Hey, this round of the 10 Minute Bible Hour Podcast is being brought to you by Dwell Audio Bible app, which is the best audio Bible I've ever heard ever. It's like Spotify for the Bible. You can pick your playlists and arrange it. You can use different voices, add music, take music away. It is a great way to receive the text. I use it, I dig it, I've told you about it before. I hope you'll check it out. They're doing 33% off for people who listen to TMBH. So you can get that link down below in the show notes. All right, let's get after it. My brain has definitely changed over the years. When I was a kid and I get in a fight with somebody, a wrestling match will scuffle in the playground with my siblings or whatever. And then we get hauled before the authority figure. In my head, the thing that I was sure that that authority figure would need to know and would be most interested in knowing right off the top would be who started it? And the answer was always them. They started it. There, I think we're finished here. But weirdly, that never got good results. Not from a parent, not from a teacher, an administrator. Nobody was like, oh, well, if they started it, then I think we're finished here. You can go on with your merry way and I'll just deal with the starter over here. Now there's always this lesson that came after that that was like, hey, yeah, but you were both punching each other. And so it's not like starting it makes you into a puncher, like you're some pre-programmed punching factory. Like you made choices, you got worked up to. And the good authority figures in my life would always want to break that down and try to bring about meaningful reconciliation by pointing out the flaws that we both brought to the equation, even if those flaws weren't a neat 50-50, and even if, frankly, somebody maybe was a little more culpable of the two. Well, that level of nuance that the authority figures in my life brought to me as a kid was very different from the level of nuance that I brought to them as a kid. And likewise, I feel like when we talk about this forgiveness versus reconciliation thing that we've kind of been lingering on for the last few conversations, the same thing is true. Reconciliation is very hard-earned, and it is something that you do not own unto yourself. It requires a dance partner. Just like a fight needs somebody else to be fighting with, so reconciliation requires somebody else to be reconciled with who wants to play ball and also wants to be reconciled with you. Whereas forgiveness just takes you. It's entirely within your control to be in a place of forgiveness. Now we've talked about this psychological reality that I think we all deal with that says forgiveness and reconciliation are roughly the same thing. Forgiveness means no problem there. I don't have any problem with what you did. That's cool. Keep doing it to other people, whatever. I think those are all red herrings. I actually think we know dang well that that's a very unnuanced position on what forgiveness means. But we like to throw these things out because, you know, we'll always craft a narrative, we'll always craft justifications that work with what we kind of wanted to do anyway. And the reality is when we're hurt and we're in a situation where we probably need to be forgiving, well, we're also mad and we've suffered an indignity and we want some justice, maybe even a pound of flesh. And it's very easy for us to craft for ourselves versions of reality that would keep us from forgiving right now. But as you and I have looked at in the text repeatedly, Jesus doesn't give an out for the person who wants to be a kingdom citizen on the forgiveness thing. It's absolutely mandatory. It's absolutely a full-time on-switch. So it's like uh, it's like the difference between an old Ford F-150. I have this old plow truck, right? It's it's 1999, it's got a big blue eight-foot plow on the front that's just hideously welded on there. I don't know how I made it through the winter with the thing. And a while back, in addition to the the Ford F-150 plow truck, I had a little Subaru outback, right? Well, the Subaru Outback is just, it's always on all wheel drive. All the wheels are always doing all of the working, and that's kind of the selling point. There's no switch on the dash. Whereas the F-150, if I want to go into four, I have to maneuver something on the dash and I feel it click in. It's like, all right, I made a volitional choice to go four-wheel drive. Like I took one run at that eight inches of snow on the uphill driveway and it didn't get it done. But now I have chosen four-wheel low lookout snow. Now I mean business. Subaru outback, no, not so. You just drive around, it's always happening, whether you know it or not. Forgiveness, I think, is the same way. Jesus' teaching is that the person who is in the kingdom is driving the Subaru outback of forgiveness. This