Joseph’s life has all the makings of an unforgettable revenge story. Jealous brothers plotted his murder. After having tempered their resentment a bit, however, they settled for selling him as a slave instead. Then, despite exceptional performance reviews and a very respectable reputation as a servant in his master’s house, Joseph’s world came crashing down again. He was the victim of vindictive lies and slander that not only ruined his reputation, but landed him in prison. Even in prison, despite his commendable behavior restoring his good name and the assistance he provided to others in his God-given interpretations of their dreams, he was still forgotten and overlooked for a time by those he helped.
Finally, though, the door opened up for him to ascend to the role of the most powerful man in Egypt next to Pharaoh himself! That’s when the opportunity for what surely could have been one of the most memorable stories of revenge presented itself. His brothers found themselves unknowingly in his presence, completely at his mercy while seeking aid for their starving families. Oh, how Joseph could have unleashed his wrath as a result of decades of pent-up spite, bitterness, and resentment! It would have been a story for the ages!
And it was. It still is. But not for the reason we might have expected; not for revenge. Instead, it’s a story for the ages because of something far more powerful than revenge: Joseph’s choice to forgive his brothers.
As The Church God Wants series wraps up, it shouldn’t surprise us at that God desires that his Church – that believers – be quick to forgive. Forgiveness is both how and why the Church even exists in the first place! The Church is not just the beneficiary of forgiveness, but its executor as well. We receive it and we distribute it. We are filled up with it and we fill others up with it. If there is one thing the Church is to do and be known for, it must always be forgiveness.
Why is that? Because no other group or institution in society bears that responsibility. Your employer is not required to teach or model forgiveness to you. “Forgiveness 101” is not a required course of study in our public schools or higher education institutions. Your kid’s coach or piano teacher is not being paid or volunteering to help your child learn about forgiveness. The government has not established any rules or regulations to foster forgiveness by threat of fine or jail time (which would of course be a bit ironic). Finally, while in many cities you will have no problem finding community centers, homeless shelters, and food pantries, I have yet to hear of anything resembling a “forgiveness facility.”
You won’t find such things elsewhere because even society – non-believers and believers alike – realizes that forgiveness is really the church’s business. Forgiveness has historically been understood to be the church’s responsibility.
For that reason, those outside the church tend to pay very close attention when those who belong to it – Christians – fail to forgive. Even they recognize that’s what the Church exists to do… even if they don’t fully recognize the how or why, which is of course one and the same: Jesus.
The Church forgives because the Church exists as a result of Jesus’ forgiveness. Remove his perfect life of obedience from the equation and his death on the cross would not have mattered. Take away his death on the cross and the empty tomb would not have been possible. Do away with the empty tomb, leaving a still-dead-today Jesus, and his payment would have been insufficient and death and hell would still reign.
But, since we have all of those and everything else that we need in Jesus, we have forgiveness. As long as the church has Jesus, she has all she needs to continue as the source of freely-flowing forgiveness. That means we have something both to receive and to give. What is our part in that? Our role involves both hearing and speaking that forgiveness and each case, for various reasons, sometimes that is very difficult and sometimes it comes quite easily.
When it comes to hearing that forgiveness, it can at times be one of the hardest things of all to hear and at other times the sweetest music to our ears. What accounts for the difference? How could forgiveness ever be hard to hear?
When we don’t feel we need it. After all, when a person has “done nothing wrong,” then there’s nothing to forgive. And that would be true… if we could ever actually figure out how to avoid all wrongdoing. Our shortcoming, however, is our failure to see our wrong or identify it as such. If we spent as much time simply owning our sin and confessing it as we do denying it, excusing it, or blaming others for it, then there would be less kicking and screaming and insisting on our innocence and more reconciliation and healing.
Those are the times when forgiveness is pure music to our ears – when our guilty ears long to hear it and our troubled hearts know we need it. When the law has done its job and exposed me as the fraud I am in so many ways, I am ready to receive the sweet freedom that only the gospel of forgiveness offers. When my stubbornness, my grudge-bearing, my refusal to forgive others, my selfishness, my stinging words, my neglect of God, my reckless spending – when all of this becomes clearly evident and our guilt won’t let go, then we crave the assurance that Jesus gives. Then we soak up his forgiveness. At those times we cannot hear it too much.
Hearing forgiveness can be hard or easy, depending on how ready our hearts are to receive it. But speaking words of forgiveness can challenge us as well. Sometimes the words are difficult to speak and other times forgiveness seems to ease effortlessly from our lips. Why is that? How could forgiveness ever be hard to speak? When we feel the other person doesn’t deserve it.
