In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

The traditional reading for the first Sunday in Advent is always the triumphal entry of Jesus into Jerusalem. As we begin a new Church Year, this text reminds us of our Lord’s promise to continually come to His people and never leave them or forsake them. In fact, that’s what the word “advent” literally means. It means a “coming” or an “approaching.” Just like Jesus approached the people of Jerusalem, riding on the back of a lowly donkey, He approaches us week after week, year after year, in Church to give us the things that we need. So, in this morning’s sermon, as we look more closely at our Gospel lesson from Matthew chapter 21, let us consider together what it teaches us about the reason why Jesus comes to us and the manner in which He does. 

First, there’s the reason why Jesus comes to us. The mere knowledge that Christ is present in our midst, or that He promises to be with us repeatedly, is not, by itself, necessarily good news. It’s only good news, if we know the purpose for His arrival. Just because a king enters into a city, or a powerful person visits your home, that doesn’t mean that it will be a pleasant experience for you. Sometimes kings show up to conquer people. Sometimes they ride into town in order to burn it to the ground and lead everyone away as captives. Sometimes the only reason why they show up is for the purpose of getting revenge on their subjects and putting them into their place.

So, is that the reason why Jesus shows up, or does He have another purpose entirely? If, we only consider a portion of God’s Word, we might be led to the wrong conclusion. After all, just listen again to what it tells about Jesus in the first part of our reading. It tells us how He orchestrated the entire event of His arrival into Jerusalem down to the smallest of details. He knew where the donkey would be that He was going ride on, and He was able to make people obey His commands even from a distance. Jesus demonstrated in one action both His omnipotence and His omniscience, showing us without a shadow of doubt that He is the Word made Flesh. He is God Himself.

And just like Jesus knew where the donkey would be, and what to say to those who were taking care of it, He knows a lot of things about you too. In fact, Jesus knows everything about you. He knows the things that you want Him to know, and He knows the things that you wish He didn’t know too. He knows all about your sin. More than anyone else, even yourself, Jesus is acutely aware of the terrible ways that you have treated Him as your King in the past. Even if you have long forgotten them, He can still recall them with ease. He knows the kinds of things that you’ve said, and He knows the kind of things that you’ve done. He even sees the desires that you have in your heart. Unlike anyone else, Jesus has a complete and perfect knowledge of your whole miserable and sinful condition. 

And yet, what does our Lord choose to do with that information? Most kings would use something like that in order to destroy us. They would use it to punish us with the just suffering that we deserve. But that’s not how it is with Jesus. He does not want to come to us as our executioner, but as our Savior. He does not want to be present with us as our Judge, but as our Redeemer. He does not want to draw near to us in order to condemn us, but in order to deliver us.

Why did Jesus ride into Jerusalem on the back of a lowly donkey? Why did He enter into that holy city as a fulfillment of God’s Old Testament promises? What waited for Christ at the end of His road, and what did the people shout out to Him when He arrived? They said the same thing that we say right before Communion, “Hosanna, blessed is He who comes in the name of the Lord.” The word “Hosanna” means “save us now.” That’s what Jesus comes to do. That was, and always is, the main purpose of His arrival. He comes not in order to punish us for our sins, but in order to forgive us for them. He uses His perfect knowledge to make a perfect atonement. He employs His almighty power to render an all-sufficient ransom. He shows up in order to take away our sins.

And until He comes again in glory, our Lord will never stop coming to us for that main purpose. He never gets tired of giving us what we need to be saved. It doesn’t matter how many times we have ignored His coming in the past, all that He wants is for us to receive His coming now. Whether it is at the first hour, or the ninth hour, or the last hour, our Lord’s only desire is that that hour would turn into an eternity. It’s that we would receive the forgiveness of our sins.

Nobody here today in Church should think that their sins are too bad to be forgiven. No one should be afraid that they have committed the same sin too many times in the past, and that there’s no hope left for them in the present. Unless, you don’t want to be forgiven, there is always forgiveness to be had in Christ. Unless, you plan on continuing in your sin without any remorse or any intention of stopping, there is no sin that you need to be afraid of. Jesus can deliver you from all of them. That’s the whole reason why He comes to us.

