Spiritual Friendship: Conflict, Forgiveness & Friendship

Hello, friends.

This is Pastor Creighton.

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The second lesson is from Colossians 3, verses 12 to 17.

Colossians 3:12–17

Put on, then, as God's chosen ones, holy and beloved, compassion.

Compassionate hearts, kindness, humility, meekness, and patience, bearing with one another, and if one has a complaint against the other, forgiving each other.

As the Lord has forgiven you, so you also must forgive.

And above all else, put on love which binds everything together in perfect harmony.

And let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts, to which indeed you were called in one body.

And be thankful.

Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly, teaching and admonishing one another in all wisdom, singing psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs with thankfulness in your hearts to God.

And whatever you do, in word or deed, do everything in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through him.

This is the word of the Lord.

As the Lord has forgiven you, so you also must forgive.

Let's pray.

We come to you this morning with an ever-present need for your grace, for your renewal, for forgiveness, which, Lord, is your pledge to us in Christ.

So would you draw us by faith more and more into that sweetness and love, that friendship that Jesus invites us to with himself and with one another as his saints.

We pray together in his name.

Amen.

Please be seated.

So I've been preparing a word this week on forgiveness in the midst of conflict.

I'd mentioned last week that that's kind of where we're going with our series.

And the truth is, the more I prepared, the more I just had this one scene playing over and over and over in my head.

And so the dangerous thing I'm going to do is share with you that scene.

And it it comes from The Office.

You all remember The Office, right?

Now there's a character on The Office who, I gotta be honest, it's just one of my favorite characters that says a lot about me.

Angela.

Angela is an accountant in the office, and Angela is perhaps the single most, how would you describe Angela?

Like uh kind of um vicious, kind of uh uh petty, uh kind of um um uh but just carries herself like she's better than everyone else around her, right?

I mean, anyway, Angela's just a representation of every personality in any given office, like that, I suppose.

So, you know, so here's Angela, and Angela's asked a question, something about her strength of character, like the kind of thing it takes to um, you know, to to to stay, to thrive and and to um to overcome difficult circumstances, even when it's the hardest thing to do to make the right decision, right?

So this is the kind of question she's asked, and so she shares an example of what to her speaks to her virtue in this regard.

Angela says, I don't back down.

My sister and I used to be best friends, and we haven't spoken in 16 years over some disagreement I don't even remember.

I don't back down.

So I'm really glad for Angela that she experiences some redemption by the end of this series.

But when we meet her like right here, gosh, you think, someone has missed the boat.

What she sees as uh fortitude, we can recognize is this years of resentment and bitterness that has just built up and hardened this character's heart.

You know, conflict happens in every relationship, happens between siblings like Angela and her sister, it happens between friends.

In fact, I have to think that we can't count someone a close friend or someone close to us unless we've worked through some kind of conflict together.

You know, so conflict happens, and conflict happens in every relationship.

The question is, how do we respond?

I mean, friends, this is true in the church, most certainly.

Pastor and scholar Michael Green says that forgiveness is another of Jesus' hallmarks for authentic church life.

There are bound to be failures and breakdowns between Christian brothers and sisters.

Conflict is a given.

Forgiveness is the way to handle them.

The Christian life is born in forgiveness, and it must characterize us all the way through our relationships.

So we've been working through what it means to practice spiritual friendship, what it means to be tied together by bonds of love and sweetness, to let the love of Christ animate our relationships with one another as brothers and sisters.

And in the midst of that desire to practice spiritual friendship, we have to come up against what it means to hit conflict.

Last week we looked at Ephesians chapter 2 and we saw that grace, God's grace at work in the fabric of our relationships means that Christians make friends out of enemies.

Ephesians 2 · chapter mention

But if we're going to do that, we need to figure out how it is we work through conflict as Christian brothers and sisters, as Christians who are practicing spiritual friendship.

And what I think scriptures teach us is that practicing friendship is really practicing, pardon me, practicing forgiveness is practicing the gospel in friendships.

Practicing forgiveness is practicing the gospel in our friendships, in our family, in our church family together.

And I think, friends, this is so important.

Because if we consider ourselves, rightly consider ourselves a gospel-centered church, then perhaps the litmus test for us is how we practice forgiveness together.

Not the absence of conflict, but how we practice forgiveness.

So this morning I want us to explore our three or three of our passages.

I want to ask a couple of questions.

One, I want to ask, where do Christians begin with this thing we call forgiveness?

