Kingdom Offerings
Exploring the offerings of scripture concerning the Kingdom of God and becoming aware of the handwriting of Jesus Christ across all of history.
Forgiveness (Part I)
June 2, 2025
Transcript
Hi there, this is Dave Scherrer. And for the last few weeks here at Kingdom Offerings, we’ve been all over the place topic-wise. We started in the beginning of this year, 2025, in a study of the kingdom disciplines. And I want to return to that today. The kingdom disciplines are the behaviors, the character traits, really the heart and soul habits that move us forward in our hopes of living a celebrative kingdom life here on earth right now, not waiting for heaven to enjoy and to impact the kingdom.
We took a brief break for a few sessions, but I want to get back to this important idea of kingdom disciplines. So I think the question for us today might be, “Are there some things that I can do to prepare myself on a day-by-day basis to live a life that better honors and glorifies King Jesus?”
Let me do that again. “Are there some things that I can do to prepare myself on a day-to-day basis in order to live a life that better honors and glorifies King Jesus?” And maybe the second question is (probably an important question), “Am I willing to pay that price?”
You know, the very word discipline makes many of us start to feel shame and guilt for our lack of discipline. I know that in my heart of hearts that excellence in any field of endeavor requires discipline, whether it’s sports or academics, financial health, physical health, in music and the arts, they all want us to be disciplined.
Some grandmother once said, “Practice makes perfect.” And I guess that’s largely true, but if my childhood efforts at learning the piano are an example, perhaps the phrase needs to be amended to say practicing well and regularly makes perfect.
So, so far, we’ve looked at disciplines such as contentedness and generosity, and we took a two-week study on prayer, but today I want to start a two or maybe even three-week podcast miniseries on forgiveness. I was inspired to get after this by the anniversary of a tragedy.
This month, here in the year 2025, it marks the 10th anniversary of the racial terrorist shooting at Emmanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston, South Carolina. On June 17th, 2015, a 21-year-old white supremacist shot and killed nine members of a black church while they were studying the Bible that evening.
The Washington D.C. Online News Service, the Crescent, wrote two days after the attack, “Even by America’s murderous standards, the mass killing of nine blacks during a Bible study at Emmanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in South Carolina has sent shockwaves through the country. According to witnesses, the shooter spent 50 minutes inside the group before opening fire, killing nine people, six women and three men, including the 41-year-old pastor Clementa Pickney, who is also a member of the South Carolina Senate. “
It’s just shocking. I remember right where I was when the news and my heart both broke.
In the fallout, though, within days, I heard of the church’s staggering public response of unconditional forgiveness. As shocking as was this act of violence, perhaps even more so, was this overwhelming act of grace and love. Frankly, acts of violence are far more common than acts of forgiveness of this kind of cosmic proportion.
Let’s listen briefly to some of the comments of the victims of this tragedy from a documentary produced five years after the shooting.
And then he unpacks that for us at the end of that Lord’s Prayer in verse 14 and 15. He says, “For if you forgive others their trespasses, your heavenly Father will also forgive you. But if you do not forgive others their trespasses, neither will your Father forgive yours.” So that feels huge to me.
And then Jesus puts it in a parable later in Matthew 18. Peter just asked the Lord, “Lord, how often will my brother sin against me and I still forgive him? As many as seven times?” That was the tradition of the day. And Jesus said to him, “I do not say to you seven times, but 77 times.” Or, as some translations have it, 70 times seven times. That’s in verse 22 of Matthew 18. Anyway, lots and lots of times. Then he shares the parable.
It’s the parable of a king who forgives a debtor who owes him a million, million dollars. It’s an off-the-chart numbers that this guy owes the king. Then he goes out and strangles a friend who owes him $10. In other words, being forgiven has zero transforming effect on this servant, on this lawbreaker. He’s as selfish as he ever was. And when the king hears about it, that’s where we pick it up here in Matthew 18, verse 32.
“Then his master summoned him and said to him, ‘You wicked servant, I forgave you all that debt because you pleaded with me. And should not you have had mercy on your fellow servant as I had mercy on you?’ And in anger, his master delivered him to the jailers until he should pay all his debt. So also, my Heavenly Father will do to every one of you” — you get thrown into prison — “if you do not forgive your brothers from your heart.”
Wow, okay. And then in the book of James, he says basically the same thing in Chapter Two, where he writes, “For judgment is without mercy to one who has shown no mercy.” And this beautiful line, “Mercy triumphs over judgment.” So this means that my mercy towards my world will be a triumphant influence at Judgment Day.
I think it can be said, given some really tight definitions, that to be a true Christian, to be born again and destined for heaven means that I cannot be an ungrateful and unforgiving person. I think Jesus would say, “You cannot genuinely receive my forgiveness and remain unforgiving.” You just can’t.
C.S. Lewis put it this way, “To be a Christian means to forgive the inexcusable, because God has forgiven the inexcusable in you.”
This is Dave Scherrer, and this is also One Hundred Fold Ministries, our podcast environment, Kingdom Offerings. We’re gonna chat about this the next couple of times that we’re together.
God forgive you and me.
Peace to you.
We took a brief break for a few sessions, but I want to get back to this important idea of kingdom disciplines. So I think the question for us today might be, “Are there some things that I can do to prepare myself on a day-by-day basis to live a life that better honors and glorifies King Jesus?”