And that leads us to the second thing that our reading shows us about the coming of Christ, and that is the manner in which He comes. Besides teaching us that Jesus comes to us for the main purpose of forgiving us of our sins, the account of the Triumphal entry also reminds us that Jesus always does that in humility. Except for on the Last Day, when our Lord will appear in visible glory together with all of His holy angels, every day until then He conceals His coming under ordinary means. Just like Jesus rode into Jerusalem not on the back of magnificent war horse, but seated on the back of lowly donkey, He still comes to us today in ways that look very plain.

What does the Bible tell us elsewhere about where Jesus comes to us now? Our Lord says in John chapter 14 that “If anyone loves Me, He will keep My Word, and My Father will love him, and We will come to him, and make our home with Him.” That’s a promise about hearing God’s Word. When we listen to it, and believe it, the Bible says that Jesus comes to us. Or what about this verse from Galatians chapter 3, “For as many of you as were baptized into Christ have put on Christ.” Here the Bible shows us that Jesus comes to us in our Baptism too. Whenever we are washed with the water and the Word, He is present to forgive us of our sins. And what about the gift of the Lord’s Supper?  What could be more obvious about Jesus coming to us than that? Our Lord Himself says, “Take eat, this is My Body. Take drink, this is My Blood, given and shed for you for the forgiveness of sins.” Every time that we celebrate the Sacrament of the Altar according to Christ’s command and institution, Christ Himself promises to be present. And He promises to be there to forgive us of our sins.

Those are the ways that Jesus chooses to come to us now to give us what we need. He does it through the pure teaching of His Word and the right administration of His Sacraments. No matter how many times we use those things in repentance and faith, we have the assurance that we will receive the exact same thing through them. We will receive Jesus and His forgiveness.

Sadly, many people today end up missing out on Jesus’ coming to them, and deprive themselves of His forgiveness, because of the way that He chooses to show up. It’s not because Jesus is hard to find, but because they don’t want to go to the places where He’s promised to be. Instead of letting the humble ways that our Lord chooses to deal with us humble them into thanksgiving, they let it harden themselves into pride. They are offended by the very thing that should give them the greatest joy. Jesus actually promises to be with us in Church. He really is here every time that we listen to His Word and study His teachings. When we get baptized our sins actually get washed away, and when we take the Lord’s Supper they truly are remitted.

How could we Christians ever get bored with that? Why would we ever want that to change, or think that we could in improve it? Can we might Jesus show up in a better way than the way He’s promised to be with us? No! When people act as if we need to do new and fancier things to attract others, instead of simply preaching the pure Word of God and rightly administering His Sacraments, they reveal their lack of knowledge about how Christ actually comes to us. They show that they either don’t take His Word seriously, or they don’t take their need for His forgiveness seriously. In either case, though, it is a serious problem.

Yes, we do the same things over and over again in Church. Week after week, year after year, we gather together in God’s house to receive His gifts. Even though there are some differences depending on the day, for the most part, we follow the same pattern of worship. We sing the same sort of hymns that have been sung for generations. We listen to the same readings from throughout the Bible. We pray the same prayers. And we take Communion in the exact same kind of way. But that’s because we need the same things over and over again. We literally commit the same kinds of sins all of the time. Think back to your life, one year ago today. How different are you from year? Have you stopped falling into sin? Have you gotten complete control over your sinful nature, or do you still get tripped up by the same sort of sins as you did in the past? Have you overcome one sin, only to have it replaced by another? You the know the answer. Many things are still the same. But Jesus promises to show up in the same way for you anyway. And He promises to do it in order to forgive you. So, may we never grow tired of receiving Him, even in this new Church Year. In Jesus’ Name. Amen.

In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

Today is the Last Sunday of the Church Year. The whole focus of this morning’s service is on the End Times and, specifically, the return of Jesus in glory. In order that we would be prepared for that event when it happens, our Lord tells us a parable about it in Matthew chapter 25, the so-called parable of the ten virgins. So, in this morning’s, I’m going to do something a little bit different than what I usually do and simply walk through this text verse by verse and explain what each part means. If you want to, you can follow along in the bulletin, or if you have your own Bible or you want to use one of the pew Bibles, you can that too.

Verse 1: Jesus said, “Then the kingdom of heaven will be like ten virgins who took their lamps and went to meet the bridegroom.”

Here our Lord shows us that this is a parable about the visible Church on earth. It isn’t about the differences between atheists and Christians, or Buddhists and Lutherans, but about all those who have outwardly attached themselves to God’s Word and Sacraments. It’s a parable about you and me, and all of the people sitting here in this room today; everyone throughout the whole world who identifies as a follower of Christ. All ten of the virgins went out to meet the bridegroom. All ten of them acknowledged that eventually he was going to show up, and, at least for a moment, they all expected it to happen.

