestos has to do with that which causes no discomfort. It's something that meets a high standard of value. So let's say we go get our car worked on. We take our car to the mechanic and they work on it and get everything fixed. They bring it back to us and they say, "Is everything OK?" We say, "Yeah. Everything is fine." That's the idea of this word. In fact it's translated that way in a couple of passages. It just means that it meets our standards. It's acceptable. It's good, not acceptable in a mediocre way but it's what we expected. It meets our standard that we were demanding. So being kind to one another emphasizes also meeting a high standard and in relationships it emphasizes being benevolent, kind, or pleasant to one another. 

Now there's an appositional word that comes after that that helps us to understand the meaning of that a little bit more, and that's the word tenderhearted. The word tenderhearted in the Greek is eusplagchnos. Splagchnos is the same word for mercy that's used elsewhere. It has to do with coming from the kidneys. 

The Jews and the Greeks were very concrete in their understanding of the emotions so they would use terms like "from the bowels" because they understood emotions really do upset you. Just think about how many times you get either excited or angry or worried and how your intestines (your insides) get all churned up. Well, that's why they would use these kinds of concrete words to express emotion. So the word they would use to express merciful or compassionate in a legitimate sense with those is through this word splagchnos. The eu prefix just emphasizes something that's good or benevolent in front of it. So to be kind to one another has this idea of exercising mercy. Mercy is grace in action. Now what all of this relates to is being gracious. "Be kind to one another" is the command - by forgiving one another. 

The Greek word for forgiving there as I pointed out in the past isn't the word aphiemi, it is the synonym used in several passages. Charizomai, from charis, meaning grace. So it's being gracious to one another; but it's used as a synonym for aphiemi in places meaning to wipe out a debt. It's used in an economic sense like that. It's this idea of not holding something against someone for some offense that they have committed. So we're kind to one another by eradicating this offense that has caused a conflict. 

Now that's fine as far as it goes but the really hard part is what comes next, because the model is "even as God in Christ was gracious to you" – same word charizomai. So charizomai emphasizes that the issue here is the implementation of grace. It's the implementation of grace. It's not just talking about grace; it's not just understanding grace; it's not just being oriented to grace in terms of understanding the theological or doctrinal principles. But it's implementing it in a very real way in the way impacts our relationships. So it is grace in action. You have not implemented grace in your life as a believer, you are not reflecting the grace of God in your life as a believer, you have not elevated yourself to the standard of being gracious in your life, if you're not forgiving one another. That's how we exhibit kindness to one another. 

The standard is as God in Christ or by means of Christ forgave you. So it's instrumental there indicating that it's through Christ and His work on the cross that we have forgiveness and are the beneficiaries of God's grace.

^NKJ Ephesians 5:1 Therefore be imitators of God as dear children.

We are to imitate our Father as a father teaches his children how to live. When those children grow up, they implement the teachings of their father. 

Then we have another command (another present imperative) in verse 2. Before I go on I want to reflect one other verse – chestos the word for kindness is used in Luke 6:35.

^NKJ Luke 6:35 "But love your enemies,

There's the command to love your enemies.

do good, and lend, hoping for nothing in return; and your reward will be great, and you will be sons of the Most High. For He is kind to the unthankful and evil.

So love has that idea of initiating action to those who are antagonistic to us. It has that idea of initiating action. The action is defined as good and it's defined also as not expecting any kind of response from the other person. 

Don't put an agenda on there and say, "I'm going to be kind and good to you and if you don't respond, you dirty rotten so-and-so, then I'm going to not kind to you anymore."

"But love your enemies, do good, and lend, hoping for nothing in return; and your reward will be great, and you will be sons of the Most High

This isn't talking about salvation and your destiny in heaven. This is talking about spiritual maturity so the issue is rewards and future ruling and reigning responsibilities in the kingdom. 

and your reward will be great, and you will be sons of the Most High

Because you are acting like a son of the Most High; that's the implication there.

For He is kind to the unthankful and evil.