I want to ask, what could practicing reconciliation, that thing that forgiveness lays the foundation of, what could practicing reconciliation look like?

And then finally, here's where I want us to land.

I want us to ask, what can result from forgiveness?

So where do we begin?

What does practicing this look like?

What can result?

Practicing forgiveness is practicing the gospel.

Where do we begin?

Let's look at Colossians chapter 3.

Colossians 3 · chapter mention

If you've got your order of service, pull it out.

We'll be flipping around a little bit.

I want us to have a quick look at Colossians chapter 3.

Colossians 3 · chapter mention

What does forgiveness look like?

So what's going on?

Chapter 3 of Colossians, Paul is calling this Colossian church to live out the Christian life with eyes set on Jesus, seek the things that are above, where Christ is, seated at the right hand of the throne of God.

That's how Paul begins chapter three.

Eyes fixed on Christ, live out what it means to be a Christian.

And what does that look like?

Well, verses 5 to 11, which precedes this passage, tells us to put to death those earthly things that are passing away, those things that belong to life outside of Christ.

We let go of those.

And putting to death is a brutal metaphor, but it's a painful thing.

For those of us who know what it is to have our character renewed in conformity with Christ, it is painful to let some of these things go.

Put them to death, because they belong not to Christ.

And then verses 12 to 17, our passage this morning, tells us to put on what we could consider to be the very character of Christ.

Put to death what's earthly, put on more and more, conform yourself to what belongs to Christ.

Begin with compassionate hearts, is what Paul says.

Compassionate hearts, the same word that's translated compassion here, you can translate as mercy.

Have a heart that wells up with sympathy for one another.

The same word appears in Luke chapter 6, when Jesus instructs his disciples to be merciful as your heavenly Father is merciful.

Luke 6 · chapter mention

We show compassion, we show mercy to one another.

We are showing the character of God to one another.

And whether Paul stacks up kindness and humility and meekness and patience next to compassion, or whether he's trying to elaborate what he means by compassion by sharing these four words, we see that compassion has everything to do with willing the very best for someone else.

That's what characterizes a Christian's disposition towards another, especially a brother and sister in the faith.

And part of being compassionate, verse 13, is bearing with one another.

This is a wild phrase.

So this was so interesting to me.

Maybe I'm just a nerd and you can forgive me, but this was so when I look up this Greek word for bearing, the word here is uh martyrio, which is the same root as martyr.

Be martyrs together, suffer with one another.

You know, martyrs are those who bear witness to the faith and they give their lives in witness to the faith.

In a small way, it's like putting self-interest to death to bear with one another as a church.

It would be a lot easier, I think, to slink away into our own self-interest.

Well, you know, it's just a lot easier to keep ourselves at a distance from other Christian brothers and sisters, isn't it?

We don't risk pain, we don't risk betrayal, we don't risk the kind of hurt, so we just kind of slink away.

Paul is calling us bear with one another, suffer with one another and for one another, for a greater good than you could have on your own.

So the church is to put together its old self and do it together.

Be compassionate towards one another, bear with one another, even when it hurts.

And this is where we land in verse 13.

Being compassionate, bearing with one another.

If one has a complaint against another, forgiving each other.

As the Lord has forgiven you, so you also must forgive.

This is probably a good place to talk about forgiveness.

Forgiveness, I think it's important to say what forgiveness is not.

One of the most memorable sermons I ever heard was from a preacher who preached a 28-point sermon.

28 points on forgiveness.

And I know you're all worried because I can preach 30 minutes on one point.

But, you know, this preacher, maybe he expanded some points more than others, but he wanted to share, he wanted to get so clear on forgiveness, what forgiveness is and what it's not.

Here's just a couple of points.

Forgiveness is not condoning.

It's not saying that was okay what happens.

Forgiveness is not the same thing as forgetting, putting it out of your mind.

And it's amazing to me how many, sometimes Christian organizations fall into this trap.

It's like, you know, maybe a financial officer was up to no good with the books, you know, but because we practice forgiveness, it's like, well, they can keep their position, you know, because we've forgiven them.

Well, that just lacks a certain degree of wisdom.

Forgiveness is not the same thing as forgetting.

We can restore and reconcile, but it's not the same thing.

Forgiveness is not excusing.

Forgiveness is not minimizing your hurt.

Forgiveness is not denying or suppressing anger.

Even though forgiveness works at uprooting resentment and bitterness, forgiveness is a decision that we make.

