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Forgiveness Over Revenge Series
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We are in part four of the "Forgiveness Over Revenge" series. By the time we're done today, you're going to know how to forgive somebody, and you're going to have to walk it out. The very prayer Jesus taught us—"Father, forgive our debts as we forgive our debtors"—means that releasing their debt is directly connected to the exemption of mine.
Today we'll look at two passages: 1 Corinthians 13, the love chapter, and Romans 12. It's critical to understand that the enemy's primary goal is to injure your capacity to love. Every time you get hurt, your love shrinks. There's somebody in this room whose heart has grown cold because they've been hurt too many times. You used to love differently, but after being stabbed, cut, dropped, and feeling neglect, you just aren't as free with your love as you used to be.
Some people call that experience. But biblically, it's called unforgiveness. When your heart loses its capacity to love, the enemy has already begun winning.
Let's look at 1 Corinthians 13:4-7. This text isn't just word vomit of characteristics—these words have an interwoven thread that ties them all together.
Love is patient. Love is kind. It does not envy. It does not boast. It is not proud.
You need patience first. But you need patience to be kind. Some of you know what I'm talking about—there are people who know how to push your buttons. They know exactly how to get on your last nerve. But patience teaches you to be kind with people who are hard to be kind to.
Why do you learn to be patient? When I think of how patient God has been with me, overlooking my faults and still choosing to love me through the years, I realize that if God has been this patient with me, I have to learn to be patient with other people.
Your kindness helps you not to envy. When you're genuinely kind towards people, you don't get envious when good things happen for them. But if you're kind only until they get something you want, you're not truly kind. Some people talking negatively about you may have secret envy towards you. You need to be free from envy to not boast and brag.
Envy is actually hidden insecurity. When you're not envious of other people, you don't start bragging anytime you see something good happen in their life. Some people you called a friend might be envious of you right now without you recognizing the signs. One sign is when something good happens to you, they need to outshine it with something equally good that happened to them.
This boasting and pride feed each other, but humility kills it. When you lose patience, you lose kindness. When you lose kindness, you become envious. When you become envious, you start boasting and bragging, trying to prove you're better than what you are.
Verse five says: It does not dishonor others.
If you are always talking down on somebody, you don't have the love of God in your heart. When you don't have the love of God in your heart, you find a reason to dishonor everybody and drag everybody down. To a person with a cancerous heart, they'll try to put cancer on everybody else.
The love of God helps you to see the good and speak honor on other people—even when people aren't necessarily honorable. Sometimes God will have you honoring people, and you're like, "God, they're not even good." And God says, "It's not about them. Let me handle them. I'm teaching you how to move in a place of honor."
Verse five continues: It is not self-seeking. It is not easily angered. It keeps no record of wrongs.
The goal is to get to a place where I can forgive so beautifully that I don't even keep a record of being wronged. But to get there, it takes time. To get to the place where I keep no record of being wronged, I have to kill hidden anger.
Let's be real: the reason it's hard for you to truly forgive them is because you're still angry about it. This isn't me judging you—this is me telling you, I am you. I've been there. When I wanted to forgive people, I really did. But then I'd see them again and think, "I can't believe they tried to play with me like that." The anger would come back out of nowhere. I thought I forgave, but when I saw them again, I just envisioned punching them. I thought, "Something ain't right in me."
In order for me to let go of the record, I got to let go of the anger. I'm preaching to somebody because you're trying to forgive, but you're still mad about it. And you think, "I don't want them to get away. I don't want anybody to feel like they can do me like that. I'm nobody's doormat."
No, but you are a son and a daughter to the King. And if you are a son and a daughter to the King, it's not your job to try to fight every soldier that comes against the kingdom.
To kill anger, I have to get rid of my selfish perspective. The reason you're still angry is because you're thinking about how you were affected. And rightfully so—that's how we all look at our problems. What you did affected me. What you said affected me. It's a very selfish perspective. We build every story with ourselves at the center.
But when I take myself out the center and put Jesus in the center, I start to realize that He paid an ultimate price when all of us did Him wrong. If He paid the ultimate price for all of our mistakes, why am I still waiting on people to pay me back for something they don't necessarily owe?
The selfish perspective makes you the victim all the time. But it's impossible to be the victim in every story. At some point, you were the villain. Somebody right now is listening to this sermon and praying to forgive you.
When you take yourself out the center, you stop being self-centered. You start realizing that people are just hurting. People are going to be people. One of the things that set me free—truly—is when I came to the reality that we are all just people. Every single last one of us is going through our own fight, our own war.
