The Meaning and Basis of Forgiveness
Philemon 8-20

A well-known popular psychologist who has his own TV show, and is followed by millions of people as a life-coach, said this about forgiveness:

“Forgiveness is not about another person who has transgressed against you; it is about you. Forgiveness is about doing whatever it takes to preserve the power to create your own emotional state. It is a gift to yourself and it frees you. You don’t have to have the other person’s cooperation, and they do not have to be sorry or admit the error of their ways. Do it for yourself.”

There’s enough cheese in that trap to attract you, and enough of a trap to destroy you. But this kind of pop-psychology, self-help therapy is what most people believe in when it comes to forgiveness.

Some people have the idea that to forgive is to not feel angry anymore. Other people feel that forgiveness is when you have forgotten about an injury. Some think that forgiveness is something that happens with time, like paint that dries, so forgiveness comes upon us passively.

Most people feel the basis of forgiveness is just ‘getting over it’. Just ‘moving on’, ‘putting it behind you’, a kind of ‘oh, well, let bygones be bygones’ kind of attitude. They think the basis of forgiveness is just deciding to no longer be angry, and to just ‘let go’.

Do you know that the Bible contradicts every one of these ideas of forgiveness? The Bible describes forgiveness in very clear and crisp terms. Not only so, but the Bible gives us very clear guidance as to how to forgive.

What does it mean to forgive? And furthermore, how do we forgive? On what basis can we forgive other people, or other people forgive us?

Once again, the book of Philemon is going to help us here.

Philemon was a wealthy Christian man who owned slaves. Onesimus was one of them. Philemon had spent money to purchase Onesimus in the first place, probably from a cruel slave trader. Once in his home, Philemon had provided for his food, his shelter, his clothing, his every physical need. Moreover, happy slaves reflected well on their master’s reputation. As a Christian, people would have looked to see how his slaves responded to his treatment of them.

So when Onesimus ran away, he harmed Philemon. He harmed Philemon’s reputation in the eyes of believers and unbelievers. He harmed Philemon financially. He disrupted Philemon’s life, business and home. In simple terms – you could say that Onesimus owed Philemon.

That’s what Paul says in verse 18:

Philemon 1:18
But if he has wronged you or owes anything, put that on my account.

This is what forgiveness revolves around – a debt that we incur before God or others.

Forgiveness is not entirely about the feelings, though it does involve them. Forgiveness involves a debt that must be paid. When we sin, we in some way or another, harm, damage, or rob a person. We take something from them – their goods, their loved ones, their reputation, their happiness, perhaps we take away their dignity. Sometimes we harm them by what we fail to do – when we fail to keep promises, or live up to vows, or love as we ought, or keep a confidence. The same happens when we are sinned against.

When you have sinned against someone – you stand in their debt. You have harmed them, and in some way or another, you owe it to them to make restitution. When you have been sinned against, the person responsible stands in your debt.

Jesus made that crystal clear in His parable of the servant in Matthew 18. His entire illustration of forgiveness revolves around debt.

Now as we study Philemon and look through the Bible we find at least three things connected with forgiveness.

I. Firstly, there must be repayment.

When one party has somehow harmed another, they are required to make up for it.

In the Law of Moses, if you dug a hole and your neighbour’s animal fell in it, you had to restore to your neighbour another animal. If someone stole, they had to restore double. If you lost something kept for safekeeping, you had to restore it. Payment had to be made. In some cases, the payment was so high, you had to pay with your own life. If you murdered someone, or committed one of several capital offences, the restitution you made was with your own life.

In Philemon’s case, Paul was willing to pay the full price for the damage produced by Philemon.

Philemon 1:18-19
But if he has wronged you or owes anything, put that on my account. I, Paul, am writing with my own hand. I will repay — not to mention to you that you owe me even your own self besides.

For Onesimus to make the long runaway trip to Rome, you can bet that he had helped himself to some money and other goods to make it possible. So now picture Onesimus standing before Philemon, and handing him this letter. Philemon reads it and senses where it is going, but he is conscious of what this has cost him. He has had to pay others to do Onesimus’ work. He has had to replace what Onesimus stole. Who is going to set that right? Who is going to settle the justice of righting the wrongs here?

