Grace and Forgiveness – Reading Matthew 18:21-35

Dear sisters and brothers in Indonesia, greetings to you in the name of our Lord Jesus
Christ from Münster! We have read your epistle from the Bethel church, community
of one love, in our service with high interest and appreciation. Thank you for sharing
your experience and thoughts with us. It is wonderful to know, in how manyfold
ways God speaks to us. When we spoke about this text, we had made some
observations and had some insights, that we want to share with you.
We see a big contrast in the text between the loving and forgiving behaviour of the
rich man, but also very hard behaviour towards the servant, who owes him so much
money. The grace is taken from the servant. That led us to the question, whether
grace can be taken at all away from someone?
We also asked ourselves, whether we can at all fulfill, what Jesus wants from us.
Petrus asks Jesus to give a concrete, yet His answer is both exact (because He uses
numbers) and incomprehensible. This showed us, how limited mankind is.
When we shared our experiences, we all agreed, that experiencing forgiveness is so
wonderful, but forgiving is really hard. Maybe forgiving must be difficult, if “true”
forgiveness means overcoming ones own resistance. Maybe therefore even anger is
necessary prior to forgiving someone. How hard forgiving someone is, seems to
differ in each case: We all agreed that forgiving material loss is more difficult than
personal accusations. If someone for instance breaks something of our belongings, it
can be replaced in most cases. Yet if someone hurts us personally, our feelings – our
soul – cannot be restored so easily.
We also saw that grace and forgiveness is not one-sided, because at least two persons
are needed: the sinner must confess and that confession must be accepted. On the
other side we must also acknowledge, that forgiveness is only true forgiveness, if the
sinner accepts the grace. This led us to many questions: What if the sinner is so
desperate in her/his guilt, that she/he cannot accept the grace and forgiveness from
someone else? Can we forgive a person, who does not see her/his own guilt? Can it
be too late to forgive someone or to accept someones forgiveness? Even after decades
we still can forgive someone, for this is a healing process. But what if one of the
persons, may it be the sinner or the one who forgives, passed away?
What about grace and forgiveness in our relationship to God? The loving God shows
His love to us by his grace that goes beyond our imagination. We cannot understand
this grace in its full sense, as it goes beyond our earthly understanding. However it is
possible to grasp its meaning, if we think about true forgiveness and grace between us
humans: God's grace is grace for everyone! If we seek traces of this divine grace, we
are right on a path to God.

Greetings to all of you! We long to hear from you again!

Shalom,
Students Congregation of Münster
7th December 2018