When I understood this about humanity, it set me free. I realized: I can never expect, if push came to shove, for you to choose my well-being over yours. It's not reality. If you got into a person, they can't choose your perspective over theirs because they don't have it. They can't choose your well-being over theirs because they don't have it.
The moment you realize that, you will stop being angry at people who hurt you while they were trying to survive.
So many people are hurting, bleeding. They've been cut and they never healed. Because they've been cut and never healed, they still have jagged edges. Here you are trying to love people who are unhealed, and you're getting cut in the process.
But once you realize they can't give me any more than what they have—this is all they have—they've been broken and damaged. And I'm asking them to give me a version of themselves that doesn't exist.
I'm so mad at my parents because they damaged me so much. But do you realize that your parents were broken humans who brought another life into this world and they tried to give you their best? Sometimes even their best comes with pain. Sometimes even their best comes with an injury because it's all they have to give.
When you learn this, when you truly release it and say, "You know what? I'm not going to keep holding you hostage because you weren't perfect. Cuz guess what? Neither was I." And when you lose that selfish perspective, you'll finally be able to honor others. You'll be able to say, "Hey, I'm not holding you hostage because I know what it is to live with that kind of pain. I'm not holding you hostage because I know what it is to live with that kind of burden. I'm not holding you hostage. I'm now able to honor you even when you aren't perfect."
Verse six says: Love does not delight in evil, but it rejoices with the truth.
This verse reminds us that what the world calls love is not biblical love. The world says if you don't agree with me, then you don't love me. But the Bible says because I love you, I can't agree with you. I have to be the one that tells you the truth even when you don't want to hear it.
We're living in places where people are saying, "That's why I don't go to church because the church is judgmental." I'm telling you, we are not judgmental. I don't have a judgment seat to sit on. I can't judge anybody. Only a good God can judge people. But just because I cannot judge, that does not mean I can't be committed to truth.
We're living in a culture that has decided they can manipulate what truth is day by day. But the only truth we have is the Word of God. If it's not in the Word, I can't give it to you.
This is the only love that we have. And this means that we'll tell you the truth even when it's painful. You want to know why? Because sometimes you gotta know pain in order to be free. You will know the truth and the truth will make you free. That means you don't have to like it. You don't have to agree with it. It may even hurt, but still it's going to set you free.
This is why the Church has to take the position to say, "Hey, we are going to stand by the Word of God even if we're fighting to live up to it, too." Sometimes you gotta say the truth even when the truth exposes you. Not just the truth for other people—you gotta lean into the Word of God even when the Word of God is telling you to be better. Even when the Word of God is telling you to repent. Even when the Word of God is calling you a sinner.
Verse seven says: Love always protects. It always trusts. It always hopes. It always perseveres.
This is not a definition of love. It's an explanation of how love functions. Love in reality is frustrating because love will continue to see good in the worst of situations. That's why you can love that person and your whole family thinks you're crazy. They do. Love naturally wants to believe the best even when looking at the worst.
We're talking about the biblical love of God. God is able to expose some stuff. But when love is untamed, it'll look at the worst situation and still try to believe the best in it. That's why when it's time to walk away from somebody you love, even though you see the truth, it still hurts—because love keeps hoping.
You keep hoping that they'll be better. You keep hoping that they'll do right. You keep hoping that this month will be better than the last 20 months y'all spent together. It always hopes.
Some people think that walking away means you don't love anymore. But quite the contrary, sometimes walking away is the last loving thing you can do. Sometimes the best thing you can do is say, "I love you so much, I'mma have to let you go." Because I'm realizing standing here is killing both of us.
I'm not just talking about romantic relationships. Sometimes I'm talking about your family. Sometimes I'm talking about the people you grew up with. Sometimes it's about the ones that you thought, "Man, this is my blood. We going to be together forever." But you realize what's killing you the most is the ones that carry your same last name.
At some point, you gotta make a decision: God, I love you enough to let you go. Please don't make me your prison. I love you enough to release you.
Let's jump to Romans 12:17-18. He says:
Never pay back evil with more evil.
Now, this is easy to read, but it's hard to do. When somebody punches me, I have a payment. And a tip. You don't want people to do something to you and you just can't give back to them what they gave to you.
This is why I like preaching this in the reality of our humanity because it's easy to talk about this from the stage or speak it in the sermon or say amen in the sanctuary, but it's hard when somebody keeps calling you to not cut back.
He says: Do things in such a way that everyone can see you are honorable. He said, "I want you to live a way because it ain't just about the person that's fighting you. It's about the people that's watching." It's about the audience and you are supposed to be a representation of Christ.
