Jesus never let the offense determine whether or not He would forgive someone.

In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus teaches us how to pray in what is called The Lord’s Prayer. The only clause in the prayer that Jesus attaches a condition to is about forgiveness, but it is not the condition we would expect. If I were to predict the condition Jesus would give us to pray about forgiveness, it would be something like this, “God please help me forgive others the way you have forgiven me.” Yet the condition is the exact opposite of that! What Jesus actually tells us to pray is this, “Dear Heavenly Father, please use the standard I use in dealing with the people who wound me as the standard you use to relate to me.” WOW! Do we really want God using anything we do as His standard, particularly how we deal with wounds? 

But that is what Jesus tells us to pray.

Therefore, it is crucial that we find a good model of forgiveness to follow. Fortunately for us, Jesus gave us the best model! How did Jesus forgive? While we could spend our whole lives considering how Jesus forgave, I will summarize in one overarching statement:

Jesus never let the offense determine whether or not He would forgive someone. 

No one ever comes to Jesus in repentance and is told, “I don’t think we covered that!” Why? Because Jesus loves people more than He hates their sin and He hates sin so much that He died on the Cross to pay for their sin. There is no sin so great, so bad, or so heinous that Jesus’ blood does not cover it. 

The blood of Jesus covers all sin…

“For God so loved the world, that He gave His only Son, so that everyone who believes in Him will not perish, but have eternal life. For God did not send the Son into the world to judge the world, but so that the world might be saved through Him”. John 3:16-17

“So then, as through one offense the result was condemnation to all mankind, so also through one act of righteousness the result was justification of life to all mankind.” Romans 5:18

“For the death that He died, He died to sin once for all time; but the life that He lives, He lives to God.” Romans 6:10

…including the ones that wound us.

A few years ago, we traveled to the Dead Sea to lead a 3-day retreat with 90 church leaders from Israel where half of them were Messianic Church leaders and half were Arab Church leaders. Even though everyone there was a Christ follower, the two groups were at odds because the sons of Ishmael and the sons of Isaac had not forgiven each other for what Abraham did. We shared the Forgiving Forward message with them and how the blood of Jesus covers all sin, including the over 4,000 years of wounds between Arabs and Jews. By the end of the retreat, the two groups melded into one as they forgave each other and repented to each other. It was one of the most thrilling and satisfying experiences in our ministry.

During a Q & A session on the second day of the retreat, a Holocaust survivor whose parents were killed by the Nazis, asked me, “Does this mean I have to forgive Hitler?” You could feel the emotional tension in the room as all eyes shifted to me to see how I would respond. I knew that what I said in response was critical, so I quietly prayed, “Lord, what do you want me to say? Speak through me.”  I swallowed hard and replied, “I want you to know that I denounce with everything that is in me what Hitler and the Nazis did to the Jews during the Holocaust. It was horrific. It was one of the most heinous periods in all of history. But the answer to your question is yes, because if the Cross doesn’t work in the extreme case then it doesn’t work in the common case. The blood of Jesus covers all sins or it doesn’t cover any sin. It’s all or nothing. So yes Ma’am. You do have to forgive what Hitler did to the Jews.” After two difficult subsequent conversations and one last night of torment, this sweet lady finally chose to forgive Hitler for his atrocities against her family and her people. She experienced the freedom of the Gospel through the power of forgiveness.

Jesus never let the offense determine whether or not He would forgive someone. 

“My little children, I am writing these things to you so that you may not sin. And if anyone sins, we have an Advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous; and He Himself is the propitiation for our sins; and not for ours only, but also for the sins of the whole world.” 1 John 2:1-2