Paul steps up and says – I will. Put it on my account. That’s literally – charge it to me. In verse 19 he says, I will pay the damages, I will compensate, I will fully make up for everything Onesimus has done to you. I myself will make it as if you had never been wronged by him. Could Paul do this? The fact that he lives in a rented house in Rome probably proves that he had some means. The fact that he asks Philemon for a guest room means he was planning on being there, to pay the debt.

What about sinning against God?

As far as God was concerned, the only restitution He would accept was blood atonement. The animals were substitutes for the person who brought them, because the wages of sin is death.

God has never, and will never forgive someone without some kind of payment, some kind of restitution, some kind of justice to pay for the offence.

“To believe that God will forgive from a mere act of goodwill is to trivialise His holiness”.

Now who else has stepped up and said ‘put that on my account’? The Lord Jesus Christ. You and I have an unpayable debt of offending God. When you sin against a God with infinite glory, the damages are infinite and so the only one who can pay is someone with infinite merit. When Jesus died on the cross, He was saying to the Father, like Paul said to Philemon – charge this to my account, I will repay. And Jesus paid. Not money, but by becoming sin for us, and bearing the wrath of God.

2 Corinthians 5:21
For He made Him who knew no sin to be sin for us, that we might become the righteousness of God in Him.

For any forgiveness to happen, there must be some kind of repayment.

II. Secondly, there must be reception.

What does that mean exactly?

Paul uses this term three times in this epistle.

Philemon 1:12
I am sending him back. You therefore receive him, that is, my own heart, (NKJV)

Philemon 1:15-17
For perhaps he departed for a while for this purpose, that you might receive him forever, no longer as a slave but more than a slave — a beloved brother, especially to me but how much more to you, both in the flesh and in the Lord. If then you count me as a partner, receive him as you would me.

There are two different Greek words for receive in this epistle which shed light on the meaning. In verse 12 and 17, the word means to accept, to take into your company, to welcome in. The word in verse 15 means to receive back in full.

Combining the two we come out at this: to forgive is to receive the person you forgive without any preconditions, without anything held against them, without holding back on affection or kindness. You accept them, welcome them, receive them with the offence no longer relevant to your relationship. Whatever came between is disregarded.

How does Paul want Philemon to receive Onesimus?

• He wants Philemon to receive Onesimus as more than a restored slave, but as a new brother in Christ. (vv15-16) Philemon is to not simply give him his job back, he is to open his heart and fellowship to Onesimus. He is to regard him as more than a slave, but as a fellow-heir of salvation. He is to consider that Philemon is now one of Christ’s. He wants this reception to be permanent. Whereas Onesimus’ sin was a one-time event, Philemon’s reception of him is to now be permanent.
• He also wants Philemon to receive Onesimus as he would receive Paul (v17). If Paul were to arrive at Philemon’s doorstep, how would he receive him? He would rejoice, he would embrace him and welcome him. Paul pleads – receive the man standing in front of you, as if it were me in his place.

Once the debt has been paid, there is nothing to prevent the two parties from receiving each other.

If there was a breach, it has been covered. If there was a crack, it has been sealed. Now both parties can receive one another.

Once again, who has done that for us? The Lord Jesus Christ. Because he has paid our debt, we can be received into the presence of God, not simply as creatures who have had their sin debt paid, but as adopted children. And in exactly the same way, we are received by the Father as if He is receiving the Son Himself. That’s what it means to be ‘in Christ’. We are welcomed, received, gladly accepted because the Son not only pays our debt, but His precious life and righteousness now covers us.

Romans 8:31-34
What then shall we say to these things? If God is for us, who can be against us? He who did not spare His own Son, but delivered Him up for us all, how shall He not with Him also freely give us all things? Who shall bring a charge against God’s elect? It is God who justifies. Who is he who condemns? It is Christ who died, and furthermore is also risen, who is even at the right hand of God, who also makes intercession for us.

If God’s forgiveness meant that He made restitution but did not receive us as if we had never sinned, it would not be good news. But the good news is that we who were afar off have now been drawn near, called to His throne, able to approach with boldness, because He receives us.

III. Thirdly there must be restoration.

The repayment must be made, the offender must be received, but then the broken relationship must be restored.

Onesimus is repentant. He has come back. The debt is to be paid by Paul. He is to be welcomed as if he had never run away. But that doesn’t change the facts. There are consequences for his sin. He has betrayed trust. He has broken confidence. He has lost respect. Forgiveness means working with him to restore the relationship, to rebuild it. The wall has been removed, but there is still a distance between them. True forgiveness will mean working to restore that relationship.