There's that comparison again. We are to imitate God who's our Father because as He has demonstrated love and kindness so we're to imitate that and reflect that to the world around us because He is kind to ungrateful and evil men. See, we don't like this because that means we have to be kind and gracious and forgiving to people that we just can't stand. That's the same word chrestos. It's this idea of kindness, of graciousness and it comes back to what has been taught. 

Then when we come to the last verse in these 3 verses, we have the command to walk in love or by means of love. That is to characterize our life. The unconditional impersonal love demonstrated by God. 

^NKJ Ephesians 5:2 And walk in love, as

See there's that little word "as" again, the same word that you have up in 4:32. That's the pattern; that's the model; that's our standard.

walk in love, as Christ also has loved us and given Himself for us

What did that verse use that we have back there in Luke 6:35? "Ungrateful and evil men". That's when we were yet enemies of God. That's what we were: ungrateful and evil men.  That is, Christ died for us.

Now we're looking at 5:2, we are to walk in love as Christ also loved us and has given Himself as a substitute for us." It brings in the idea of a substitutionary sacrifice. Then Paul adds a final phrase here.

for a sweet-smelling aroma.

Now that phrase connects it right back to Old Testament sacrifices which is where we ended last time as I was looking at the peace offering. If you're trying to take notes and keep these enumerated those first 4 points of review are:

1. First of all, peace is related to love, grace, reconciliation and forgiveness.
2. Second we've looked at aspects of love and grace and only as they're understood in the character of God as the ultimate reference point and in the work of Christ can we understand love and grace.
3. Matthew 7:3-4 indicates (emphasizes) that we have to have humility for self-examination to face the reality of our own contribution to the problem.
4. We looked at Ephesians 4:32-5:2 that the pattern is God's grace. It's all about grace. That is what forgiveness emphasizes with the word charizomai.  The pattern is God's forgiveness for us. 
5. Then the 5^th point that I'm going to go to is how this connects to the Old Testament illustration of the peace offering. 

^NKJ Leviticus 3:5 'and Aaron's sons shall burn it on the altar

That's the sacrifice of the bull or sheep or the goat.

upon the burnt sacrifice, which is on the wood that is on the fire, as an offering made by fire, a sweet aroma to the LORD.

That's the olah, the first of the offerings, the 5 offerings mentioned the beginning of Leviticus. The burnt offering with the smoke ascending was primarily a picture of the believer giving up himself, making a statement of his complete and total devotion to God. All the first 3 sacrifices you have in Leviticus are all called sweet savor or aromatic sacrifices because this same statement is made. It's an offering by fire. It's a sweet aroma to the Lord. There's a connection that Paul makes here between what Christ does on the cross and the sweet smelling or sweet savor offerings at the beginning of Leviticus. Since the issue is forgiveness, which is connected to reconciliation, then we would tie that to the whole issue of the peace offering. 

Last time I started looking at the peace offering in Leviticus 3. The two passages that describe the burnt offering are Leviticus 3, which gives the sort of the mechanics. This is how you do it, who does it, and what you bring. Then Leviticus 7:11f describes how the priests were to implement it.

In Leviticus 3 we realize first off that but the peace offering can come from the herd. It can be male or female so there is not a distinction made as there was with the burnt offering in chapter 1. 

^NKJ Leviticus 3:1 …whether male or female, he shall offer it without blemish before the LORD.

^NKJ Leviticus 3:6 ' If his offering as a sacrifice of a peace offering to the LORD is of the flock, whether male or female, he shall offer it without blemish.

^NKJ Leviticus 3:12 ' And if his offering is a goat, then he shall offer it before the LORD.

There are no birds here as you had with the earlier offerings. It has to be an animal of this size because this is the only offering where there is a shared meal. The shared a meal emphasizes fellowship and rapport and reconciliation that has taken place, because of the sacrifice. That's the picture: the peace that comes. The shared meal is the result of the fact that a sacrifice has been made. In other words, a penalty has been paid. 

