Today, I was on the phone a number of times with a man who just couldn't forgive. He is deeply entrenched in past hurts that he finds it clouds his thought process.
According to some history buffs, Leonardo DaVinci was once wronged by a fellow artist. And so DaVinci plotted how to get back at this guy. He happened to be working on the painting of the Last Supper at the time. So he said, "Yea, I know what I'm going to do!" And he went, meticulously and with great detail painted this other artists face into the face of Judas. And I mean he worked overtime on this. He did it in such a way that no one would be able to mistake who Judas really was and this would heap scorn on this guy.
Well everything went great until DaVinci got to the face of Christ. And he began to paint the face of Christ. And he just had a block, he just couldn't do it. He was making no progress. He finally figured out that it was because of his unforgiving spirit, his spirit of revenge. So DaVinci, went to that artist that had sinned against him and forgave him and surprise, surprise, you can see the results in the face of Christ in that world famous painting, the Last Supper.
Who has wronged you? Maybe mildly sinned against you? Or violently wronged you? Who? What is your response? What will it be this week? Someone has written that forgiveness is the fragrance of the violet that still clings to the heel that crushed it. You and I can forgive. We will forgive. Because if we've met Jesus Christ at more than second hand, then we have gotten more than just a whiff of the scent of forgiveness.
Christ is trying to wake us up here. It makes us stop and think, doesn't it? When we live in this real world, we're going to be wounded. We going to be wronged by many people. And the key question before you and me today is how are we going to respond when we are sinned against, when we're wronged? The world comes at you and me with all kinds of appealing options, but they're all unfaithful and they're all unhealthy.
Forgiveness can never be an option. But as we read these verses, (verses 14 and 15) they sound so ungracious. But I don't think they are at all. The fact is that you can't talk about forgiveness without talking about grace. Grace is at the very heart of forgiveness. What Jesus is presenting here is not Santa Claus theology. Santa Claus theology says, we act first then God responds- "he knows when you've been bad or good, os be good for goodness sake." When Jesus says, that when we forgive others God will forgive us, He knows that the only reason you and I can ever forgive anyone, the only reason you and I are ever able to forgive anyone, the only reason you and I ever even think about forgiving someone is because a preveniant, a going ahead of us grace, the Holy Spirit is at work in our lives, enabling us to understand how we've been forgiven in Christ Jesus and therefore we move out to forgive others.
Right after W.W.II, Corrie Ten Boom was speaking in a church in Hamburg, Germany. And she had been recounting the horrors that she had experienced in a concentration camp. She had seen her whole family killed, in fact she had seen her sister personally killed. And after her talk, she was standing at the front of the church, and people were lined up to shake her hand and say "nice talk" and that kind of stuff. And as she was shaking her hands, she looked back and, horror of horrors, she recognized the face that she knew she would never forget her whole life. It was the face of the SS guard who was in charge of the actual killing of her sister. She said at that moment "I had my crisis of faith. This man was going to come. Would I be able to shake his hand?" Not only that, when he gets up to her he looks her in the eye and says, "Miss Ten Boom, will you forgive me?". By the grace of God she extended her hand and took his and said, "I forgive you".
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+ R Scates, CPC Baltimore 2000 + Corrie Ten Boom, National Presbyterian Washington DC 1974
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