In verse 15, Paul suggests that Philemon should restore Onesimus to usefulness in his service, and work on building a new relationship with him as a brother. It would not be Christlike to simply consider the debt paid, receive him, but then leave the relationship cool, stiff, awkward and strained. Forgiveness will mean working to close the distance between them.

Forgiveness is not only writing off the debt. It is not only momentarily receiving a person back in full. It is continuing to work on restoring that relationship.

When you think about it, God does this for us. The word for it is sanctification. God forgives us in Christ, He counts us righteous in Christ, but He doesn’t leave it there. He then begins a lifelong process that will only be complete when we die, of drawing us closer to Himself, purging us of sin, showing us Himself, making us more like Himself. What is He doing? He is reducing the distance between us and Him. He is making you less like that person who rejected Christ all those years, and more and more like the person He will spend eternity with. He is restoring you to greater usefulness.

This is biblical forgiveness. First, there must be payment for the wrong done. Once there is that payment, there must be a full reception, without any holding back. Thirdly, there must be restoration – bringing back the intimacy and the fellowship.

So how are we to do that in our lives?

Now the application of forgiveness is a lengthy and fairly involved doctrine. There are aspects of it that are unconditional, aspects that are conditional. What I want to do is make the application of what it means to forgive another person in your life. I am not going to deal with the matters of their repentance, of the procedure. Simply – I want to answer the question – what does it mean to forgive another person their trespasses against me before God?

I. Count the debt as being paid, either on the cross, or in hell.

The problem with forgiveness is this: often the person who has wronged you cannot restore what they have broken – it might be your reputation, it might be your heart. Sometimes the person is simply unwilling to, even if they can. Sometimes they are unaware that they have done so.

But no matter what the case, God has placed within us a judicial sentiment. Judicial – meaning justice, and sentiment, meaning feeling. Within your heart there is a sense that wrongs must be punished and rights must be rewarded. What is wrong must be made right. So regardless of whether or not the person can pay, or wants to pay, or realises they should pay – what is going on in your heart is a demand that they pay. And understand something very important – up to a point, this demand is not sinful. If your window is broken, it is not wrong to want the offender to replace it. If your reputation is smeared, it is not wrong to want the liar to take back his or her lies. If you didn’t have this judicial sentiment in your heart, you would not be made in the image of God, you would not ultimately rejoice in justice.

Yet we are commanded to forgive. How can we have this sentiment in our hearts, calling on us to forgive, when the person cannot or will not pay, while being commanded to forgive? Think about Philemon’s situation. What freed him to forgive Onesimus? Philemon could forgive Onesimus because the damages were going to be covered. Who is going to cover the damages done to us?

The answer is that every sin committed against you, is firstly a sin against who? God.

Understand that a sin against you is a sin, and therefore a sin against God. Who takes sin more seriously, you or God? Who senses the wickedness of sin more, you or God? Whoever has offended you, has offended God greater. And if a sin against you is also a sin against God, then God is going to take responsibility for making sure there is justice. So that’s what He did.

There are two places where God’s justice is satisfied – the cross of Jesus Christ, and the lake of fire.

On the cross, God Himself has paid for sin. When Jesus Christ died on the cross, He experienced the full wrath of God upon sin. He not only made more than the human restitution, He made restitution before God.

In hell, the sinner who does not repent pays for his or her own sin. Burning in a lake of fire eternally, satisfies the wrath of God against sin. Either way – the cross, or hell, every sin is dealt with Therefore, count the injury against you as more than fully paid by the justice of God.

If they are a believer, charge it to Jesus’ account. Consider the violent and terrible death of Jesus as more than enough restitution for the sin done against you. Count the sin fully punished, and the need to keep crying out for justice no longer there.

If he or she is not a believer, know that unless they repent, they will be punished for their sins, and there is no longer a need to keep crying out for them to be punished.

Either way, every sin that has ever been committed will be paid for. It will be paid for on the cross, or it will be paid for in hell. No one gets away with any sin. If a single sin slipped under the radar, God would not be the perfectly just and fair God He is. But every sin has been or will be punished.

That means that the sense in your heart that ‘so and so got away with it’ is based on unbelief. God says, no one gets away with it. God says to the judicial sentiment in your heart – you can have mercy, because I have taken care of justice on the cross and in hell.