I'm talking about your actual life, not the narrative. Because what tends to happen is we try to spin the narrative to make it seem like we were the good ones in the story. You know those kinds of people—it's like everybody always does them wrong, but they can never figure out who they've done wrong. I'm not saying flip the narrative. I'm saying live with such integrity that you can stand before God and say, "God, if you examine my life, you'll see I've remained faithful to your word and how I've honored your people."
It isn't the narrative of what they think. It's who you actually are.
Verse 18: Do all that you can to live in peace with everybody.
Some of y'all don't live in peace. You are the storm. There are some people who have a problem with people at church and at work and in their family. "Oh, I just got a problem with everybody." Wait, that's different. You may be the storm.
Now, the reality is you will not be able to live in peace with everyone. There are some people who will never let you live in peace because of the storm that's in them. Some people are carrying so much war inside their own souls that you can't deposit peace in them. And that's not your responsibility.
I need you to know that because sometimes we take it on ourselves. "I don't know what the problem is. I'm trying to do right by them." There is no problem in you. It's a problem in the receiver. The person is hearing it. They're going to find a problem regardless of what you say. And you cannot confuse their inability to receive peace with your responsibility to manufacture it.
We start thinking, "I got to manufacture peace. I got to do whatever I can." And I've been there. I'm one of those people that I'm like, "Yo, I'm trying my best. If there's a problem, I want to fix it." So I'll call, I'll text, I'll say, "Let's sit down and have coffee." We do our best. Now, once you've done your best, once you've followed the biblical requirements of trying to restore peace, if a person doesn't want it, it is not your job to force them to take your peace.
One verse we don't read often is when Jesus told us we can take our peace back. In Matthew 10:12, He says:
As you enter a home, give it your greeting or your blessing. If the home is deserving, let your peace rest on it. And if it is not, let your peace return to you.
Why don't we preach this? Why are we telling people that you do not have to leave your peace in the possession of other people?
They just disrupt your peace. Why do they have it? If my peace is hidden in the person of Christ, can they snatch my Jesus out of me? No. I can release peace to you. I can be kind to you, but if you don't want it and you don't want a relationship and you don't want to repair, that's also okay. My day is not going to be disrupted because you decide to live in a storm.
Verse 19: Dear friends, never take revenge. Leave that to the righteous anger of God. For the scriptures say, I will take revenge and I will pay them back, says the Lord.
When he says never take revenge, that is strong language. He's trying to make it very clear: Never take revenge. What, I'm just supposed to do? Trust Him.
Now, I know that's easy to be said, but it's hard to be lived because when you feel like people are getting away, you feel like you need to jump in the fight. But you're going to get yourself in trouble with God trying to do His job.
Remember what I said to you at the beginning: the enemy's goal is to injure your capacity to love. The moment you start trying to take revenge, you start shrinking your capacity. He's not really after your happiness or your success or your business. He's after your capacity to love the way that Jesus loves.
Why? Because if he can destroy your love, he will kill everything that love produces—patience, kindness, joy, meekness, thinking of other people. Those other qualities live inside of love. And if you shrink love's capacity, you can't look like Jesus, who is love.
You don't take revenge into your own hands. There are so many people that do that. Some people just play with God all the time. They say, "I know God said don't do it, but tough. I just gotta do my own thing." It's not "but tough." It feels good in that moment, but the Bible says it's a dangerous thing, a scary thing to fall in the hands of an angry God.
I like what David said. When David was into it with King Saul, Saul was trying to attack him. David was on the run and he finally got to a point where he was face to face with King Saul. And what he said to King Saul face to face was something I've always lived by. In 1 Samuel 24:12, he said:
May the Lord judge between you and me. I'm putting this thing in God's hands because I can't get—I can't lose myself trying to get you back. I can't lose the grace on my life. I can't lose the anointing on my life trying to prove to you how you're handling me. May the Lord judge between you and me. And may the Lord avenge the wrongs you have done to me. But my hand will not touch you.
This is crazy. He said, "Don't worry about my hands. Worry about God's hands. Because if God gets a hold of you, you in trouble."
Now, this takes a righteous position. Because in order for David to say that, he had to know he lived righteously. He said, "May God judge between you and me. I'm not about to get in front of these people and try to prove a point. God knows everything we both did. And may he avenge you for the wrongs you've been doing to me all this time. But you ain't gotta worry about my hands. My hands are too small to get in this fight. I'm leaving it to the hands and the righteousness of God."