Verse 2: “Five of them were foolish and five were wise.”

According to God’s Word, not everyone who is connected with the visible Church will be prepared for the return of Christ. Not everyone who shows us on Sunday, or calls himself a Christian will necessarily be ready when Jesus comes again in glory. Some people are wise and some people are foolish. That doesn’t mean that some people have a high IQ and others have a lower one. It means that some people take God’s Word seriously and others don’t. As we read in Proverbs chapter 1, “The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom, fools despise wisdom and instruction.” True wisdom, in the Biblical sense of the word, doesn’t have anything to do with how good you are at math or whether or not you know quantum physics. It has everything to do with whether or not you listen to the Scriptures and take them to heart; whether or not you have a living and active faith that firmly clings to the Word of God.

Verses 3 and 4: For when the foolish took their lamps, they took no oil with them, but the wise took flasks of oil with their lamps.

The main way that the wise virgins showed that they actually took the return of the bridegroom seriously was by making preparations for it. They weren’t content simply to be ready at just one time, they knew that they had to be ready all of the time. That’s why they brought along extra oil for their lamps. They recognized that without constant replenishment, the oil of their lamps would run out.

This passage, and this whole parable for that matter, strikes a crushing blow to the false teaching of “once saved, always saved.” Nowhere in the Bible are we taught that just because a person believed in Jesus at one point in their life, they’re automatically “good to go” at every other point of their life too. 

The foolish virgins did not think that they could ever fall away from the faith. They weren’t trusting in God’s promises to preserve them in the faith, they were abusing those promises so that they didn’t have to keep the faith at all. This is sort of like when people today who refuse to come to church, or are living in unrepentant sin, act as if just because they got baptized as a baby, or confirmed when they were a teenager, or that their name is still on the roles, there’s no possible way that they could ever go to hell. They act as if just because they had faith in the past, that faith will still save them even if they don’t have faith in the present. Well, are you saved because you used to have faith, or are you saved because you have faith when you die? Will you go to heaven because you used to live a life of repentance, or do you still have to live a life of repentance now? We all know the answer. 

In order for us to remain in the faith until we die, our faith needs to be fed all of the time. Just like how a person will starve to death unless they eat food, we need to eat the spiritual food of God’s Word over and over again so that our souls don’t starve. We need to hear the Law and Gospel and receive the forgiveness that comes from Jesus on an ongoing basis so that we will have enough oil to keep our lamps burning to the end.

Verse 5: “As the bridegroom was delayed, they all became drowsy and slept.”

In this part of the parable, Jesus reminds us that even though there are differences between the wise and foolish virgins, there is one way in which all of them are the same. They all got tired and fell asleep. In the Bible, sometimes sleep is a euphemism for when a Christian dies in the faith. But since one of the main points of this parable is that the foolish virgins lost their faith and didn’t go to heaven, we know it doesn’t mean that here. The other option is that becoming drowsy and falling asleep has to do with falling into sin. Remember what happened in the garden of Gethsemane? Jesus asked the disciples to stay awake and pray with Him, but none of them could keep their eyes open. Then Jesus said, “Watch and pray that you may not enter into temptation. The Spirit indeed is willing, but the flesh is weak.”

All of us, believers and unbelievers alike, have the same sinful nature. Even after our conversion we continue to carry around with us a fallen flesh. That means that we still sin. The difference is with what we do with our sin. Do we repent of our sin, or do we indulge our sin? Do we turn away from our sin, or do we defend our sin? Do we look to Jesus to forgive our sin, or are we content to keep on living in our sin?

What set apart the wise virgins from the foolish was not that they didn’t have any sin. It was that they didn’t take their sin lightly. They didn’t act as if their sin was “no big deal.” On the contrary, they knew that the corruption of their sin ran so deep that they never stopped needing the mercy and forgiveness of Christ. They never stopped needing to listen to God’s Word and receive His Holy Sacraments. They never stopped needing to go to Church.

When people make a habit of skipping church, or not go to church on a regular basis, they are doing what the foolish virgins did in the parable. They are not making any provisions against their sinful flesh. They are proving by their actions that, to a certain degree, they don’t really take their sin that seriously. And that’s a very dangerous thing to do. Because even though we all get drowsy and fall asleep sometimes, even though we all sin, if we give into our sin, we risk the possibility of not waking up from it on time. We risk the possibility of not being able to receive forgiveness for it before it’s too late.

