“Bear with each other and forgive one another if any of you has a grievance against someone. Forgive as the Lord forgave you”
This verse is our focus for this morning as we continue our exploration of this section of Paul’s letter to the Christians living in Colossae. As Nick explained last week, this is an unusual series as we read the same passage week after week, focussing in on a different verse each week, each time with our church value of “Loving each other” in mind. If you want to catch up on what Nick said last week as we focussed on being a chosen people, then you can on Facebook, Youtube and the podcast of the sermon.
Last week’s verse finished with the word, “patience”, which leads perfectly into the first idea that we come across in this week’s verse. “Bear with each other….” This is what patience looks like in practice – it looks like bearing with each other.
I used to be part of a running club and on our club runs we would have some people who wanted to run further and more quickly than others, so we had different groups who had different routes and different guideline paces. Even then, thought, within each group would be a range of abilities. So, every so often those who were at the front of the group would loop back the way they had come until they were right at the back of the group and then turn round again and run with the group. This way the group stayed together, no-one got left behind and no-one shot off into the distance. We bore with each other.
We’ve all got our own quirks and oddities, preferences, likes and dislikes. Most of us carry the scars and wounds of life. Many of us live with pressures that others cannot see. All these things can cause friction in a community. Bearing with each other is about allowing each other space, making generous assumptions about each other’s motivations, choosing to think the best about each other.
This doesn’t mean that bad behaviour should never be challenged. It might the case that “hurt people hurt people”, and that might help us to have compassion for someone who is lashing out or pushing people away, but it doesn’t mean that person shouldn’t be held accountable for that. It does mean that we approach those conversations with love and a spirit of wanting to help someone carry their burdens – to help them bear them, rather than with anger and judgement.
Hopefully as we learn to bear with each other, and to bear one another’s burdens, there will be fewer and fewer grievances, but the reality is that we are all human, get things wrong, and there will be times that we do things that hurt each other, annoy each other, upset each other.
What are we to do then?
Firstly, we need to be honest with ourselves about whether a grievance is a “me problem” or a “them problem”. To take a trivial example sometimes I have a grievance with other members of my family about the way in which the dishwasher is loaded. Suffice to say, I would do it differently. Fundamentally, (don’t tell them I said this) their way of doing it isn’t wrong, they haven’t chosen to do it their way to hurt me, no-one has sinned against me. My grievance is a “me problem”. This links back to where we started – part of “bearing with each other” is realising when our grievances are a “me problem” and not putting them onto other people.
If it’s a “me problem” then we might need to do a bit of work to explore where our reaction is coming from – a past wound or hurt, a sense of pride or privilege, a belief that my way is the best way. We might find it helpful to talk about it with a trusted Christian friend (again part of bearing with each other). Whatever we discover, there is a healing and forgiveness for us, as we bring it to God.
What then if, having thought and prayed on it, it is truly a “them problem”? This is where the command to forgive comes in. Here it is shared by Paul, but it is a command of Jesus – who spoke repeatedly about his command to us to forgive others as we have been forgiven. We heard just one of these times in our reading from Matthew’s eye witness account of the good news of the life and teaching of Jesus. There is no wriggle room here, it is a clear and repeated command to us to be a forgiving people. It is not a suggestion or a recommendation, it is a command that we are directed to obey, to forgive as we have been forgiven.
So, how has the Lord forgiven us?
To explore this let’s go to John’s reflection on the cross, shared in his first letter, 1 John 2:2 says,
“Jesus is the atoning sacrifice for our sins, and not for ours only but also for the sins of the whole world.”
From this we see that God’s forgiveness flows from Jesus’ sacrifice on the cross – it was costly and painful. It is also universal – Jesus’ sacrifice is full and sufficient to cover the sins of everyone. There is a real sense in which every person has ever lived has been forgiven by God for everything they’ve ever done. Not everybody has received that forgiveness, as they haven’t trusted in it, but it is there for them.
This is really offensive. God’s forgiveness is scandalous.
Let me explain what I mean. Just think of those stories about Jesus telling people that their sins are forgiven. Usually there are some Pharisees, religious experts, objecting that only God can forgive sins. And we sit there reading it and thinking, “good old Jesus, forgiving people” and “bad old religious types being all judgy”. But now just imagine that you’re sat there in the crowd, and you’re one of the people that the person being told that they’re forgiven has hurt, has sinned against. Personalise it. Think about the person who has hurt you most. Now imagine watching Jesus tell them they have been forgiven for what they did to you.
It gets worse. Let’s go to the cross, and Luke’s historical account of Jesus’ death. As Jesus was on the cross he said, “Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing.” Luke 23:34
As we read this we realise that Jesus is actively forgiving people who haven’t asked for forgiveness, who haven’t said sorry, who don’t even know that they need to be forgiven.
So, how does the Lord forgive? With a costly and sacrificial forgiveness that is freely available to everyone, is offered to people who don’t even know they need it, and which includes all the people who have sinned against us.
This is how we are to forgive – as we have been forgiven.
This can be hard – it is likely to be costly and to take sacrifice. So how are we to do it?
The first step is to dwell in our own forgiveness. To acknowledge our need of it, and to receive it wholeheartedly. This is one of the reasons that we have the confession as part of our services most weeks. It helps to remind us that we ourselves are not perfect, that we sin, that we need forgiveness and that God has given it to us. This is the foundation upon which we build our forgiveness of others – that we ourselves need forgiveness and have been forgiven.
Talking with God, prayer, is important. As Jesus prayed from the cross, we can pray that the person will know God’s forgiveness. Jesus commanded us to pray for our enemies. So we can pray for God’s blessing on them. Sometimes when I have a grievance against somebody I replay conversations with them in my head, or imagine the things I really want to say to them. This doesn’t help me forgive them, it just entrenches my sense of hurt and anger. What if, when I catch myself doing this, I was to instead ask God to bless them. What if I was ask God to help me forgive them. Maybe I don’t want to forgive them. Perhaps my prayer would go something like, “I am really angry with that person, I don’t want to forgive them, but I know I ought to, please help me.”
As a side note, another thing that can entrench our feelings of grievance can be telling lots of other people about it. Earlier on I suggested that we might want to talk about a feeling of grievance with a trusted friend to help us discern if it’s a “me problem” or a “them problem”, and there is also a place with getting support when we’ve been hurt, but we have to be really careful about our motivations for this. It is so easy to slip into ways of speaking about each other that will actually create barriers to us moving towards forgiveness.
None of this is easy. It is where the reality of life in community really bites. It is the practical outworking of loving each other as we have been loved. We cannot do it by ourselves. We need God’s help, and it is part of the work on the Holy Spirit to help us realise our own need for forgiveness, to move into the joy of receiving forgiveness, that releases us into the freedom of being able to bear with and forgive each other.
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