Now this is important because when you talk about forgiveness I find that forgiveness is one of those really misunderstood issues in life. If you forgive somebody that doesn't necessarily mean that you absolve them of the consequences. Now I want to say that again because a lot of people think forgiveness means you don't suffer any more consequences. Sometimes you can forgive somebody and they have to go through the consequences. If someone has committed a murder and they are on death row and they're going to be executed for their crime, just because they've become a believer as Karla Faye Tucker did back in the 90's in the Texas penal system (There was a human cry by all kinds of pastors who said, "Ah. She has become a believer now. She needs to have her sentence commuted." That shows how so many Christians don't understand this issue) doesn't necessarily mean that the penalty should be commuted. Now God did that several times. So it's not saying and I'm not saying that you shouldn't be gracious at times and commute the consequences, it depends on the circumstances and the situation. 

The most obvious example is in the Old Testament when David committed two capital crimes. He committed adultery with Bathsheba. Then he conspired with Joab to have her husband Uriah killed when it was discovered that Bathsheba was pregnant. So if Uriah was killed then there wouldn't be a problem.  So David is complicit in murder; and he is responsible for adultery both of which were to be punished with the death penalty under the Mosaic Law. But God commuted that sentence for David. He's forgiven and the consequences are reduced. There were consequences. There were consequences that impacted his family four fold during the coming years. There was tremendous disruption and things that happened within his family: incest, murder of one half brother for another, the rebellion of Absalom. All these things were – the death of the baby – all these things were part of the discipline (the divine discipline) and the consequences of the action, but it wasn't as severe as it could have been. 

Other times God commutes the sentence completely, and there are no consequences. So forgiveness does not mean necessarily that consequences are removed. That might happen; that might not happen; or they might just be diminished. Forgiveness and the implementation of consequences of punishment are two different issues; they are not the same thing. Yet most people in our culture cannot distinguish between the two. 

Your kids will get you on that if they haven't already. 

"Well, you forgave me so why are you punishing me?"

"Because, you need to know that certain actions demand punishment and consequences. But you're forgiven. You're loved. It just doesn't feel like it right now." 

So that is maintaining that distinction in terms of those consequences. 

The other thing that we have in terms of forgiveness, is forgiveness does not necessarily mean that everything's going to go back to the way it was instantaneously because in a number of serious situations where there has been financial defrauding, where there has been physical or sexual abuse, where there's been a criminal action, it is not wise for the person who has been the wronged person, the person who has been defrauded or abused to put themselves back into a situation where it can happen all over again. That doesn't mean that they haven't forgiven the person. 

But if you have entered into a financial transaction, let's say a real estate contract with somebody, and they defrauded you and you lost a couple hundred thousand dollars and that person comes to you and asks forgiveness. You are to forgive them and truly genuinely forgive them but that doesn't mean that you're going to enter into real estate deal with them the next day. That would be foolish. It doesn't have anything to do with whether or not you've forgiven them. It's whether or not you have learned your lesson. Those are different issues. 

We have to understand what forgiveness really is. As I pointed out last time The Oxford English Dictionary points out that forgiveness has to do with not harboring ill will, laying aside any desire for vengeance, any bitterness any hostility, any resentment that occurs as a result of the conflict that had occurred. I want to describe that a little more because I'm developing some ways to think about that that I think will be helpful for everybody in terms of looking at forgiveness from a subjective aspect, which means you as the subject (the one forgiving), what's going on inside of your soul, and an objective aspect; and that has to do with what happens in the life and actions of the person who is the object of forgiveness. These are the two things that need to be distinguished.

So the peace offering illustrates this that the peace that occurs (the reconciliation) occurs because the penalty has been paid. My point in everything I've just said is that the penalty that is paid may vary. Sometimes we may say in terms of the actions of the individual that there are no consequences, but actually a penalty is paid. As I'll point out that penalty for all sin was paid for at the cross. A penalty has to be paid. 

Now looking at the aspects of the peace offering you can turn over to Leviticus 7, the last part of chapter 7 from 11 down to the middle part (11:21), which deals with the aspects of eating the meal together. This is very important because it shows that the two parties that have been a part of this conflict are not just going to kiss and make up, they are going to sit down and have a meal and there is a real genuine restoration of the relationship. That is very hard to do, and I would suggest that you can't do it unless you have the power of God the Holy Spirit, unless you're in fellowship and you're really trying to do what the Word of God says to do.