Verses 6 and 7: “But at midnight there was a cry, ‘Here is the bridegroom! Come out to meet him.’ Then all those virgins rose and trimmed their lamps.

Eventually, Jesus Christ will make good on His Word and come back in the same way that He left. Just like we confess in the Creeds, He will return to judge the living and the dead. The reason why our Lord says in this parable that the bridegroom came at midnight is not because He wants us to try and figure out, or predict, the exact date and time that it will happen. As God Word tells us in multiple places, including at the end of this text, “No one knows the day or the hour.” Rather, Jesus uses the language of midnight to remind us of how it will happen very suddenly, even when many people are secure and complacent in their sins.

As our mother’s often warned us, nothing good happens after midnight. And as Saint Paul says in our Epistle lesson, “those who get drunk get drunk at night.” People do shameful things under the cover of darkness because they think that it’ll be easier to get away with. They think that no one is watching. What they are forgetting about, though, is that there’s Someone who’s always watching. God never slumbers nor sleeps. He sees everything that we do and He knows every thought that crosses our mind. Even the things that are hidden to others, like our deepest and darkest secrets that we’ve never shared with anyone else, we can’t keep secret from Him. And soon, everything will be exposed. That’s why we expose our sins now by confessing them and receiving forgiveness for them. It’s so that we don’t have to be ashamed for them later.

Verses 8 through 9: “And the foolish said to the wise, “Give us some of your oil, for our lamps are going out.” But the wise answered, saying, ‘Since there will not be enough for us and for you, go rather to the dealers and buy for yourselves.”

Just like it’s not enough to have believed in Jesus in the past, it’s not enough to have other people believe in Jesus for you either. Everyone must believe in Jesus for himself.

Yes, it’s a wonderful thing, and a true blessing from God, to have faithful friends and family that look out for you and encourage you in your walk with Christ. Thank the Lord for parents who make their kids go to Confirmation Class and wives that keep on inviting their husbands to church. Praise God for grandparents who pray with their grandkids, and neighbors who witness to those who live next to them. But eventually, each one of us will be responsible for ourselves. We won’t get to fall back on the fact that we have relatives who were really pious Lutherans, or that we can trace our blood line all the way back to father Abraham himself. None of that will matter. All that will matter is whether or not our lamps are burning. All that will matter is if we have faith. The foolish virgins had to leave and try buy oil because they didn’t have enough of it for themselves when they actually needed it. They tried to repent and get some after the fact, but then, they found out just how impossible that was.

Verse 10: “And while they were going to buy, the bridegroom came, and those who were ready went in with him to the marriage feast, and the door was shut.

There are no second chances when it comes to Judgment Day. That’s why we call it the “Last Day.” The moment that the trumpet sounds and our Lord appears in the sky, our eternal state will be fixed, and there won’t be any changing it. Just like the door was shut in the parable, the door to heaven will be closed. But that isn’t necessarily a bad thing. It’s only a bad thing for those who aren’t inside. Think about another time that God closed a door on someone. He did that for Noah right before the flood. In that case, God closing the door was the very thing that kept Noah safe. It was His way of protecting Noah and his family from the destruction that He was about to bring upon the earth.

And that’s the attitude that we should have about Judgment Day as members of the household of God. It’s not something that we’re supposed to dread. It’s something we’re supposed us to look forward too. They only reason why Judgment Day should scare us is if are sinning on purpose and not looking to Jesus for His forgiveness. But if we are repenting of our sins and trusting in Christ, regardless of what how terrible our sins have been, we don’t have anything to worry about. We can have confidence that the sins that our Lord died for, He won’t make us suffer for in entirety. When He shuts the door on us, it won’t be to condemn us, but to protect us. It will be to guard us from even the possibility of ever falling away from Him again.

Verses 11 and 12: “Afterward the other virgins came also, saying, ‘Lord, lord, open to us.” But He answered, ‘Truly, I say to you, I do not know you.’

This is one of the most terrifying verses in the whole Bible. Sometimes God’s Word tells us things in order to comfort us, and other times it’s tells us things to warn us. This one is obviously the latter. We can get a lot of bad news in our life, but nothing is worse than hearing from Jesus that He doesn’t even know you. But that is what will happen to those who don’t want to know Him. That’s what will happen to those who reject God’s grace when it’s offered to them and try and stand before Him on the basis of anything other than the blood of Christ. It won’t go well for them. And the reason why Jesus warns us about it is, of course, because He doesn’t want it to happen to us. He wants us to seek His grace while it may be found, so that we’ll be found in Him, covered in His righteousness, and secure in our identity as God’s children.

