We all watched, transfixed by the televised images of the collapsed bridge in Minneapolis. Lives were lost and now there's a big gap in the road system, causing major traffic problems. We've all had the experience of traveling on the interstate when traffic slows or stops; we always wonder why. Finally we get close to the problem and see that a bridge is out and is being replaced. All traffic has been shifted to one lane on the bridge that takes traffic in the other direction, and it's a mess. Minnesota has an ambitious plan to rebuild the bridge in Minneapolis. A project like usually takes three years but they plan to do it in one year, because they really need that bridge.

All of us are bridge-builders. A bridge is a structure that spans two pieces of land, connecting them. We build bridges between ourselves and other people; those bridges are called relationships. Sometimes those bridges collapse: one person hurts another, in essence destroying the bridge. You and I experience this often, when people hurt us or disappoint us, and the only way to make things better is to rebuild the bridge. That requires forgiveness on the part of the one who's been hurt or disappointed. Forgiveness is the main building material we must use to bridge the gap between us and another person.

It's not going to be easy to rebuild that bridge in Minneapolis. It's also difficult to rebuild a bridge with another person, especially if we think that the other person is really responsible for the problem. That's why, in this six-part series on “Overcoming the Great Temptations of Life,” we have to look at “The Temptation to Hold a Grudge.” It's a major threat to living life well.

THE NEED FOR FORGIVENESS
Does anybody here have a perfect relationship with anyone? Of course not; even the best, healthy relationships run into snags. None of us is perfect, and we don't act perfectly in our relationships with each other.

That's true with your marriage, if you’re married, and it's true with any friendship. It's true with our parents and children and it's true with our extended families. It's true with our neighbors and with our church family. Sooner or later — and it's usually sooner — someone says or does something (the sin of commission) or doesn't say or do something (the sin of omission) that hurts us. They've wrecked the bridge between us — or at least damaged it severely.

We're always caught by surprise when someone hurts or disappoints us. You'd think that by now it wouldn't surprise us, but it does. The bridges between us and other people are going to collapse — or at least be badly damaged. If we're going to live life well, we have to become adept at rebuilding bridges and resisting the temptation to hold a grudge.

Being a follower of Jesus means taking seriously this business of forgiving people. We’ve been given a model prayer by Him; it's not a long prayer, so each part is vitally significant. He wants us to pray, “Forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors.” (Matthew 6:12) If we want to be followers of Jesus, it’s essential to use forgiveness to rebuild bridges with others who have hurt us and disappointed us. It's a non-negotiable part of a relationship with Jesus! One day Jesus told a story that can help us see, from His perspective, why we’re supposed to forgive.

JESUS' STORY ABOUT FORGIVENESS
The apostle Peter had a question for Jesus. He asked, “Lord, how many times shall I forgive my brother when he sins against me? Up to seven times?” (Matthew 18:21) I suppose that Peter was tired of forgiving the same person over and over again, and he wanted to know just how many times you're supposed to forgive someone. Peter concluded his question with a suggestion about how many times we should do that. He undoubtedly thought that seven times was a very generous number. The number seven is found throughout the Hebrew Scriptures, and as a good Jew, Peter knew the Scriptures well. Seven is what you could call a good round number in Holy Scripture.

Jesus answered, “I tell you, not seven times, but seventy-seven times.” (Matthew 18:22) Jesus’ point wasn’t to increase Peter's suggestion by seventy; He could as easily have said “umpteen” times. In other words, we shouldn't keep count! There should be no end of forgiveness.

Jesus then told a story that interestingly had little to do with the number of times we're supposed to forgive. If we keep count of how many times we have to forgive someone, our motives aren’t right. Jesus' story was about the ultimate motive for forgiving and rebuilding bridges. The right motivation for anything makes all the difference in the world.

A king was reviewing the business he was conducting with his subjects when he saw that a man owed him a huge amount: ten thousand talents. Ten thousand talents was a very big amount. Solomon, a very rich and generous king, made a personal contribution of three thousand talents to build his temple for the Lord. That was three thousand talents; this was ten thousand. Suffice it to say that the man owed the king more than he could ever pay back.

The king ordered that the man's family be sold as slaves and that everything he owned be liquidated. The man begged for mercy; after all, what did he have to lose? He had already lost everything. Jesus said, “The servant's master took pity on him, canceled the debt and let him go.” (Matthew 18:27) It was an astonishing act of mercy and generosity! The debt was wiped out and the man received a full pardon!

One of the first things this newly debt-free man did was to track down a man who owed him a hundred denarii. A denarii was about a day's wages for a soldier or a common laborer — something like minimum wage. A hundred denarii was a hundred day's wages. (Most of us owe much more than that on a car payment or certainly on a mortgage on our homes. In other words, it was a debt that could be paid off; it wasn’t unrealistic.) The newly debt-free man who was owed the 100 denarii demanded immediate payment and choked the other man. The poor man pleaded for mercy, promising to pay the debt. However, the one to whom he owed the money had him tossed into prison until he paid off the debt — which of course would be very difficult to do when he was in prison!

The king heard about the despicable behavior of the man for whom he had canceled the debt and asked that he be brought to him. The king told him, “I canceled all that debt of yours because you begged me to. Shouldn't you have had mercy on your fellow servant just as I had on you?” (Matthew 18:33) Then the king ordered the man thrown into jail until he repaid all of his debt, which would never happen.

REASONS TO FORGIVE
The analogy is obvious: if we're followers of Jesus we must realize how much God has forgiven us so that we’re allowed to follow Him. If God has forgiven us an immeasurable amount, how can we not forgive those who have done something pityingly small by comparison?