But the principle that I want to take from the peace offering is that a penalty is paid before there is the reconciliation. There is a penalty paid and I want to see how that works out in some passages in the New Testament. Now I want to take you back into the New Testament to Romans. We've touched on Roman 5 before. I want to take you back to Romans 5, which is one of two key chapters on reconciliation in the New Testament. You have Romans 5 and 2 Corinthians 5.

In Romans chapter 4 Paul has explained justification: that justification takes place because God as the Supreme Judge of the Universe is able to decree in a judicial decision that the individual is just before His court because that person has been imputed or given the righteousness of Christ. And that's what salvation is. We don't do anything for it; it is pure grace. Grace means God gives us something that we don't deserve. Anything less than that doesn't meet the standard of grace, it is completely lacking in grace. 

So justification, which we describe by "faith alone", is the result of God's grace in providing a Savior by which our sins are imputed to Jesus and He pays their penalty in full. When we trust Him, His righteousness is imputed to us or credited to us so that our sin is covered. It is not removed in the sense that we've become "not sinners" or it never happened, because you'll hear especially in Bible colleges this trite little phrase that justification means just as if I never sinned. That's just theologically poor. The first reason is because our condemnation isn't because we sinned; our condemnation is because Adam sinned. So it's not "just as if I've never sinned." Secondly we're going to continue to sin and our sin or "not sin" isn't the issue. The issue is that we are saved because we possess Christ's righteousness and that is what God looks at, not our unrighteousness or our relative righteousness. It is not just as if I never sinned. That's almost heresy. Justification is free.

^NKJ Romans 5:1 Therefore

He's taking his explanation of salvation to the next step. He says:

having been justified by faith,

Now that's a rather ambiguous way to translate this participle. It should be translated with a causal sense for what Paul is saying is, "Because we've been justified by faith we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ." 

Now two things need to be stated here in terms of the grammar that are very important. That phrase that's translated "having been justified" is one word in the Greek, but it's a perfect participle. The perfect passive participle emphasizes a completed action in past time. So you have this completed action back here that justification took place in the past; and it's done with; it is not a process. Now I could go off on a long rabbit trail otherwise known as an anacoluthon here because this is the problem with both Lordship salvation and Roman Catholic theology is justification is seen as a process. 

There are a lot of reform guys in lordship who will say it is a once-for-all action, but they don't really work it out that way. Roman Catholicism is much more overt with this, and Roman Catholic theology says that having been justified is not a one time action; it's a process. But this makes it clear that because we have been justified (completed action, perfect tense – having been completely justified by faith in the past) we now (present time) have peace. Peace is a real present time possession that every believer has with God because at some time in their past they were justified by faith alone in Christ alone. 

So Paul starts off by saying, "Therefore because we have been justified by faith we presently currently have right now peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ." The conflict has been resolved.  

^NKJ Romans 5:9 Much more then, having now been justified

Same phrase, perfect passive participle with the emphasis on the present realty of a past completed action. 

by His blood,

Which is a metaphor for His death.

we shall be saved from wrath through Him.

Now "shall be saved" is what tense? Future. See you thought when you were justified you thought you were saved, didn't you? That's not what Paul says in Romans. Paul says you were justified, but you will be saved in the future. See the word sozo has different meanings, and it rarely has the meaning in Scripture that is synonymous with justification. It does in several places, but most of the time it has a different sense. Sometimes it refers our present spiritual life: we are being saved. And sometimes it has to do with our future glorification. That's how it's used mostly in Romans. 

^NKJ Romans 5:9 Much more then, having now been justified by His blood, we shall be saved from wrath through Him.

That's phase one salvation (phase one justification) when we put our faith alone in Christ alone. At that instant we are justified. Then in the future we will be saved from His wrath. That is eternal condemnation or eternal judgment through Him. So we have the past and the future. 

^NKJ Romans 5:10 For if when we were enemies we were reconciled to God through the death of His Son,

When we were enemies (when we were obnoxious, when we were disloyal, when we were rebellious, when we were doing everything against God, suppressing the truth in unrighteousness, when we were as obnoxious as we could possibly be), we were reconciled to God through the death of His Son. 