Verse 13: “Watch, therefore, for you know neither the day nor the hour.”

The whole point of the parable of the ten virgins is that Jesus doesn’t want us to miss out on heaven. There is nothing that He desires more than for us to spend eternity with Him in paradise. Not only does Jesus desperately want that for each and every one of us, but He has provided all of the means for that to take place. He did that, in the first place, by dying for all of our sins on the cross. That’s where Jesus bought us the oil that we need to keep our lamps burning. That’s where He purchased for us the forgiveness of our sins. But not only did He purchase that forgiveness for us, He actually gives it to us in His Word and Sacraments. He uses the Word, Water, Bread and Wine, as instruments to fill up our lamps with His saving forgiveness until they are overflowing. And through the work of His Holy Spirit, He assure us that He will use those things in order to give us faith, strengthen our faith, and keep our faith living until He comes again. Jesus provides us with everything that we need to be saved.

So, may we make use of the gifts that He has given us. May we stay as close as possible to the place where He promises to fill our lamps. May we keep coming to the feast that we get in Church so that when the Bridegroom returns we can see clearly to enter with Him into the Feast that has no end. In Jesus’ Name. Amen.

In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

The main point of the parable of the unforgiving servant is that we should forgive other people because God has forgiven us. When Jesus told Saint Peter that he should forgive his repentant brother not seven times, but seventy times seven, obviously our Lord was not just picking a new limit that was higher than Saint Peter’s limit. He was showing us that our forgiveness is supposed to have no limits. Whatever amount we might think is too many times to forgive someone when they come to us asking for it, we should multiply it again. In other words, just as God does not stop forgiving us, we should never stop forgiving other people.

Now, even though this is very clear from our text today, and from the rest of the Bible for that matter, our sinful nature constantly fights against it and always tries to come up with different reasons why we don’t have to do it. So, in this morning’s sermon, in light of what Jesus tells us in Matthew chapter 18, I’m simply going to respond to some of the most common objections that we hear against forgiving other people. And to clarify things before we get started, because every time this topic comes up I always get the same kind of questions, this text is not about how governments should stop punishing criminals or how there shouldn’t be any boundaries put in place for things like abuse or adultery. Sometimes there are temporal consequences for sins, even though the eternal consequences have been completely removed by Christ. For example, an individual can be forgiven before God in heaven for committing literal murder, but that doesn’t mean that he shouldn’t have to go to jail. A bank robber can be forgiven for robbing banks, but that doesn’t mean we should make him the treasurer of the church. It’s possible for forgiveness to be given at the same time that other steps are put in place in order to guard against temptation and to teach others who may be watching to take sin seriously. The issue that Jesus is dealing with in our text has to do with things like holding grudges, harboring hatred toward others in our hearts, or trying to even with them for doing us wrong. That’s the kind of forgiveness that He’s talking about. 

And so, here are the most common objections there are against forgiving others. The first one is “I don’t have to forgive them because they don’t deserve my forgiveness.” But statements like that completely miss the point. Not deserving forgiveness is the exact thing that makes it forgiveness in the first place. If we deserved forgiveness, then it wouldn’t be forgiveness at all. It would be restitution. The man in the parable that Jesus told obviously did not deserve to have his debt taken away.  He couldn’t do anything to get out of his debt and what he did was the exact thing that put him into all of that debt to begin with. The master had to forgive him out of his own pity.

And the same is true for us. When we ask God for the forgiveness of our sins, we are not asking Him for something that we deserve. We are asking Him for the exact opposite of what we deserve.  And when we receive God’s forgiveness, we are not getting something that we earned, we are getting something that we could never earn. Remember how Saint Paul describes it in Romans chapter 5. He says, “the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.” That’s how God’s forgiveness come to us. It’s a gift, and as Saint Paul adds for emphasis, a free gift at that.

