“Do I have to forgive my enemies?”

Steve Brown:
Do I have to forgive my enemies? The answer to that question and others, on Key Life.

Matthew Porter:
Welcome to Key Life. Our host and teacher is Steve Brown. He’s nobody’s guru, but he does have honest answers to hard questions about the Bible. God’s grace changes everything, how we love, work, live, lead, marry, parent, evangelize, and worship. Now, here’s Steve and Pete Alwinson from ForgeTruth with street-smart Bible teaching for real life.

Steve Brown:
Thank you Matthew. Hi Pete. How you doing?

Pete Alwinson:
Good. How are you doing today?

Steve Brown:
I’m doing good, too. I really am. I really like these Fridays. I like sitting down. You know, we don’t do any preparation, and that’s probably obvious. We just decide, look, we’ve been doing this for more years than a lot of you have been alive. And if we don’t have the answers to some of these questions, then we’ve been wasting our time all these years.

Pete Alwinson:
Boy, that’s true. If we don’t know the Bible answers to some of these, we shouldn’t be in our role.

Steve Brown:
That’s true. So, we just jump into the deep end and that’s kind of fun. And it’s a bit anxiety producing unless on occasion you want to say, I have no idea. And we’re both willing to do that. Hey, check out, ForgeTruth.com if you haven’t heard the podcast weekly on ForgeTruth.com you have missed a great podcast. So, check it out. You’ll be glad I told you about it. And by the way, we love getting your questions. You can send your questions to

Key Life Network
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in Canada, it’s

Key Life Canada
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or you can e-mail your question to [email protected] or if the spirit moves, you might want to just pick up the phone and dial 1-800-KEY-LIFE and follow instructions. And sometimes, we’ll use your actual phone call on the air, but we do love to get your questions and we love to get your money, too. So, and boy, that was crass, I shouldn’t have said it that way. But listen, we are a faith based ministry and we’re dependent on your contributions. And I’ve got to say, you guys have been wonderful. Every bill has been paid, but we worry about tomorrow. So, if you can help us financially, please do. If you can’t, we understand and say a prayer for this ministry. We are a member of ECFA in the States and CCCC in Canada and those organizations oversee the financial integrity of their membership. So, help us if you can. If you can’t, we understand. Pete lead us in prayer and we’ll get to these questions.

Pete Alwinson:
All right. Let’s pray together. Our great God, what a joy to come just for a minute and to connect with the God of the universe Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, and we worship you. And Lord, we come to you because you first came to us. We thank you for, through people, through the teaching of your word, through crises in our life, you brought us to the end of ourselves. And helped us and enabled us to trust in Jesus alone for our salvation. And Lord Jesus, we honor you and pray that you’d continue to be the Lord of our lives. Help us as we follow you through the relationships that we have, the work that we do and the complexities of modern life. Lord, we ask you for your grace and power and use our pastors and priests and teachers and leaders, worship directors, and all those at church this week-end to continue to keep us on the path of advancing your great kingdom. So, we commit our leaders to you. And we ask even now, as we do Q&A, that you would by your Spirit answer questions that we have deep down that will unleash us in serving you even more. May your kingdom come and your will be done on earth as it is in heaven. We pray these things in Jesus’ name. Amen.

Steve Brown:
Amen. All right Pete, let’s first go to our phone lines.

Caller 1:
I seem to be hearing from someone that you should not say the Lord’s Prayer or that it’s unnecessary to say the Lord’s Prayer. Is the problem maybe that if you don’t forgive others their sins, you will not be forgiven at all? That’s my question. I’m not sure I’m getting this person’s teachings mixed up.

Steve Brown:
Well, there are a lot of issues there, maybe more than you even know. There’s a theological issue, there is a kind of theological position, and it’s dispensational, but it’s hyper dispensational. And because The Lord’s Prayer is not a part of the church age, it’s no longer relevant, and we shouldn’t pray it. But that’s rare. You don’t find that among hardly any of my dispensational friends. But then you move into another area where you pray forgive us our sins the way we forgive others. And then, as if that weren’t enough, Jesus right after he teaches The Lord’s Prayer comments on that very issue. And he seems to say if you don’t forgive, you won’t be forgiven. That is not a works based thing. The prayer isn’t, and the commentary isn’t. That’s like saying if a dog doesn’t bark, then that dog’s not a dog, which is true. Dogs bark because they’re dogs, and trees have green leaves because they are trees. And so, there’s something about being forgiven that if you’re genuinely forgiven, begins to work in you in a process that allows you to at least begin to pray that prayer as a goal, but remembering that that’s not easy sometimes. Does that make sense?

Pete Alwinson:
Yeah. I think that’s good. I think that’s good. Yeah. The prayer that we’re given is a model, is an outline prayer. You can pray it and then, but also it’s a model and it is also a call. It also calls us to a higher level and so, forgive us our debts as we forgive our our debtors, by confessing my sins, I remember I probably have somebody to forgive who sinned against me and that is connected. No, I thought you hit it just right.