And experiencing negative emotion, even in the context of forgiveness, these things are not mutually exclusive of one another.

Forgiveness is not denying our anger.

Forgiveness is not ignoring accountability or justice.

And forgiveness is not the same thing as pardoning, seeing someone else step in and restore that person to whatever position or that might be.

Forgiveness is something we have to decide in our own hearts for ourselves.

And forgiveness is not even the same thing as reconciliation, which is re-establishing trust in the relationship.

I do think forgiveness lays down a foundation for reconciliation.

And I think the fullest sense of forgiveness, you know, we can see reconciliation to the degree that it's possible, but it's not the same thing.

Those two things cooperate with one another, but forgiveness is not the same thing as reconciliation.

So, what is forgiveness?

I want to suggest it's this.

Forgiveness is the free and willful decision to release the wrongdoer from our resentment and bitterness and releasing the right to exact vengeance.

Forgiveness has everything to do with the attitude of our own heart.

I can be so ticked off with my brother Tony, let's say.

Forgiveness, maybe Tony's done me wrong, maybe I've done Tony wrong.

I can choose to just live there in bitterness and resentment for the rest of our lives, and we're not talking to one another.

That's Angela and her sister, isn't it?

That's the decision they made.

Forgiveness doesn't say what happened was okay.

Forgiveness does say, I'm going to refuse to live in a place where I am so angry with my brother that there's a barrier between us.

Forgiveness releases those feelings of, works that releases resentment and bitterness and releases the need to exact vengeance.

We can't forgive someone else when we're trying to undermine them or get back at them.

So the heart of the matter for forgiveness is that forgiveness is a matter of the heart, isn't it?

It is a decision we made in the very center, the very core of our being, in some way to be for and not against someone.

In uh looking up this word that's translated forgiveness here.

This word forgiveness is used in such a way that it's giving another party, um, giving grace to another party without requiring reciprocity.

It doesn't demand a two-way street, but it's it's about clearing up what's on my side of the street so that I can live the best, most healthy, godly life that I can.

Resentment, it's like it's like resentment is just clogs us up in that way.

We choose to live in resentment and hostility.

We just choose to harden our heart.

We slink away, we miss out on the joy of friendship.

As the Lord has forgiven you, so you also must forgive.

The question is, how has the Lord forgiven us?

And when I think about Luke chapter 23, here's Jesus hanging on the cross.

Luke 23 · chapter mention

What does Jesus have to say about those who've put them there, put him there?

Father, forgive them.

They know not what they do.

Jesus' forgiveness is abundant and boundless, and here he is the victim of the greatest injustice that could occur.

But his heart is for the wrongdoers, not against them.

Now we might say, gosh, well, that's Jesus, and I'm not Jesus, and you'd be right to say that.

And it might even, there might even be just a burning in your blood to think that that could even be a possibility.

That people will be released from the wrong that has been committed against me.

That's not right.

And I think that's an understandable thing to feel as well.

But the Christian, the Christian expectation is not that we don't feel that injustice, but rather that we're willing to reckon with God's amazing grace such that we are changed, such that we are moved in compassion towards those who might do us wrong.

This is Jesus' point in the parable of the unmerciful servant later in Matthew chapter 18.

Matthew 18 · chapter mention

Here's a servant who has been pardoned an enormous debt, but when it comes to him forgiving someone else a minor debt, he refuses to do that.

It says he chokes them, which is like wild to me, but we kind of choke out each other, I think, spiritually, emotionally, when we refuse to offer that sort of forgiveness.

Forgiveness is reckoning with the amazing grace of God that has forgiven us so completely, even at our very worst, as Christ is upon the cross, his heart is for us.

And that means forgiveness is a very courageous decision to make.

It is not a decision we make in weakness.

It's the courageous decision to release resentment and bitterness, to refuse to allow those things to be where we operate from, that give us strength, that fuel our lives, and that negative emotion that hardens our heart.

Forgiveness is releasing these things.

And releasing others.

That's what we pray, isn't it?

Forgive us our sins as we forgive them that sin against us.

How many times, Peter asks?

And Jesus says, not just seven, but 77 times, or better yet, you could translate that 70 times seven, which isn't Jesus saying you need to forgive 490 times and no more.

He's saying go on forgiving.

I refuse to forgive you is not in a Christian's vocabulary.

We can say I'm struggling to forgive.

I think that that's a fair thing to say.

That is an honest thing to say.

I am wrestling with what it means to forgive you.