Let me do that again. “Are there some things that I can do to prepare myself on a day-to-day basis in order to live a life that better honors and glorifies King Jesus?” And maybe the second question is (probably an important question), “Am I willing to pay that price?”
You know, the very word discipline makes many of us start to feel shame and guilt for our lack of discipline. I know that in my heart of hearts that excellence in any field of endeavor requires discipline, whether it’s sports or academics, financial health, physical health, in music and the arts, they all want us to be disciplined.
Some grandmother once said, “Practice makes perfect.” And I guess that’s largely true, but if my childhood efforts at learning the piano are an example, perhaps the phrase needs to be amended to say practicing well and regularly makes perfect.
So, so far, we’ve looked at disciplines such as contentedness and generosity, and we took a two-week study on prayer, but today I want to start a two or maybe even three-week podcast miniseries on forgiveness. I was inspired to get after this by the anniversary of a tragedy.
This month, here in the year 2025, it marks the 10th anniversary of the racial terrorist shooting at Emmanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston, South Carolina. On June 17th, 2015, a 21-year-old white supremacist shot and killed nine members of a black church while they were studying the Bible that evening.
The Washington D.C. Online News Service, the Crescent, wrote two days after the attack, “Even by America’s murderous standards, the mass killing of nine blacks during a Bible study at Emmanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in South Carolina has sent shockwaves through the country. According to witnesses, the shooter spent 50 minutes inside the group before opening fire, killing nine people, six women and three men, including the 41-year-old pastor Clementa Pickney, who is also a member of the South Carolina Senate. “
It’s just shocking. I remember right where I was when the news and my heart both broke.
In the fallout, though, within days, I heard of the church’s staggering public response of unconditional forgiveness. As shocking as was this act of violence, perhaps even more so, was this overwhelming act of grace and love. Frankly, acts of violence are far more common than acts of forgiveness of this kind of cosmic proportion.
Let’s listen briefly to some of the comments of the victims of this tragedy from a documentary produced five years after the shooting.
“So biblical forgiveness is this shockingly brutal thing. Ephesians 4:32 says that we are called to forgive others the way God, in Christ, forgave us.”
“When you see hate, hate is something that festers, right? It can metastasize into something that’s cancerous.”
“Not only did I lose my mother, but then my cousins, Susie Jackson and Tywanza Sanders. Myra Thompson was a childhood friend.”
“Was she hurting? How long did she hurt? Like, was she praying? What was she thinking? ‘Oh my God, I never see my girls again. ‘”
“She died because someone didn’t like black folks, and she happened to be at the church, and she happened to be black.”
“I believe that the tragedy was an eye-opener. You know, it was a senseless act.”
“Because God gave us, forgave us completely. He forgave us before we were even sorry. He pursued us in our sins and yet adopted us as sons and daughters.”
“And as a person of faith, I had to ask myself if God can forgive me, even through all that he did, I have to find it in my heart.”
“And He reminded me who I was. You know I was a sinner, just like Dylan. And He’s reminded me that he might have killed your wife, but you’ve done some things wrong too. He’s my child and you’re my child.”
“Forgiveness has nothing to do with the person who did it because they don’t care whether I forgive them or not.
“But for me, forgiveness is putting one foot in front of the other and I can continue to smile. I can continue to show what God’s love is all about.”
And then he unpacks that for us at the end of that Lord’s Prayer in verse 14 and 15. He says, “For if you forgive others their trespasses, your heavenly Father will also forgive you. But if you do not forgive others their trespasses, neither will your Father forgive yours.” So that feels huge to me.
And then Jesus puts it in a parable later in Matthew 18. Peter just asked the Lord, “Lord, how often will my brother sin against me and I still forgive him? As many as seven times?” That was the tradition of the day. And Jesus said to him, “I do not say to you seven times, but 77 times.” Or, as some translations have it, 70 times seven times. That’s in verse 22 of Matthew 18. Anyway, lots and lots of times. Then he shares the parable.
It’s the parable of a king who forgives a debtor who owes him a million, million dollars. It’s an off-the-chart numbers that this guy owes the king. Then he goes out and strangles a friend who owes him $10. In other words, being forgiven has zero transforming effect on this servant, on this lawbreaker. He’s as selfish as he ever was. And when the king hears about it, that’s where we pick it up here in Matthew 18, verse 32.
“Then his master summoned him and said to him, ‘You wicked servant, I forgave you all that debt because you pleaded with me. And should not you have had mercy on your fellow servant as I had mercy on you?’ And in anger, his master delivered him to the jailers until he should pay all his debt. So also, my Heavenly Father will do to every one of you” — you get thrown into prison — “if you do not forgive your brothers from your heart.”
Wow, okay. And then in the book of James, he says basically the same thing in Chapter Two, where he writes, “For judgment is without mercy to one who has shown no mercy.” And this beautiful line, “Mercy triumphs over judgment.” So this means that my mercy towards my world will be a triumphant influence at Judgment Day.
I think it can be said, given some really tight definitions, that to be a true Christian, to be born again and destined for heaven means that I cannot be an ungrateful and unforgiving person. I think Jesus would say, “You cannot genuinely receive my forgiveness and remain unforgiving.” You just can’t.
C.S. Lewis put it this way, “To be a Christian means to forgive the inexcusable, because God has forgiven the inexcusable in you.”
This is Dave Scherrer, and this is also One Hundred Fold Ministries, our podcast environment, Kingdom Offerings. We’re gonna chat about this the next couple of times that we’re together.
God forgive you and me.
Peace to you.