The first, primary reason that we’re supposed to forgive is that God has forgiven us. God's forgiveness is the main message of the Gospel of Jesus Christ. We're all sinful people and are alienated from the holy, holy, holy God. We can't do anything about it on our own because the debt of our sin is astronomical. We may not think we're very bad people -- and we may not be compared to some people we could compare ourselves to -- but we're in big trouble when we compare ourselves to the Holy God. We could never earn our way to a better relationship with Him, so Christ came to die on the cross to pay the price for us. All we need to do is accept what He did for us and accept Him as our personal Savior. Once we do that we’re debt-free with God! How can we dare to not offer forgiveness to someone else when God has forgiven us beyond measure?

The best way to be able to forgive someone (and it’s always hard work) is to focus on God's grace and mercy toward us. Don't put the primary focus on the forgiving you need to do; focus on the forgiving the Lord has done — and continues to do — for you! We can forgive others because He has forgiven us!

It’s difficult to hold a grudge when you're at the foot of the cross! Remember, you and I don't deserve the forgiveness of Christ, but we can have it anyway. We usually feel that someone doesn't deserve our forgiveness, and of course they don't; that's why we call it forgiveness!

A second reason that we’re supposed to forgive is that it draws us near to God and helps us to become more like Him. The servant in the story should have been like the king who forgave him. We’re supposed to be Christ-like, and Christ is the great forgiver! We can't be close to Him unless we seek to be like Him this way. Jesus said on an earlier occasion, “Therefore, if you are offering your gift at the altar and there remember that your brother has something against you, leave your gift there in front of the altar. First go and be reconciled to your brother; then come and offer your gift.” (Matthew 5:23) We're talking about overcoming “grudgitis”: holding a grudge. According to the dictionary “grudge” means “to withhold; unwilling to give.” We often talk about giving “grudgingly.” Holding a grudge means withholding forgiveness. Jesus was saying that we can't give ourselves to Him if we haven't given forgiveness to those who need it from us. There's no sense in approaching God, depending on His forgiveness, when we haven't forgiven those who depend on it from us.

A third reason to forgive is that it's a command: “Bear with each other and forgive whatever grievances you may have against one another. Forgive as the Lord forgave you.” (Colossians 3:13) Forgiveness isn’t an option for followers of Christ. What’s commanded isn’t something we want to do or something easy to do; that's why it's being commanded!

A fourth reason to forgive — and this is a selfish reason — is that it's good for us. This shouldn’t be the main reason to forgive, and this is where we part ways with the world's view. Commonly you hear that you should forgive someone so that he no longer has control over you. That's not a very loving reason, and that's why it's not the number one reason to forgive and why I'm putting it last. Why mention it at all? Sometimes, being the fallen creatures we are, it's good to think to ourselves, “Hey! This grudge that I'm nursing is eating me up! It's ruining my day, my week — and if I keep it up, my life!”

If someone does something wrong and we fail to forgive him, it's as if that person is beating us with a stick. Then he wants to take a break and rest for a while, so we offer to take the stick and go on beating ourselves for him!

In his book None of These Diseases Dr. S. I. McMillen wrote, “It might be written on many thousands of death certificates that the victim died of 'grudgitis.' The moment I start hating a man I become his slave. I cannot enjoy my work any more because he even controls my thoughts. My resentments produce too many stress hormones in my body; I become fatigued after only a few hours of work. The man I hate may be miles from my bedroom, but more cruel than any slave driver he whips my thoughts into such a frenzy that my inner-spring mattress becomes a rack of torture. I really must acknowledge that I am a slave to every man on whom I pour out my wrath.”

Author Gordon MacDonald told a story from a book by John Claypool. (He’s not sure whether it’s true.) Twin brothers took over the family business. They worked well together and were the envy of everyone in the business community. One day one of the brothers waited on a customer and left the customer's dollar bill on top of the cash register as he walked him to the door to say good-bye. When he came back, the dollar was gone. He asked his brother whether he had put the dollar into the cash register. He said that he hadn't even seen it. “I'm sure I laid it on top of the cash register,” the first brother said.

About an hour later he asked his brother about it again, this time with a little suspicion in his voice. “Are you sure you didn't put that dollar into the cash register?” The other brother noticed the suspicion in his voice and answered, in a defensive tone, that he knew nothing about the dollar.

No discussion resolved the issue, and the breach between the two men grew wider until they were so angry with each other that they dissolved the partnership. They built a wall down the middle of the store and ran competitive businesses side by side; both businesses did poorly.

One day years later a car pulled up in front of the two stores. A well-dressed man stepped out of his car and entered one store. He asked the owner whether he was the same merchant who had the store twenty years earlier. The merchant said that he was, and the man explained that twenty years ago he had been a drifter. He had been in the store the day when the dollar bill was lying on the register; he took it and left the store with it when the owner wasn't looking. He had come back to return the dollar and said it had really bothered him since he became a Christian. He asked the merchant to accept the dollar bill and said that he’d pay him whatever was appropriate for the damages.

The aged merchant began to shake and weep. When he gained control of himself he said to the man, “I want you to go next door and repeat the story you just told me.”

People are a major part of our lives, and our relationships with them are like bridges. Sometimes those bridges are seriously damaged or destroyed, and sometimes we believe it's the other person’s fault. We can go through life trying to navigate around all the destroyed bridges, or we can determine to be bridge re-builders using the construction material of forgiveness. The choice is ours, and if we’re followers of Jesus we know what that choice needs to be!