A New Blog and Forgiveness

I caved in the other day, and decided to get a blog website from blogspot. Most of my friends use this one rather than xanga.

I volunteer with the youth group at my church. On sunday nights, I am with the youth director and the middle school class. This year we have been going through the Life of Joseph, and although I have always known the story (sidenote, when I did YoungLife we were instructed never to use the term story for a biblical account because it means it is untrue. I however, disagree and therefore use the term story), I had never before looked into it this much. It is an incredible story of forgiveness, repentence, and reconciliation. On Sunday night we were at the point in the story when Joseph basically set his 11 brothers up to be caught for stealing his silver cup. At this point in the story, although Joseph did set them up, he had shown in various ways that he had in fact forgiven his brothers for selling him into slavery 22 years prior. However, with the brothers, they had shown signs of feeling guilty for what they had done, but the Bible shows us no evidence of repentence. In Middle School Youth Group, we have not finished the story yet, but it ends with the brothers repenting, Joseph revealing himself to them, and ultimately a great reconciliation of a family torn apart by hatred, mistreatment, and pain.

In the past few weeks, I have been thinking a lot about forgiveness. Do we forgive people only when they repent, admit their wrong and apologize? Or are we called to forgive no matter what the offense and no matter how much the other person doesn't recognize their wrong? The story of Joseph made me think harder about this. In surveying my actions over the course of my life, I tend to forgive only when wrong has been admitted and apologized for. I can put things aside for a long while, but seeing as how I generally "blow up" eventually, true forgiveness did not take place when I just set the offense aside. I discussed this issue with the youth director. He too tended to think that forgiveness comes after repentence. Playing devil's advocate and in light of the evidence in this story of Joseph's life, I argued that maybe forgiveness comes first. When were my sins forgiven by Christ? They were forgiven the day He died on the cross.

Mark 11:25 says, And whenever you stand praying, forgive, if you have anything against anyone, so that your Father also who is in heaven may forgive you your trespasses.

I read this whole passage and it never says anything about what the person who has done something against you. It only commands you to forgive.

Then, Mark 4:11-12 says, And he said to them, “To you has been given the secret of the kingdom of God, but for those outside everything is in parables, 12 so that
“they may indeed see but not perceive,and may indeed hear but not understand,lest they should turn and be forgiven.”

Is this turning that Mark speaks about repentence? And why is it placed before forgiveness?

Then in Luke 17:3-4, Pay attention to yourselves! If your brother sins, rebuke him, and if he repents, forgive him, and if he sins against you seven times in the day, and turns to you seven times, saying, ‘I repent,’ you must forgive him.”

If he repents, forgive him? The more I read, the more confused I get. I find evidence of both. It seems that in most stories about how people lived and acted, especially in the Old Testament, forgiveness usually came before repentence........or is that evidence of forgiveness, evidence of a "readiness to forgive". It also seems that throughout the New Testament, when people are being instructed, repentence comes before forgiveness.

If, forgiveness comes first, then I am not saying that repentence doesn't need to happen. Christ calls us to repent of our sins daily, but I say that my sins are forgiven before the repentence takes place. I think this because Christ is still at work in my heart, He is still revealing sin to me that I never knew existed, and if I were to die without repenting of the "individual sins" I committed, I am confident that I would be in heaven with my Savior. But what does that mean for us? In how we relate to others?