But we must stop right there and be very clear about something before we go on.
It’s only a worldly – and therefore rather limited and virtually impotent – version of forgiveness that attaches any sense of requirement to it. Only the world speaks of forgiveness in terms of the guilty party somehow being deserving enough or sorry enough or pitiful enough for forgiveness. In other words, it’s a limited forgiveness, a conditional one.
But God’s forgiveness that extends through his Church is not at all like that. It isn’t limited. It isn’t conditional. It isn’t at all dependent on how deserving the recipient may or may not be, because it is entirely grace-based. That means it isn’t ever deserved and cannot ever be earned. So the kind of forgiveness that is withheld because someone has determined the guilty party doesn’t deserve it is not the kind of forgiveness found in the church.
When we find it difficult to forgive others, it’s because we’re focused on the world’s “forgiveness” and not the Church’s. That happens when we focus on the wrong itself and how awful it was or the wrongdoer himself and how awful he is to have committed it. Where either the gravity of the wrong committed or the degree of wickedness of the wrongdoer himself is the determining factor, forgiveness will always be conditional.
That also means it will be subjective. One person who determines the wrong or the wrongdoer wasn’t really that bad may find it easy to forgive, while another person may struggle mightily with the same sin because of a different personal experience or perception of that sin. So the kind of forgiveness dependent on the gravity of the crime or the wickedness of the perpetrator – a forgiveness not sanctioned in the Bible, by the way – will always be hard to speak.
Other times, though, words of forgiveness are come easily. When?
When we focus not on the wrongdoer, but on our forgiver, Jesus. Yes, you read that right – when we focus on our forgiver. That is always the best and necessary place to start. I need to put myself at the center of the investigation and lay bare my whole history, my whole track record of sin, remembering all the despicable stuff I’ve done.
Then, when I realize that God has not withheld his forgiveness for any one of my sins, but that Jesus’ blood has covered and washed away every last one, it seems downright laughable that I should stand before someone else and pretend that his wrong is the exception. How absurd that I could accept that my sin should be cancelled but that his sin could not possibly be. Those are the moments when it hits me why Jesus told the story of the unmerciful servant in Matthew 18. He wanted to convict me of how ludicrous it is of me to ever withhold forgiveness from someone else until they _______________ (fill in the blank with any requirement you’d like to attach).
No, forgiveness comes so much more easily when I look first at who has forgiven me. When I see Jesus nailed to the cross, imagining a banner with the words, “Paid in full” over him, I see no ground to stand on where I can withhold Jesus’ same payment from someone else. No matter what they’ve done. No matter how much what they did hurt me. No matter how much ongoing damage it causes me. No matter how much I might still be processing it even years later.
When I let go of the burden of trying to pretend the heavy weight of dispensing forgiveness is mine to bear and instead remember that Jesus already carried that weight and earned my forgiveness, then I can freely and fully forgive others.
That’s why Joseph wept. He had already forgiven his brothers. But he was finding out how hard it can be for that forgiveness to sink in. He had forgiven his brothers 17 years ago, and here they were still terrified that the real punishment they deserved was going to be be exacted upon them after their dad died and Joseph no longer had to “fake” forgiveness.
But in place of the retribution his brothers expected, they received reassurance. Instead of demanding restitution from his brothers for all the harm they had done to him, he promised to provide for all their families’ needs. No revenge, just forgiveness in its place. Joseph didn’t dwell on the damage his brothers had done to him, but rather on the good God had worked through him. “But Joseph said to them, ‘Don’t be afraid. Am I in the place of God? You intended to harm me, but God intended it for good to accomplish what is now being done, the saving of many lives. So then, don’t be afraid. I will provide for you and your children.’ And he reassured them and spoke kindly to them” (v.19-21).
Notice something rather profound in Joseph’s words. He knew full well the responsibility of making sure justice was carried out perfectly was not his, but God’s. “Am I in the place of God,” he asked. Of course not!
However, we are, in a sense, in the place of God today. We are in the place of God when we apply his forgiveness to others who know they need it. We are in the place of God when we withhold that forgiveness from God for those who see no sin in themselves that needs forgiving. God has given that responsibility to his church to forgive, as he has forgiven us. Then alone do we stand in the place of God, as if God himself were the one pronouncing his forgiveness upon a penitent sinner. That is exactly what God wants in us. That is exactly the kind of church God wants – a quick-to-forgive church. May we always be just that, and may others always see that when they look at us.