is always on, it's always happening. You live in a default state of constant forgiveness and gratitude for the forgiveness you've received. So it's not even like I got to choose to give that away to people. Nope, just I want grace for me. Everybody else gets grace from me. Those are the ground rules. Whereas I think a lot of us like to conceive of the forgiveness thing like the F-150 model, like, uh, all right, well, now I want to get along with God and I want to be the bigger man. I'm gonna take the high road. Wow, like double metaphor there. That kind of worked. So I'm gonna consciously choose to switch this thing into four, switch it into forgiveness mode, and do this. Theoretically, you're not doing forgiveness. It just is who you are as your person who's a part of the kingdom. So if we go around and we look at some of the stuff in the Bible that talks about forgiveness beyond what we've looked at so far. I mean, we looked at the parable about the dude who chokes the other dude for owing money, things like that. But if we go and look at just some of the little tidbits that we see here and there, I think it fits with the whole Subaru F-150 model of things and why the Subaru model is better. Colossians 3.13, bear with each other and forgive whatever grievances you may have against one another, forgive as the Lord forgave you. That's it. There's a whole lot of instruction going on in Colossians. Maybe someday we'll get to Colossians. We'll break the whole thing down. But on this point, in terms of the instructions for how to just manage your relationships and the mundane parts of life that we get here in Colossians 3, it's really simple. You got forgiveness, you give away forgiveness. You received forgiveness in such a dose that it's basically unfathomable, give it away in an unfathomable dose as well. This is what's being implied, the mark of the Christian. Then you look at a couple of key examples of forgiveness in the Bible. Maybe two of the most shocking examples of forgiveness would be Stephen getting executed. You remember this guy in the book of Acts? You got this young man who'd been picked just like what, a chapter earlier, two? I think it was two chapters earlier before he died. And they they pick him and they're like, this guy has a good reputation with this fledgling Christian community, and he's smart and he's honest and he's fair, and people trust him. And we're gonna have him help with some of these practical needs that are arising in the early church, and then he runs afoul of the religious leadership who thought they had put a bullet in this Christianity thing when they nailed Jesus to a cross, but now they can't produce his body, they're freaking out and upset. More and more people are signing up to follow Jesus, even though he's technically dead. And well, the frustration gets targeted at the remaining disciples, and even worse, the second generation of remaining disciples or new disciples. Like this thing is spreading, it's leaking. And so Stephen comes into the crosshairs of the very same people who, at least politically, helped to put Jesus on the cross, and they give him a kangaroo court hearing. He says a whole bunch of stuff that is frankly pretty provocative, but pretty true and pretty brave. And in the end, they're like, we're not even gonna wait for Rome's permission. We're just gonna murder this dude. So they grab a bunch of rocks and they just hit him with rocks until he's dead. And in the midst of all of that, he imitates Jesus in forgiving the people who are hitting him with rocks. Now, you're real smart. Would you say that Stephen and the people who were still in the act of hitting him with rocks as he was asking for their forgiveness were reconciled? I would argue, again, not a language expert here, but I would argue that no, they were not reconciled because of the continued bombardment of death rocks that they were throwing at him until he died from them. Jesus is another pretty great example of this, right? He goes to the cross and he's up there, and what does he say on the cross? Well, a decent amount of stuff. One of the things he's saying is forgive them. They don't know what they're doing. Would you say Jesus was reconciled to the people who were murdering him? Well, I mean, well, it's state-sanctioned murder, but it's still murder, right? Well, no, of course not. So we see two prime examples uh that fit with this Colossians 3 notion we just read, that fit with the Matthew 6 perpetual forgiveness notion, also fits with Matthew chapter 18 and verses 21 and 22. We reference this one vaguely the other day, but here again, forgiveness, the Subaru, is one thing, and the F 150 is another thing. Uh 18 verses 21 through 22. Did I stall well enough? I thought that went really well, actually. So then Peter came to Jesus and asked, Lord, how many times shall I forgive my brother who sins against