II. Receive the Person Debt-Free, and refuse to demand payment in any way

Once there is full payment made, there is no reason to not receive a person debt-free.

The essence of unforgiveness is to continue to demand payment of the person who has wronged you. It is to see them as your debtor. One who owes you. That demand for payment can be in the form of hating them in your heart, despising what they did to you, wishing their humiliation, or failure, or disgrace, meditating on the injury as if it is an outstanding debt, waiting for them to humble themselves before you. For as long as you hold that person’s sin as an outstanding debt which is between you and him or her, you have not forgiven.

Once you have counted their debt as paid by Christ (or potentially paid in the future by them if they do not repent) then you are free to treat them as if they had not wronged you. But in light of the cross, and in light of what the Bible describes as hell, what are we doing if we refuse to forgive?

Romans 12:17-19
Repay no one evil for evil. Have regard for good things in the sight of all men. If it is possible, as much as depends on you, live peaceably with all men. Beloved, do not avenge yourselves, but rather give place to wrath; for it is written, “Vengeance is Mine, I will repay,” says the Lord.

This is what you are doing. You are usurping God’s place. You are nudging the Almighty out the way, and saying, “You cannot be trusted to keep justice in Your own universe. I will take matters into my hands. I will see to it that this person is punished for their sin.”

That is why bitterness burns the way it does. You are taking upon yourself a God-sized task – that is, punishing the sins of others. The weight of trying to be the Judge, Jury and Executioner of other people exhausts and collapses the human heart. You can’t do it.

You are not wrong for wanting restitution. You are wrong for insisting upon it above and beyond the cross of Jesus Christ, and the punishment of hell.

To receive them without demanding payment, is to receive a person without the debt straining the relationship. You can feed them, give them something to drink, even while they are estranged from you. You can bless them (v14). You can pray for them. You can greet them, be kind to them.

You do not place upon them the pre-condition of apologizing, of coming to you first, of saying sorry.

Now there is more to it, as we will see in successive messages. There is the matter of seeking another person’s repentance. There is the matter of their repentance or lack thereof. But before God, you can release the debt, and receive them as if they had not committed the sin. You do not expect anything more from them in order to treat them in a Christlike fashion.

Now let me add something practical about forgiving and forgetting. People talk about forgiving and forgetting. They say if you have truly forgiven, then you forget about it. There was even a song a few years ago about God throwing our sins into the sea of his forgetfulness.

Now, all of that sounds nice, but is it true?

Firstly, God doesn’t forget anything. God is not able to forget, because then He would lose some knowledge and no longer be omniscient, all-knowing.

Secondly, forgetting is usually something we do passively, not actively. Through weakness, I forget where I put my keys. I forget the name of a person. I forget an event. This is something that happens to my mind. I cannot tell myself to forget.

Now, it is probably true, that if you count someone’s sin against you as paid for, and dismiss it from your mind, you may forget it happened.

But the truth is, there are going to be some injuries and hurts done against us which we will probably never forget.

Because we do not forget, does that mean we have not forgiven?

No. In fact, God never says He does not forgive. He says He refuses to remind Himself of the sins we commit.

Isaiah 43:25
I, even I, am He who blots out your transgressions for My own sake; And I will not remember your sins.

Micah 7:18
He will again have compassion on us, And will subdue our iniquities. You will cast all our sins Into the depths of the sea.

Jeremiah 31:34
“No more shall every man teach his neighbor, and every man his brother, saying, ‘Know the LORD,’ for they all shall know Me, from the least of them to the greatest of them, says the LORD. For I will forgive their iniquity, and their sin I will remember no more.”

He forgives. He knows about them. He still knows that David committed adultery. But as David stands before Him, it does not come up. God is not reminded of David’s sin when He sees David.

He does not associate the two. He refuses to remind Himself.

So it is with forgiveness. Forgiveness is not forgetting, it is refusing to remind yourself of that person’s sin. When tempted to reflect on the injury, you refuse to do so. You count it paid for, you refuse to demand payment, and you refuse to reflect and remember and be reminded about the sin.

In God’s universe, justice is not the victim of mercy. You do not have to give up justice to show mercy. In God’s universe though, He claims the right to ultimate justice on sin, and calls on us to show mercy. The point is – you don’t have to swallow the offence done to you, you must simply know what to do with it. Charge it to God’s justice. Receive the person. Refuse to remind yourself.