Abating Apollyon's Attack

Luke 6:37-38

37 "Judge not, and you will not be judged; condemn not, and you will not be condemned; forgive, and you will be forgiven; 38 give, and it will be given to you. Good measure, pressed down, shaken together, running over, will be put into your lap. For with the measure you use it will be measured back to you."

Sounds simple, doesn’t it? And I suppose it is to some people. Not so to me. Take forgiveness, for example. How in the world do you forgive someone who is not repentant? Does God forgive the unrepentant? If someone trespasses against me and adamantly, intransigently refuses to see my hurt and to ask forgiveness of me then must I forgive them? Surely I can forgive only when someone asks for forgiveness, right? There is even a passage in Luke that says I must forgive a brother "if he repents." {Luke 17:3-4}

I will not make distinctions between brothers and neighbours in considering this question, though such distinctions could be brought to bear. In the end, forgiveness is as much about my peace and wellbeing as it is about the offender, whatever my relationship to him.

Though God does not forgive the unrepentant, He holds himself ready to do so. The attitude of His heart is one of forgiveness. He is ready to forgive. He has provided the infinite and eternal means by which that forgiveness can be received. The death of Christ is sufficient for all, and there is a free offer in the gospel. No one who comes to Christ will ever be rejected. This is not the place to consider why no one ever comes apart from the enabling grace of God. The question here is not one of election, but of readiness to forgive.

Believers must have already made the sacrifice that makes it possible to forgive anything - just as God has already made the sacrifice that makes it possible for Him to forgive anything. (Even before the foundation of the world the sacrifice was "already" made because the Divine mind had purposed and willed it) {Revelation 13:8,1Peter 1:19-21} Just as Christ sacrificed Himself as the effectual means of God’s forgiveness, sufficient for all - so I must sacrifice my life as the effectual means of God’s forgiveness for all through me.

Say what? What I said is that if I died with Christ then what have I left to forgive, since dead men cannot be offended? But I must willingly embrace that death. I must welcome it. I must sacrifice myself to it. It is a curiously living death. In essence I must regard myself as having died with Christ, even though I am still alive and dwelling right alongside my old nature. I must die daily - put to death the lusts and deeds of the flesh, one of which is the lust for revenge springing from the pride of the flesh.

This is not semantics. It is not mere mechanics. It is not simply ethics. It is the life. It is reality for the true child of God. I must not only acknowledge, not only be cognizant of, but actually implement this truth through faith in Christ. There is no choice. I must do it. If I will not do it, then I am simply proving to myself that I am not a child of God because I do not exhibit the character of my supposed Father. It’s that serious.

But I must also be real in other ways. I cannot deny that the abuses and the unfairness of others both hurt and enrage me. Denial of this would be wrong. It moves me away from the truth of the reality I am experiencing. I do feel injured. I am hurt. There is nothing wrong with those feelings at all. There is even nothing wrong with rebuking a brother when he does me injury. All these things are true of God. He feels the hurts and the anger when we trespass against Him. He is not impassive, monolithic, insensitive. Quite the contrary! He is reactive, responsive, sensitive, feeling to the Nth degree.

God rebukes and chastises constantly. He reminds men of their waywardness all the day long through manifold means, calling all to repentance. Health and financial problems, want, need, disaster, tribulation - all these things can be (can be - though they are not invariably so) tokens of God’s displeasure and signs of His call to repentance. And all of His kindnesses are also meant to bring men to repentance. {Romans 2:4}

So the whole process of forgiveness does not take place absent the true effects of the offence as I sometimes tend to think. I must not try to be a stoic for the sake of pridefully proving my saintliness. I am a thinking, feeling being - just like my Maker is a thinking, feeling Being. If the sins of others never caused me injury or pain then I would be better than Jesus. And that is a pathetic and ridiculous thought. The question is not whether I hurt but what the remedy is in a fallen world.

Turns out that remedy is quite a surprising departure from natural tendecies. The remedy is to feel the hurt and hold a forgiving heart towards the offender. To pray for them. To do good unto them. These things are absolutely impossible for the natural man, and well nigh impossible for the saint. For some people (like me) there is a great battle in which, like Bunyan’s Christian struggling with Apollyon in the way, they must fight to within an inch of their life - pressed down, weak, in the dust with the knee of the enemy grinding into their chest as he waves above them a wieldy weapon ready to deal the death-blow.

If you are called to such a battle do not despair. The right Man is on your side - the Man of God’s own choosing. You may be pressed down with the weight of offence and hurt - you may be struggling with anger and resentment and the desire to hurt in return - you mind may be a jangle of revengeful thoughts and imaginings... Nevertheless take heart! You would not be so tormented were you not on the Lord’s side. Stand fast and never stop resisting. If you stumble - get up and carry on. Pray for the grace to do what God commands so that when it comes you will know from Whom it has been supplied, and you will not be tempted to exalt yourself in victory.

God’s rod and His staff do indeed comfort us. The staff is held out to herd us in the right direction, and the rod is there to encourage us more firmly when we stray. God is not too proud to both entreat and threaten as means by which to bring us willingly to obedience. Here He reminds us of the sweetness and the fullness of doing His will, and warns that if we act according to our old nature there can be nothing but bitterness and loss.

God will complete in us that good work which He started unto the Day of Jesus Christ {Philippians 1:6} - but the means He uses can sometimes be terrible - especially when we resist. Therfore submit to God, resist the devil and see what God will do.