And so, if God’s forgiveness comes to us freely for Christ’s sake, then how can we turn around and act as if other people need to deserve forgiveness from us when we don’t deserve it from God? How can we say that our brothers and sisters in Christ need to earn our forgiveness before we can give it to them, when the very forgiveness we have from the Lord isn’t something that we earned, but something that was given to us by grace? The reason why the unforgiving servant in the parable was condemned by Jesus at the end of the story was because in refusing to forgive others, he showed that he did not really believe in God’s forgiveness at all. In acting as if forgiveness needed to be deserved, he not only showed that he did not understand how forgiveness works, but he was rejecting the undeserved forgiveness of God. We never deserve forgiveness! Forgiveness is always for the underserving. And that’s why we should still give it to other people even if they don’t deserve it from us either.

Another objection that we often hear to forgiving people is that “what they did is too sinful to be forgiven.” But again, the parable that Jesus tells us shows us very clearly why that is never a valid reason to withhold forgiveness. Consider again the details of the story. One conservative estimate is that in ancient times a single talent could have been valued at more than a year’s worth of wages. The man in the parable owed ten thousand talents. He owed ten thousand years’ worth of wages. In our day and age, that would be the equivalent of someone owing something like 500 million dollars. It was a preposterous sum. It went well beyond carelessness and into the realm of purposeful evil. How on earth does a person even go about racking up that kind of debt? You almost have to be trying to do it. But Jesus uses this large sum of money to drive home the point that the servant obviously could never repay what he owed. It was too much. He didn’t have the means, nor did he have the time. In fact, more time would have probably made things even worse. His plea to the master to “have patience with me, and I will pay you everything,” was just as ridiculous as the amount of money that he owed.

And yet, the master forgave him. The master forgave the man’s debt by paying the debt himself. We all know that despite how some people often act these days, debt doesn’t just go away. Eventually someone always has to pay for it. Whether that is you, or your children, or your children’s children, or the people who lent you the money, somebody is still on the hook for it. And while it is certainly possible to argue that other people who have sinned against us have done things so bad that they cannot pay for them themselves, it is impossible to argue that they have done things so bad that not even God can pay for it Himself. The Bible tells us that Jesus Christ is the “Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world.” It tells us in 1 John chapter 2 that Jesus is the “propitiation [or the payment] for our sins; and not for ours only but also for the sins of the whole world.” When Jesus died on the cross, He really did pay for all of the sins of all of the sinners who ever lived. His life was given as a ransom not just for some, but as He Himself says elsewhere, for many, as in, for everyone. Therefore, since there is no sin that Jesus did not take upon Himself and bear as His own when He died for all of our sins on the cross, there is no sin that is too bad to be forgiven. Whenever we are tempted to think that someone else has done something that is too sinful to be forgiven, we shouldn’t just look at them and what they did, we should look at Jesus and what He did for us all.

The next objection that we often hear to forgiving others is that “I don’t have to forgive them because they aren’t actually sorry for what they did.” Now, it’s true that no one who is not sorry for their sins receives forgiveness for them. The Bible teaches us all over the place that forgiveness is only received by those who regret their sins and want to do better. As King David says in Psalm 51, “For when I was silent, my bones wasted away…” and, “I said, I will confess my transgressions to the Lord and you forgave the iniquity of my sin.” Or as it says in 1 John 1, “If we say we have no sin we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us, but if we confess our sins, God, who is faithful and just, will forgive our sins and cleanse us from all unrighteousness.” And as we read in the book of Acts, “Repent, therefore, and turn back, that your sins may be blotted out.” It’s impossible for a person to receive forgiveness who isn’t sorry for his or her sins and won’t stop doing them.

However, we should be very careful not to give the impression that our repentance is what causes God to forgive us, or that the repentance of others is what should cause us to forgive them either. Repentance does not cause forgiveness. Repentance receives forgiveness. Repentance does not remove sin for our souls. God removes sin for our souls. His forgiveness comes not from the suffering of our guilty conscience, but from the suffering of Jesus’ on the cross. Our guilty conscience does not bring God’s forgiveness to us, our guiltily conscience receives the forgiveness that God gives to us on His own. Did the master in the parable forgive the man’s debts because of how sorry he was, or did he do it because of how gracious he himself was? It was the second one. God does not forgive us because of how sorry we are, but because of how merciful He is.