Romans 12:20: Instead, watch this. If your enemies are hungry, feed them. If they are thirsty, give them something to drink. In doing this, you will heap burning coals of shame on their heads.
This is where it gets hard. We don't see this lived out often. It's only in a few places. It's lived out in David's story when he said, "God prepares a table before me in the presence of my enemies." And we see it in Joseph's story.
It's one thing to say, "All right, don't retaliate." It's another thing to say, "Help them do well."
Joseph does something so profound. Joseph is facing his brothers. His brothers tried to kill him. Because they didn't want to tell their father, they're like, "Let's just sell him into slavery." They sell him into slavery, strip him of his coat, dip it in blood, and tell his dad he's dead.
So Joseph goes into slavery, comes out of slavery, then he's doing good, then gets lied on, goes into prison, comes out of prison, he's finally at the top. And famine comes and the same brothers who sold him into slavery come hungry and need food.
So Joseph is standing right now and his brothers come: "We're going to die of starvation if you don't help us." That's why God knew some of us couldn't be Joseph. Some of y'all right now would be like, "Oh, now you need me. Oh, look who's alive. I'm not dead. Look who came crawling back on their knees." Some of us would have took that moment and gave them scraps. But he filled their cups.
Look at what Joseph said here in Genesis 50:20:
You intended to harm me but God intended it for the good because I'm saving many lives now.
Who am I preaching to that they tried to kill you but God says it's okay. I'm going to use that crushing to bring an anointing out of you. And now the people who are being saved and your anointing are only there because I allowed you to get crushed.
I'm preaching to somebody right now because you keep saying, "God, why? What's going on? Why so many attacks? Why so much betrayal? Why do I have to keep bleeding the way I'm bleeding?" And God is saying, "I'm using this for the anointing I'm bringing out of your life. I'm allowing you to be crushed right now. And I know you don't like it, but the crushing brings the oil."
That's what Joseph said: "It's okay. I know you did it on purpose, too. But God used it for purpose too." To create the man, the woman that God created me to be today.
This shows us that love is not just passive non-retaliation. That's what we think. We think that when we say love and forgiveness, it just means we'll be passive and we won't retaliate. But it's actually a good will, an act of goodwill towards the person that wronged you.
So to be like Jesus, I can't just say I forgive you. I still caused me to help you when He nudges my heart to do so. He nudges me to be kind. This kindness heaps coals of fire on their head—shame on the head.
Why is kindness a greater weapon than revenge? Two reasons. One, because it keeps God involved. You will never be able to fight back the way God fights for you. That's number one.
But the second one is because the enemy sees that he could not break you. This is why the enemy is mad when God keeps elevating you because he sees that he could not tear you down.
For some of you, this is what you need. You need that ability, that capacity to keep loving and not to shrink.
As a pastor, let me give this example. Early on in pastoring, I got cut really, really, really bad. Not like once or twice—I'm talking about a lot of times. You start pastoring. I was very green-eyed, as they would say. I'm a new pastor and I'm like, "I'm going to show people the kind of pastor, how pastors are supposed to be." So I'm up at 1 and 2 o'clock in the morning. People come in my house. I'm counseling people at 1:00 in the morning. But I don't care. I'm putting my life on the line for the sheep.
People need money. I'm giving them my money. The church didn't even have money at that time. I only had my businesses. So my business was funding the church. When people needed money, I couldn't get nothing from the church. Church didn't have nothing. So I was giving people my money: "Hey, I'll help you pay your rent." I'm just poor because that's who I am. And then I just got cut and stabbed and cut.
And I learned very early that sheep have teeth. And they will bite you. Because no matter how many times you help me, the one time you don't do what I want you to do, you are now not good enough to be my pastor. I gotta go to somebody else's church. Yeah. Forget the 2:00 in the morning meetings. Forget the time you paid my rent. Forget the times you bought my kids clothes for the beginning of school because I didn't have it. Now I need a better pastor because I didn't like what you said on Sunday.
And I was hurt. I'm going to be real with y'all. I was like, "Man, that hurts." And what God told me is: Guard your heart and do not shrink your capacity to love.
I'm preaching to somebody. Because if I had shrunk my capacity to love, there are so many people in this room who came with amazing hearts and came with good joy and good intentions that I would have never let in because I allowed the injuries to shrink me.
And some of you, it's not that God isn't sending good people. It's because you got so cold, you closed off everybody. And now the good people that God sent, you can't even see them, can't experience it, can't receive the love. Why? Because you got cut early. So you shut down the rest of the function.