Now notice that it doesn't say we were reconciled to God by our faith in Christ. Did it say that? No, it doesn't say that does it? It says we were reconciled to God through the death of His Son. 

much more, having been reconciled, we shall be saved by His life.

Now "shall be saved" is future tense. But His life is emphasizing something different. So the "shall be saved" here is not talking about future glorification.  The "shall be saved" here is talking about how we live our present tense spiritual life. We are saved in the present – our ongoing sanctification, our ongoing spiritual growth, by His life. His death paid the penalty for sin but in His life He demonstrated how to live by means of God the Holy Spirit, how to solve problems, how to depend upon God, how to apply the Word; all of those things. So by implementing that then we can grow and mature as believers in this life. 

So in Romans we have the principle of reconciliation and peace built on a penalty that's paid, a sacrifice that's made, and the forgiveness that occurred at the cross. 

Now I'm tying a lot of different loose ends together here for you so I don't want to get too far afield so that at the end of the lesson tonight we can pull these threads together a little better. 

2 Corinthians is the other passage that deals with reconciliation and peace, we read:  

^NKJ 2 Corinthians 5:17 Therefore, if anyone is in Christ,

And you are if you're a believer in Christ.

he is a new creation;

You are a new creation in Christ. You still have the sin nature but you're a new creature in Christ. You have new capacities and new capabilities; you have new resources.

old things have passed away; behold, all things have become new.

^NKJ 2 Corinthians 5:18 Now all things are of God, who has reconciled us to Himself

Notice, God is the one who initiated. That's grace. He initiated the reconciliation. He reconciled us to Him; we don't reconcile ourselves to God.  Reconciliation is God's work, not man's work. 

through Jesus Christ, and has given us the ministry of reconciliation,

Application: if you are in any kind of relationship (business relationship, a marital relationship, family relationship, friendship relationship, whatever it might be) with another person and a conflict is involved, then we are to pursue peace because that's part of the ministry of reconciliation. This isn't just limited to preaching or explaining the gospel to people so they can be reconciled to God. 

How can a person talk to other people about being reconciled to God when they can't implement the basic application of reconciliation to other people? How can that work? And that's what the implication of this is.

^NKJ 2 Corinthians 5:18 Now all things are of God, who has reconciled us to Himself through Jesus Christ, and has given us the ministry of reconciliation,

That is that God was in Christ reconciling the world to Himself; not when the world was lovely, wonderful, happy and pleased with God, but when the world is completely antagonistic to God and hostile to God. God is initiating in grace His plan and to effect reconciliation and peace.

^NKJ 2 Corinthians 5:19 that is, that God was in Christ reconciling the world to Himself, not imputing their trespasses to them,

God isn't saying, "Okay, here's your list of sins." He imputed those sins to Christ on the cross. He's not imputing those sins to the world. 

and has committed to us the word of reconciliation.

^NKJ 2 Corinthians 5:20 Now then, we are ambassadors for Christ,

We represent Him. That means as representatives of Christ the standard of behavior in our life is to imitate what Christ has done. That takes us right back to the Ephesians 4:32-5:2 passage in terms of forgiving one another as God through Christ has forgiven us. 

as though God were pleading through us: we implore you on Christ's behalf,

Now in your Bibles you is in italics, but Paul's not talking to the Corinthians. They are already saved; they are already reconciled. He is talking about "we", meaning the collective of the body of Christ as Christians. We implore (that is, unbelievers, non-Christians) on Christ's behalf.

be reconciled to God.

God's the one who does the work but the way the unbeliever is reconciled to God is by trusting in Christ. In terms of the conflict, he has to respond to the initiative of grace, to the overtures of grace. But we all know that they don't all do that. In the same way when you are trying to resolve a conflict in your life whether it's marriage, business, family, whatever it might be, there are going to be times and people that just aren't going to respond no matter what you do.  There are people who aren't going to admit their fault, their guilt, their part of the action, at all. In fact they're just going to continue to blame you for everything. But we are to function on that higher standard of grace. We are not to fall short of that standard. 

When I talk about reconciliation here, I've emphasized that this really took place at the cross and I'm gong to tie it back just briefly. We've gone through this in detail in Colossians 2:13-14 where Paul said:

^NKJ Colossians 2:13 And you, being dead in your trespasses and the uncircumcision of your flesh, He has made alive together with Him, having forgiven you all trespasses,

That's wiping them out. 