Steve Brown:
And there’s no wiggle room. I mean, people say, well, they have got to repent. They’ve got, no, there’s not an exception. And that’s hard. If it’s bad, it’s hard. You know, if you don’t speak to me sometime when you come in here, I might be bent out of shape, but I’ll forgive you instantly. But if you go out and write a book against me and it takes away my ministry, I’ve still got to forgive you.

Pete Alwinson:
I know.

Steve Brown:
But that’s not going to happen quickly.

Pete Alwinson:
It’s not. Can I tell you a quick story about that? I have a good friend, who’s an African American brother who comes to Forge and he had a neighbor, a white guy that literally did every negative racist thing to my friend that you could ever imagine. And so, this guy, he had to take him to court, never got resolved. Finally, this racist white neighbor moves away. And so, that went on for two years for my friend, at least, at least. And I had breakfast with him the other day and he told me, you know what happens, I was at church and guess who comes into church?

Steve Brown:
Oh no.

Pete Alwinson:
That white dude strolls into church and sees my friend, who’s like a deacon or something. And he’s working and he doesn’t say anything. And next week, guess what? He shows up again and he comes up to my friend and he says, you know, I’ve got to say, I’m sorry. I was at a really bad point in my life.

Steve Brown:
Oh man.

Pete Alwinson:
God has got a hold of me. And my friend was just dumbstruck because he’d been struggling and struggling and struggling to do just what we talked about. Forgive, and he was in the process and he almost got that guy out of his mind. And then he shows up. And then God does that miraculous work.

Steve Brown:
Is that so good? I, that is so, you know, that reminds me of something that’s important. When God tells you to do something, he doesn’t just say, do it or I’m going to destroy you. He walks with you. And he begins, I have a hit list on my prayer list. You know, I’ve said that a lot. And nobody is on that hit list that was on it a year ago, and I’m honest about it. I just say, God, you know this person and they don’t like you any more than they do me, but I, and I can’t forgive them, I hope they die, but you told me I’ve got to forgive them, so you’ve got to do something and change my heart. And he does. I make a point of naming names, and God begins to work, and eventually I’m able to forgive just this past week.

Pete Alwinson:
Oh man.

Steve Brown:
I wrote a note to a friend, who absolutely drove me nuts because I learned to forgive. And I just told him I prayed for you this morning. I didn’t tell him how I prayed for him. I prayed for you this morning and I really appreciate you and just wanted to say so. I got back the nicest, kindest, most affirming e-mail that I’ve gotten in weeks.

Pete Alwinson:
Wow.

Steve Brown:
God does stuff.

Pete Alwinson:
God does that. And I think evangelicals, we believe the truth, but we need to allow the truth of forgiveness to sink into our hearts. So, we don’t pray that prayer because we think we forgive perfectly.

Steve Brown:
No, of course not.

Pete Alwinson:
But we’re reminded to forgive as a part of our regular course of following Jesus.

Steve Brown:
And there’s no wiggle room. I mean, you don’t get to say, but they did something so bad it’s unforgiveable, you don’t get to do that.

Pete Alwinson:
Can’t do it.

Steve Brown:
No matter what they’ve done. We interviewed a guy on our talk show who had forgiven his father of some stuff you wouldn’t believe, and I wouldn’t have forgiven him. And I just wrote a blurb for his book because it blew me away. It’s hard to forgive. Don’t let anybody tell you that, the bad stuff.

Pete Alwinson:
That’s right.

Steve Brown:
Alright, do you believe the story of Noah is literal or a myth?

Pete Alwinson:
Yeah, I believe it’s literal.

Steve Brown:
Absolutely.

Pete Alwinson:
Yeah.

Steve Brown:
And you know there’s archaeological evidence to suggest that happened.

Pete Alwinson:
We, you know, and we can go a lot of different ways. I mean, they have the whole Ark up in, what is it, Kentucky?

Steve Brown:
You ever been there?

Pete Alwinson:
No, I never have.

Steve Brown:
I’m going sometime.

Pete Alwinson:
Yeah. I want to go see it too. I just realized, you know, because it’s the way it’s laid out, it’s not laid out as a mythical thing at all.

Steve Brown:
Not a bit.

Pete Alwinson:
The whole account is historical and Jesus builds on it historically, the Bible builds on it historically. So, it’s a supernatural event that took place.

Steve Brown:
Oh, it is.

Pete Alwinson:
But it was real.

Steve Brown:
And there’s a worldwide flood and plenty of evidence, and you know, but maybe our listeners don’t, that almost every religious view in the world have a story about a universal flood.

Pete Alwinson:
Yeah. Creation stories and flood stories.

Steve Brown:
And unbelievers say, see there, you just copied everybody else. No, we didn’t. It’s because it’s an event that actually happened.

Pete Alwinson:
They copied us. You know, the, the Babylonian account

Steve Brown:
that’s so true

Pete Alwinson:
they copied us.

Steve Brown:
Yeah. So yeah. Is it literal? And if the Bible doesn’t give you an indication that it’s not literal, you probably ought to underline it, memorize it. And rest in the fact that this is not a story. It really happened. Okay. Guys, time for us to go. Thank you for spending this 15 minutes with us. And a reminder, Key Life is a listener supported production of Key Life Network.