And besides all that, we don’t always know how sorry a person even is. Yes, sometimes we can see their outward actions, which can be revealing, but only God can see what is going on on the inside. It’s entirely possible that the reason why someone hasn’t said sorry to us is not because they aren’t sorry, but because they’re too embarrassed to say it. What if they haven’t apologized for what they’ve done because they are afraid of us? What if it’s not because they aren’t sorry, but because they’re worried about what we’ll say to them, or how we’ll treat them? If we cannot even examine our own hearts well enough to gage the level of our own sincerity and contrition, why would we think we can do that for someone else? Even when we confess our sins, we confess along with them that not even our confession is completely perfect. And yet, we trust that God forgives us not because of the merits of our confession, but because of the merits of His Son. And that’s why we don’t refuse to forgive other people just because we suspect that they might secretively be not sorry for what they’ve done. We stand ready to forgive. We reach out to them for the purpose of forgiving, and we do our best to bring them the forgiveness that they need even if they end up rejecting it. We forgive as Jesus forgave us. We pray for others, as Jesus Himself prayed for us on the cross, “Father forgive them, for they know not what they do.” 

Now the last and the most dangerous objection that we often to hear to why we shouldn’t have to forgive other people is because “forgiving them will only encourage them to do it again.” This is the most dangerous objection that there is because it isn’t just an argument against our forgiving of others, but worst of all, it’s an argument against God’s forgiving of us. It’s an argument against the Christian Gospel. Some churches teach that if we tell repentant individuals, that is, those who are already sorry for their sins and want to do better, that their sins are freely forgiven for Christ’s sake and that it’s unnecessary and impossible for them to do any kind of special penance to make up for them to God, that we are encouraging them to sin even more in the future. They maintain that if we offer God’s forgiveness for free that it will only make people take advantage of it. But that’s not true.  The Gospel does not encourage people to sin. The Gospel is the exact thing that frees us from our sins and give us the strength to fight it. It is the rejection of the Gospel leads to more sin. It is the neglect of the Gospel, and a misapplication and misrepresentation of the Gospel, that leads to more sin. The problem, though, is never with the actual Gospel. The problem is with those who do not believe the Gospel. Remember what Saint Paul tells us in Romans chapter 1 that our attitude should be toward the Gospel. He writes, “For I am not ashamed of the Gospel, for it is the power of God for salvation for everyone who believes.”

No one who actually believes the Gospel despises it. Nobody who has actually received the forgiveness of their sins in faith abuses it on purpose. No one who actually trusts that God has really taken away their sins in Christ sees it as an encouragement to keep on sinning. Yes, there are those who pretend to believe the Gospel, and twist it in order to defend their own sinful behavior, but they prove by their actions that they don’t really believe the Gospel at all. And yet, none of that means that we should stop preaching the Gospel.

There is nothing in this world that is capable of making us fight off our sin like the knowledge that Christ has already removed the punishment for our sin when He suffered for it on the cross. When we forgive others for their sins, because Jesus has forgiven us for ours, we are doing the best thing that can be done about sin.  We are pointing people to where sin has lost its power. It’s not true that forgiving other people who are sorry for what they’ve done and tell us that they want to do better will only encourage them to do it again. In fact, it is the very thing that will help them stop doing it more in future.

Jesus teaches us in the parable of the unforgiving servant that we should forgive other people just as God has forgiven us. We should forgive them freely, and we should forgive them without any limits. Just because someone doesn’t deserve our forgiveness, that is not a reason not to forgive them. We didn’t deserve forgiveness either, but God still gave it to us by His grace. Just because someone’s sin is really bad, and maybe it is, that doesn’t mean that we should not forgive them either. Our sins are bad too. And Jesus died for every sin on the cross, even the bad ones. Just because we suspect that someone might not be actually sorry, that is not a reason to withhold forgiveness from them either. We can’t always tell if someone is sorry, and our sorrow isn’t the cause of our forgiveness anyway, our sorrowful heart receives it. And just because it’s possible that someone might have trouble with sinning against us again later on, that is not a reason not to forgive them either. It is one of main reasons why we should forgive them. Our forgiveness will help them look to Christ, and learn from Him how to love their neighbor. It will give them the strength to fight their sin in the future.

Not only does our neighbor need ongoing forgiveness, but we need it too. And Jesus gives it to us by grace. To quote again the words of Saint Paul, “And you, who were dead in your trespasses and the uncircumcision of your flesh, God made alive together with him, having forgiven us all our trespasses, by canceling the record of debt that stood against us with its legal demands. This he set aside, nailing it to the cross.” Jesus set aside our sin by nailing it to cross. May we see our neighbors sin their too, and may we forgive them just as Jesus has forgiven us. In Jesus’ Name. Amen.