I think it's better to give an honest witness to where we're at than lie and just cheaply patch over a band-aid.

Yeah, yeah, I forgive you.

But to refuse to forgive, this is what we're called out of.

This is what new life calls us out of.

So where do we begin?

This is really a matter of the heart, isn't it?

And so maybe if we're working, gosh, if there's if we know that there is a source of resentment, of conflict, a breakdown, a barrier, a hardness of heart, where do we begin?

Maybe we have to begin with our own heart.

Sometimes it's so easy to begin by pointing the finger, isn't it?

That's their problem.

If they dealt with it, I would feel a lot better.

But the thing is we can only take responsibility for what's on our side of the street, can't we?

And if my heart is hard, I'm not going to be willing to move forward in forgiveness.

So maybe I need to begin by praying through what it means to have compassion, pouring out my heart to God and asking, what does it mean to bear with my brother and sister, even when that's a difficult thing to do?

Maybe I need to pray for a heart that is rooted in God's grace.

Grace, I'm convinced, dissolves that hardness of heart, that callousness that so easily builds up against one another.

If we are rooted in grace, if we are amazed by God's grace, I suspect we cannot be content to live in resentment and bitterness.

So maybe that's where we begin.

We begin by examining our own hearts.

And when we're ready to put forgiveness into practice, when we're ready to take that next step and perhaps broach that gap that is developed, we can start taking steps towards reconciliation.

Again, reconciliation is not the same thing as forgiveness, but reconciliation, I think, is the greatest desire of forgiveness to see what broke down, restored.

And I think Jesus gives us a bit of an outline of what that can look like in Matthew chapter 18.

Matthew 18 · chapter mention

Jesus is teaching his disciples here about the character and the authority of what it means to be his church.

And Jesus, right here, as he's commissioning his disciples, is saying, conflict is going to be a part of your life together.

Here's how you're going to work through it.

Now, Matthew 18 is, I think, is a normative pattern for godly reconciliation, but it's not without exception.

This isn't something we just slapped.

Down without any kind of consideration to particular cases, nor, by the way, is this a smokescreen for a wrongdoer.

Because I've seen too many pastors caught in very public scandal who say, well, such and such so and so didn't follow Matthew 18, so I'm absolved of any wrongdoing.

That's not what this is about.

This is not a smoke screen for wrongdoing, but this is a roadmap towards reconciling in the everyday examples of conflict that occur in the life of the church, in the life of God's people, it's a roadmap to reconciliation, to seeing forgiveness fully realized.

And I want us to go through this really quickly.

Step one in Matthew 18 is a private admonition.

If your brother sins against you, go and tell him his fault.

Between you and him alone, if he listens to you, you have gained your brother.

It's amazing to me how many conflicts get resolved right here in step one.

In my experience, so many conflicts start with, gosh, I just totally misunderstood what it was that you were saying.

Or I wasn't even aware that I hurt you in that way, and I want to make amends.

I want to say sorry.

But we need to have that conversation to get there.

We need to be willing to broach that gap and not be content to settle in hardness of heart and resentment, but be willing to make that approach.

If that doesn't listen, if our brother and sister doesn't listen to us, then step two is we come together with witnesses, it says.

This is not ganging up on a brother or a sister, but this is about giving evidence for the kind of uh character that's hurting, uh, bringing hurt to other people's lives.

And there have been those moments in my life where maybe I've maybe I've had a brother or a sister approach me and say, you know what you're doing here is not good.

It's hurting other people, or it's really disruptive.

And I just sort of think, well, what's your problem?

And I get to walk away because I'm stubborn like that sometimes.

But it's when caring friends, two or three or four caring friends, come together and say, the thing is, Creighton, I think you need to think this through.

Sometimes that gets me to think, gosh, maybe I do need to think that through, because maybe the problem is looking at me in the mirror.

Have a private admonition, bring some witnesses, and then step three, bring it to the church.

Um if he refuses to listen to the witnesses, tell it to the church.

If he refuses to listen even to the church, let him be to you as a Gentile and a tax collector.

So what does it mean to tell it to the church?

Should we uh have a moment in our announcement time where we stand up and make public accusations against one another and vote each other out of the church?

I don't think that that's what that means.

I don't think that's particularly helpful.

But I do think that uh what Jesus is getting at is there there ought to be there ought to be a mechanism for accountability and discipline within the life of the church.

Jesus goes on to point out that what you bind on earth and what you loose on earth is going to be loose and bound in heaven.

