He Ate It and He Is Not Sorry and He Is Never Going to Be

The boy spent eleven days on a model of the barn.

Matchsticks, glue, a roof that took him four attempts, a little door that actually opened. He carried it into the kitchen to show me on a Tuesday evening and set it on the end of the table, and we both admired it for a while, and then he went to wash his hands.

You already know what happened. Bucky came through the door that I will accept some responsibility for leaving open, and by the time anybody got back to that table there was no barn. There was a small amount of barn. He had eaten the roof entirely and most of one wall, and he was standing there chewing with an expression of total calm, and when the boy came in and made a noise I have not heard him make before or since, that goat did not so much as change his footing.

Here is the thing I want to say plainly, because it is the whole reason I am writing this one.

Bucky was not sorry. He is not sorry now. He has never in his life been sorry about anything, and he was not going to learn a lesson from this, and if I put that model back on that table tomorrow he would eat it again.

And the boy still had to decide what to do with the rest of his evening.

The order it comes in

There is a line in Ephesians that is easy to read as an instruction and is actually a description of where a person is already standing.

And be ye kind one to another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, even as God for Christ's sake hath forgiven you. (Ephesians 4:32)

Read the order. Not so that God will forgive you. Even as God, for Christ's sake, hath forgiven you. Past tense. Already done.

That changes what forgiveness is. It is not a fee anybody pays to get something. It is not a person generating a supply of mercy out of their own goodwill on an evening when they have none. It is handing on something already given, out of a supply that is not theirs and does not run out.

You are not being asked to produce forgiveness. You are being asked to pass some along. Ephesians 4:32 puts the forgiving of you in the past tense before it asks anything, and it is the Holy Spirit rather than your own reserves who makes that a supply you can draw on.

You have already been handed the thing you are being asked for. The written word says hath forgiven, which is finished business, and His Spirit is what makes finished business feel like a full tank rather than a debt.

The condition Scripture does not attach

Here is what is not in that verse, and it is worth noticing what is absent.

It does not say forgive them when they apologize. It does not say forgive them once they understand what they did, or once they have stopped doing it, or once they are sorry.

Look at the hardest example in the whole book. On the cross, with the thing still actively happening to Him, with nobody in that crowd repenting of anything:

Then said Jesus, Father, forgive them; for they know not what they do. (Luke 23:34)

They know not what they do. He is not describing people who have come to their senses. He is describing people in the middle of it who do not even understand what they are doing, and He forgives them there, from inside it, before anything changes.

You are not waiting on a condition that Scripture never attached, and Luke 23:34 has the forgiving spoken from inside the wrong while it is still going on. The Spirit of God is what makes that read as a door rather than as an impossible example.

You have not been handed a transaction between two people. Luke 23:34 is addressed to the Father rather than to the crowd, and the Holy Spirit is the one who makes the direction of that sentence the thing that sets a person free.

Peter asks for a number and does not get one

Peter tries to find the edge of this, which is a very reasonable thing to do.

Lord, how oft shall my brother sin against me, and I forgive him? till seven times? (Matthew 18:21)

Seven is generous. Seven is more than anybody would expect. And Jesus answers:

I say not unto thee, Until seven times: but, Until seventy times seven. (Matthew 18:22)

He is not setting the limit at four hundred and ninety. He is telling Peter there is no ledger. The moment a person is counting, they are keeping the wrong kind of record, and Jesus takes the pencil away.

Then He tells a story about a servant forgiven an impossible debt who goes straight out and seizes somebody over a small one, and the point of it is not that the second man deserved mercy. The point is what the first man had just been handed and did not pass on.

You are holding a pencil that was taken out of somebody's hand a long time ago. Matthew 18:22 answers a number question by ending numbering, and His Spirit is what makes putting a pencil down easier than doing the sums.