^NKJ Colossians 2:14 having wiped out the handwriting of requirements that was against us, which was contrary to us. And He has taken it out of the way, having nailed it to the cross

It wasn't nailed to the cross by our faith in Christ in 1955 or 1965 or 1995. It got nailed to the cross. That list of indictments got nailed to the cross almost 2,000 years ago. That's when reconciliation occurred. Now the issue is to affect that not to lay the groundwork for it. The groundwork has already occurred.  So this all raises the question: how do you forgive somebody that won't admit guilt? Didn't you just say there had to be a recognition of guilt, there had to be a penalty paid? All of these examples that I've given (the peace offering, etc.) of penalties paid that forgiveness when we realize experientially the forgiveness of sin in our life, don't we have to come to that point where we recognize that we're a sinner and that we are in need of salvation, that at some point there's an admission of failure or guilt on our part for contributing to the conflict in terms of sin? 

And there are passages that indicate that. For example, Luke 17:3-4.

^NKJ Luke 17:3 "Take heed to yourselves. If your brother sins against you, rebuke him

Which means to confront him with it. That's the issue of Matthew 7:3-4. Matthew 7:3-4 tells us how to go about that. You go about that by being humble and taking the log out of your own eye before you take a grain of sand out of the other person's eyes. 

rebuke him

And how do you do that? Remember the forgiveness? You're kind which means you're not doing it in a way that will overtly and intentionally cause pain and suffering. 

and if he repents, forgive him.

Now that's the word metamelomai. Now we have trouble with this word repent. Repent means simply to change, to change his mind. He's done something against you and you confront him with it and he says, "You are right. I was wrong." 

What are we supposed to do? Forgive him. Here the word is aphiemi, which is the verb for wiping it out, just as if it never occurred. 

^NKJ Luke 17:4 "And if he sins against you seven times in a day, and seven times in a day returns to you, saying, 'I repent,'

"You know I was sorry. I repent. I did something wrong."

you shall forgive him."

Each and every time!

^NKJ Matthew 18:21 Then Peter came to Him and said, "Lord, how often shall my brother sin against me, and I forgive him? Up to seven times?"

^NKJ Matthew 18:22 Jesus said to him, "I do not say to you, up to seven times, but up to seventy times seven.

It is an idiomatic way of expressing Jewish idiom indicating you don't stop. Day in, day out they just keep doing the same thing; and they keep coming back and saying, "You know, I was wrong."

"I'm supposed to forgive them?" Isn't that what God does for us?

I don't want anybody raising any hands now. This isn't true confession; this isn't show and tell. But how many times have we gone to the Lord in confession and confessed the same old sin. If we'd had a counter we're some were up into the sixth or maybe seven digits by now in confessing whatever sin that was – arrogance, anger, pride, lust, whatever it is. We've been confessing the same sin against God 239,000 times now since we were 8 years. Now that's the pattern. Is God going to forgive us just as quickly and for the same reason the 269,000^th time as the first time? Yes!

He doesn't say, "You know, I'm just getting tired of this. You know, can't you get it right? Haven't you learned this yet? I'm not going to forgive you the next time. It's over with."

Grace has a higher standard and we can't fall short of that standard of grace, which is always patterned in the character of God. We have to pursue peace with all people, and we have to understand love and grace, and we have to understand forgiveness and what it is and what it isn't. We're going to come back next time, tie this together looking at Matthew 18 and then putting this together with what's happening in the next 3 verses in Hebrews 12:15ff.

Notice that next phrase there. The next phrase that is so often taken by people to mean that somehow you just don't get saved. What have I been saying all night? Looking carefully lest you fall short of the grace of God. What's the standard for forgiving people? It's God's grace. If you don't live up to that standard, then you fell short of that standard; and you're not forgiving as God in Christ forgave us. That's what that means. It's just a simple phrase. Falling short of God's grace means you're not living up to the standard that God set for forgiveness. Then that's tied into Esau. 

So we'll see that and pull that together next Thursday night.