And what I think he's talking about here is the kind of authority that his apostles have in the life of the church.

They have an authority to work through church discipline towards restoration.

And friends, I think that that's what we have in our own church.

In our Anglican polity, we don't just have me as the pastor who's available to work through conflicts as needs be, but we have wardens.

We also have a bishop, a chief pastor.

And part of the purpose of having these officers of the church is that we work through conflicts together.

We don't just slink away from one another.

Okay.

What does it mean to treat someone like a Gentile and tax collector?

Doesn't that sound harsh?

I think it's it it can seem that way, and it's true that sometimes there is such a fundamental breakdown in a relationship that boundaries are necessary.

Keeping a distance is necessary for the life and the integrity of a community, that's necessary sometimes.

But let's bear in mind how Jesus, what Jesus thinks about Gentiles and tax collectors.

How does he treat them?

Doesn't he treat them with love?

Doesn't he treat them as those who are worthy of being restored?

Isn't his heart for them?

I mean, friends, when we go about conflict resolution in this way, we're always bearing in mind we're aiming at restoration here.

This isn't about public shaming, this isn't about having at someone, this is about renewal, this is about restoration, this is about reconciliation, and that's Jesus' heart.

So whatever we do, we need to bring Jesus' heart with us.

That heart full of compassion, that heart that wants to bear with us, the heart that calls us to forgive.

Okay.

Here's where I want us to land.

What can result from this kind of forgiveness?

Because if our heart is full of compassion and we're ready to make that approach, what can result from this kind of forgiveness?

This is where I want us to land in Genesis chapter 50.

Genesis 50 · chapter mention

This is the tail end of Joseph's story.

Joseph was, well, in his in his youth he had visions of ruling over his brothers, and he very arrogantly and brashly made that well known to his brothers, and you can imagine how that was received.

But in no way did he deserve what happens next.

He was beaten and sold into slavery.

He went off into Egypt, but through God's sheer providence, he rose to a place of second command in this powerful nation.

And through Joseph, God used Joseph to preserve all of Egypt and the surrounding nations through a famine.

And then through that work of God, he was able to reconnect with his brothers and eventually reveal who he is.

Now Joseph's father has died, and his brothers are well, feeling guilty and concerned that there's nothing preventing Joseph now from exacting revenge.

So the brothers start scheming verses 15 to 17.

We're going to tell Joseph that his dad's dying wish was that he forgive us.

It's like they can't conceive of any way to restore their relationship with Joseph than to try and deceive them in this way.

I mean, they know their fault is so grievous.

But this is Joseph's heart.

This is so wild.

Joseph said to them, verse 19, Do not fear, for am I in the place of God?

As for you, you meant evil against me, but God meant it for good, to bring it about that many people should be kept alive as they are today.

So do not fear.

What's Joseph saying here?

He's not saying that what happened was okay.

He's not calling evil good.

But Joseph is choosing forgiveness for his brothers, and in choosing forgiveness, he's opening up a door, a door that wouldn't otherwise be open, and it's a door that opens up a whole new kind of possibility.

That God can take what is seemingly irredeemable to us, the pain and the hurt that we've experienced, and he can bring about a greater good from it.

God is not at work in his church despite their conflicts.

He is working in his church in and through the conflicts.

How we go about restoration and reconciliation with one another.

And when we're willing to release resentment and bitterness, when we're willing to practice forgiveness like Joseph, then we begin to recognize that God is bigger than what I've been through.

And God can redeem even what seems irredeemable to me.

He can bring about good through my choice of forgiveness.

Friends, practicing forgiveness is practicing the gospel in our relationships.

And I think as God's forgiven people, if we can't practice forgiveness with one another, what hope does a world outside these walls have?

And yet, what an amazing thing it could be for folks to come and see New Song and see a church that actually practices forgiveness, that practices restoration and reconciliation with one another, that isn't content to have hardened hearts towards one another, but seeks one another out and seeks restoration to the greatest degree that that's possible.

That is bearing witness to the gospel in our relationships.

That is being a gospel-centered church.

So let's begin by examining our own hearts.

Are we full of compassion?

Are we bearing with one another and forgiving one another?

And if there is a matter of resentment, can we bridge that gap?

Can we consider how to make that approach to a brother or a sister who's wronged us?

And can we trust that God is bigger even than the pain we've been through and can bring about a greater good even through it?

Amen.

Thank you for listening today.

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