me? Up to seven? Seven. But Jesus answered, I tell you, not seven times, but seventy-seven times. But you know what's interesting is the thing that prompts Peter in the narrative to come and ask Jesus, Well, how many times am I supposed to forgive then? How much of this should I give away? Is the famous Matthew 18 passage that precedes it about church discipline and straightening things out, and frankly, reconciliation between individuals and also an individual who's being a jerk and the church. So remember, this is the one that starts with uh verse 13 of Matthew 18. If your brother sins against you, go and show him his fault, just between the two of you. If he listens, yeah, great, you've won your brother over. The hey great was me. But if you will not listen, take one or two others along so that every matter may be established by the testimony of two or three witnesses. If he refuses to listen to them, tell it to the church. And if he refuses to listen even to the church, treat him as you would a pagan or a tax collector. And then he goes on to this whole business about, I tell you the truth, whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven. And further, I tell you that if two of you on earth agree about anything you ask for, it'll be done for you by my Father. And if two or three are gathered together in my name, there I am with them. A lot of people read that as like, oh, as Jesus saying, if you just get enough people together to agree, you get all the God magic you want. But contextually, it would seem that Jesus is saying that reconciliation is very, very difficult, even in a church setting sometimes, that you need to follow these three steps when you're fixing things. We'll break this down way more when we actually get to the text in order. And you follow these steps, and as you go through this difficult thing, there's an avenue that could lead to reconciliation. There's an outcome that could lead to not reconciliation, but you have spoken truth. Forgiveness is assumed that it is going on, and that's made clear again by the follow-up passage where Peter's like, How much do we forgive? And Jesus' parable about the unforgiving, forgiven debtor. And so all of this adds up to an immediate composite picture in Matthew 18 from verses, did I say 13? It starts in 15 through the end of the chapter, where we have forgiveness held out alongside reconciliation. Jesus, Stephen, circumstances in your life demonstrate that reconciliation is not always possible. The person is still a threat, the person is still doing damage, the person has died, the person has divorced themselves from you. You have no access to them. Uh, they don't believe they're wrong, and they don't want to hear it, and they're behaving in a way that is stubborn and dug in. There are all kinds of reasons you might not be able to reconcile. It takes two to reconcile. But forgiveness, 70 times seven, again and again and again and again, as a constant state of being, is what is required of the kingdom citizen. And just to be clear about where we're at in our relationship, I am the king of nothing, least of all your life, least of all, er, the Bible. So I'm telling you how I'm reading this thing, and I'm holding it out in front of you, and you can do with it whatever you need to. And if you read it and you're like, no, forgiveness is optional and I see the text differently, um, okay, that's cool. Um, you might land in a different place. If the therapeutic version of forgiveness is more appealing or where you're at, uh, we can still get along. We might disagree about how to read the text. If you are in a place where forgiveness is more of a project and less of a state of being, okay, again, I don't think that squares with how Jesus is coming at it, but the point of the exercise of us hanging out and going through the Bible together is not for me to ultimately dictate that you got to go make that phone call or you got to go do that thing. You owe me exactly nothing, and I am in charge of exactly nothing. But I think we've done a fair job of looking at examples from the text that demonstrate that forgiveness is something that is in an always-on position for one who wants to receive forgiveness from God, that is one who is a kingdom citizen. And reconciliation, pretty hard work. Yeah, it's the ideal, as much as is up to you, be at peace with everyone. Is it always achievable? No. What does as much as is up to you mean? It sounds like more of a principle where you just got to think and be honest with yourself and your conscience and God. What I do know is that forgiveness and reconciliation are both biblical concepts. Reconciliation is an outgrowth that can happen at times, being born out of forgiveness, which must happen for the kingdom citizen at all times. On to fasting next time around. I'm Matt, this is a 10-minute Bible hour podcast. Let's do this again soon it's it it.