But I'm speaking to you: walking in true love and forgiveness means you have to be vulnerable again. You gotta open up again. You're going to miss promise because of persecution. You're going to miss what God is trying to give you. All because of the pain the enemy offered you early.
Remember, when God wants to bless you, He sends people. When the enemy wants to attack you, He sends people. But if I cut off all people, I'll cut off God while shooting at the enemy. I'll cut off what God is trying to do.
Romans 12:21: Don't let evil conquer you, but conquer evil by doing good.
I said all this to say: pain has a way of changing you to where the person who received pain begins to be the person that gives pain. Evil can conquer you. But the greatest victory over the people that hurt you is not proving them wrong. It's refusing to become like them.
Forgiveness is not me asking you to pretend that you were never hurt. The hurt is there, but it's just deciding to not let the hurt decide who you become.
The enemy will traumatize your heart, shrink your capacity, and have you in a place now when God is trying to increase you, He can't because your heart is so numb.
For some of you, the thing you need today is you need surgery in your heart. God needs to come in and deal with those things that have been breaking you up and shutting you down for so long because it comes in multiple forms.
A woman came into the hallway last Sunday. She said, "Pastor, I really am trying to forgive. I've been listening to all the sermons. But I'm struggling." Why? She said, "Because I've been trying to forgive my family, but no matter how many times I say it, I just still feel the hurt."
And I said, "That's so real." Listen, you can't expect for years of trauma to leave after one sermon. When people have cut you and cut you and cut you, you have been traumatized. And trauma shrinks. It affects how you receive love, how you experience the world. It affects your mind and your soul. And every time that person comes around, you can be triggered.
Being triggered is not just remembering the pain. Being triggered is being brought back to the place of pain. It's being transported to the place that they damaged you in in the first place. So if you have trauma and you've been triggered, it's hard for you to truly heal.
But hear my heart: God still needs you to trust Him. Trust God with what you feel before you just trust what you feel. Give it to God. God, I'm surrendering it to you because if I don't, this thing is going to start killing me from the inside out.
When I went through a season where I had to forgive people like that, let me be honest: I had to ask God to help me forgive them every day. It wasn't a one-day prayer. I'd be lying if I said that. But it was every day for probably a month. Every time I woke up: "God, help my heart be free." And then you learn a new detail and now you gotta forgive all over again. Like, "I forgave you for the first five. I ain't even know you did that."
It's hard. But you gotta keep forgiving. Why? Because if you don't, you could be dying right now and not know it. Right now, unforgiveness and bitterness inside your heart is killing you. You're not even aware.
I was in Vegas. I went golfing. It was 111 degrees outside. I almost died. I told God, "This is why I don't want to go to hell. I will live righteous." The caddy told me, "Man, stay hydrated." I said, "Yeah." He said, "No, no, listen. Stay hydrated." He gave me five Gatorades. He said, "Because people in this kind of weather are always passing out."
I'm like, "I mean, it's hot." He said, "No, no, no. Because it's dry heat, when you sweat, it dries your sweat before you ever see it. So the problem is you're getting dehydrated from the inside out and you don't know it until it's too late."
Man, bitterness and unforgiveness is the exact same way. You're getting dehydrated and killed from the inside out and you don't even know it. And you're thinking, "I'm fine. I'm good." No. Something inside of you is taking away your joy, taking away your kindness, taking away your patience, taking away your peace.
And the only way for you to deal with that is say, "Okay, God, I'm realizing there's something in here. I need to give all of it over to you and trust you with it."
Father, this is my prayer—Lord, that you get all the glory, honor, and praise out of our lives. I pray for those who have been hurting today and they realize, "God, I'm trying to forgive, but this is an old pain that doesn't seem to leave easily. Maybe it happened in my childhood or maybe it's been happening since my childhood. And so Lord, I'm trying to forgive, but it's hard."
I pray for them, Lord, that you would give them grace and strength to be able to say once and for all: "Lord, I let it go today. I let go of the pain. I let go of the bitterness. I let go of the tension. I let go of the need to hear an apology. Today I say, God, I release it because I want to trust you with it. I trust you with what I feel before I just trust what I feel. Give it to you, Lord."
I pray that the spirit of forgiveness—and I mean true forgiveness—rushes through this place. Why, God? Because we need to make sure our capacity to love doesn't shrink. There are more people you're sending. There's a new family that will love us even more. There are new friends. There's even more new healthy relationships you want us to step into. And God, we can't miss it because we're trapped in the prison of pain.
Help us to release the bitterness once and for all today. In Jesus name we pray. Amen.
